The Field Museum announces acquisition of ‘Archaeopteryx 13’

Lumpers seem to like ‘Archaeopteryx‘.
Few workers want to add more than one or two to their analyses. Most want to consider all Solnhofen birds congeneric and conspecific. This is good marketing. Everyone wants an ‘Archaeopteryx‘.

At it turns out, few get them. Most remain in Germany.
So it’s a big deal to the Field Museum when one (Figs 1, 2) comes to Chicago.

If all these Solnhofen birds are ever added to an academic cladogram
then someone in Chicago will someday realize they don’t have an Archaeopteryx, even though they might have the most primitive Solnhofen bird, the great-grandaddy of all birds. That’s a possibility no one wants to deal with. So they look the other way.

The Chicago (Field Museum) specimen will not enter the LRT until more details are known, but presently (and without scale bars or much attention paid) it reminds me of JM2257 (Fig 3).

In any case, this (Figs 1, 2) is one of the better specimens, even though it’s pectoral girdle popped off during taphonomy. That’s a little strange, considering all the white meat surrounding that area. Lots of wing and tail feather impressions were preserved. Artists have created an animated version of the bones, fleshed out with feathers in the video below.

From NBCChicago.com
“With feathers and wings, the specimen is believed to be the earliest-known dinosaur that also qualifies as a bird, cementing a link that has lasted for millions of years.”

Journaliststs, please! Don’t use the term ‘believed’. This is science, not religion.
Instead, use the term, “paleontologists have determined.”

“According to the museum, the fossil has the most complete skull of any of the dozen Archaeopteryx specimens found in the world. It features impressions of the creature’s feathers, along with hollow bones, 52 tiny teeth, a long and bony tail, and wings that actually featured clawed hands and movable fingers, according to experts.”

Good job, journalists! “According to experts” is an excellent way of describing what paleontologists are telling you.

The LRT was able to
lump and separate nine of the most complete Solnhofen birds (Fig 4). Some nest together. Others don’t. The Thermopolis specimen is the most primitive, of the Solnhofen birds. The Dating specimen is a pre-bird theropod. The holotype London specimen is the most derived, close to Hesperornis, the flightless water bird of the Late Cretaceous of North America. There was a lot of water surrounding the Solnhofen islands in the Late Jurassic.

Still waiting for others
to confirm, refute or modify this hypothesis of interrelationships (Fig 4) by simply adding taxa. In paleontology, you have to be patient for someone to get around to doing this.

That’s why I did that several years ago. I was curious.

The death pose of the Chicago specimen
greatly resembles that of the Berlin specimen (Fig 5) once the pectoral girdle is replace to its in vivo position. The Chicago specimen has a larger skull and slightly longer hind limbs. We’ll see what the experts determine.

Maybe the addition of the Chicago specimen to a cladogram will prompt workers to add all the other reasonably preserved specimens. Or will they forego this test, opting instead to just call it the Chicago Archaeopteryx?

References
Alonso PD, Milner AC, Ketcham RA, Cookson MJ and Rowe TB 2004. The avian nature of the brain and inner ear of Archaeopteryx Nature 430, 666-669.
Dames W 1884. Ueber Archaeopteryx. Palaeontologische Abhandlungen, 2 (3):119-198.
Foth C, Tischlinger H and Rauhut OWM 2014. New specimen of Archaeopteryx provides insights into the evolution.of pennaceous feathers. Nature 511:79–83.DOI: 10.1038/nature13467
Heller F 1959. Ein dritter Archaeopteryx Fund aus den Solnhofener Plattenkalken von Langenaltheim/Mfr. Erlanger Geologische Abhandlungen, 31: 1-25; Erlangen
von Meyer H 1861. Archaeopteryx litographica (Vogel-Feder) und Pterodactylus von Solenhofen. Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, Geognosie, Geologie und Petrefakten-Kunde. 1861: 678–679.
Owen R 1863. On the Archaeopteryx von Meyer, with a description of the fossil remains of a long-tailed species from the lithographic stone of Solnhofen. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London 153: 33-47.
Paul G 2002. Dinosaurs of the Air: The Evolution and Loss of Flight in Dinosaurs and Birds. Johns Hopkins University Press. 460 pp.
Wellnhofer P 1974. Das fünfte Skelettexemplar von Archaeopteryx. Palaeontographica Abt. A Vol. 147 S: 168-216.
Zhou Z and Zhang F-C 2004. A Precocial Avian Embryo from the Lower Cretaceous of China. BREVIA Science 22 October 2004: 306 no. 5696 p. 653. DOI: 10.1126/science.1100000. online abstract here

wiki/Archaeopteryx
eptileevolution.com/archaeopteryx.htm

Publicity
Field Museum NBCChicago.com

Source: https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2024/05/08/the-field-museum-announces-acquisition-of-archaeopteryx-13/