The bird is a type of woodcreeper that’s found in the forests of South America and makes a living by crawling up tree trunks ...

The Ground Finch uses its crushing beak to remove ticks from the backs of tortoises and iguanas. The Woodpecker and Cactus Finch have probing beaks to find grubs in holes and dead tree branches.

The team then found those same patterns in lithornithid fossil beaks, which suggests that lithornithids had the same sensory abilities and were probe-foraging birds. The discovery makes sense ...