This week’s fossil is a real superstar, and definitely one of my favorites! One that changed how we see birds forever: Archaeopteryx.
At first glance, it looks like a bird that’s just flown into a window… but this incredible fossil is over 150 million years old, and it’s one of the most important ever discovered. Found by a quarry worker in the fine limestone of Solnhofen, Germany, Archaeopteryx sits perfectly between dinosaurs and modern birds. You can go see the first one found in the London NHM, although it's a replica they have on display, the real one's nicely tucked away safely behind the scenes for preservation.
The best looking one in my eyes, and the one in the image, is over in Germany at their natural history museum in Berlin.
I've been a bit busy this week, so I've grabbed a picture to show that famous fossil pose, wings spread, feathers splayed, and tail outstretched — not because it crash-landed mid-flight, but simply because luckily that’s just how it settled before being covered by sediment, and eventually fossilised!
What really makes Archaeopteryx so special (not just that it's fun to imagine it as a really cool pet!) is how it bridges two worlds: it had feathers and wings like a bird, but teeth, claws, and a bony tail like a dinosaur. When it was discovered in the 1861, it arrived just after Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and provided stunning evidence for his theory of evolution, showing a true transitional form. This really gave the theory credibility, and helped to fight of opponents at the time.
It's actually a fossil discussed in the last three books I've read, all for different reasons, but that's probably because I read some quite nerdy books
Fun fact: Only around a dozen Archaeopteryx specimens have ever been found, all from the same region of Germany. The first was actually a single feather, which looks almost exactly like a feather you'd see today. Every one adds a little more to our understanding of how dinosaurs took to the skies, and remind us that Chickens really are dinosaurs!
Image credit: Humboldt Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
