by
Clyde Freeman Herreid
Department of Biological Sciences
University at Buffalo, State University of New York
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PART I - MISTAKEN IDENTITY
First he was puzzled. Then he was stunned. He had traveled to the Teyler Museum in Haarlem, Holland, to view the type specimen of the pterodactyl Pterodactylus crassipes. Here he was, holding the precious fossil in his hands while his host, curator C.O. van Regteren Altena, was off on a brief errand. Professor John Ostrom of Yale University knew the moment he touched the slab and the counterslab of limestone that this was no pterodactyl, for those extinct flying reptiles were his specialty. "If it's not a pterosaur, what is it?" he thought to himself.
Ostrom pushed himself up from the table and carried the specimen to the window for a better look. The Teyler was a "daylight museum"; public areas were lit only by sunlight, which streamed in through the large windows. There, in the oblique sunlight, Ostrom saw the feathers. They would have been invisible in the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights of a modern museum. Feathers meant bird and not just any bird. This was the famous Archaeopteryx!
Ostrom's pulse was racing. Later, when recounting his discovery, his face would light up. "I knew what I was holding. Oh, I knew it." Striking his hands together, "Oh, I knew it like that!" Since the first discovery of a feather in 1861 and three fossil Archaeopteryx specimens, all from the German Solnhofen limestone, the scientific world knew that this bird was special. And here he was, holding the fifth specimen in his hands, misidentified for over 100 years as a flying reptile. It was truly ironic, for Thomas Huxley, Darwin's most eloquent supporter, had anticipated this.
The first Archaeopteryx fossil found was a feather impression in a limestone slab, announced by Hermann von Meyer in 1860. It was about 6 cm long and 1.1 cm wide. It looked perfectly modern, with its central quill off center, dividing the feather into two asymmetrical veins. It looked like a primary flight feather of a living bird. Nothing special, except that the feather was 150 million years old! It meant this was the first bird. Within a month, von Meyer announced an even more spectacular find, a fossil skeleton of a beautifully preserved bird, which he named Archaeopteryx lithographica. He declared that it was a bird in spite of its distinct reptilian features. The fossil skeleton was sold at an exorbitant price to the British Museum of Natural History, while the slab and counterslab of the feather went to museums in Munich and Berlin.
The privilege of describing the skeletal Archaeopteryx fell to the prominent anatomist Richard Owen of the British Museum. He was noted for his unpleasant demeanor and for using dishonest and malicious attacks to further his own political position. But he was an outstanding scientist. In fact, Charles Darwin had given him many specimens to describe from his famous voyage around the world. Owen was also noted for being the first person to recognize and name dinosaurs. Since Darwin had written his famous book, "On the Origin of Species," Owen had appeared decidedly jealous. His own views, although confusingly stated, were quite evolutionary in tone. He thought species changed through time, but he didn't like the mechanistic approach that Darwin advocated. And he surely didn't like Huxley, the showboating anatomist who was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" because of his vigorous attacks on those who disliked Darwin's views.
Huxley and Owen were old enemies, and Archaeopteryx didn't help, for although Owen described the specimen, it wasn't long before Huxley pointed out that Owen had got it all wrong. He had confused the right and left side of the bird and incorrectly oriented the furcula, or wishbone. At the end of Huxley's critical paper, he made two prescient statements. First, he challenged Owen's prediction that Archaeopteryx would have a toothless beak like other birds. (The head wasn't intact, so who could know?) Huxley said: Wait a minute, tortoises have fleshy lips and a horny beak and they are certainly reptiles: "If, when the head of Archaeopteryx is discovered, its jaws have teeth, it will not the more, to my mind, cease to be a bird, than turtles cease to be reptiles because they have beaks." In other words, to be a bird you don't have to have a beak. When the next specimen of Archeopteryx turned up in 1877 Huxley's backhanded prediction turned out to be correct: Archaeopteryx did indeed have teeth.
Huxley's second point was that the pelvis and feet of birds and Archaeopteryx resemble those of several dinosaurs that walk on two feet. They especially resemble the small dinosaur, Compsognathus, also from the Solnhofen limestone. In fact, he intimated that if it weren't for the fact that Archaeopteryx had feathers, it would be easily mistaken for a reptile. These were prophetic words, as John Ostrom would show a hundred years later when he saw that Archaeopteryx was misidentified as a pterodactyl. In 1973 and again in 1988, two other specimens of Archaeopteryx were discovered hiding under assumed names in collections in Germany. Once again, Archaeopteryx had been identified as Compsognathus. It appears that Huxley was right: Archaeopteryx is a feathered dinosaur.
"Seven skeletons, one feather.... Nearly half of all known skeletons were initially misidentified, one mistaken for a pterosaur, two others mistaken for the small dinosaur Compsognathus...."
Study Questions
References
Nedin, C. Adelaide Univ., Australia. "All About Archaeopteryx." The Talk.Origins Archive.
Last updated Jan 15, 1999.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/info.html
Nedin, C. Adelaide Univ., Australia. "Archaeopteryx: Answering the Challenge of the Fossil Record." The Talk.Origins Archive.
Last updated Oct 6, 1996.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/archaeopteryx/challenge.html
Cast of the most beautiful specimen of Archaeopteryx lithographica discovered, the Berlin specimen
UCMP (UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology) website
Date Case Posted: 9/30/99 nas
