In 2018, paleontologist Daniel Field took a closer look at specimens from an amateur fossil collector. His team used micro-CT scanning, kind of like a high-energy CAT scan, to visualize the encased fossils. They were amazed to find a tiny bird skull: the earliest known fossil record of a modern bird. The skull looks chicken-like in the front and duck-like in the back. The bird may have looked and behaved like a modern shorebird.

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