Archaeopteryx was less bird like, more like dinos

A new research has shown that the Archaeopteryx, which has long been considered the iconic first bird, was less bird like, and more like dinosaurs.

The research, by Gregory Erickson of the Department of Biological Science at Florida State University, involved microscopic imaging of bone structure, which showed that the famously feathered fossil of the archaeopteryx grew much slower than living birds and more like non-avian dinosaurs.

The first Archaeopteryx skeleton was found in Munich, Germany, in the 1860’s and dating to 150 million years ago.

“For a long time, Archaeopteryx was considered the archetypical bird primarily because it had feathers, although it retained typical dinosaur features like a long tail and teeth,” said Mark Norell, Chair of the Division of Paleontology at the Museum and a o-author of the research paper.
 
“But the discovery of classical bird features like feathers and

wishbones have recently been found in many non-avian dinosaurs

blurring the line of what constitutes a bird,” he added.

Norell, Erickson, and colleagues looked at growth rate in

Archaeopteryx and in birds and dinosaurs up and down the family

tree by removing tiny, 250-micron chips from the long bones

(specifically thigh bones and one of the shinbones).

The Munich Archaeopteryx was sampled with the help of co-author

Oliver Rauhut of the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology

and Geology in Munich.

According to Rauhut, “The Munich specimen is one of the more

recently discovered specimens. Nevertheless, ‘cutting up’ this

fossil to take samples of the bones was almost considered

blasphemous until recently. But because the samples were very

small and were removed with great skill by our preparator, the

knowledge gained was more than worth the sacrifice.”

Surprisingly, the bones of the juvenile Archaeopteryx were not the

highly vascularized, fast-growing type, as in other avian

dinosaurs. Instead, Erickson found lizard-like, dense, nearly

avascular bone.

To explain the strange bone type, the researchers also examined

different-size species of dinosaurs that were close relatives of

Archaeopteryx, including Deinonychosaurs.

They then looked to colleagues in China for specimens of two of

the earliest birds: Jeholornis prima, a long-tailed creature, and

the short-tailed Sapeornis chaochengensi, which had three fingers

and teeth.

Next, the research team plugged bone formation rates into the

sizes of the Archaeopteryx femora (thigh bones) to predict its

rate of growth.

“We learned that the adult would have been raven-sized and taken

about 970 days to mature,” Erickson said.

“Some same-size birds today can do likewise in eight or nine

weeks. In contrast, maximal growth rates for Archaeopteryx

resemble dinosaur rates, which are three times slower than living

birds and four times faster than living reptiles,” he added. (ANI)

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