Farewell, Archaeopteryx
Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 13:30
in Paleontology & Archaeology
It's not often that paleontology makes the news. This week, however, it did - in a big way. And let me tell you, it wasn't the edgy paper on a new assemblage of South American bivalves ("Barremian Bivalves from the Huitrín Formation, West-Central Argentina: Taxonomy and Paleoecology of a Restricted Marine Association") that was all over the rolling news channels.No; it's the news that Archaeopteryx may be knocked off it's pedestal as the earliest bird in the fossil record, based on a new phylogeny by Xu et al. Archaeopteryx, is now deemed to be just another deinonychosaur; probably closer to velociraptor than to birds. read more
