CHAPTER 1 A SURPRISE IN LIMESTONE In 1861 workers at a quarry in Germany Imade a startling discovery The workers were mining blocks of limestone When they split one block open they found a fossil of an ancient animal The animal had four limbs and a long tail It looked like a small dinosaur Yet something about the fossil was odd Archaeopteryx fossils often include the imprints of feathers claws or
The workers saw the clear outline of feathers imprinted on the smooth stone These feathers made it seem like the animal was an ancient bird But in other ways the animal was like a dinosaur For example it had a bony tail It had claws on the ends of its front limbs In contrast birds have tails made of feathers not bones And a bird’s front limbs have no claws The fossil puzzled many scientists They were not sure if it was a bird a dinosaur or something in between A German scientist named the animal Archaeopteryx The word is Greek for ancient wing 6
Richard Owen was one of the first scientists to recognize that dinosaurs were different from modern reptiles Paleontologist Richard Owen studied this fossil at the Natural History Museum in London England The fossil’s head was mostly missing so Owen could not see whether the animal had a birdlike beak 7
