Page 95 - The Origin of Birds and Flight

An Archaeopteryx fossil found near
Langenaltheim in 1861, known in the
literature as “the London specimen.
This fossil was announced by the
German paleontologist Hermann von
Meyer and was later sold to the
London Museum. The fossil’s feath-
ers have the same structure as pre-
sent-day flying bird feathers.
Archaeopteryx fossils reveal the exis-
tence, millions of years ago, of birds
with complex feather structures and
the ability to fly.

Mesozoic Period (251 to 65 million years ago). In addition, analysis of the
many modern discoveries of dinosaur skin has revealed that “The skin
of a wide variety of dinosaurs . . . is unlikely to represent a predecessor
to a feather-bearing integument.” 72
In their Scientific American article, “Which Came First, the Feather or
the Bird?” Richard O. Prum and Alan H. Bush wrote:
Progress in solving the particularly puzzling origin of feathers has also
been hampered by what now appear to be false leads, such as the
assumption that the primitive feather evolved by elongation and
division of the reptilian scale, and speculations that feathers evolved
for a specific function, such as flight. A lack of primitive fossil feath-
ers hindered progress as well. For may years, the earliest bird fossil
has been Archæopteryx lithografica, which lived in the Late Jurassic peri-
od (about 148 million years ago). But Archaeopteryx offers no new