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When a fossil saves the animal’s complete body in a death pose, you see it observing a snapshot in time. There are several such fossils in Archeopteryx (the earliest known birds), and the surprising specimens now off limits to scientists provide previously invisible evidence of the first bird’s flight capabilities.
Researchers have wondered how Archeopteryx appeared in the air, though most of the feathered dinosaur cousins never left the ground. And they claimed that Archeopteryx is probably more like a glider than a real flyer. The first fossil of this Jurassic winged wonder was discovered in southern Germany over 160 years ago and is about 150 million years ago. To date, only 14 fossils have been discovered. However, civilian collectors have severed some of these rarities, sequestering fossils from scientific research and segregating hobling investigations into this pivotal moment in the evolution of birds.
One such fossil was recently acquired by Chicago’s Outdoor Natural History Museum, providing answers to many years of questions about flight at Archeopteryx. Researchers published a description of the pigeon-sized specimen in Nature on May 14th, reporting that ultraviolet (UV) light and computed tomography (CT) scans revealed soft tissue and structure that have never been seen before in this ancient bird. The findings included wings indicating that Archeopteryx could power it.
Most archaeological fossil specimens are “incomplete and crushed,” but the fossils lacked only a single digit and were not blurred by time, said Dr. Jingmai O’Connor, the lead research author, and Dr. Jingmai O’Connor, curator of the Association of Fossil Reptiles at the Open-Air Museum.
“The bones are exquisitely preserved in 3D. We don’t really see it in every other specimen,” O’Connor told CNN. “There are also more fossilized soft tissues associated with the specimen than we’ve seen in other individuals.”
Kiyokawa Kiyoshi and Constance Van Beek, co-authors of the Outdoor Museum’s Fossil Preparatory Officer and Researcher, have been working on specimens for over a year. They modeled bone locations by scanning them in 3D for hundreds of hours. Remove any limestone debris. UV light is used to illuminate the boundaries between mineralized soft tissue and rocky matrix.
O’Connor’s preparation – estimated to be a process that took about 1,600 hours in total – paid off. Researchers detected the first evidence of Archeopteryx, a group of flight feathers called Tertials, which grow along the humerus between the elbow and the body, growing along the humerus and is a key element of all powered flights in modern birds. Since the 1980s, scientists have assumed that Archeopteryx has a sect due to the length of the humerus, O’Connor said. However, this is the first time such a feather has been discovered in archaeological fossils.
The surprise didn’t end there. The elongated scale shape of the toe pad implied that Archeopteryx spent time foraging on the ground, as is the case with modern pigeons and pigeons. And the bones on the mouth roof provided clues about the evolution of the skull features of birds called skulls. This feature gives birds more flexibility in how they use their beaks.
“It was ‘Amazing!’ After the next one,” O’Connor said.
“We’ve seen a lot of people living in the world,” said Susan Chapman, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Clemson University, South Carolina. Chapman, who was not involved in the study, uses paleontology and developmental biology to study the evolution of birds.
“The Chicago Archeopteryx prepists did a remarkable job of maintaining the impression of soft tissue as well as bone structure,” Chapman told CNN via email. “For their care, this almost complete specimen does not offer unprecedented insight into the fossils of this transition from theropod dinosaurs to birds.”
However, Archeopteryx can probably only fly in short distances, she added. Despite the playful line, there is a lack of specific adaptations to powered flight found in modern birds, such as special flying muscles and the extension of the sternum called keels to secure those muscles, Chapman said.
The museum acquired the Archeopteryx specimen in 2022, and at the time Julian Sigers, the museum’s president and CEO, called it “the most important fossil acquisition of the open-air museum since suing T. Rex.”
The importance of the evolution of Archeopteryx was unquestionable as a link between non-existent theropod dinosaurs and the lineages that produced all modern birds. But in some respects, the museum had a big bet on that particular fossil, according to O’Connor. He has been in a private hand since 1990 and his condition is unknown. When it arrived at the museum, scientists didn’t know what to expect, O’Connor said.
To say that the fossils exceeded their expectations is an understatement.
“When I learned we were going to win the Archeopteryx, I never thought we would end up with such a spectacular specimen,” O’Connor said. “This is one of the most important macroevolutionary transitions in Earth’s life history, as it not only survives the ultimate Cretaceous mass extinction, but also causes a group of dinosaurs that will become the most diverse group of terrestrial vertebrates on Earth today. This is a very important moment of evolution.”
The importance of such specimens underscores why scientific access should be prioritized over civilian fossil collection, Chapman added. When fossils are sold for profit and private displays rather than research, “their preparations are often poor and lose their irreplaceable soft tissue structure,” she said. “In addition, the value of such specimens to an understanding of human evolution has been lost for decades.”
The Chicago Archeopteryx probably holds many other important details about bird evolution, O’Connor added. The complete story has not yet been told, as data already collected from the fossils and analysis is still ongoing.
“There’s probably a lot more going on,” she said. “I hope everyone finds it just as exciting as me.”
Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer who appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works Magazine. she”The rise of zombie bugs“The Amazing Science of Parasitic Mind Control” (Hopkins Press).