Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 29, 2007



Archaeopteryx is the earliest and most primitive bird known to date. It lived in the late Jurassic Period around 155-150 million years ago in what is now southern Germany. At the time Archaeopteryx lived, Europe was an archipelago of islands in a shallow warm tropical sea, much closer to the equator than it is now. Archaeopteryx had feathers and wings, but it also had teeth and a skeleton similar to a small carnivorous dinosaur; therefore, it had both bird and theropod dinosaur features. Similar in size and shape to a European Magpie, it bore broad, rounded wings and a long tail. Archaeopteryx could grow to about half a metre, or 1.6 feet in length. Its feathers resembled the flight feathers of modern birds, suggesting not only capacity for flight, but also homoiothermy. Otherwise, its features were reptilian, with jaws lined with sharp teeth, three 'fingers' ending in curved claws and a long bony tail. These features, which are consistent with theropod dinosaurs, made Archaeopteryx a hot topic in the debate on evolution. Many have seen it as a true 'missing link'. In 1862 the description of the first intact specimen of Archaeopteryx, just two years after Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, set off a firestorm of debate about evolution and the role of transitional fossils that endures to this day. The eleven fossils currently classified as Archaeopteryx are the oldest evidence of feathers on the planet and the only ones dated from Jurassic times. (more...)

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