Animal Education 17 - Archaeopteryx

Animal Education Podcast

Okay, so this week's theme is misconceptions about dinosaurs. So, before we get into that, what is a dinosaur? The exacts are a little complicated, but essentially, they are a clade of reptiles, specifically a type of archosaur, that split off and includes all the creatures that would be considered dinosaurs and birds. So yes, birds are dinosaurs. Crocodilians are archosaurs but separate from the dinosaur clade. Since birds are so different and derived from dinosaurs, they are often called avian dinosaurs, and the "normal" dinosaurs are the non-avian dinosaurs. So, where did this avian and non-avian split occur? Well, since we only have a snapshot of past life, less than 1%, in fossils, we can only guess for now. One species commonly claimed to be this cutoff point is Archaeopteryx, "the oldest bird". This creature lived in Germany from 150.8 to 148.5 million years ago, which back then was an island archipelago. We know after over a century and a half of having fossils of this creature that, it could fly, but in a way different from modern birds but kind of like pheasants with burst flight. We also know the creatures' feathers were primarily matte black, but patterns are unknown. How we know the color from fossils is another day's topic. Quick hint: the fossils of the creature are so good we have its feathers. Anyway, is it a bird? No? New studies show it is in Deinonychosauira, which split off from birds. This clade also holds things like Velociraptors and troodontids. This classification of Archaeopteryx, however, is still up for debate, and many still consider Archaeopteryx to be the first bird, and the people who published the alternative still said it could be the first bird. We will need to find more fossils to see more exactly where birds split off from dinosaurs and if Archaeopteryx is a bird or not. Final note: this is a safari model. Good minus the color as the color from the real specimens only got to the point it is now in 2020, and this model is from 2015, so I can't really blame the toy.

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