Phyllis Ballentine, age 11, of Columbia, SC

What is an Archaeopteryx?

The word archaeopteryx means the first winged ones  It is a scientific name given to a group of the earliest flying birds and to one in particular  These daring Wright Brothers of the bird world lived about 150 million years ago during the Jurassic Period of earth's history when most of the animals were dinosaurs  There were large and small dinosaurs  Some walked on two legs, some on four, some lived on land and some in the sea  All of them were cold‑blooded, scaly‑skinned, egg‑laying reptiles 

During this period, the earth enjoyed a mild climate and the ancient seas slopped over onto vast areas of the land  These conditions suited the dinosaurs just fine and they branched out into‑an amazing assortment ' of shapes and sizes  Later, when the swampy land dried, countless numbers of their fossilized bones were preserved in the hardened earth 

Big sturdy bones of course, tend to make the best fossils, for they are strong and durable  The bones of small animals tend to break apart in the crushing layers of the earth's crust  The fragile bones of a bird are small and hollow, and a bird fossil is very rare indeed  However, once in a while an early bird fell into a swamp and the imprint of his feathery body was pressed into the soft mud and sealed there as the mud hardened into a sedimentary rock,

 One of the earliest birds fall into a swampy lagoon in what is now

Bavaria, The water teemed with weeds which took minerals and made them into crusty calcium  Later, the swamp became dry land and the ancient bird was sealed in a layer of limestone  His remains ware discovered when the limestone was mined to be used in a special process of printing words and pictures  Also sealed in the ancient limestone were the fossil remains of turtles and cuttlefish, dragonflies and ancient crocodiles 

From these and other records were rebuilt a picture of the archaeopteryx and the everyday world in which the first birds took to the air  Their bodies were no larger than crows, but their feathery pinions mush have made them seem much bigger  They had strong feet, suitable for running and perching  The head, body and tail, however, were more like that of a lizard than a modern bird  In fact, the experts tell us that the first birds were members of the reptile family and all our birds share their remote ancestors with the dinosaurs 

The archaeopteryx of Bavaria had a long lizard body bordered on each side with a fringe of stiff, flat feathers  He had a long, lizard snout and sturdy haws crammed with sharp teeth  Has leathery wings were tipped with stiff pinions  The imprint of his skeleton shows that his wing bones were very like the arm bones of his ancestors  In facts claws like those of his scrappy ancestors still poked forth from the ends of his fossil wings