Chicago: An exquisitely preserved fossil of the earliest-known bird Archaeopteryx, a pigeon-sized specimen revealing new anatomical details of a creature whose 19th century discovery lent support to Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolution, has been acquired by the Field Museum in Chicago and will go on public display.

The museum announced on Monday the acquisition of the fossil, which it said had been in the hands of a series of private collectors since being unearthed in southern Germany sometime before 1990. It has the best-preserved skull, vertebral column and soft tissues of the 13 known Archaeopteryx specimens, the museum said.

“No single specimen tells us the whole story of this animal. Most previous specimens are incomplete, crudely prepared, and/or crushed, limiting the data they can provide,” Field Museum paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor said.

“The Chicago specimen preserves soft tissues never before seen in any other specimen and new information about the skeleton that help us better understand how this bird lived and its precise relationship with non-avian dinosaurs.” Archaeopteryx lived about 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. Birds evolved from small feathered dinosaurs, and are part of the dinosaur lineage — indeed, the sole survivors from that lineage of a mass extinction 66 million years ago caused by an asteroid striking Earth.

Archaeopteryx boasted reptilian traits like teeth, a long, bony tail, and claws on its hands, alongside bird-like traits like wings formed by large, asymmetrical feathers.

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2024