Old feather

To celebrate the "Darwin year" on the Munich Mineral Show 2009 were displayed six of the known specimens of Archaeopteryx, and because it's a rare opportunity, and Archaeopteryx is a pop-icon of earth sciences, here some impressions:


The imprint of a single feather discovered in 1861 in a quarry near the village of Solnhofen. This fossil was the first evidence for birds in the lagerstätte of the Solnhofer limestone, and anyway the first evidence for Mesozoic birds. Studying this feather Hermann von Meyer proposed the species Archaeopteryx lithographica in 1861, even if today it is not clear if it can be related to the found skeletons in the same formation (this fossil is today hosted in the collection of the Paleontological Museum Munich, the counterpart is treasured in the collection of the museum for Natural history in Berlin).

To be continued...