Fossil of Oldest Living Paleocene Bird Found!
or
Paleocene Puzzle
or
Paleocene Problems
or
A Muddled Minefield of Murkiness?

It is currently widely accepted that our modern birds are descended from the dinosaurs, or more correctly, from the avian dinosaurs. The dinosaurs that perished in the big dinosaur extinction are referred to as the non-avian dinosaurs. And the common belief is that the birds survived the K-Pg extinction event:

One of the earliest known birds is the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx, but birds had evolved before then. A range of birds with more advanced features appeared soon after Archaeopteryx. One group gave rise to modern birds in the Late Cretaceous. So, for a time, bird-like dinosaurs, primitive birds and early modern birds all co-existed.

Only a small number of advanced birds ('neornithines') survived the end-Mesozoic extinction event. These are the ancestors of today's birds. Non-avian dinosaurs and primitive birds, such as Archaeopteryx, did not survive.
https://australian.museum/learn/dinosaurs/the-living-dinosaurs/

So if we wanted to look for any survivors, where would we start?

With hindsight, birds can be categorized as avian dinosaurs and all the other sorts—from Stegosaurus to Brontosaurus—are non-avian dinosaurs. The entire reason paleontologists make that split is because of a catastrophe that struck 66 million years ago. ... All told, more than 75 percent of species known from the end of the Cretaceous period, 66 million years ago, didn’t make it to the following Paleogene period. The geologic break between the two is called the K-Pg boundary, and beaked birds were the only dinosaurs to survive the disaster.

To understand more about how birds managed to survive and make a living in a world recovering from one of the worst mass extinctions of all time, the task at hand is to find more fossils from the time directly following the mass extinction, from a time called the Paleocene. Paleontologists have some great examples of fossil birds from about 10 million years after the disaster, from a time called the Eocene, but birds fossils from the slice in between the Cretaceous and Eocene are fragmentary and hard to find.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-birds-survived-and-dinosaurs-went-extinct-after-asteroid-hit-earth-180975801/

For years the Evolutionists have claimed the avian-dinosaurs survived the extinction. But the earliest Paleocene bird fossils they have so far found are millions of years past the event. That doesn't really support a survival.

The Paleocene is the very first epoch of the Paleogene period following the Cretaceous period. It starts straight after the K-Pg extinction event which brought the Cretaceous period and Mesozoic era to an end along with the non-avian dinosaurs and supposedly 75% of all species on earth.

By this we want to look for birds in the Paleocene. I found a page listing paleocene birds and there were only about 19 referenced so this should be a very simple search. We just need to list each one with the earliest temporal range date [the end date is not needed]. And see just which one is the closest to the 66 Ma extinction point. Pretty simple... or is it? This is what I found:

Pages in category "Paleocene birds"

Australornis 61.5 Ma
Berruornis 58.7 Ma
Crossvallia 55 Ma
Fissuravis 61.7 Ma
Gastornis 56 Ma
Kupoupou 62.5 Ma
Lithoptila 59.2 Ma
Lithornis 56 Ma
Novacaesareala 65 Ma, 64 Ma?
Ogygoptynx 61.7 Ma, Late Paleocene?
Palaeotringa 66 Ma but too close to call. Controversial.
Presbyornis 62 Ma
Qianshanornis Middle Paleocene
Qinornis 61 Ma
Remiornis 58 Ma
Sandcoleidae 63.3 Ma
Scaniornis 65 Ma??
Tsidiiyazhi 62.2 Ma
Waimanu 61 Ma
Constructed from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Paleocene_birds

And the obvious winners look like Novacaesareala, Palaeotringa, and Scaniornis.

But this is where things get a little murky.

The clear winner looks like Palaeotringa but checking some information on this gives the following:

Palaeotringa
Temporal range: Paleocene, 66 Ma
Palaeotringa is a prehistoric bird genus that was discovered by O. C. Marsh during the late 19th century American bone wars. Its remains were found in the controversial Hornerstown Formation of New Jersey (United States) which straddles the Cretaceous-Paleocene boundary some 66 million years ago. Though it cannot be said if these birds lived before or after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, they were in all likelihood wading birds that inhabited the coasts of the northwestern Atlantic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palaeotringa

and digging a bit deeper yields:

Palaeotringa Marsh 1870 (shorebird)
PaleoDB taxon number: 36645
Full reference: O. C. Marsh. 1870. Notice of some fossil birds, from the Cretaceous and Tertiary formations of the United States. American Journal of Science and Arts, series 2 49(145):205-217
Parent taxon: Graculavidae according to S. L. Olson and D. C. Parris 1987
Subtaxa: Palaeotringa littoralis, Palaeotringa vagans
Age range: 70.6 to 66.043 Ma
http://fossilworks.org/?a=taxonInfo&taxon_no=36645

This places these birds more on the Cretaceous side of the Extinction Event. So that leaves Novacaesareala and Scaniornis. Still a little murky but a lot easier to deal with.

And until one of them died and fell into some sediment and was buried and over deep time became fossilized there just weren't any

Let's look at Novacaesareala first:

Novacaesareala
Temporal range: Paleocene, 65 Ma
Novacaesareala is a genus of prehistoric bird. It is known only from the fossil remains of a single partial wing of the species Novacaesareala hungerfordi. This was found in Hornerstown Formation deposits, probably from the Early Paleocene (Danian); it lived around 64 million years ago on the western shores of the Atlantic, where now is New Jersey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novacaesareala

This is one of those controversial finds with some pages placing it in the Cretaceous. The above info puts it in the early Paleocene. But which is it? 64 or 65 Ma? and does it make a difference? We need to check Scaniornis:

Scaniornis
Temporal range: Danian–Selandian
Scaniornis is a prehistoric bird genus. The only known species, Scaniornis lundgreni, lived in the MP 1–5 (Early Paleocene, perhaps Middle Paleocene: c. 65–59 million years ago).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaniornis

So here's the problem. If we take Novacaesareala at 64 Ma, then Scaniornis is the clear winner at 65 Ma. But if we use the 65 Ma date for Novacaesareala then we have a draw with them both occurring at the same time from the Extinction point.

The solution to this puzzle may be just in the wording, and abbreviation used. For Novacaesareala, we are told it lived "around" 64 million years ago.

Similarly for Scaniornis we are given the time range "c. 65–59" which believe it or not means "around" 65–59.

So given these two "around" times we could possibly conclude that Scaniornis is the winner.

circa

Circa, which translates as "around" or "approximately," usually appears with dates. You may see it abbreviated as c. or ca. (or, more rarely, as cca. or cir.). It indicates that a number or value is approximate, not exact. For example, you might see sentences like "the construction of Stonehenge began circa 3000 BCE." More rarely, you may see circa in reference to measurements of amounts, such as "circa $45,000" or "c. 1.5 mL." Your meaning will often be clearer to readers if you stick with English in the main body of your text and save "c." for things in parentheses and notes. So, for example, you might write "the construction of Stonehenge began around 3000 BCE" or "when Stonehenge began to be constructed (c. 3000 BCE)."
https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/latin-terms-and-abbreviations/

But the muddled murkiness of all of this can be seen in that the times for these fossil finds are given "around" dates. With the temporal range for Novacaesareala also given as 65 Ma it still leaves a question mark over it all. And 65 as an integer is not really a range but a point in time so of course this probably means 65 and up to but not including 64 Ma? Or 65.5 up to 64.5?

And no doubt the paleontologists have been digging around just above the K-Pg boundary, frantically searching for bird fossils that would give some evidence that the avian-dinosaurs did indeed survive the extinction.

So given these dates are approximate, the earliest "around" date is for Scaniornis and we will go with that. Though this could change in the future.

So what does this give us?

At approximately 65 Ma, the fossil of Scaniornis is only 1 million years past the 66 Ma K-Pg Extinction Event when all the non-avian dinosaurs supposedly met their demise. But the birds somehow survived, so the Evolutionists tell us. Just how they supposedly survived is covered on some of my other pages. Here we are looking for the survivors.

A face-saving search

And no doubt the paleontologists have been digging around just above the K-Pg boundary, frantically searching for bird fossils that would give some evidence that the avian-dinosaurs did indeed survive the extinction. This is a face-saving search. For years the Evolutionists have claimed the avian-dinosaurs survived the extinction. But the earliest Paleocene bird fossils they have so far found are millions of years past the event. That doesn't really support a survival.

Scaniornis: Earliest Fossil of Paleocene Bird Found at 65 Ma!

And now with this search we have found the earliest one, Scaniornis, with the fossil being found around 1 million years past the Extinction, at approximately 65 Ma. It doesn't really support a survival and some Christians believe that these gaps instead support Progressive Creationism.

P.C. is a fascinating answer to all of the gaps and why completely new species seem to appear out of nowhere. But I'm not buying it. In fact, I am going to propose a very novel solution to this bird survival problem that could actually get the Evolutionists completely out of this hole.

They have been looking for survivors, birds whose fossils should be as close to the K-Pg boundary in the early Paleocene as possible. And Evolution tells us that we need a clear line of descent [or ascent?]:

Throughout the lives of the individuals, their genomes interact with their environments to cause variations in traits.
Natural selection acts on the phenotype, the characteristics of the organism which actually interact with the environment, ... Over time, this process can result in populations that specialise for particular ecological niches (microevolution) and may eventually result in speciation (the emergence of new species, macroevolution).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

So the question then is how do these birds get these new variations in traits?

Variation exists within all populations of organisms. This occurs partly because random mutations arise in the genome of an individual organism, and their offspring can inherit such mutations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

And there it is. We need parent birds and offspring.

Now this is a very simple approach. We first need the parent birds. If the birds supposedly survived the K-Pg extinction event, then it seems pretty straight-forward that that is where the parent birds must be. Just before the meteor impacted the Earth and took out the non-avian dinosaurs.

And at this point there must have been some speciation and their offspring inherited these new changes. And with the parents growing older and passing on we now have these new birds still living at the extinction point.

The Evolutionists tell us [and have been for quite a while] that the birds survived the impact extinction. This means that some of these offspring birds [or all of them?] survived the Extinction event. If they didn't survive then that is something that the Evolutionists need to admit.

Perhaps the answer was just staring them in the face

Since no admission has been forthcoming we can make the assumption that most or all of these offspring birds survived the Extinction Event and lived on into the early Paleocene. So now we have the problem of no earlier fossils of these birds being found. And with the paleontologists frantically searching for them perhaps the answer has just been staring them in the face.

Maybe these new birds just lived for a long time. A very long time. And until one of them died and fell into some sediment and was buried and over deep time became fossilized there just weren't any.

Sure it's a stretch.

But so is belief in Evolution. And this would solve the problem of the gap of 1 million years where they just haven't been able to find any bird fossils. They may not have found any because until then none of these offspring birds had died.

Scaniornis: Earliest Fossil of Oldest Paleocene Bird Found at 65 Ma! Age: 1 My

And sure, this could be hopelessly wrong. If they can actually date the actual age of these birds from the fossils it would put this suggestion completely to rest. But until then, this is a curious proposal that does solve the gap problem for the Evolutionists without them having to worry about Christians claiming Progressive Creationism.

So, just what did our 1 million year old bird actually look like [and probably when it was younger]?

Scaniornis
Temporal range: Danian–Selandian
Scaniornis is a prehistoric bird genus. ...
It appears to be somewhat similar to flamingos and was long placed with these
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaniornis

Scaniornis: Fossil of Oldest Paleocene Bird Found at 65 Ma! Age: 1 My
Scaniornis was somewhat similar to flamingos. And no, scientists were not tagging these birds at 65 Ma.

REFERENCES

Page design/construction Stephen Buckley 2021.