Definitive fossil evidence for the extant avian radiation in the Cretaceous

By J. Clarke, C. Tambussi, J. Noriega, G. Erickson, Richard A. Ketcham. Nature, 2005

329 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Long-standing controversy surrounds the question of whether living bird lineages emerged after non-avian dinosaur extinction at the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary or whether these lineages coexisted with other dinosaurs and passed through this mass extinction event. Inferences from biogeography and molecular sequence data (but see ref. 10) project major avian lineages deep into the Cretaceous period, implying their ‘mass survival’ at the K/T boundary. By contrast, it has been argued that the fossil record refutes this hypothesis, placing a ‘big bang’ of avian radiation only after the end of the Cretaceous. However, other fossil data—fragmentary bones referred to extant bird lineages—have been considered inconclusive. These data have never been subjected to phylogenetic analysis. Here we identify a rare, partial skeleton from the Maastrichtian of Antarctica as the first Cretaceous fossil definitively placed within the extant bird radiation. Several phylogenetic analyses supported by independent histological data indicate that a new species, Vegavis iaai, is a part of Anseriformes (waterfowl) and is most closely related to Anatidae, which includes true ducks. A minimum of five divergences within Aves before the K/T boundary are inferred from the placement of Vegavis; at least duck, chicken and ratite bird relatives were coextant with non-avian dinosaurs.

Subfields: Nature and Landscape Conservation, Paleontology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cbab681441d4864345b313f58bb0f383a19d9918

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Citations in the corpus

Accounting for calibration uncertainty in phylogenetic estimation of evolutionary divergence times. (2009, background): “As an example, Vegavis was reported by Clarke et al. (2005) to provide a minimum bound for the divergence of ducks from the magpie-goose.”
Anatomy, phylogeny and palaeobiology of early archosaurs and their kin (2013, background): “However, the diversification of the avian and crocodylian crown groups are relatively recent events that began during the Late Cretaceous (Brochu 2001, 2003; Clarke et al. 2005), less than 100 Ma ago.”
Late Cretaceous bioconnections between Indo‐Madagascar and Antarctica: refutation of the Gunnerus Ridge causeway hypothesis (2011, background): “Similarly, the remains of avian fossils from Antarctica (e.g. Noriega & Tambussi, 1995; Chatterjee, 2002; Clarke et al., 2005; Chatterjee et al., 2006; Coria et al., 2007; Tambussi & Acosta Hospitaleche, 2007) appear to represent members of the anatomically modern clade Neornithes, whereas those…”
Paleontological evidence to date the tree of life. (2006, background): “A further latest Cretaceous anseriform is Vegavis iaai from lithostratigraphic unit K3 of Vega Island, Antarctica, dated as mid to late Maastrichtian, c. 68–66 MYA (Clarke et al. 2005).”
Do hormonal control systems produce evolutionary inertia? (2008, background): “It is heartening to realize that birds did make it through the mass extinction event that eliminated all the other dinosaurs, an event that may have involved climate change more sudden and extreme than what is occurring now (Clarke et al. 2005).”
Different evolutionary histories underlie congruent species richness gradients of birds and mammals (2012, background): “This allows us to examine the phylogenetic structure of the mammal gradient at a finer taxonomic level and captures the phylogenetic pattern arising from all extant radiations spanning the Late Cretaceous to the Pleistocene.”
Constraints on the timescale of animal evolutionary history (2015, background): “Vegavis iaai is identified as a galloanserine, a neognath, and a neornithine on the basis of phylogenetic analysis (Clarke et al., 2005).”
How can a knowledge of the past help to conserve the future? Biodiversity conservation and the relevance of long-term ecological studies (2007, background): “Information from these records indicate that modern birds are one group that have a relatively recent radiation evolving around the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary (ca 65 Myr) and the group is still increasing and diversifying (Clarke et al. 2005).”