Illustration by Ville Sinkkonen
Joel Kontinen
Some evolutionist think that Archaeopteryx is a a
proto bird that is one the way to being a real bird. But that’s not the way these
animals become birds. This is what told Live Science says about this:
Iconic transition species between dinosaurs and birds
may have had weird 'teeth' on roof of its mouth and a highly mobile tongue,
study reveals searchers have uncovered an intriguing set of never-before-seen
features in the skull of Archaeopteryx,
an iconic dinosaur that is considered a key transitional fossil in the
evolution of birds, a new study reports.
The features — which are absent in nonflying dinosaurs
but are widespread in living birds —
may have enabled Archaeopteryx to acquire, manipulate and
process food more efficiently, the research team proposed in the study, which
was published Feb. 2 in the journal The Innovation.
The newly discovered features include a tiny bone that
indicates Archaeopteryx had a highly mobile tongue. The
researchers also identified "weird" soft tissue traces interpret but
this is qhat science daily ed as oral papillae — small, tooth-like projections
on the roof of the mouth, Jingmai
O'Connor, an associate curator of fossil reptiles at the
Field Museum in Chicago and lead author of the study, in an email. Finally, the
team found "unusual" openings near the tip of Archaeopteryx's
jaw that suggest a nerve-rich structure and may represent an early analogue of
what is known as a bill-tip organ in modern birds.
he identification of these features in Archaeopteryx marks
their earliest known appearance in the fossil record, according to the study,
suggesting these characteristics evolved during or close to the emergence of
avian dinosaurs —
known as birds — which is thought to have occurred during the Late Jurassic
period (roughly 161.5 million to 143 million years ago). he
identification of these features in Archaeopteryx marks their
earliest known appearance in the fossil record, according to the study,
suggesting these characteristics evolved during or close to the emergence of
avian dinosaurs —
known as birds — which is thought to have occurred during the Late Jurassic
period (roughly 161.5 million to 143 million years ago).
Modern birds are the only dinosaur lineage that survived the
mass extinction event 66 million years ago. Archaeopteryx, which
lived around 150 million years ago in what is now Germany, is among the oldest —
if not the earliest — known dinosaur that can also be considered a bird under a
broad definition, although it was probably not the first bird to evolve,
O'Connor said.
Furthermore, Archaeopteryx is
unlikely to have been a direct ancestor of modern birds, research
suggests. According to O'Connor, Archaeopteryx represents
the earliest known dinosaur with good evidence for active, feather-driven flight,
although this was likely limited to brief, powered bursts
Source:
Aristos Georgiou 2026 Archaeopteryx, one of the world's first proto birds, has a set of weird, never-before-seen features, new study reveals | Live Science February 13
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