THE EVOLUTION OF THE BIRD
If the explanation that I have given above is true we should be justified in believing that the oldest known bird, called Archaeopteryx (Fig. 1), which is known to us by two
fossil skeletons, one in the British Museum, and the other in Berlin, is intermediate between the reptiles and the modern birds in its structure. Archaeopteryx, a queer lizard tailed bird, was found in rocks at Solenhofen, in Bavaria, which are in age nearer to the first rocks in which we find remains of ordinary birds than the rocks that were being laid down at the time when the change from reptile to bird began. We should therefore expect to find, and we do find, that it is nearer in structure to ordinary birds than to the reptiles. It has, for example, fully developed feathers, but it is in many ways a distinctly intermediate form. The hind foot,
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