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ESRF / Pascal Goetgheluck
A new species of Archeopteryx, the famous "first bird", has been identified. The discovery supports the idea that Archeopteryx is really a kind of transition between dinosaurs and their descendants of birds, and not a stalemate of evolution, as has been suggested.
Archeopteryx was recognized as a species in the 1860s. It was immediately seized as evidence of Darwin's theory of evolution, as it was a bird with dinosaur-like features. He had wings and feathers, but teeth instead of a beak. The obvious implication was that Archeopteryx was a transitional fossil, showing how birds evolved from the ancestors of dinosaurs.
It was about the size of a crow and maybe had black feathers. It was suggested that he was flying only in short bursts like a pheasant and that he was hunting at night.
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However, over the last decade, its position in the evolutionary bird tree has been questioned as a result of the discovery of similar dino-birds in China. A 2011 study built a family tree and concluded that Archeopteryx was a dinosaur, not a bird.
Martin Kundrát of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Slovakia and his colleagues have now studied a Archeopteryx fossil.
Ghost fossil
It was found in the early 1990s, apparently in a quarry near Daiting, Germany, and was found with a private collector. For years, he remained unknown and was nicknamed "the ghost". In 2009 he was bought by paleontologist Raimund Albersdörfer. He is now the subject of a long-term loan at the National Collection of Paleontology and Geology of Bavaria, Munich.
The fossil contains the largest part of the skull, as well as parts of the shoulders and the left wing. It is covered with rock and was crushed, but Kundrát scanned it with the help of high-powered X-rays. "We can see all the bones preserved," says Kundrát. "Not only that, we can see these bones from the inside."
The team discovered subtle differences in bones and teeth not seen in other fossils known to Archeopteryx. The Kundraat team placed the specimen in a new species, Archeopteryx albersdoerferi.
Some bones are hollow, which makes them lighter. Modern birds have similar bones to help them fly, which implies that the species could fly.
Up early
When the team built a new family tree of related birds and dinosaurs, it placed the new species of Archeopteryx at the base of the line of the bird (or avian). "It's in an important position to tell us about the early evolution of avian dinosaurs," says Kundrát.
"It seems more and more likely that Archeopteryx We are really somewhere in the lineage of recent birds, "said Oliver Rauhut of the Bavarian National Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Germany. "It's very unlikely to be an ancestor for later birds," he says, as it is unlikely that a direct ancestor will be fossilized, but "that gives us a good idea of what an early one could have looked like
The flight has appeared "probably three times" and perhaps more among the bird-like dinosaurs, says Rauhut. He points to Microraptor, a dinosaur with flying feathers on his legs as well as his wings that have probably slipped. "It has nothing to do with the origin of the birds." Another dinosaur, Yi qi, had membranous wings like those of a bat.
Journal reference: Historical biology, DOI: 10.1080 / 08912963.2018.1518443
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