THE EVOLUTION OF THE BIRD 



If the explanation that I have given above is true we 

 should be justified in believing that the oldest known bird, 

 called Archaeopteryx (Fig. 1), which is known to us by two 

 fossil skeletons, 

 one in the British 

 Museum, and the 

 other in Berlin, is 

 intermediate be- 

 tween the reptiles 

 and the modern 

 birds in its struc- 

 ture. Archaeop- 

 teryx, a queer liz- 

 ard tailed bird, was 

 found in rocks at 

 Solenhofen, in 

 Bavaria, which are 

 in age nearer to 

 the first rocks in 

 which we find re- 

 mains of ordinary 

 birds than the 

 rocks that were be- 

 ing laid down at 

 the time when the 

 change from rep- 

 tile to bird began. 

 We should there- 

 fore expect to find, 

 and we do find, 



that it is nearer in structure to ordinary birds than to the 

 reptiles. It has, for example, fully developed feathers, but it is 

 in many ways a distinctly intermediate form. The hind foot, 



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Fig. 2. 



"Archaeopteryx was considerably smaller than 

 a crow, with a stout little head armed with 

 sharp teeth (as scarce as hen's teeth was no joke 

 in that distant period). "While he fluttered 

 through the air he trailed after him a tail longer 

 than his body, beset with feathers on each side. 

 Everyone knows that nowadays the feathers of a 

 bird's tail are arranged like the sticks of a fan 

 and that the tail opens and shuts like a fan. 

 But 171 Archaeopteryx the jeatherr- were arranged 

 in pairs, a jeather on each side of every joint of 

 the tail, sd that on a small scale the tail was 

 something like that of a kite; and because of this 

 long, lizard-like tail this bird and his immediate 

 kith and kin are placed in a group Saururae, or 

 lizard-tailed." — Lucas. 



