Dinosaurs With Feathers: The Ancestors of Modern Birds

Dinosaurs With Feathers: The Ancestors of Modern Birds — page 3
BURIED IN LIMESTONE The lagoon in which the ancient bird was buried slowly dried up and the chalky deposits turned into limestone a rock that people often use for building Limestone that is especially fine-grained is used to make lithographic plates for printing In 1861 workers in a lithographic limestone quarry near the small town of Solnhofen Germany cut a slab of rock and split it open As they care fully examined each surface for imperfections they discovered the imprint of feathers and tiny bones Although they were accustomed to finding the remains of insects fish and even small dinosaurs embedded in the limestone they had never seen a fossil like this one It was the skeleton of an animal that resembled a small dinosaur except that it had long feathers fanning out from its arms and tail They had found the remains of the ancient bird The skeleton in the limestone slab was arranged in an almost lifelike pose The bird’s leg bones one of which ended in a perfectly formed foot were spread on either side of the long tail and the arm bones were raised above the body A long line of tiny vertebrae as well as the feathers that extended outward from them were clearly visible in the tail Feathers also extended from the arms mak ing them into wings Some of the bones including those of the skull had become detached and scattered but the specimen was otherwise nearly complete and amazingly well preserved Scientists named the new fossil Archaeopteryx from Greek words meaning ancient wing This remarkable discovery provided the first clear proof that birds had been alive in the Age of Dinosaurs Archaeopteryx is still the oldest known bird Only seven fossil skeletons and one feather imprint of Archaeopteryx have ever been found The original 1861 discovery is on exhibit at the British Museum of Natural History in London The best preserved Archaeopteryx fossil was unearthed in 1876 in a quarry not far from Solnhofen It is on display at the Humboldt Museum of Natural History in Berlin In this specimen even the skull of the bird is clearly visible as are the clawed wings and toes