We all have seen dragons in movies. These huge and fearsome animals can fly and spit fire. Have such animals ever existed in the past? Scientists say that, if we forget the fire-spitting part, these animals resembled a flying reptile that lived a long time ago!
The Archaeopteryx was a part reptile and part bird that lived 150 million years ago. This animal is a wonderful example of an in-between creature, which is neither a bird nor a reptile fully. Several fossils of this reptile-bird have been found in fine-grained stone. The skeleton look like that of a dinosaur but it shows the presence of feathers. Feathers are the most important feature of birds and they have evolved from the scales of reptiles. The archaeopteryx had a toothed jaw, a long tail and a weak breastbone. Unlike the bones of birds, all the bones of birds, all the bones of the archaeopteryx were solid.
Do you know there is an uncanny connection between the cuckoo and the crocodile? The feathers of the archaeopteryx tell us that the crocodile, in fact, is related to the cuckoo.
What do we know about the archaeopteryx?
The first bird to inhabit the Earth is believed to be the archaeopteryx (meaning ‘ancient wing’). It was a cat-sized bird, with several reptilian features. It had a beak containing sharp teeth, claws on its wings, and a long tail with bones in the middle. They had wings, feathers and a furcula. The furcula, or wish bone in birds, is a forked bone that joins the right and left shoulder joints. Not much is known about this bird’s direct ancestors or descendants.
Picture credit: google