The animal's feathers are not like those of modern birds which have vanes of barbs that zip together and extend from a central shaft Instead they have vanes consisting of short flexible barbs that don't easily stick together This mass of feathers gives the animal a fluffy scruffy appearance These feathers are not very A BIRD LIKE A efficient for flight Although they help with DINOSAUR insulation and repel water they aren't great at Hoatzins don't fit in with other birds According to Audubon writer Elizabeth those jobs either This little animal with its four Deatrick these scruffy Amazon jungle feathered wings is a dinosaur called Anchiornis birds never got the genetic message that they aren't dinosaurs anymore 1 For Although not yet a bird it is well on its way to one thing their chicks have claws just like becoming one Anchiornis's Hoatzins build nests on branches overhanging the water When predators such Paleontologists discovered the first as snakes appear chicks drop from the nest into the safety of the water They swim to land Anchiornis fossils in China in 2009. Since then after the snake leaves then use their claws more than 200 similar fossils have been found to climb the tree and return to the nest The hoatzin's claws disappear in adulthood but One group of scientists has pieced together it remains a clumsy flier for its entire life A descriptions of Anchiornis's structure and 2014 DNA study indicated the hoatzin is most closely related to shorebirds such as cranes movement Others have used a technique and plovers but not very closely related It branched off from other birds approximately 65 MYA
Archaeopteryx Lithographica was the size of a large crow called laser stimulated fluorescence to look at the fossils In the fluorescence technique a laser is pointed at the fossil in a dark room and scientists record the wavelengths of light that bounce off This helped scientists determine Anchiornis's feather coloration a black and gray body white highlights and a red crest ARCHAEOPTERYX The first fossil skeleton to give a clue about bird origins was uncovered in 1861 in southern Germany The bird named Archaeopteryx lithographica lived approximately 150 MYA when
Germany was an archipelago with a Florida like climate Because it had characteristics of both birds and reptiles A. lithographica was considered a transitional fossil that linked dinosaurs with modern birds Eleven more A. lithographica fossils have since been found in Germany The bird was raven sized weighing approximately two pounds 1 kg It had broad rounded wings and a tail up to 20 inches 50 cm long 2 Fluffy feathers covered its body and legs Scientists aren't sure if it had head or neck feathers DINOSAURS ARE NOT EXTINCT In 2018 an international group of Dr. Christopher Eppig says that when scientists using state of the art technology people eat chicken or turkey they are at a facility in France tried to understand eating dinosaurs Birds are not simply similar to dinosaurs he says They are not the flying abilities of A. lithographica Using merely related to dinosaurs They actually synchrotron microtomography a type of are dinosaurs Since the mid 1990s evidence for birds X ray imaging the scientists were able to dinosaur origins has grown Pieces of this create a three dimensional 3 D image that evidence have included shared skeletal features and the discovery of dinosaur allowed them to see inside the fossilized bones feathers According to the Understanding without damaging them They discovered that Evolution website at University of California Berkeley Birds are simply a twig on the dinosaurs branch of the tree of life 3
A. lithographica's wing bones were much thinner than those of ground dwelling dinosaurs They were actually very similar to modern pheasant bones Pheasants are not strong fliers They use short flights to evade predators or cross barriers THEROPODS GIVE RISE TO BIRDS There are two theories about how flight evolved In one theory a tree dwelling ancestor began by gliding to the ground It could remain in the air longer when it flapped its forelimbs A second theory suggests that a small ground dwelling ancestor ran on two legs and extended its forelimbs as it leaped to catch prey or avoid predators Feathers would have improved lift making flight easier Fossils help scientists find more answers about the origins and evolution of flight Birds have a very limited fossil record because their thin lightweight bones tend to disintegrate rather than form fossils Paleontologists piece together the bones that have survived providing a clearer picture of bird origins Scientists found the first A. lithographica fossil just after the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species But A. lithographica was not the origin of modern birds True birds probably arose from the end of the Triassic 251.9-201.3 MYA to the beginning of
