https://sciencetrends.com/vegaviidae-gr ... xtinction/https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken- ... st-a-duck/"A recent article highlighted the discovery of a “duck-relative” (otherwise known as a duck) [no], which they call a “modern bird,” [yes ie it was not toothed unlike most from the Cretaceous era] from the supposed “Age of Dinosaurs,” [no 'supposed' just actual] according to the evolutionary timeline.
"This duck group supposedly survived the dinosaur extinction event some 65 million years ago and is allegedly “the first documented case of a group of birds surviving such extinction.”" [That's what the evidence shows.] "But how could dinosaurs have evolved into birds if we have examples of modern birds in the very same layers as dinosaurs?" [Easily since there were hundreds of species of dinosaurs - though not all of them contemporaneous with each other - through an era lasting more than 150 million years, and (as AiG accept) some birds, species that are now long extinct, were already around too towards the end of that era.] Ham's bold type sentence is wilful misdirection.
This article also repeats Ken Ham 'information' from earlier this month that has recently been mostly debunked by a Christian palaeontologist blogger. Namely: "And, contrary to what the article states, these ducks are certainly not the only example [that article never said they were it said neornithes were "very scarce and patchy" and then suggested that Vegaviidae was "the first group of modern birds from the Mesozoic" (to survive the extinction event - and note the word 'group')] of modern birds buried with dinosaurs. We find fossilized parrots, albatrosses, loons, owls, flamingos, penguins, sandpipers, and more buried in the same layers as dinosaurs. And one evolutionary researcher claimed that such evidence supports the idea that “most or all of the major modern bird groups were present in the Cretaceous” (a so-called “dinosaur layer”). While these fossils are rarely displayed in museums, they exist and are a serious challenge to the evolutionary timeline."
See:
https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken- ... just-bird/"But the author of the article calls these birds “bird-like dinosaurs” because of the supposed evolutionary connection between dinosaurs and birds (even though modern and now-extinct birds lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, including parrots, loons, owls, flamingos, and more)."
And then:
https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2018/02 ... sil-birds/"But this claim is just wrong and it is wrong in multiple ways. First, for most of the birds mentioned, no such fossils exist. Second, the term “modern” is undefined but 99% of AiG’s readers will take this to mean that a “modern” parrot from the era of dinosaurs is a parrot similar to one alive today but whose bones are found mixed with dinosaur-bearing rocks.
So, are there fossils of “modern” parrots, loons, owls and flamingos found in dinosaur-era rocks? The short answer – NO! But are there fossils in dinosaur-bearing rocks of ancestral parrots and flamingos that are recognizable as belonging to those families or “kinds” as Ken Ham might want to call them or may be thinking in his “modern” term? The answer is still NO! There aren’t even any fossils that can be definitely identified as belonging to these families that are found with dinosaurs." [However Ken Ham does appear to have shown in his latest blog post that there were some ancestral parrots around in the Cretaceous.]
A "serious challenge to the evolutionary timeline" is not the same thing as a serious challenge to the theory of evolution.
And Ham hasn't finished:
"The layers don’t represent eons of evolutionary time—they most likely represent ecosystems successively buried by rising floodwaters." Total garbage. How could more than one ecosystem be found in a single location in the space of one year (a 'flood year' indeed)? Total nonsense. Real science - and real deep time - does explain what is observed.
"To learn more about fossils of so-called “modern” animals, check out Living Fossils, an excellent book by Dr. Carl Werner. You’ll be shocked by what’s found in the fossil record that you never knew about!
Oh, and ducks have always been—well—ducks!"
Said the Ayatollah of Misinformation.
Actually these Vegaviidae birds may have been more loons than ducks. Remind you of anyone? From the article Ham tries to ridicule:
"Records of Modern birds (Neornithes) from the Age of Dinosaurs or Mesozoic Era, are very scarce and patchy. Most specimens are represented by isolated bones or strongly incomplete skeletons. This contrast with toothed birds, which are widely represented and known by abundant skeletons." Toothed birds, which appeared earlier in Earth history, having now gone extinct. We are left with 'modern' birds (even if some of them had ancient origins).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VegaviidaeKen Ham is anti-science. His articles are often breath-takingly simplistic and stupid.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28988276PS at 12.44 am
That parrot fossil has now been mentioned in comments at the Naturalis Historia blog.