A Ticklish Debate
How might the feather have evolved?
By Sid Perkins
In 1861, just 2 years after the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection, stoneworkers exhumed a curious fossil from a limestone quarry in Bavaria. The fossil had many of the skeletal characteristics of dinosaurs, including a full set of teeth, a flat breastbone, and a long, bony tail.
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But Archaeopteryx, which had lived about 150 million years ago, also had a wishbone, wings, and feathers nearly indistinguishable from those of birds today. Almost immediately after the find, some scientists seized upon the fossil’s blend of characteristics and hailed it as the formerly missing link between ancient reptiles and modern birds. They asserted it was a perfect example of a transitional creature predicted by Darwin’s insight into evolution.