Dinosaur 🦖 of the month: Archaeopteryx
213 2019-08-16 by Cdace
Archaeopteryx (meaning "ancient wing") is a fucking half breed dinosaur 🦖 , dating from about 150 million years ago during the Jurassic period.
Archaeopteryx seemed to be part bird and part dinosaur. Unlike modern-day birds, it had teeth, three claws on each wing, a flat sternum (breastbone), belly ribs (gastralia), and a long, bony tail. Like modern-day birds, it had feathers, a lightly-built body with hollow bones, a wishbone (furcula) and reduced fingers. This crow-sized animal may have been able to fly, but not very far and not very well. Although it had feathers and could fly, it had similarities to dinosaurs, including its teeth, skull, lack of a horny bill, and certain bone structures. Archaeopteryx had a wingspan of about 1.5 feet (0.5 m) and was about 1 foot ( 30 cm) long from beak to tail. It probably weighed from 11 to 18 ounces (300 to 500 grams).
Paleontologists think that Archaeopteryx was a dead-end in evolution and that coelurosaurian theropods (a group of dinosaurs that included the Dromaeosaurs Deinonychus, Utahraptor, and Velociraptor) led to the birds. Fossils: Amazingly detailed Archaeopteryx fossils have been found in fine-grained Jurassic limestone in southern Germany. This fine-grained limestone is used in the lithographic process, hence the species name "lithographica" given to the early Archaeopteryx specimen. The first Archaeopteryx fossil (a feather) was found in 1860 near Solnhofen, Germany, and was named by the German paleontologist Hermann von Meyer in 1861. That year he also discovered the first specimen of Archaeopteryx. A total of eight Archaeopteryx specimens have been found, plus the feather.
The Solnhofen area was a stagnant lagoon during the Jurassic period (Europe was a series of islands at this time). The lagoon's waters had little or no oxygen (anoxic) near the bottom, a situation that helped preserve many dead organisms, and boost the chances of fossil formation, since decay after death is very slow in anoxic waters.
Bird fossils are rare because bird bones are hollow and fragile, and usually deteriorate instead of fossilizing. However, a few Jurassic, mid-Cretaceous, Eocene and Miocene-Pliocene bird fossils have been found.
The Origin of Birds: In 1868, Thomas Henry Huxley interpreted the Archaeopteryx fossil to be a transitional bird having many reptilian features. Using the fossils of Archaeopteryx and Compsognathus, a bird-sized and bird-like dinosaur, Huxley argued that birds and reptiles were descended from common ancestors. Decades later, Huxley's ideas fell out of favor, only to be reconsidered over a century later (after much research and ado) in the 1970's.
In 1986, J. A. Gauthier looked at over 100 characteristics of birds and dinosaurs and showed that birds belonged to the clade of coelurosaurian dinosaurs. [Gauthier, J.A., 1986. Saurischian monophyly and the origin of birds, in: The Origin of Birds and the Evolution of Flight, California Academy of Sciences Memoir No. 8]
38 comments
1 SnapshillBot 2019-08-16
Your mind is diseased. Pick a dandelion and hold it in your mouth until you feel the urge to urinate. Then, swallow the dandelion and urinate on the spot from which it was picked.
Snapshots:
Dinosaur 🦖 of the month: Archaeopte... - archive.org, archive.today, removeddit.com
Archaeopteryx - archive.org, archive.today
I am just a simple bot, *not** a moderator of this subreddit* | bot subreddit | contact the maintainers
1 ImJustaBagofHammers 2019-08-16
Cucked and non-sentient.
1 Cdace 2019-08-16
😭
1 Starship_Litterbox_C 2019-08-16
When I was a kid I remember looking at dino books with Archaeopteryx and Allosaurus and all kinds of other cool shit. Archaeopteryx really takes me back
1 goldfish_memories 2019-08-16
Imagine being unironically able to spell all those names lmao. Don't u have other uses for your brain?
1 MacAndShits 2019-08-16
I came here to chew bussy and spell dinosaur names.
And I'm all out of bussy.
1 Starship_Litterbox_C 2019-08-16
Yes? I can also spell the names of over 3 dozen species of cat
1 goldfish_memories 2019-08-16
Congrats then. You should unironically come to med school. It seems the professors these days only want their students that are walking dictionaries or HDDs. And I'm saying this as someone who struggles to even remember all the names of my 3 dozen friends 😭😭😭
1 [deleted] 2019-08-16
[removed]
1 Green_and_Lean 2019-08-16
Man, I miss the days when all I needed were dinosaur picture books to keep me entertained
1 trexmundi 2019-08-16
Awww yes. This is the good stuff.
1 TaysSecondGussy 2019-08-16
Yasss bitch. Getting to the weird shit.
1 Jidi_Isle 2019-08-16
One of my favorites 😍
1 elephantofdoom 2019-08-16
The names of some of these dinosaurs are just trolling us. A lot of them are combinations of Greek and Latin and follow no logical grammar or structure.
1 duckraul2 2019-08-16
A consequence of the early days of paleontology basically being a weird ego hobby of eccentric rich old bastards for like 200 years. Pay varying degrees of amateur paleontologists to go out and make the next most amazing whole fossil discovery and name it. It got pretty weird when different expeditions began sabotaging other expedittions, stealing their shit, planting b.s. fossils, threatening each other, destroying fossil sites to deny others.
1 elephantofdoom 2019-08-16
Science was more fun when it was autistic guys looking for an excuse not to fuck their wives.
1 Kellere31 2019-08-16
Science was more fun when UNTERMENSCHEN shit like "morality" and "human rights" didn't exist.
1 horrorfan96 2019-08-16
Science was more fun when we were trying to find out how long someone could survive in freezing water
1 Tzar-Romulus 2019-08-16
Dumb bird. Shoulda' flew away from the meteor.
1 zsfh 2019-08-16
Archaeopteryx was not capable of full powered flight; instead it glided.
1 Bbekko 2019-08-16
Retard bird lizard should’ve glided up then
1 plast1c45 2019-08-16
My nigga didn't know whether he was gonna fly or eat shit
1 xxretartistxx 2019-08-16
Thank you, Very cool
1 smolbur 2019-08-16
Not just a half breed dinosaur but a fucking half breed dinosaur.
Fuck yeah, dinosaurs. Fucking cool man.
1 _bobsacamano 2019-08-16
The wokest dinosaur. I know it. You know it. Everybody knows it.
1 DasRoteOrgan 2019-08-16
He a pretty boy
1 Redactor0 2019-08-16
Imagine thinking that they don't have their own seat on the Galactic Council. 😂😂😂 Paleontologists are so dumb.
1 Cdace 2019-08-16
It’s amazing they know so much and so little at the same time
1 sub2tine 2019-08-16
😡 put the pictures first
1 Cdace 2019-08-16
Nope you gotta read first
1 [deleted] 2019-08-16
[removed]
1 Cdace 2019-08-16
Nope
1 aartadventure 2019-08-16
My fav dino/semi-dino since I was a kid!
1 Sudokublackbelt 2019-08-16
This is fucking nuts man, we are closer in timeline to the Triceratops, Velociraptor and T-Rex from 56 million years ago than they are to the Archaeopteryx.
1 Cdace 2019-08-16
It’s really amazing seeing the timeline for these creatures. Makes you realize how small the portion of time humanity has been around really is
1 JohnWoo4 2019-08-16
Implying we didn't all coexist in the Garden of Eden smh.
1 htmlcoderexe 2019-08-16
Where did you copy paste this from lmao
1 Cdace 2019-08-16
I don’t remember tbh