Chicago museum's fossil yields insights on famed early bird Archaeopteryx
The specimen, unearthed in southern Germany, is one of the most complete and best preserved of the 14 known fossils of Archaeopteryx identified since 1861. The discovery of the first Archaeopteryx fossil, with its blend of reptile-like and bird-like features, caused a sensation, lending support to British naturalist Charles Darwin's ideas about evolution and showing that birds had descended from dinosaurs.
The new study, examining the Chicago fossil using UV light to make out soft tissues and CT scans to discern minute details still embedded in the rock, shows that 164 years later there is more to learn about this celebrated creature that took flight 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Period.
The researchers identified anatomical traits indicating that while Archaeopteryx was capable of flight, it probably spent a lot of time on the ground and may have been able to climb trees.
The scientists identified for the first time in an Archaeopteryx fossil the presence of specialized feathers called tertials on both wings. These innermost flight feathers of the wing are attached to the elongated humerus bone in the upper arm. Birds evolved from small feathered dinosaurs, which lacked tertials. The discovery of them in Archaeopteryx, according to the researchers, suggests that tertials, present in many birds today, evolved specifically for flight.
Feathered dinosaurs lacking tertials would have had a gap between the feathered surface of their upper arms and the body.
"To generate lift, the aerodynamic surface must be continuous with the body. So in order for flight using feathered wings to evolve, dinosaurs had to fill this gap - as we see in Archaeopteryx," said Field Museum paleontologist Jingmai O'Connor, lead author of the study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.
"Although we have studied Archaeopteryx for over 160 years, so much basic information is still controversial. Is it a bird? Could it fly? The presence of tertials supports the interpretation that the answer to both these questions is 'yes,'" O'Connor added.
The delicate specimen, preserved in three dimensions rather than squashed flat like many fossils, was painstakingly prepared to protect soft tissue remains, which glowed under ultraviolet light.
Birds are the only members of the dinosaur lineage to have survived a mass extinction 66 million years ago, caused by an asteroid striking Earth. Archaeopteryx boasted reptilian traits like teeth, a long and bony tail, and claws on its hands, alongside bird-like traits like wings formed by large, asymmetrical feathers.
The soft tissue of its toe pads appears to have been adapted for spending a lot of its life on the ground, consistent with the limited flight capabilities that Archaeopteryx is believed to have possessed.
"That's not to say it couldn't perch. It could do so still pretty well. But the point being that near the beginning of powered flight, Archaeopteryx was still spending most of its time on the ground," said study co-author Alex Clark, a doctoral student in evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago and the Field Museum.
The soft tissue on the hand suggests that the first and third fingers were mobile and could be used for climbing.
An examination of Archaeopteryx's palate - roof of the mouth - confirmed that its skull was immobile, unlike many living birds. But there was skeletal evidence of the first stages in the evolution of a trait that lets the beak move independently from the braincase, as seen in modern birds.
The fossil possesses the only complete Archaeopteryx vertebral column, including two tiny vertebrae at the tip of the tail showing it had 24 vertebrae, one more than previously thought.
The museum last year announced the acquisition of the fossil, which it said had been in the hands of a series of private collectors since being unearthed sometime before 1990.
"This specimen is arguably the best Archaeopteryx ever found and we're learning a ton of new things from it," O'Connor said.
"I consider Archaeopteryx to be the most important fossil species of all time. It is, after all, the icon of evolution, and evolution is the unifying concept of the biological sciences. Not only is Archaeopteryx the oldest-known fossil bird, with birds today being the most successful lineage of land vertebrates, it is the species that demonstrates that birds are living dinosaurs," O'Connor said. —Reuters
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Observer
23-07-2025
- Observer
Alexandria is most at risk along the Mediterranean Basin
From her ninth-floor balcony over Alexandria's seafront, Eman Mabrouk looked down at the strip of sand that used to be the wide beach where she played as a child. "The picture is completely different now," she said. The sea has crept closer, the concrete barriers have grown longer, and the buildings around her have cracked and shifted. Every year, 40 of them collapse across Egypt's second city, up from one on average a decade ago, a study shows. The storied settlement that survived everything from bombardment by the British in the 1880s to attacks by crusaders in the 1160s is succumbing to a subtler foe infiltrating its foundations. The warming waters of the Mediterranean are rising, part of a global phenomenon driven by climate change. In Alexandria, that is leading to coastal erosion and sending saltwater seeping through the sandy substrate, undermining buildings from below, researchers say. "This is why we see the buildings in Alexandria being eroded from the bottom up," said Essam Heggy, a water scientist at the University of Southern California who co-wrote the study published in February describing a growing crisis in Alexandria and along the whole coast. The combination of continuous seawater rises, ground subsidence, and coastal erosion means Alexandria's coastline has receded on average 3.5 metres a year over the last 20 years, he told Reuters."For many people who see that climate change is something that will happen in the future and we don't need to worry about it, it's happening right now, right here," Heggy said. The situation is alarming enough when set out in the report - "Soaring Building Collapses in Southern Mediterranean Coasts" in the journal "Earth's Future". For Mabrouk, 50, it has been part of day-to-day life for years. She had to leave her last apartment when the building started moving."It eventually got slanted. I mean, after two years, we were all ... leaning," she told Reuters. "If you put something on the table, you would feel like it was rolling. "BARRIERS, BULLDOZERS, CRACKS Egypt's government has acknowledged the problem and promised action. Submerged breakwaters reduce coastal wave action, and truckloads of sand replenish stripped beaches. Nine concrete sea barriers have been set up "to protect the delta and Alexandria from the impact of rising sea waves," Alexandria's governor, Ahmed Khaled Hassan, said. The barriers stretch out to sea, piles of striking geometric shapes, their clear curves and lines standing out against the crumbling, flaking apartment blocks on the land. Authorities are trying to get in ahead of the collapses by demolishing buildings at risk. Around 7,500 were marked for destruction, and 55,000 new housing units will be built, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a crowd as he stood on one of the concrete barriers on July 14."There isn't a day that passes without a partial or complete collapse of at least one building that already had a demolition order," Madbouly said. Some are hopeful the measures can make a difference."There are no dangers now ... They have made their calculations," coffee shop owner Shady Mostafa said as he watched builders working on one of the barriers. Others are less sure. Alexandria's 70-km (45-mile) long coastal zone was marked down as the most vulnerable in the whole Mediterranean basin in the February report. Around 2% of the city's housing stock - or about 7,000 buildings - were probably unsafe, it added. Every day, more people are pouring into the city - Alexandria's population has nearly doubled to about 5.8 million in the last 25 years, swollen by workers and tourists, according to Egypt's statistics agency CAPMAS. Property prices keep going up, despite all the risks, trackers levels are rising across the world, but they are rising faster in the Mediterranean than in many other bodies of water, partly because the relative shallowness of its sea basin means it is warming up faster. The causes may be global, but the impacts are local, said 26-year-old Alexandria resident Ahmed al-Ashry."There's a change in the buildings, there's a change in the streets," he told Reuters. "Now and then, we try to renovate the buildings, and in less than a month, the renovations start to fall apart. Our neighbours have started saying the same thing: that cracks have started to appear."
Observer
10-07-2025
- Observer
Egyptian conservators give King Tut's treasures new glow
As a teenager, Eid Mertah would pore over books about King Tutankhamun, tracing hieroglyphs and dreaming of holding the boy pharaoh's golden mask in his hands. Years later, the Egyptian conservator found himself gently brushing centuries-old dust off one of Tut's gilded ceremonial shrines -- a piece he had only seen in textbooks. "I studied archaeology because of Tut," Mertah, 36, told AFP. "It was my dream to work on his treasures -- and that dream came true." Mertah is one of more than 150 conservators and 100 archaeologists who have laboured quietly for over a decade to restore thousands of artefacts ahead of the long-awaited opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) -- a $1 billion project on the edge of the Giza Plateau. Originally slated for July 3, the launch has once again been postponed -- now expected in the final months of the year -- due to regional security concerns. The museum's opening has faced delays over the years for various reasons, ranging from political upheaval to the Covid-19 pandemic. But when it finally opens, the GEM will be the world's largest archaeological museum devoted to a single civilisation. It will house more than 100,000 artefacts, with over half on public display, and will include a unique feature: a live conservation lab. From behind glass walls, visitors will be able to watch in real time as experts work over the next three years to restore a 4,500-year-old boat buried near the tomb of Pharaoh Khufu and intended to ferry his soul across the sky with the sun god Ra. But the star of the museum remains King Tut's collection of more than 5,000 objects -- many to be displayed together for the first time. Among them are his golden funeral mask, gilded coffins, golden amulets, beaded collars, ceremonial chariots and two mummified foetuses believed to be his stillborn daughters. Egyptian conservators give King Tut's treasures new glow - 'Puzzle of gold' - Many of these treasures have not undergone restoration since British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered them in 1922. The conservation methods used by Carter's team were intended to protect the objects, but over a century later, they have posed challenges for their modern-day successors. Coating gold surfaces in wax, for instance, "preserved the objects at the time", said conservator Hind Bayoumi, "but it then hid the very details we want the world to see". For months, Bayoumi, 39, and her colleagues painstakingly removed the wax applied by British chemist Alfred Lucas, which had over decades trapped dirt and dulled the shine of the gold. Restoration has been a joint effort between Egypt and Japan, which contributed $800 million in loans and provided technical support. Egyptian conservators -- many trained by Japanese experts -- have led cutting-edge work across 19 laboratories covering wood, metal, papyrus, textiles and more. Tut's gilded coffin -- brought from his tomb in Luxor -- proved one of the most intricate jobs. At the GEM's wood lab, conservator Fatma Magdy, 34, used magnifying lenses and archival photos to reassemble its delicate gold sheets. "It was like solving a giant puzzle," she said. "The shape of the break, the flow of the hieroglyphs -- every detail mattered." Egyptian conservators give King Tut's treasures new glow - Touching history - Before restoration, the Tutankhamun collection was retrieved from several museums and storage sites, including the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, the Luxor Museum and the tomb itself. Some items were given light restoration before their relocation to ensure they could be safely moved. Teams first conducted photographic documentation, X-ray analysis and material testing to understand each item's condition before touching it. "We had to understand the condition of each piece -- the gold layers, the adhesives, wood structure -- everything," said Mertah, who worked on King Tut's ceremonial shrines at the Egyptian Museum. Fragile pieces were stabilised with Japanese tissue paper -- thin but strong -- and adhesives like Paraloid B-72 and Klucel G, both reversible and minimally invasive. The team's guiding philosophy throughout has been one of restraint. "The goal is always to do the least amount necessary -- and to respect the object's history," said Mohamed Moustafa, 36, another senior restorer. Beyond the restoration work, the process has been an emotional journey for many of those involved. "I think we're more excited to see the museum than tourists are," Moustafa said. "When visitors walk through the museum, they'll see the beauty of these artefacts. But for us, every piece is a reminder of the endless working hours, the debates, the trainings." "Every piece tells a story." —AFP
Observer
08-07-2025
- Observer
Iron Age Roman settlement uncovered in UK after rare sword find
Archaeologists have uncovered a rare Iron Age Roman settlement following the discovery of two Roman cavalry swords near a Cotswolds village. The excavation, prompted by geophysical surveys, suggests the site may include a Roman villa. The swords, found during a metal-detecting rally two years ago by Glenn Manning, were later donated to the Corinium Museum in Cirencester. Manning described the find as "amazing," sharing that he had a feeling something special would be uncovered the day before. The swords, likely used by Roman cavalry from the early second to third century AD, are known as spatha and are associated with mounted soldiers. Historic England's surveys revealed potential prehistoric and Romano-British remains, including three or four Iron Age ring ditches, a large rectangular enclosure, and Roman limestone structures possibly forming a villa. Further excavations this year uncovered settlement evidence spanning several centuries, emphasizing the area's historical significance. More archaeological work is planned, and authorities may recommend the site be protected as a scheduled monument. The discovery offers insights into the transition from Iron Age to Roman Britain, particularly during the tumultuous period of Roman conquest. Ian Barnes of Historic England noted the importance of these findings for understanding settlement patterns in Gloucestershire. Peter Busby of Cotswold Archaeology praised the efforts of volunteers and professionals, noting how they transformed a ploughed field into a story of a multi-century settlement. Emma Stuart, director of the Corinium Museum, highlighted the significance of the rare weapons, enriching the story of Roman life in the Cotswolds. The swords will be on display at the museum from August 2. —dpa
