A 68-million-year-old skull fossil found in Antarctica has revealed the oldest known modern bird, which was likely related to the waterfowl that live by lakes and oceans today, according to new research.

With its glaciers and sub-zero temperatures, Antarctica hardly seems like a place of refuge. However, the now icy continent might have been just that for the early ancestors of today’s living waterbirds –especially after an asteroid slammed into the Earth.

The near-complete fossil skull, unearthed on Vega Island near the Antarctic Peninsula, reveals a bird that thrived in the challenging waters off Antarctica roughly 69 million years ago, just three million years before the dinosaur-killing asteroid impact.

Near the end of the age of dinosaurs, a bird resembling today's loons and grebes dove for fish and other prey in the perilous waters off Antarctica. Thanks to a nearly complete fossil skull, scientists now have identified this waterfowl as the oldest-known member of the lineage spanning all birds alive today.

Sixty-six million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, an asteroid impact near the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico triggered the extinction of all known non-bird dinosaurs. But for the early ancestors of today's waterfowl,

A new and nearly complete skull of Vegavis iaai discovered in Antarctica suggests that modern birds originated before the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.