A significant breakthrough, lots of say, a missing link that connects modern birds to their dinosaur ancestors. But a few sack the fossil as an unimportant sparrow, drab in color and evolutionary implication, enlightening nothing about bird beginnings. Archaeopteryx (ar-kee-OP-ter-ix) lived 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. It shared the Earth with dinosaurs and flying reptiles known as pterosaurs (TARE-uh-sars). Seven fossils of "Archie" (like the one shown below) have been found in southern Germany. This crow-sized creature was one of the first birds on Earth. It had lots of body parts that modern birds have, such as feathers and a wishbone. It also had many parts that were not bird-like. Some scientists think these parts show that Archie evolved from some kind of small dinosaur. The earliest birds had theropod dinosaur-like feet.
Archaeopteryx is the foremost bird for which we have clear fossil confirmation. About the size of a crow, the first fossil was found in a Jurassic limestone quarry in Bavaria in 1861. It had the clawed fingers and long bony tail of a dinosaur, with the wishbone and feathered wings of a bird.
For more than a century, people have argued about archaeopteryx. Did archaeopteryx evolve from a dinosaur, or from some other reptile? It is difficult for a nonpaleontologist to appreciate the heat with which this seemingly dry question has been, and is being, argued. Boiling more than a century of ferocious argument down to a few lines, the preponderance of evidence favors a dinosaur ancestor. Archaeopteryx is remarkably like a therapod dinosaur called velociraptor. (Barthel, K.W.; Swinburne, N.H.M. & Conway Morris, S. (1990)
Archaeopteryx was originally identified as the earliest fossil bird because of its feathers. Since then other dinosaurs with feathers have been found; if Archaeopteryx were discovered today it probably would be considered more dinosaur than bird...............
