Archaeopteryx, the London Specimen
Late Jurassic, about 147 million years ago
In a case in the Treasures gallery lies a slab of pale limestone bearing the imprint of a creature that is half reptile and half bird. Archaeopteryx had feathered wings and a wishbone like a modern bird, yet also teeth, clawed fingers and a long bony tail like a small dinosaur. The London specimen was the first skeleton of its kind ever found, and it is still the type specimen against which all other Archaeopteryx fossils are defined. Look for the fan of feather impressions around the tail and the outline of the wing, pressed into stone that was once the floor of a tropical lagoon.
The fossil is preserved in extraordinary detail because the Solnhofen lagoon in Bavaria had still, oxygen poor water in which carcasses sank into fine lime mud without being disturbed. The skeleton is disarticulated, with the skull missing most of its bones, but the braincase is present and has been scanned to show that the animal had a bird like inner ear and good vision. Notice the three clawed fingers on each wing and the long tail with feathers along its length, features no living bird has.
The specimen was found in 1861, two years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species, and the museum's superintendent Richard Owen bought it for the enormous sum of seven hundred pounds, partly to keep it out of the hands of Darwin's supporters in Germany. The irony is that it became the most famous piece of evidence for evolution ever discovered, a genuine transitional form linking dinosaurs to birds. Thomas Huxley used it to argue exactly that in the 1860s, and modern research has proved him right.
Did You Know? Richard Owen paid the equivalent of a professor's annual salary for this slab, hoping it would disprove Darwin, and it did the opposite.
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