NEW YORK — One of the world’s most famous fossil creatures, widely considered the earliest known bird, is getting a rude present on the 150th birthday of its discovery: A new analysis suggests it isn’t a bird at all.
Chinese scientists are proposing a change to the evolutionary family tree that boots Archaeopteryx off the “bird” branch and onto a closely related branch of birdlike dinosaurs.
Archaeopteryx was a crow-size creature that lived about 150 million years ago. It had wings and feathers but also quite unbirdlike features such as teeth and a bony tail. Discovered in 1861 in Germany, two years after Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species,” it quickly became an icon for evolution.
The Chinese scientists acknowledge they have only weak evidence to support their theory. Other experts say the change could easily be reversed by further discoveries: Archaeopteryx dwells in a section of the family tree that’s been reshuffled repeatedly over the past 15 or 20 years and remains murky. It contains the small, two-legged dinosaurs that took the first steps toward flight.
