CHICAGO, May 7 — An exquisitely preserved fossil of the earliest-known hen Archaeopteryx, a pigeon-sized specimen revealing new anatomical particulars of a creature whose nineteenth century discovery lent help to Charles Darwin’s concepts about evolution, has been acquired by the Field Museum in Chicago and can go on public show.
The museum introduced on Monday the acquisition of the fossil, which it mentioned had been within the palms of a collection of personal collectors since being unearthed in southern Germany someday earlier than 1990. It has the best-preserved cranium, vertebral column and comfortable tissues of the 13 identified Archaeopteryx specimens, the museum mentioned.
“No single specimen tells us the entire story of this animal. Most earlier specimens are incomplete, crudely ready, and/or crushed, limiting the information they will present,” Field Museum paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor mentioned. “The Chicago specimen preserves comfortable tissues by no means earlier than seen in some other specimen and new details about the skeleton that assist us higher perceive how this hen lived and its exact relationship with non-avian dinosaurs.”
Archaeopteryx lived about 150 million years in the past through the Jurassic Period. Birds developed from small feathered dinosaurs, and are half of the dinosaur lineage — certainly, the only real survivors from that lineage of a mass extinction 66 million years in the past brought on by an asteroid putting Earth. Archaeopteryx boasted reptilian traits like tooth, an extended, bony tail, and claws on its palms, alongside bird-like traits like wings shaped by massive, asymmetrical feathers.
The fossil is almost full, lacking solely the tip of one finger, O’Connor mentioned. The fossilised impressions of feathers are in depth, revealing a tract of wing feathers not preserved within the different specimens, O’Connor added.
The fossil possesses the one full Archaeopteryx vertebral column — together with two tiny vertebrae on the tip of the tail exhibiting it had 24 vertebrae, another than beforehand thought, O’Connor mentioned. Another distinctive characteristic is the scales on the underside of Archaeopteryx’s ft, O’Connor added.
It stays in a limestone slab as a result of of the fragility of the bones and different options. After being delivered to Chicago in August 2022, museum fossil preparators Akiko Shinya and Connie Van Beek spent greater than 1,400 hours utilizing tiny drills to take away rock and expose the bones and different options.
The largest Archaeopteryx specimen is in regards to the measurement of a raven. This one is tied for the smallest.
“Archaeopteryx lived on an arid, pretty sparsely vegetated archipelago visited by seasonal storms. It appears to have been tailored for all times on the bottom, like many dwelling birds, and we hypothesise it was succesful of solely bursts of flight and maybe gliding down from bushes,” O’Connor mentioned.
Fossilised bones of the neck, head and one wing of the traditional hen Archaeopteryx are seen on the Field Museum in Chicago on this undated handout {photograph}. — Picture by Delaney Drummond/Field Museum/Handout by way of eNM
Darwin in 1859 revealed his concept of evolution by pure choice. Building on the notion that organisms can change over time, the British naturalist proposed that new species come up from earlier ones and that species finest tailored to their setting usually tend to survive and cross on the genes underpinning their success.
The “gravest objection” to his concept, Darwin famous, was the dearth on the time of fossils of transitional types. The 1861 discovery in Bavaria of Archaeopteryx, combining reptile-like and bird-like options, supplied help for Darwin’s concept.
“I believe it’s superb how one fossil can educate us a lot. This one fossil taxon confirmed us birds are dinosaurs, helped to show pure choice as a mechanism for evolution, and nonetheless stays after 160-plus years one of essentially the most researched and vital fossil species of all time,” O’Connor mentioned.
The museum — already house to the skeleton of Sue, maybe the most important and finest preserved Tyrannosaurus rex — didn’t disclose the worth paid for the Archaeopteryx fossil. From Tuesday it’s going to go on show for a few month, then return later in a everlasting exhibit.
A 2015 German legislation requires newly found Archaeopteryx fossils to remain in Germany. This specimen was offered outdoors of Germany in 1990, which means it was already out of the nation earlier than that statute was handed, the museum mentioned. — eNM
