New View: Fossil offers novel look at an ancient bird
By Sid Perkins
A newly described specimen of an ancient creature that most scientists consider the oldest known bird is posed in a way that provides new viewing angles for several body features. Analyses of those traits bolster the notion that the 150-million-year-old creature, Archaeopteryx, as well as other birds, evolved from theropod dinosaurs, a team of scientists suggests.
Many studies of previously described Archaeopteryx fossils, especially cranial scans that depict the creature’s braincase and inner ear (SN: 8/7/04, p. 86: Available to subscribers at Bird Brain? Cranial scan of fossil hints at flight capability), indicate that the creature could fly. The new fossil, only the 10th example of Archaeopteryx and its close relatives, is one of the best preserved, says Gerald Mayr, an ornithologist at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany. It’s also the only specimen whose skull and body are seen not in profile but from above, he notes. This viewpoint reveals characteristics unseen or unpreserved in other fossils.