title: Drake equation

text: Calculations in 2010, from NASA and the European Space Agency indicate that the rate of star formation in this Galaxy is about of material per year. To get the number of stars per year, we divide this by the initial mass function (IMF) for stars, where the average new star's mass is about . This gives a star formation rate of about 1.5–3 stars per year.


title: Drake equation

text: Analysis of microlensing surveys, in 2012, has found that may approach 1—that is, stars are orbited by planets as a rule, rather than the exception; and that there are one or more bound planets per Milky Way star.


title: Drake equation

text: In November 2013, astronomers reported, based on "Kepler" space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy. 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars. Since there are about 100 billion stars in the galaxy, this implies is roughly 0.4. The nearest planet in the habitable zone is Proxima Centauri b, which is as close as about 4.2 light-years away.


title: Drake equation

text: The consensus at the Green Bank meeting was that had a minimum value between 3 and 5. Dutch science journalist Govert Schilling has opined that this is optimistic. Even if planets are in the habitable zone, the number of planets with the right proportion of elements is difficult to estimate. Brad Gibson, Yeshe Fenner, and Charley Lineweaver determined that about 10% of star systems in the Milky Way Galaxy are hospitable to life, by having heavy elements, being far from supernovae and being stable for a sufficient time.


title: Drake equation

text: The discovery of numerous gas giants in close orbit with their stars has introduced doubt that life-supporting planets commonly survive the formation of their stellar systems. So-called hot Jupiters may migrate from distant orbits to near orbits, in the process disrupting the orbits of habitable planets.


title: Drake equation

text: On the other hand, the variety of star systems that might have habitable zones is not just limited to solar-type stars and Earth-sized planets. It is now estimated that even tidally locked planets close to red dwarf stars might have habitable zones, although the flaring behavior of these stars might speak against this. The possibility of life on moons of gas giants (such as Jupiter's moon Europa, or Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus) adds further uncertainty to this figure.


title: Drake equation

text: The authors of the rare Earth hypothesis propose a number of additional constraints on habitability for planets, including being in galactic zones with suitably low radiation, high star metallicity, and low enough density to avoid excessive asteroid bombardment. They also propose that it is necessary to have a planetary system with large gas giants which provide bombardment protection without a hot Jupiter; and a planet with plate tectonics, a large moon that creates tidal pools, and moderate axial tilt to generate seasonal variation.


title: Drake equation

text: Geological evidence from the Earth suggests that may be high; life on Earth appears to have begun around the same time as favorable conditions arose, suggesting that abiogenesis may be relatively common once conditions are right. However, this evidence only looks at the Earth (a single model planet), and contains anthropic bias, as the planet of study was not chosen randomly, but by the living organisms that already inhabit it (ourselves). From a classical hypothesis testing standpoint, without assuming that the underlying distribution of is the same for all planets in the Milky Way, there are zero degrees of freedom, permitting no valid estimates to be made. If life (or evidence of past life) were to be found on Mars, Europa, Enceladus or Titan that developed independently from life on Earth it would imply a value for close to 1. While this would raise the number of degrees of freedom from zero to one, there would remain a great deal of uncertainty on any estimate due to the small sample size, and the chance they are not really independent.


title: Drake equation

text: Countering this argument is that there is no evidence for abiogenesis occurring more than once on the Earth—that is, all terrestrial life stems from a common origin. If abiogenesis were more common it would be speculated to have occurred more than once on the Earth. Scientists have searched for this by looking for bacteria that are unrelated to other life on Earth, but none have been found yet. It is also possible that life arose more than once, but that other branches were out-competed, or died in mass extinctions, or were lost in other ways. Biochemists Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel laid special emphasis on this uncertainty: "At the moment we have no means at all of knowing" whether we are "likely to be alone in the galaxy (Universe)" or whether "the galaxy may be pullulating with life of many different forms." As an alternative to abiogenesis on Earth, they proposed the hypothesis of directed panspermia, which states that Earth life began with "microorganisms sent here deliberately by a technological society on another planet, by means of a special long-range unmanned spaceship".


title: Drake equation

text: In 2020, a paper by scholars at the University of Nottingham proposed an "Astrobiological Copernican" principle, based on the Principle of Mediocrity, and speculated that "intelligent life would form on other [Earth-like] planets like it has on Earth, so within a few billion years life would automatically form as a natural part of evolution". In the authors' framework, , , and are all set to a probability of 1 (certainty). Their resultant calculation concludes there are more than thirty current technological civilizations in the galaxy (disregarding error bars).


title: Drake equation

text: This value remains particularly controversial. Those who favor a low value, such as the biologist Ernst Mayr, point out that of the billions of species that have existed on Earth, only one has become intelligent and from this, infer a tiny value for . Likewise, the Rare Earth hypothesis, notwithstanding their low value for above, also think a low value for dominates the analysis. Those who favor higher values note the generally increasing complexity of life over time, concluding that the appearance of intelligence is almost inevitable, implying an approaching 1. Skeptics point out that the large spread of values in this factor and others make all estimates unreliable. (See Criticism).


title: Drake equation

text: In addition, while it appears that life developed soon after the formation of Earth, the Cambrian explosion, in which a large variety of multicellular life forms came into being, occurred a considerable amount of time after the formation of Earth, which suggests the possibility that special conditions were necessary. Some scenarios such as the snowball Earth or research into extinction events have raised the possibility that life on Earth is relatively fragile. Research on any past life on Mars is relevant since a discovery that life did form on Mars but ceased to exist might raise the estimate of but would indicate that in half the known cases, intelligent life did not develop.


title: Drake equation

text: Estimates of have been affected by discoveries that the Solar System's orbit is circular in the galaxy, at such a distance that it remains out of the spiral arms for tens of millions of years (evading radiation from novae). Also, Earth's large moon may aid the evolution of life by stabilizing the planet's axis of rotation.


title: Drake equation

text: There has been quantitative work to begin to define formula_2 . One example is a Bayesian analysis published in 2020. In the conclusion, the author cautions that this study applies to Earth's conditions. In Bayesian terms, the study favors the formation of intelligence on a planet with identical conditions to Earth but does not do so with high confidence.


title: Drake equation

text: Planetary scientist Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute proposes that this fraction is very low (0.0002). He based this estimate on how long it took Earth to develop intelligent life (1 million years since Homo erectus evolved, compared to 4.6 billion years since Earth formed).


title: Drake equation

text: For deliberate communication, the one example we have (the Earth) does not do much explicit communication, though there are some efforts covering only a tiny fraction of the stars that might look for human presence. (See Arecibo message, for example). There is considerable speculation why an extraterrestrial civilization might exist but choose not to communicate. However, deliberate communication is not required, and calculations indicate that current or near-future Earth-level technology might well be detectable to civilizations not too much more advanced than present day humans. By this standard, the Earth is a communicating civilization.


title: Drake equation

text: Another question is what percentage of civilizations in the galaxy are close enough for us to detect, assuming that they send out signals. For example, existing Earth radio telescopes could only detect Earth radio transmissions from roughly a light year away.


title: Drake equation

text: Michael Shermer estimated as 420 years, based on the duration of sixty historical Earthly civilizations. Using 28 civilizations more recent than the Roman Empire, he calculates a figure of 304 years for "modern" civilizations. It could also be argued from Michael Shermer's results that the fall of most of these civilizations was followed by later civilizations that carried on the technologies, so it is doubtful that they are separate civilizations in the context of the Drake equation. In the expanded version, including "reappearance number", this lack of specificity in defining single civilizations does not matter for the end result, since such a civilization turnover could be described as an increase in the "reappearance number" rather than increase in , stating that a civilization reappears in the form of the succeeding cultures. Furthermore, since none could communicate over interstellar space, the method of comparing with historical civilizations could be regarded as invalid.


title: Drake equation

text: David Grinspoon has argued that once a civilization has developed enough, it might overcome all threats to its survival. It will then last for an indefinite period of time, making the value for potentially billions of years. If this is the case, then he proposes that the Milky Way Galaxy may have been steadily accumulating advanced civilizations since it formed. He proposes that the last factor be replaced with , where is the fraction of communicating civilizations that become "immortal" (in the sense that they simply do not die out), and representing the length of time during which this process has been going on. This has the advantage that would be a relatively easy-to-discover number, as it would simply be some fraction of the age of the universe.


title: Drake equation

text: It has also been hypothesized that once a civilization has learned of a more advanced one, its longevity could increase because it can learn from the experiences of the other.


title: Drake equation

text: The astronomer Carl Sagan speculated that all of the terms, except for the lifetime of a civilization, are relatively high and the determining factor in whether there are large or small numbers of civilizations in the universe is the civilization lifetime, or in other words, the ability of technological civilizations to avoid self-destruction. In Sagan's case, the Drake equation was a strong motivating factor for his interest in environmental issues and his efforts to warn against the dangers of nuclear warfare.


title: Drake equation

text: An intelligent civilization might not be organic, as some have suggested that artificial general intelligence may replace humanity.


title: Drake equation

text: As many skeptics have pointed out, the Drake equation can give a very wide range of values, depending on the assumptions, as the values used in portions of the Drake equation are not well established. In particular, the result can be , meaning we are likely alone in the galaxy, or , implying there are many civilizations we might contact. One of the few points of wide agreement is that the presence of humanity implies a probability of intelligence arising of greater than zero.


title: Drake equation

text: As an example of a low estimate, combining NASA's star formation rates, the rare Earth hypothesis value of , Mayr's view on intelligence arising, Drake's view of communication, and Shermer's estimate of lifetime:


title: Drake equation

text: On the other hand, with larger values for each of the parameters above, values of can be derived that are greater than 1. The following higher values that have been proposed for each of the parameters:


title: Drake equation

text: Monte Carlo simulations of estimates of the Drake equation factors based on a stellar and planetary model of the Milky Way have resulted in the number of civilizations varying by a factor of 100.


title: Drake equation

text: In 2016, Adam Frank and Woodruff Sullivan modified the Drake equation to determine just how unlikely the event of a technological species arising on a given habitable planet must be, to give the result that Earth hosts the "only" technological species that has "ever" arisen, for two cases: (a) this Galaxy, and (b) the universe as a whole. By asking this different question, one removes the lifetime and simultaneous communication uncertainties. Since the numbers of habitable planets per star can today be reasonably estimated, the only remaining unknown in the Drake equation is the probability that a habitable planet "ever" develops a technological species over its lifetime. For Earth to have the only technological species that has ever occurred in the universe, they calculate the probability of any given habitable planet ever developing a technological species must be less than . Similarly, for Earth to have been the only case of hosting a technological species over the history of this Galaxy, the odds of a habitable zone planet ever hosting a technological species must be less than (about 1 in 60 billion). The figure for the universe implies that it is extremely unlikely that Earth hosts the only technological species that has ever occurred. On the other hand, for this Galaxy one must think that fewer than 1 in 60 billion habitable planets develop a technological species for there not to have been at least a second case of such a species over the past history of this Galaxy.


title: Drake equation

text: As many observers have pointed out, the Drake equation is a very simple model that omits potentially relevant parameters, and many changes and modifications to the equation have been proposed. One line of modification, for example, attempts to account for the uncertainty inherent in many of the terms.


title: Drake equation

text: Combining the estimates of the original six factors by major researchers via a Monte Carlo procedure leads to a best value for the non-longevity factors of 0.85 1/years. This result differs insignificantly from the estimate of unity given both by Drake and the Cyclops report.


title: Drake equation

text: Others note that the Drake equation ignores many concepts that might be relevant to the odds of contacting other civilizations. For example, David Brin states: "The Drake equation merely speaks of the number of sites at which ETIs spontaneously arise. The equation says nothing directly about the contact cross-section between an ETIS and contemporary human society". Because it is the contact cross-section that is of interest to the SETI community, many additional factors and modifications of the Drake equation have been proposed.


title: Drake equation

text: Criticism of the Drake equation follows mostly from the observation that several terms in the equation are largely or entirely based on conjecture. Star formation rates are well-known, and the incidence of planets has a sound theoretical and observational basis, but the other terms in the equation become very speculative. The uncertainties revolve around the present day understanding of the evolution of life, intelligence, and civilization, not physics. No statistical estimates are possible for some of the parameters, where only one example is known. The net result is that the equation cannot be used to draw firm conclusions of any kind, and the resulting margin of error is huge, far beyond what some consider acceptable or meaningful.


title: Drake equation

text: One reply to such criticisms is that even though the Drake equation currently involves speculation about unmeasured parameters, it was intended as a way to stimulate dialogue on these topics. Then the focus becomes how to proceed experimentally. Indeed, Drake originally formulated the equation merely as an agenda for discussion at the Green Bank conference.


title: Drake equation

text: A civilization lasting for tens of millions of years could be able to spread throughout the galaxy, even at the slow speeds foreseeable with present day technology. However, no confirmed signs of civilizations or intelligent life elsewhere have been found, either in this Galaxy or in the observable universe of 2 trillion galaxies. According to this line of thinking, the tendency to fill up (or at least explore) all available territory seems to be a universal trait of living things, so the Earth should have already been colonized, or at least visited, but no evidence of this exists. Hence Fermi's question "Where is everybody?".


title: Drake equation

text: A large number of explanations have been proposed to explain this lack of contact; a book published in 2015 elaborated on 75 different explanations. In terms of the Drake Equation, the explanations can be divided into three classes:


title: Drake equation

text: These lines of reasoning lead to the Great Filter hypothesis, which states that since there are no observed extraterrestrial civilizations despite the vast number of stars, at least one step in the process must be acting as a filter to reduce the final value. According to this view, either it is very difficult for intelligent life to arise, or the lifetime of technologically advanced civilizations, or the period of time they reveal their existence must be relatively short.


title: Drake equation

text: An analysis by Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler and Toby Ord suggests "a substantial "ex ante" probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe".


title: Drake equation

text: The equation was cited by Gene Roddenberry as supporting the multiplicity of inhabited planets shown on "Star Trek", the television series he created. However, Roddenberry did not have the equation with him, and he was forced to "invent" it for his original proposal. The invented equation created by Roddenberry is:


title: Goatse.cx

text: goatse.cx ( , ; "goat sex"), often spelled without the .cx top-level domain as Goatse, was originally an Internet shock site. Its front page featured a picture entitled codice_1, showing a close-up of a hunched-over naked man using both hands to stretch open his anus and expose his rectum, which was lit red by the camera flash.


title: Goatse.cx

text: The photo became a surprise image and Internet meme, and has been used in bait-and-switch pranks, prevention of hot-linking in a hostile manner, and defacement of websites, in order to provoke extreme reactions. Even though the image from the site was taken down in 2004, mirror websites are widespread.


title: Goatse.cx

text: The index page also contained a content disclaimer and a warning about unofficial goatse.cx merchandise, with a reassurance that official merchandise would be made available. Newer versions of the site had links to defunct websites such as dolphinsex.org and urinalpoop.org, while older versions linked to biganal.com.


title: Goatse.cx

text: On January 14, 2004, the domain name "goatse.cx" was suspended by Christmas Island Internet Administration due to Acceptable Use Policy violations in response to a complaint, but many mirrors of the site are still available, remaining on display on many other websites. A Christmas Island resident filed the complaint that resulted in the suspension of goatse.cx's domain name.


title: Goatse.cx

text: In January 2007, the Christmas Island Internet Administration put the domain goatse.cx back into the available domain pool. The domain was subsequently registered on January 16 through domain registrar Variomedia, and the registrant tried to auction the right to use the domain.


title: Goatse.cx

text: An early attempt to offer the domain for sale by SEOBidding placed the reserve at $120, which was not met.


title: Goatse.cx

text: The goatse.cx domain name was reportedly sold at an auction on April 30, 2007 to an unknown bidder. According to SEOBidding.com, the first auction ended with fake bids so the auction was reactivated. This was again won by fake bidders, so in July SEOBidding.com announced that the website would be sold for $500,000 and that legal action would be pursued against the fake bidders. On November 25, 2007, and continuing as of June 2010, the site was still for sale, listed as: "goatse.cx Asking: $50,200 minimum".


title: Goatse.cx

text: The October 21, 2009 edition of the Rick Latona "Daily Domains" newsletter advertised the goatse.cx domain for sale at an asking price of $15,000, noting it as being a "famous site, [with] tons of backlinks".


title: Goatse.cx

text: As of May 7, 2010, the site was once again active, containing an announcement saying "Only 24 days to go until Goatse Stinger 2.0 goes beta on May 9, 2010!"


title: Goatse.cx

text: The page showed a stylized representation of codice_1, which featured a pair of silver robotic hands 'stretching' a metallic, circular wall aperture in what appears to be a futuristic factory setting. Later in May, a new page was hosted at goatse.cx, for the stated purpose of offering email service at the site, featuring a sketch with hands spreading wide a view onto a mailing envelope.


title: Goatse.cx

text: In July 2011, goatse.cx remained unchanged while "www."goatse.cx began redirecting to a Web hosting company.


title: Goatse.cx

text: In November 2012, it was announced that the goatse.cx domain had been acquired by a new owner, who was advertising a forthcoming webmail service to give users access to goatse.cx email addresses. The domain, at that time, redirected to codice_4, which said the service would be "launching in early December 2012 for limited release".


title: Goatse.cx

text: In January 2014, the site announced that it was preparing to launch its own cryptocurrency, the "Goatse Coin".


title: Goatse.cx

text: The site was offering subdomains by January 2015. During 2022 the site consisted of a landing page where advertisers could buy pixels for ethereum. As of mid-2022, the site was a parked domain, containing no content related to Goatse.


title: Goatse.cx

text: Because many Internet users have been tricked into viewing the site or a mirror of the site at one time or another, it has become an Internet meme.


title: Goatse.cx

text: On November 24, 2000, the Goatse "giver" and "receiver" images were posted to the official online Oprah Winfrey Message Boards in the "Soul Stories" board. Trystan T. Cotten and Kimberly Springer, authors of "Stories of Oprah: the Oprahfication of American Culture", said that this "seemingly considerable male intrusion drove many of the women elsewhere, and the board was retired shortly afterwards". Slashdot altered its threaded discussion forum display software because "users made a sport out of tricking unsuspecting readers into visiting <nowiki>[goatse.cx]</nowiki>".


title: Goatse.cx

text: The "Los Angeles Times" Wikitorial was introduced on June 17, 2005, to be a publicly accessible method of directly responding to the paper's editorials; Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales had consulted on the project, and on its first day contributed a "forking" of the page to accommodate opposing opinions. Prior to the feature's introduction, "L.A. Times" editorial and opinion editor Michael Kinsley stated that "Wikitorials may be one of those things that within six months will be standard. It's the ultimate in reader participation". The wiki was closed two days later on June 19, 2005, because, "The Guardian" reported, "explicit images known as Goatses appeared on [it]".


title: Goatse.cx

text: The practice of using goatse.cx as a "fake" link to shock friends became popular, according to ROFLcon organizer Tim Hwang in an interview on NPR, because


title: Goatse.cx

text: it's ... the spectacle of the thing, right? You really want to be there when the person is seeing it. To the extent that there's all these sites online of sort of people taking pictures of their friends and showing them Goatse... [In photos online,] It's like thousands and thousands of people looking really shocked or disgusted. It's really great.


title: Goatse.cx

text: The goatse.cx image has been used by website authors to discourage other sites from hot-linking to them. By replacing the hot-linked image with an embarrassing image when hot-linking has been discovered, an unsubtle message is sent to the offending website's operators, visible to all who view the web page in question. In 2007, Wired.com hot-linked to another site in an article about the "sexiest geeks of 2007"; the site subsequently swapped the hot-linked image with one from goatse.cx.


title: Goatse.cx

text: Images on the site such as codice_1 and others have become subjects of parodies, mirrors, and tributes.


title: Goatse.cx

text: Following Hurricane Charley in August 2004, a photograph purporting to show "the hands of God" in the cloud formations in the aftermath of the disaster circulated via email. The image was eventually proven to be a parody, the clouds having been photo-manipulated to include hands, as in the hello.jpg image.


title: Goatse.cx

text: Disc images supposedly containing a leaked Mac OS X build, OSx86, which could run on standard "x86 architecture" computers, were distributed during 2005 on BitTorrent filesharing networks. But rather than load the expected Mac OS, the discs reportedly displayed the Goatse image when booted.


title: Goatse.cx

text: In his book "The Long Tail" (2008), Chris Anderson wrote that goatse.cx is well-known only to a relatively small Internet-using "subcultural tribe" who reference it as a "shared context joke" or "secret membership code". Anderson cited a photo accompanying an "otherwise innocuous article" about Google in the June 2, 2005 "The New York Times", in which Anil Dash wore a T-shirt emblazoned with stylized hands stretching out the word "Goatse".


title: Goatse.cx

text: In June 2007, a proposed sketch of the 2012 Summer Olympics logo appeared on the BBC News 24 broadcast and website as one of the 12 best viewer-submitted alternatives to the official logo. In it, two hands stretched the "0" wide in "2012", as the submitter wrote, "to reveal the Olympics". The sketch was later shown as part of a gallery of viewers logos on BBC London News and BBC News 24, and was subsequently removed from the website. The editor of the BBC News website acknowledged the mistake in his blog, saying his team "simply didn’t spot it".


title: Goatse.cx

text: In June 2010, a group of computer experts known as Goatse Security exposed a flaw in AT&T's security which allowed the e-mail addresses of iPad users to be revealed. Andrew Auernheimer (alias "weev"), a member of the group, was interviewed by the media and discussed the group's name, among other things. The group uses a stylized cartoon of the cropped goatse.cx image as their logo and has the motto "Gaping Holes Exposed".


title: Goatse.cx

text: In April 2011 an Audi billboard campaign was multiply reported as showing an image similar to the Goatse image. One article author asks, "unintentionally hilarious or intentionally evil?"


title: Goatse.cx

text: "The Register" reported that Scottish TV News, while reporting on a hacking incident, unintentionally broadcast a link to Goatse images while showing the LulzSec Twitter feed on the victim site, which read, "For anyone that doesn't know what goatse is, check it out here, it's really eye-opening: [link]".


title: Goatse.cx

text: During the 2010s circulated an urban legend alleging the Nokia N-Gage design was based on Goatse by a disgruntled engineer.


title: Goatse.cx

text: In 2022, several mods for the game "Garry's Mod" were noted to have been altered to cause "pornographic jumpscares" of the Goatse image. An article from "PC Gamer" described the image as "really upsetting" and noted the prominence of the mod in the game's community leading to many being affected. Some modders on Steam Workshop started to make censored versions of the altered mods.


title: Goatse.cx

text: In September of 2022, news media reported multiple incidents across the US of users of the elementary school interactive app Seesaw having their accounts compromised in order to post links to the image in parent-teacher chatrooms. Seesaw later removed the images and stated that the breach had only affected the accounts of individual users with insecure credentials.


title: Goatse.cx

text: On 20 September 2013, the United States Department of Justice filed a response brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in "United States v. Auernheimer", an appeal in a criminal case from the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, which involved the access of AT&T customers' email addresses by Goatse Security. The brief explains on page three that "The firm's name is a reference to a notoriously obscene internet shock site" and includes a footnote which reads "For a more graphic description, see <nowiki>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse</nowiki>." The fact that a brief filed in a U.S. federal appellate court linked to a page about Goatse, even if only a Wikipedia article, caused a stir on social media.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Archaeopteryx (; ), sometimes referred to by its German name, "" ( "Primeval Bird"), is a genus of bird-like dinosaurs. The name derives from the ancient Greek ("archaīos"), meaning "ancient", and ("ptéryx"), meaning "feather" or "wing". Between the late 19th century and the early 21st century, "Archaeopteryx" was generally accepted by palaeontologists and popular reference books as the oldest known bird (member of the group Avialae). Older potential avialans have since been identified, including "Anchiornis", "Xiaotingia", and "Aurornis".


title: Archaeopteryx

text: "Archaeopteryx" lived in the Late Jurassic around 150 million years ago, in what is now southern Germany, during a time when Europe was an archipelago of islands in a shallow warm tropical sea, much closer to the equator than it is now. Similar in size to a Eurasian magpie, with the largest individuals possibly attaining the size of a raven, the largest species of "Archaeopteryx" could grow to about in length. Despite their small size, broad wings, and inferred ability to fly or glide, "Archaeopteryx" had more in common with other small Mesozoic dinosaurs than with modern birds. In particular, they shared the following features with the dromaeosaurids and troodontids: jaws with sharp teeth, three fingers with claws, a long bony tail, hyperextensible second toes ("killing claw"), feathers (which also suggest warm-bloodedness), and various features of the skeleton.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: These features make "Archaeopteryx" a clear candidate for a transitional fossil between non-avian dinosaurs and birds. Thus, "Archaeopteryx" plays an important role, not only in the study of the origin of birds, but in the study of dinosaurs. It was named from a single feather in 1861, the identity of which has been controversial. That same year, the first complete specimen of "Archaeopteryx" was announced. Over the years, ten more fossils of "Archaeopteryx" have surfaced. Despite variation among these fossils, most experts regard all the remains that have been discovered as belonging to a single species, although this is still debated.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: "Archaeopteryx" was long considered to be the beginning of the evolutionary tree of birds. It has qualities that helped define what it is like to be a bird, such as its long, powerful front limbs. However, in recent years, the discovery of several small, feathered dinosaurs has created a mystery for palaeontologists, raising questions about which animals are the ancestors of modern birds and which are their relatives. Most of these eleven fossils include impressions of feathers. Because these feathers are of an advanced form (flight feathers), these fossils are evidence that the evolution of feathers began before the Late Jurassic. The type specimen of "Archaeopteryx" was discovered just two years after Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species". "Archaeopteryx" seemed to confirm Darwin's theories and has since become a key piece of evidence for the origin of birds, the transitional fossils debate, and confirmation of evolution.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Over the years, twelve body fossil specimens of "Archaeopteryx" have been found. All of the fossils come from the limestone deposits, quarried for centuries, near , Germany.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The initial discovery, a single feather, was unearthed in 1860 or 1861 and described in 1861 by . It is currently located at the Natural History Museum of Berlin. Though it was the initial holotype, there were indications that it might not have been from the same animal as the body fossils. In 2019 it was reported that laser imaging had revealed the structure of the quill (which had not been visible since some time after the feather was described), and that the feather was inconsistent with the morphology of all other "Archaeopteryx" feathers known, leading to the conclusion that it originated from another dinosaur. This conclusion was challenged in 2020 as being unlikely; the feather was identified on the basis of morphology as most likely having been an upper major primary covert feather.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The first skeleton, known as the London Specimen (BMNH 37001), was unearthed in 1861 near , Germany, and perhaps given to local physician in return for medical services. He then sold it for £700 (roughly £83,000 in 2020) to the Natural History Museum in London, where it remains. Missing most of its head and neck, it was described in 1863 by Richard Owen as "Archaeopteryx macrura", allowing for the possibility it did not belong to the same species as the feather. In the subsequent fourth edition of his "On the Origin of Species", Charles Darwin described how some authors had maintained "that the whole class of birds came suddenly into existence during the eocene period; but now we know, on the authority of Professor Owen, that a bird certainly lived during the deposition of the upper greensand; and still more recently, that strange bird, the "Archaeopteryx", with a long lizard-like tail, bearing a pair of feathers on each joint, and with its wings furnished with two free claws, has been discovered in the oolitic slates of Solnhofen. Hardly any recent discovery shows more forcibly than this how little we as yet know of the former inhabitants of the world."


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The Greek word () means 'ancient, primeval'. primarily means 'wing', but it can also be just 'feather'. Meyer suggested this in his description. At first he referred to a single feather which appeared to resemble a modern bird's remex (wing feather), but he had heard of and been shown a rough sketch of the London specimen, to which he referred as a "" ("skeleton of an animal covered in similar feathers"). In German, this ambiguity is resolved by the term which does not necessarily mean a wing used for flying. was the favoured translation of "Archaeopteryx" among German scholars in the late nineteenth century. In English, 'ancient pinion' offers a rough approximation to this.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The Berlin Specimen (HMN 1880/81) was discovered in 1874 or 1875 on the Blumenberg near , Germany, by farmer Jakob Niemeyer. He sold this precious fossil for the money to buy a cow in 1876, to innkeeper Johann Dörr, who again sold it to Ernst Otto Häberlein, the son of K. Häberlein. Placed on sale between 1877 and 1881, with potential buyers including O. C. Marsh of Yale University's Peabody Museum, it eventually was bought for 20,000 Goldmark by the Berlin's Natural History Museum, where it now is displayed. The transaction was financed by Ernst Werner von Siemens, founder of the company that bears his name. Described in 1884 by Wilhelm Dames, it is the most complete specimen, and the first with a complete head. In 1897 it was named by Dames as a new species, "A. siemensii"; though often considered a synonym of "A. lithographica", several 21st century studies have concluded that it is a distinct species which includes the Berlin, Munich, and Thermopolis specimens.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Composed of a torso, the Maxberg Specimen (S5) was discovered in 1956 near Langenaltheim; it was brought to the attention of professor Florian Heller in 1958 and described by him in 1959. The specimen is missing its head and tail, although the rest of the skeleton is mostly intact. Although it was once exhibited at the Maxberg Museum in Solnhofen, it is currently missing. It belonged to Eduard Opitsch, who loaned it to the museum until 1974. After his death in 1991, it was discovered that the specimen was missing and may have been stolen or sold.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The Haarlem Specimen (TM 6428/29, also known as the "Teylers Specimen") was discovered in 1855 near , Germany, and described as a "Pterodactylus crassipes" in 1857 by Meyer. It was reclassified in 1970 by John Ostrom and is currently located at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands. It was the very first specimen found, but was incorrectly classified at the time. It is also one of the least complete specimens, consisting mostly of limb bones, isolated cervical vertebrae, and ribs. In 2017 it was named as a separate genus "Ostromia", considered more closely related to "Anchiornis" from China.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The Eichstätt Specimen (JM 2257) was discovered in 1951 near Workerszell, Germany, and described by Peter Wellnhofer in 1974. Currently located at the Jura Museum in Eichstätt, Germany, it is the smallest known specimen and has the second-best head. It is possibly a separate genus ("Jurapteryx recurva") or species ("A. recurva").


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The Solnhofen Specimen (unnumbered specimen) was discovered in the 1970s near Eichstätt, Germany, and described in 1988 by Wellnhofer. Currently located at the Bürgermeister-Müller-Museum in Solnhofen, it originally was classified as "Compsognathus" by an amateur collector, the same mayor Friedrich Müller after which the museum is named. It is the largest specimen known and may belong to a separate genus and species, "Wellnhoferia grandis". It is missing only portions of the neck, tail, backbone, and head.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The Munich Specimen (BSP 1999 I 50, formerly known as the "Solenhofer-Aktien-Verein Specimen") was discovered on 3 August 1992 near Langenaltheim and described in 1993 by Wellnhofer. It is currently located at the Paläontologisches Museum München in Munich, to which it was sold in 1999 for 1.9 million Deutschmark. What was initially believed to be a bony sternum turned out to be part of the coracoid, but a cartilaginous sternum may have been present. Only the front of its face is missing. It has been used as the basis for a distinct species, "A. bavarica", but more recent studies suggest it belongs to "A. siemensii".


title: Archaeopteryx

text: An eighth, fragmentary specimen was discovered in 1990 in the younger Mörnsheim Formation at Daiting, Suevia. Therefore, it is known as the Daiting Specimen, and had been known since 1996 only from a cast, briefly shown at the Naturkundemuseum in Bamberg. The original was purchased by palaeontologist Raimund Albertsdörfer in 2009. It was on display for the first time with six other original fossils of "Archaeopteryx" at the Munich Mineral Show in October 2009. The Daiting Specimen was subsequently named "Archaeopteryx albersdoerferi" by Kundrat et al. (2018).


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Another fragmentary fossil was found in 2000. It is in private possession and, since 2004, on loan to the Bürgermeister-Müller Museum in Solnhofen, so it is called the Bürgermeister-Müller Specimen; the institute itself officially refers to it as the "Exemplar of the families Ottman & Steil, Solnhofen". As the fragment represents the remains of a single wing of "Archaeopteryx", it is colloquially known as "chicken wing".


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Long in a private collection in Switzerland, the Thermopolis Specimen (WDC CSG 100) was discovered in Bavaria and described in 2005 by Mayr, Pohl, and Peters. Donated to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis, Wyoming, it has the best-preserved head and feet; most of the neck and the lower jaw have not been preserved. The "Thermopolis" specimen was described on 2 December 2005 "Science" journal article as "A well-preserved "Archaeopteryx" specimen with theropod features"; it shows that "Archaeopteryx" lacked a reversed toe—a universal feature of birds—limiting its ability to perch on branches and implying a terrestrial or trunk-climbing lifestyle. This has been interpreted as evidence of theropod ancestry. In 1988, Gregory S. Paul claimed to have found evidence of a hyperextensible second toe, but this was not verified and accepted by other scientists until the Thermopolis specimen was described. "Until now, the feature was thought to belong only to the species' close relatives, the deinonychosaurs." The Thermopolis Specimen was assigned to "Archaeopteryx siemensii" in 2007. The specimen is considered to represent the most complete and best-preserved "Archaeopteryx" remains yet.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The discovery of an eleventh specimen was announced in 2011; it was described in 2014. It is one of the more complete specimens, but is missing much of the skull and one forelimb. It is privately owned and has yet to be given a name. Palaeontologists of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich studied the specimen, which revealed previously unknown features of the plumage, such as feathers on both the upper and lower legs and metatarsus, and the only preserved tail tip.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: A twelfth specimen had been discovered by an amateur collector in 2010 at the Schamhaupten quarry, but the finding was only announced in February 2014. It was scientifically described in 2018. It represents a complete and mostly articulated skeleton with skull. It is the only specimen lacking preserved feathers. It is from the Painten Formation and somewhat older than the other specimens.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Beginning in 1985, an amateur group including astronomer Fred Hoyle and physicist Lee Spetner, published a series of papers claiming that the feathers on the Berlin and London specimens of "Archaeopteryx" were forged. Their claims were repudiated by Alan J. Charig and others at the Natural History Museum in London. Most of their supposed evidence for a forgery was based on unfamiliarity with the processes of lithification; for example, they proposed that, based on the difference in texture associated with the feathers, feather impressions were applied to a thin layer of cement, without realizing that feathers themselves would have caused a textural difference. They also misinterpreted the fossils, claiming that the tail was forged as one large feather, when visibly this is not the case. In addition, they claimed that the other specimens of "Archaeopteryx" known at the time did not have feathers, which is incorrect; the Maxberg and Eichstätt specimens have obvious feathers.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: They also expressed disbelief that slabs would split so smoothly, or that one half of a slab containing fossils would have good preservation, but not the counterslab. These are common properties of Solnhofen fossils, because the dead animals would fall onto hardened surfaces, which would form a natural plane for the future slabs to split along and would leave the bulk of the fossil on one side and little on the other.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Finally, the motives they suggested for a forgery are not strong, and are contradictory; one is that Richard Owen wanted to forge evidence in support of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which is unlikely given Owen's views toward Darwin and his theory. The other is that Owen wanted to set a trap for Darwin, hoping the latter would support the fossils so Owen could discredit him with the forgery; this is unlikely because Owen wrote a detailed paper on the London specimen, so such an action would certainly backfire.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Charig "et al." pointed to the presence of hairline cracks in the slabs running through both rock and fossil impressions, and mineral growth over the slabs that had occurred before discovery and preparation, as evidence that the feathers were original. Spetner "et al." then attempted to show that the cracks would have propagated naturally through their postulated cement layer, but neglected to account for the fact that the cracks were old and had been filled with calcite, and thus were not able to propagate. They also attempted to show the presence of cement on the London specimen through X-ray spectroscopy, and did find something that was not rock; it was not cement either, and is most probably a fragment of silicone rubber left behind when moulds were made of the specimen. Their suggestions have not been taken seriously by palaeontologists, as their evidence was largely based on misunderstandings of geology, and they never discussed the other feather-bearing specimens, which have increased in number since then. Charig "et al." reported a discolouration: a dark band between two layers of limestone – they say it is the product of sedimentation. It is natural for limestone to take on the colour of its surroundings and most limestones are coloured (if not colour banded) to some degree, so the darkness was attributed to such impurities. They also mention that a complete absence of air bubbles in the rock slabs is further proof that the specimen is authentic.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Most of the specimens of "Archaeopteryx" that have been discovered come from the Solnhofen limestone in Bavaria, southern Germany, which is a , a rare and remarkable geological formation known for its superbly detailed fossils laid down during the early Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period, approximately 150.8–148.5million years ago.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: "Archaeopteryx" was roughly the size of a raven, with broad wings that were rounded at the ends and a long tail compared to its body length. It could reach up to in body length and in wingspan, with an estimated mass of . "Archaeopteryx" feathers, although less documented than its other features, were very similar in structure to modern-day bird feathers. Despite the presence of numerous avian features, "Archaeopteryx" had many non-avian theropod dinosaur characteristics. Unlike modern birds, "Archaeopteryx" had small teeth, as well as a long bony tail, features which "Archaeopteryx" shared with other dinosaurs of the time.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Because it displays features common to both birds and non-avian dinosaurs, "Archaeopteryx" has often been considered a link between them. In the 1970s, John Ostrom, following Thomas Henry Huxley's lead in 1868, argued that birds evolved within theropod dinosaurs and "Archaeopteryx" was a critical piece of evidence for this argument; it had several avian features, such as a wishbone, flight feathers, wings, and a partially reversed first toe along with dinosaur and theropod features. For instance, it has a long ascending process of the ankle bone, interdental plates, an obturator process of the ischium, and long chevrons in the tail. In particular, Ostrom found that "Archaeopteryx" was remarkably similar to the theropod family Dromaeosauridae.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Archaeopteryx had three separate digits on each fore-leg each ending with a "claw". Few birds have such features. Some birds, such as ducks, swans, Jacanas ("Jacana" sp.), and the hoatzin ("Opisthocomus hoazin"), have them concealed beneath their leg-feathers.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Specimens of "Archaeopteryx" were most notable for their well-developed flight feathers. They were markedly asymmetrical and showed the structure of flight feathers in modern birds, with vanes given stability by a barb-barbule-barbicel arrangement. The tail feathers were less asymmetrical, again in line with the situation in modern birds and also had firm vanes. The thumb did not yet bear a separately movable tuft of stiff feathers.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The body plumage of "Archaeopteryx" is less well-documented and has only been properly researched in the well-preserved Berlin specimen. Thus, as more than one species seems to be involved, the research into the Berlin specimen's feathers does not necessarily hold true for the rest of the species of "Archaeopteryx". In the Berlin specimen, there are "trousers" of well-developed feathers on the legs; some of these feathers seem to have a basic contour feather structure, but are somewhat decomposed (they lack barbicels as in ratites). In part they are firm and thus capable of supporting flight.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: A patch of pennaceous feathers is found running along its back, which was quite similar to the contour feathers of the body plumage of modern birds in being symmetrical and firm, although not as stiff as the flight-related feathers. Apart from that, the feather traces in the Berlin specimen are limited to a sort of "proto-down" not dissimilar to that found in the dinosaur "Sinosauropteryx": decomposed and fluffy, and possibly even appearing more like fur than feathers in life (although not in their microscopic structure). These occur on the remainder of the body—although some feathers did not fossilize and others were obliterated during preparation, leaving bare patches on specimens—and the lower neck.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: There is no indication of feathering on the upper neck and head. While these conceivably may have been nude, this may still be an artefact of preservation. It appears that most "Archaeopteryx" specimens became embedded in anoxic sediment after drifting some time on their backs in the sea—the head, neck and the tail are generally bent downward, which suggests that the specimens had just started to rot when they were embedded, with tendons and muscle relaxing so that the characteristic shape (death pose) of the fossil specimens was achieved. This would mean that the skin already was softened and loose, which is bolstered by the fact that in some specimens the flight feathers were starting to detach at the point of embedding in the sediment. So it is hypothesized that the pertinent specimens moved along the sea bed in shallow water for some time before burial, the head and upper neck feathers sloughing off, while the more firmly attached tail feathers remained.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: In 2011, graduate student Ryan Carney and colleagues performed the first colour study on an "Archaeopteryx" specimen. Using scanning electron microscopy technology and energy-dispersive X-ray analysis, the team was able to detect the structure of melanosomes in the isolated feather specimen described in 1861. The resultant measurements were then compared to those of 87modern bird species, and the original colour was calculated with a 95% likelihood to be black. The feather was determined to be black throughout, with heavier pigmentation in the distal tip. The feather studied was most probably a dorsal covert, which would have partly covered the primary feathers on the wings. The study does not mean that "Archaeopteryx" was entirely black, but suggests that it had some black colouration which included the coverts. Carney pointed out that this is consistent with what we know of modern flight characteristics, in that black melanosomes have structural properties that strengthen feathers for flight. In a 2013 study published in the "Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry", new analyses of "Archaeopteryx"'s feathers revealed that the animal may have had complex light- and dark-coloured plumage, with heavier pigmentation in the distal tips and outer vanes. This analysis of color distribution was based primarily on the distribution of sulphate within the fossil. An author on the previous "Archaeopteryx" color study argued against the interpretation of such biomarkers as an indicator of eumelanin in the full "Archaeopteryx" specimen. Carney and other colleagues also argued against the 2013 study's interpretation of the sulphate and trace metals, and in a 2020 study published in "Scientific Reports" demonstrated that the isolated covert feather was entirely matte black (as opposed to black and white, or iridescent) and that the remaining "plumage patterns of "Archaeopteryx" remain unknown".


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Today, fossils of the genus "Archaeopteryx" are usually assigned to one or two species, "A. lithographica" and "A. siemensii", but their taxonomic history is complicated. Ten names have been published for the handful of specimens. As interpreted today, the name "A. lithographica" only referred to the single feather described by Meyer. In 1954 Gavin de Beer concluded that the London specimen was the holotype. In 1960, Swinton accordingly proposed that the name "Archaeopteryx lithographica" be placed on the official genera list making the alternative names "Griphosaurus" and "Griphornis" invalid. The ICZN, implicitly accepting De Beer's standpoint, did indeed suppress the plethora of alternative names initially proposed for the first skeleton specimens, which mainly resulted from the acrimonious dispute between Meyer and his opponent Johann Andreas Wagner (whose "Griphosaurus problematicus" – 'problematic riddle-lizard' – was a vitriolic sneer at Meyer's "Archaeopteryx"). In addition, in 1977, the Commission ruled that the first species name of the Haarlem specimen, "crassipes", described by Meyer as a pterosaur before its true nature was realized, was not to be given preference over "lithographica" in instances where scientists considered them to represent the same species.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: It has been noted that the feather, the first specimen of "Archaeopteryx" described, does not correspond well with the flight-related feathers of "Archaeopteryx". It certainly is a flight feather of a contemporary species, but its size and proportions indicate that it may belong to another, smaller species of feathered theropod, of which only this feather is known so far. As the feather had been designated the type specimen, the name "Archaeopteryx" should then no longer be applied to the skeletons, thus creating significant nomenclatorial confusion. In 2007, two sets of scientists therefore petitioned the ICZN requesting that the London specimen explicitly be made the type by designating it as the new holotype specimen, or neotype. This suggestion was upheld by the ICZN after four years of debate, and the London specimen was designated the neotype on 3 October 2011.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: It has been argued that all the specimens belong to the same species, "A. lithographica". Differences do exist among the specimens, and while some researchers regard these as due to the different ages of the specimens, some may be related to actual species diversity. In particular, the Munich, Eichstätt, Solnhofen, and Thermopolis specimens differ from the London, Berlin, and Haarlem specimens in being smaller or much larger, having different finger proportions, having more slender snouts lined with forward-pointing teeth, and the possible presence of a sternum. Due to these differences, most individual specimens have been given their own species name at one point or another. The Berlin specimen has been designated as "Archaeornis siemensii", the Eichstätt specimen as "Jurapteryx recurva", the Munich specimen as "Archaeopteryx bavarica", and the Solnhofen specimen as "Wellnhoferia grandis".


title: Archaeopteryx

text: In 2007, a review of all well-preserved specimens including the then-newly discovered Thermopolis specimen concluded that two distinct species of "Archaeopteryx" could be supported: "A. lithographica" (consisting of at least the London and Solnhofen specimens), and "A. siemensii" (consisting of at least the Berlin, Munich, and Thermopolis specimens). The two species are distinguished primarily by large flexor tubercles on the foot claws in "A. lithographica" (the claws of "A. siemensii" specimens being relatively simple and straight). "A. lithographica" also had a constricted portion of the crown in some teeth and a stouter metatarsus. A supposed additional species, "Wellnhoferia grandis" (based on the Solnhofen specimen), seems to be indistinguishable from "A. lithographica" except in its larger size.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: If two names are given, the first denotes the original describer of the "species", the second the author on whom the given name combination is based. As always in zoological nomenclature, putting an author's name in parentheses denotes that the taxon was originally described in a different genus.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: ""Archaeopteryx" vicensensis" (Anon. "fide" Lambrecht, 1933) is a "nomen nudum" for what appears to be an undescribed pterosaur.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Modern palaeontology has often classified "Archaeopteryx" as the most primitive bird. However, it is not thought to be a true ancestor of modern birds, but rather a close relative of that ancestor. Nonetheless, "Archaeopteryx" was often used as a model of the true ancestral bird. Several authors have done so. Lowe (1935) and Thulborn (1984) questioned whether "Archaeopteryx" truly was the first bird. They suggested that "Archaeopteryx" was a dinosaur that was no more closely related to birds than were other dinosaur groups. Kurzanov (1987) suggested that "Avimimus" was more likely to be the ancestor of all birds than "Archaeopteryx". Barsbold (1983) and Zweers and Van den Berge (1997) noted that many maniraptoran lineages are extremely birdlike, and they suggested that different groups of birds may have descended from different dinosaur ancestors.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The discovery of the closely related "Xiaotingia" in 2011 led to new phylogenetic analyses that suggested that "Archaeopteryx" is a deinonychosaur rather than an avialan, and therefore, not a "bird" under most common uses of that term. A more thorough analysis was published soon after to test this hypothesis, and failed to arrive at the same result; it found "Archaeopteryx" in its traditional position at the base of "Avialae", while "Xiaotingia" was recovered as a basal dromaeosaurid or troodontid. The authors of the follow-up study noted that uncertainties still exist, and that it may not be possible to state confidently whether or not "Archaeopteryx" is a member of Avialae or not, barring new and better specimens of relevant species.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Phylogenetic studies conducted by Senter, "et al." (2012) and Turner, Makovicky, and Norell (2012) also "Archaeopteryx" to be more closely related to living birds than to dromaeosaurids and troodontids. On the other hand, Godefroit "et al." (2013) recovered "Archaeopteryx" as more closely related to dromaeosaurids and troodontids in the analysis included in their description of "Eosinopteryx brevipenna". The authors used a modified version of the matrix from the study describing "Xiaotingia", adding "Jinfengopteryx elegans" and "Eosinopteryx brevipenna" to it, as well as adding four additional characters related to the development of the plumage. Unlike the analysis from the description of "Xiaotingia", the analysis conducted by Godefroit, "et al." did not find "Archaeopteryx" to be related particularly closely to "Anchiornis" and "Xiaotingia", which were recovered as basal troodontids instead.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Agnolín and Novas (2013) found "Archaeopteryx" and (possibly synonymous) "Wellnhoferia" to be form a clade sister to the lineage including "Jeholornis" and Pygostylia, with Microraptoria, Unenlagiinae, and the clade containing "Anchiornis" and "Xiaotingia" being successively closer outgroups to the Avialae (defined by the authors as the clade stemming from the last common ancestor of "Archaeopteryx" and Aves). Another phylogenetic study by Godefroit, "et al.", using a more inclusive matrix than the one from the analysis in the description of "Eosinopteryx brevipenna", also found "Archaeopteryx" to be a member of Avialae (defined by the authors as the most inclusive clade containing "Passer domesticus", but not "Dromaeosaurus albertensis" or "Troodon formosus"). "Archaeopteryx" was found to form a grade at the base of Avialae with "Xiaotingia", "Anchiornis", and "Aurornis". Compared to "Archaeopteryx", "Xiaotingia" was found to be more closely related to extant birds, while both "Anchiornis" and "Aurornis" were found to be more distantly so.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Hu "et al". (2018), Wang "et al". (2018) and Hartman "et al". (2019) found "Archaeopteryx" to have been a deinonychosaur instead of an avialan. More specifically, it and closely related taxa were considered basal deinonychosaurs, with dromaeosaurids and troodontids forming together a parallel lineage within the group. Because Hartman "et al". found "Archaeopteryx" isolated in a group of flightless deinonychosaurs (otherwise considered "anchiornithids"), they considered it highly probable that this animal evolved flight independently from bird ancestors (and from "Microraptor" and "Yi"). The following cladogram illustrates their hypothesis regarding the position of "Archaeopteryx":


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The authors, however, found that the "Archaeopteryx" being an avialan was only slightly less likely than this hypothesis, and as likely as Archaeopterygidae and Troodontidae being sister clades.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: As in the wings of modern birds, the flight feathers of "Archaeopteryx" were somewhat asymmetrical and the tail feathers were rather broad. This implies that the wings and tail were used for lift generation, but it is unclear whether "Archaeopteryx" was capable of flapping flight or simply a glider. The lack of a bony breastbone suggests that "Archaeopteryx" was not a very strong flier, but flight muscles might have attached to the thick, boomerang-shaped wishbone, the platelike coracoids, or perhaps, to a cartilaginous sternum. The sideways orientation of the glenoid (shoulder) joint between scapula, coracoid, and humerus—instead of the dorsally angled arrangement found in modern birds—may indicate that "Archaeopteryx" was unable to lift its wings above its back, a requirement for the upstroke found in modern flapping flight. According to a study by Philip Senter in 2006, "Archaeopteryx" was indeed unable to use flapping flight as modern birds do, but it may well have used a downstroke-only flap-assisted gliding technique. However, a more recent study solves this issue by suggesting a different flight stroke configuration for non-avian flying theropods.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: "Archaeopteryx" wings were relatively large, which would have resulted in a low stall speed and reduced turning radius. The short and rounded shape of the wings would have increased drag, but also could have improved its ability to fly through cluttered environments such as trees and brush (similar wing shapes are seen in birds that fly through trees and brush, such as crows and pheasants). The presence of "hind wings", asymmetrical flight feathers stemming from the legs similar to those seen in dromaeosaurids such as "Microraptor", also would have added to the aerial mobility of "Archaeopteryx". The first detailed study of the hind wings by Longrich in 2006, suggested that the structures formed up to 12% of the total airfoil. This would have reduced stall speed by up to 6% and turning radius by up to 12%.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The feathers of "Archaeopteryx" were asymmetrical. This has been interpreted as evidence that it was a flyer, because flightless birds tend to have symmetrical feathers. Some scientists, including Thomson and Speakman, have questioned this. They studied more than 70 families of living birds, and found that some flightless types do have a range of asymmetry in their feathers, and that the feathers of "Archaeopteryx" fall into this range. The degree of asymmetry seen in "Archaeopteryx" is more typical for slow flyers than for flightless birds.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: In 2010, Robert L. Nudds and Gareth J. Dyke in the journal "Science" published a paper in which they analysed the rachises of the primary feathers of "Confuciusornis" and "Archaeopteryx". The analysis suggested that the rachises on these two genera were thinner and weaker than those of modern birds relative to body mass. The authors determined that "Archaeopteryx" and "Confuciusornis", were unable to use flapping flight. This study was criticized by Philip J. Currie and Luis Chiappe. Chiappe suggested that it is difficult to measure the rachises of fossilized feathers, and Currie speculated that "Archaeopteryx" and "Confuciusornis" must have been able to fly to some degree, as their fossils are preserved in what is believed to have been marine or lake sediments, suggesting that they must have been able to fly over deep water. Gregory Paul also disagreed with the study, arguing in a 2010 response that Nudds and Dyke had overestimated the masses of these early birds, and that more accurate mass estimates allowed powered flight even with relatively narrow rachises. Nudds and Dyke had assumed a mass of for the Munich specimen "Archaeopteryx", a young juvenile, based on published mass estimates of larger specimens. Paul argued that a more reasonable body mass estimate for the Munich specimen is about . Paul also criticized the measurements of the rachises themselves, noting that the feathers in the Munich specimen are poorly preserved. Nudds and Dyke reported a diameter of for the longest primary feather, which Paul could not confirm using photographs. Paul measured some of the inner primary feathers, finding rachises across. Despite these criticisms, Nudds and Dyke stood by their original conclusions. They claimed that Paul's statement, that an adult "Archaeopteryx" would have been a better flyer than the juvenile Munich specimen, was dubious. This, they reasoned, would require an even thicker rachis, evidence for which has not yet been presented. Another possibility is that they had not achieved true flight, but instead used their wings as aids for extra lift while running over water after the fashion of the basilisk lizard, which could explain their presence in lake and marine deposits (see Origin of avian flight).


title: Archaeopteryx

text: In 2004, scientists analysing a detailed CT scan of the braincase of the London "Archaeopteryx" concluded that its brain was significantly larger than that of most dinosaurs, indicating that it possessed the brain size necessary for flying. The overall brain anatomy was reconstructed using the scan. The reconstruction showed that the regions associated with vision took up nearly one-third of the brain. Other well-developed areas involved hearing and muscle coordination. The skull scan also revealed the structure of its inner ear. The structure more closely resembles that of modern birds than the inner ear of non-avian reptiles. These characteristics taken together suggest that "Archaeopteryx" had the keen sense of hearing, balance, spatial perception, and coordination needed to fly. "Archaeopteryx" had a cerebrum-to-brain-volume ratio 78% of the way to modern birds from the condition of non-coelurosaurian dinosaurs such as "Carcharodontosaurus" or "Allosaurus", which had a crocodile-like anatomy of the brain and inner ear. Newer research shows that while the "Archaeopteryx" brain was more complex than that of more primitive theropods, it had a more generalized brain volume among Maniraptora dinosaurs, even smaller than that of other non-avian dinosaurs in several instances, which indicates the neurological development required for flight was already a common trait in the maniraptoran clade.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Recent studies of flight feather barb geometry reveal that modern birds possess a larger barb angle in the trailing vane of the feather, whereas "Archaeopteryx" lacks this large barb angle, indicating potentially weak flight abilities.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: "Archaeopteryx" continues to play an important part in scientific debates about the origin and evolution of birds. Some scientists see it as a semi-arboreal climbing animal, following the idea that birds evolved from tree-dwelling gliders (the "trees down" hypothesis for the evolution of flight proposed by O. C. Marsh). Other scientists see "Archaeopteryx" as running quickly along the ground, supporting the idea that birds evolved flight by running (the "ground up" hypothesis proposed by Samuel Wendell Williston). Still others suggest that "Archaeopteryx" might have been at home both in the trees and on the ground, like modern crows, and this latter view is what currently is considered best-supported by morphological characters. Altogether, it appears that the species was not particularly specialized for running on the ground or for perching. A scenario outlined by Elżanowski in 2002 suggested that "Archaeopteryx" used its wings mainly to escape predators by glides punctuated with shallow downstrokes to reach successively higher perches, and alternatively, to cover longer distances (mainly) by gliding down from cliffs or treetops.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: In March 2018, scientists reported that "Archaeopteryx" was likely capable of flight, but in a manner distinct and substantially different from that of modern birds. This study on "Archaeopteryx"'s bone histology suggests that it was closest to true flying birds, and in particular to pheasants and other burst flyers.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Studies of "Archaeopteryx's" feather sheaths revealed that like modern birds, it had a center-out, flight related molting strategy. As it was a weak flier, this was extremely advantageous in preserving its maximum flight performance.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: An histological study by Erickson, Norell, Zhongue, and others in 2009 estimated that "Archaeopteryx" grew relatively slowly compared to modern birds, presumably because the outermost portions of "Archaeopteryx" bones appear poorly vascularized; in living vertebrates, poorly vascularized bone is correlated with slow growth rate. They also assume that all known skeletons of "Archaeopteryx" come from juvenile specimens. Because the bones of "Archaeopteryx" could not be histologically sectioned in a formal skeletochronological (growth ring) analysis, Erickson and colleagues used bone vascularity (porosity) to estimate bone growth rate. They assumed that poorly vascularized bone grows at similar rates in all birds and in "Archaeopteryx". The poorly vascularized bone of "Archaeopteryx" might have grown as slowly as that in a mallard (2.5micrometres per day) or as fast as that in an ostrich (4.2micrometres per day). Using this range of bone growth rates, they calculated how long it would take to "grow" each specimen of "Archaeopteryx" to the observed size; it may have taken at least 970 days (there were 375 days in a Late Jurassic year) to reach an adult size of . The study also found that the avialans "Jeholornis" and "Sapeornis" grew relatively slowly, as did the dromaeosaurid "Mahakala". The avialans "Confuciusornis" and "Ichthyornis" grew relatively quickly, following a growth trend similar to that of modern birds. One of the few modern birds that exhibit slow growth is the flightless kiwi, and the authors speculated that "Archaeopteryx" and the kiwi had similar basal metabolic rate.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: Comparisons between the scleral rings of "Archaeopteryx" and modern birds and reptiles indicate that it may have been diurnal, similar to most modern birds.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The richness and diversity of the Solnhofen limestones in which all specimens of "Archaeopteryx" have been found have shed light on an ancient Jurassic Bavaria strikingly different from the present day. The latitude was similar to Florida, though the climate was likely to have been drier, as evidenced by fossils of plants with adaptations for arid conditions and a lack of terrestrial sediments characteristic of rivers. Evidence of plants, although scarce, include cycads and conifers while animals found include a large number of insects, small lizards, pterosaurs, and "Compsognathus".


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The excellent preservation of "Archaeopteryx" fossils and other terrestrial fossils found at Solnhofen indicates that they did not travel far before becoming preserved. The "Archaeopteryx" specimens found were therefore likely to have lived on the low islands surrounding the Solnhofen lagoon rather than to have been corpses that drifted in from farther away. "Archaeopteryx" skeletons are considerably less numerous in the deposits of Solnhofen than those of pterosaurs, of which seven genera have been found. The pterosaurs included species such as "Rhamphorhynchus" belonging to the Rhamphorhynchidae, the group which dominated the ecological niche currently occupied by seabirds, and which became extinct at the end of the Jurassic. The pterosaurs, which also included "Pterodactylus", were common enough that it is unlikely that the specimens found are vagrants from the larger islands to the north.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The islands that surrounded the Solnhofen lagoon were low lying, semi-arid, and sub-tropical with a long dry season and little rain. The closest modern analogue for the Solnhofen conditions is said to be Orca Basin in the northern Gulf of Mexico, although it is much deeper than the Solnhofen lagoons. The flora of these islands was adapted to these dry conditions and consisted mostly of low () shrubs. Contrary to reconstructions of "Archaeopteryx" climbing large trees, these seem to have been mostly absent from the islands; few trunks have been found in the sediments and fossilized tree pollen also is absent.


title: Archaeopteryx

text: The lifestyle of "Archaeopteryx" is difficult to reconstruct and there are several theories regarding it. Some researchers suggest that it was primarily adapted to life on the ground, while other researchers suggest that it was principally arboreal on the basis of the curvature of the claws which has since been questioned. The absence of trees does not preclude "Archaeopteryx" from an arboreal lifestyle, as several species of bird live exclusively in low shrubs. Various aspects of the morphology of "Archaeopteryx" point to either an arboreal or ground existence, including the length of its legs and the elongation in its feet; some authorities consider it likely to have been a generalist capable of feeding in both shrubs and open ground, as well as along the shores of the lagoon. It most likely hunted small prey, seizing it with its jaws if it was small enough, or with its claws if it was larger.


title: ISO 3166-1

text: ISO 3166-1 ("Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes") is a standard defining codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. It is the first part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization.


title: ISO 3166-1

text: The alphabetic country codes were first included in ISO 3166 in 1974, and the numeric country codes were first included in 1981. The country codes have been published as ISO 3166-1 since 1997, when ISO 3166 was expanded into three parts, with ISO 3166-2 defining codes for subdivisions and ISO 3166-3 defining codes for former countries.


title: ISO 3166-1

text: As a widely used international standard, ISO 3166-1 is implemented in other standards and used by international organizations to allow facilitation of the exchange of goods and information. However, it is not the only standard for country codes. Other country codes used by many international organizations are partly or totally incompatible with ISO 3166-1, although some of them closely correspond to ISO 3166-1 codes.


title: ISO 3166-1

text: Currently 249 countries, territories, or areas of geographical interest are assigned official codes in ISO 3166-1. According to the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA), the only way to enter a new country name into ISO 3166-1 is to have it registered in one of the following two sources:


title: ISO 3166-1

text: The list of names in "Country and Region Codes for Statistical Use" of the UN Statistics Division is based on the bulletin "Country Names" and other UN sources.


title: ISO 3166-1

text: Once a country name or territory name appears in either of these two sources, it will be added to ISO 3166-1 by default.


title: ISO 3166-1

text: The ISO 3166/MA may reserve code elements for other entities that do not qualify for inclusion based on the above criteria. For example, because the European Union is not a country, it is not formally included in ISO 3166-1, but for practical reasons, the ISO 3166/MA has "reserved the two-letter combination for the purpose of identifying the European Union within the framework of ISO 3166-1".


title: ISO 3166-1

text: ISO 3166-1 is published officially in both English and French. Since the second edition of ISO 3166-1, the following columns are included for each entry:


title: ISO 3166-1

text: The country names used in ISO 3166-1 are taken from the two UN sources mentioned above. Some country names used by the UN, and accordingly by ISO, are subject to dispute:


title: ISO 3166-1

text: The codes are chosen, according to the ISO 3166/MA, "to reflect the significant, unique component of the country name in order to allow a visual association between country name and country code". For this reason, common components of country names like "Republic", "Kingdom", "United", "Federal" or "Democratic" are normally not used for deriving the code elements. As a consequence, for example, the United Kingdom is officially assigned the alpha-2 code rather than , based on its official name "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (although is reserved on the request of the United Kingdom). Some codes are chosen based on the native names of the countries. For example, Germany is assigned the alpha-2 code , based on its native name "Deutschland".


title: ISO 3166-1

text: The following is a complete ISO 3166-1 encoding list of the countries which are assigned official codes. It is listed in alphabetical order by the country's English short name used by the ISO 3166/MA.


title: ISO 3166-1

text: "Note: Each country's alpha-2 code is linked to more information about the assignment of its code elements."


title: ISO 3166-1

text: Besides the officially assigned codes, code elements may be expanded by using either reserved codes or user-assigned codes.


title: ISO 3166-1

text: Reserved code elements are codes which have become obsolete, or are required in order to enable a particular user application of the standard but do not qualify for inclusion in ISO 3166-1. To avoid transitional application problems and to aid users who require specific additional code elements for the functioning of their coding systems, the ISO 3166/MA, when justified, reserves these codes which it undertakes not to use for other than specified purposes during a limited or indeterminate period of time. Codes are usually reserved for former countries, overseas territories, international organizations, and special nationality status. The reserved alpha-2 and alpha-3 codes can be divided into the following four categories "(click on the links for the reserved codes of each category)":


title: ISO 3166-1

text: User-assigned code elements are codes at the disposal of users who need to add further names of countries, territories, or other geographical entities to their in-house application of ISO 3166-1, and the ISO 3166/MA will never use these codes in the updating process of the standard. The following codes can be user-assigned:


title: ISO 3166-1

text: The ISO 3166/MA updates ISO 3166-1 when necessary. A country is usually assigned new ISO 3166-1 codes if it changes its name or its territorial boundaries. In general, new alphabetic codes are assigned if a country changes a significant part of its name, while a new numeric code is assigned if a country changes its territorial boundaries. Codes for formerly used country names that were deleted from ISO 3166-1 are published in ISO 3166-3.


title: ISO 3166-1

text: ISO used to announce changes in newsletters which updated the currently valid standard, and releasing new editions which comprise a consolidation of newsletter changes. As of July 2013, changes are published in the online catalogue of ISO only, and no newsletters are published anymore. Past newsletters remain available through the search option on the ISO website.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: Constantine I (, "Konstantínos I"; – 11 January 1923) was King of Greece from 18 March 1913 to 11 June 1917 and from 19 December 1920 to 27 September 1922. He was commander-in-chief of the Hellenic Army during the unsuccessful Greco-Turkish War of 1897 and led the Greek forces during the successful Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, in which Greece expanded to include Thessaloniki, doubling in area and population. He succeeded to the throne of Greece on 18 March 1913, following his father's assassination.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: Constantine’s disagreement with Eleftherios Venizelos over whether Greece should enter World War I led to the National Schism. He forced Venizelos to resign twice, but in 1917 he left Greece, after threats by the Entente forces to bombard Athens; his second son, Alexander, became king. After Alexander's death, Venizelos' defeat in the 1920 legislative elections, and a plebiscite in favor of his return, Constantine was reinstated. He abdicated the throne for the second and last time in 1922, when Greece lost the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, and this time was succeeded by his eldest son, George II. He died in exile four months later, in Sicily.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: Constantine I was born on 2 August 1868 in Athens, Constantine was the eldest son of King George I and Queen Olga. His birth was met with an immense wave of enthusiasm: the new heir apparent to the throne was the first Greek-born member of the family. As the ceremonial cannon on Lycabettus Hill fired the royal salute, huge crowds gathered outside the Palace shouting what they thought should rightfully be the newborn prince's name: "Constantine". This was both the name of his maternal grandfather, Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov of Russia, and the name of the "King who would reconquer Constantinople", the future "Constantine "XII", legitimate successor to the Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos", according to popular legend. He was inevitably christened "Constantine" (, "Kōnstantīnos") on 12 August, and his official style was the "Diádochos" (Διάδοχος, Crown Prince, literally: "Successor"). The most prominent university professors of the time were handpicked to tutor the young Crown Prince: Ioannis Pantazidis taught him Greek literature; Vasileios Lakonas mathematics and physics; and Constantine Paparrigopoulos history, infusing the young prince with the principles of the "Megali Idea". On 30 October 1882 he enrolled in the Hellenic Military Academy. After graduation he was sent to Berlin for further military education, and served in the German Imperial Guard. Constantine also studied political science and business in Heidelberg and Leipzig. In 1890 he became a Major General, and assumed command of the 3rd Army Headquarters (Γʹ Αρχηγείον Στρατού) in Athens.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: In January 1895, Constantine caused political turmoil when he ordered army and gendarmerie forces to break up a street protest against tax policy. Constantine had previously addressed the crowd and advised them to submit their grievances to the government. Prime Minister Charilaos Trikoupis asked the King to recommend that his son avoid such interventions in politics without prior consultation with the government. King George responded that the Crown Prince was, in dispersing protesters, merely obeying military orders, and that his conduct lacked political significance. The incident caused a heated debate in Parliament, and Trikoupis finally resigned as a result. In the following elections Trikoupis was defeated, and the new Prime Minister, Theodoros Deligiannis, seeking to downplay hostility between government and the Palace, regarded the matter closed.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: The organization of the first modern Olympics in Athens was another issue which caused a Constantine-Trikoupis confrontation, with Trikoupis opposed to hosting the Games. After Deligiannis's electoral victory over Trikoupis in 1895, those who favored a revival of the Olympic Games, including the Crown Prince, prevailed. Subsequently, Constantine was instrumental in the organization of the 1896 Summer Olympics; according to Pierre de Coubertin, in 1894 "the Crown Prince learned with great pleasure that the Games will be inaugurated in Athens." Coubertin assured that "the King and the Crown Prince will confer their patronage on the holding of these Games." Constantine later conferred more than that; he eagerly assumed the presidency of the 1896 organizing committee. At the Crown Prince's request, wealthy businessman George Averoff agreed to pay approximately one million drachmas to fund the restoration of the Panathinaiko Stadium in white marble.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: Constantine was the commander-in-chief of the Army of Thessaly in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, which ended in a humiliating defeat. In its aftermath, the popularity of the monarchy fell, and calls were raised in the army for reforms and the dismissal of the royal princes, and especially Constantine, from their command posts in the armed forces. The simmering dissent culminated in the Goudi coup in August 1909. In its aftermath, he and his brothers were dismissed from the armed forces, only to be reinstated a few months later by the new Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, who was keen on gaining the trust of King George. Venizelos was ingenious in his argumentation: "All Greeks are rightly proud to see their sons serve in the army, and so is the King". What was left unsaid was that the royal princes' commands were to be on a very tight leash.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: In 1912 with the formation of the Balkan League, Greece was ready for war against the Ottoman empire and Prince Constantine became Chief of the Hellenic Army.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: Ottoman planning anticipated a two-prong Greek attack east and west of the impassable Pindus mountain range. They accordingly allotted their resources, equally divided, in a defensive posture to fortify the approaches to Ioannina, capital of Epirus, and the mountain passes leading from Thessaly to Macedonia. This was a grave error. The war plan by Venizelos and the Greek General Staff called for a rapid advance with overwhelming force towards Thessaloniki with its important harbor. A small Greek force of little more than a division, just enough to forestall a possible Turkish redeployment eastwards, was to be sent west as the "Army of Epirus".


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: At the same time the bulk of the Greek infantry and artillery made a rapid advance against the Turks in the east. In the event, the Greek plan worked well. Advancing on foot, the Greeks soundly defeated the Turks twice, and were in Thessaloniki within 4 weeks. The Greek plan for overwhelming attack and speedy advance hinged upon another factor: should the Hellenic Navy succeed in blockading the Turkish fleet within the Straits, any Turkish reinforcements from Asia would have no way of quickly reaching Europe. The Ottomans would be slow to mobilize, and even when the masses of troops raised in Asia were ready, they were able to go no further than the outskirts of Constantinople, fighting the Bulgarians in brutal trench warfare. With the Bulgarians directing the bulk of their force towards Constantinople, the capture of Thessaloniki would ensure that the railway axis between these two main cities was lost to the Turks, causing loss of logistics and supplies and severe impairment of command and control capability. The Turks would be hard placed to recruit locals, as their loyalties would be liable to lie with the Balkan Allies. Ottoman armies in Europe would be quickly cut off and their loss of morale and operational capability would lead them toward a quick surrender.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: Previously the Inspector General of the Army, Constantine was appointed commander-in-chief of the "Army of Thessaly" when the First Balkan War broke out in October 1912. He led the Army of Thessaly to victory at Sarantaporos. At this point, his first clash with Venizelos occurred, as Constantine desired to press north, towards Monastir, where the bulk of the Ottoman army lay, and where the Greeks would rendezvous their Serb allies. Venizelos, on the other hand, demanded that the army capture the strategic port city of Thessaloniki, the capital of Macedonia, with extreme haste, so as to prevent its fall to the Bulgarians. The dispute resulted in a heated exchange of telegrams. Venizelos notified Constantine that "... political considerations of the utmost importance dictate that Thessaloniki be taken as soon as possible". After Constantine impudently cabled: "The army will not march on Thessaloniki. My duty calls me towards Monastir, unless you forbid me", Venizelos was forced to pull rank. As Prime Minister and War Minister, he outranked Constantine and his response was famously three-words-long, a crisp military order to be obeyed forthwith: "I forbid you". Constantine was left with no choice but to turn east, and after defeating the Ottoman army at Giannitsa, he accepted the surrender of the city of Thessaloniki and of its Ottoman garrison on 27 October (O.S.), less than 24 hours before the arrival of Bulgarian forces who hoped to capture the city first.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: The capture of Thessaloniki against Constantine's whim proved a crucial achievement: the pacts of the Balkan League had provided that in the forthcoming war against the Ottoman Empire, the four Balkan allies would provisionally hold any ground they took from the Turks, without contest from the other allies. Once an armistice was declared, then facts on the ground would be the starting point of negotiations for the final drawing of the new borders in a forthcoming peace treaty. With the vital port firmly in Greek hands, all the other allies could hope for was a customs-free dock in the harbor.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: In the meantime, operations in the Epirus front had stalled: against the rough terrain and Ottoman fortifications at Bizani, the small Greek force could not make any headway. With operations in Macedonia complete, Constantine transferred the bulk of his forces to Epirus, and assumed command. After lengthy preparations, the Greeks broke through the Ottoman defences in the Battle of Bizani and captured Ioannina and most of Epirus up into what is today southern Albania (Northern Epirus). These victories dispelled the tarnish of the 1897 defeat, and raised Constantine to great popularity with the Greek people.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: George I was assassinated in Thessaloniki by an anarchist, Alexandros Schinas, on 18 March 1913, and Constantine succeeded to the throne. In the meantime, tensions between the Balkan allies grew, as Bulgaria claimed Greek and Serbian-occupied territory. In May, Greece and Serbia concluded a secret defensive pact aimed at Bulgaria. On 16 June, the Bulgarian army attacked their erstwhile allies, but were soon halted. King Constantine led the Greek Army in its counterattack in the battles of Kilkis-Lahanas and the Kresna Gorge. In the meantime the Bulgarian army had started to disintegrate: beset by defeat in the hands of Greeks and Serbs, they were suddenly faced by a Turkish counterattack with fresh Asian troops finally ready, while the Romanians advanced south, demanding Southern Dobrudja. Under attack on four fronts Bulgaria sued for peace, agreed to an armistice and entered into negotiations in Bucharest. On the initiative of Prime Minister Venizelos, Constantine was also awarded the rank and baton of a Field Marshal. His popularity was at its peak. He was the "winner over the Bulgarians", the King who under his military commandment, doubled the Greek territory.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: The widely held view of Constantine I as a "German sympathizer" owes something to his marriage with Sophia of Prussia, sister of Wilhelm II, to his studies in Germany and his supposed "militaristic" beliefs and attitude.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: Constantine did rebuff Kaiser Wilhelm who in 1914 pressed him to bring Greece into the war on the side of Austria-Hungary and Germany. In their correspondence he told him that his sympathy was with Germany, but he would not join the war. Constantine then offended also the British and French by blocking popular efforts by Prime Minister Venizelos to bring Greece into the war on the side of the Allies.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: Constantine's insistence on neutrality, according to him and his supporters, was based more on his judgement that it was the best policy for Greece, rather than venal self-interest or his German dynastic connections, as he was accused of by the Venizelists.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: Admiral Mark Kerr, who was Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Hellenic Navy in the early part of World War I and later Commander-in-Chief of the British Adriatic Squadron, supported the Allied cause, but was sympathetic to the King, personally. He wrote in 1920:


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: "The persecution of King Constantine by the press of the Allied countries, with some few good exceptions, has been one of the most tragic affairs since the Dreyfus case." [Abbott, G.F. (1922) 'Greece and the Allies 1914–1922']


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: Although Venizelos, with Allied support, forced Constantine to leave the throne in 1917, he remained popular with parts of the Greek people (as shown by the vote for his return in the December 1920 plebiscite), who saw the Allied actions as a violation of sovereignty of Greece.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: In the aftermath of the victorious Balkan Wars, Greece was in a state of euphoria. Her territory and population had doubled with the massive liberation of Greeks from Ottoman rule and, under the dual leadership of Constantine and Venizelos, her future seemed bright. However Constantine had been ill with pleurisy since the Balkan wars and almost died during the summer of 1915.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: This state of affairs was not to last, however. When World War I broke out, a dispute appeared between the king and the government about the responsibility for the external policy of the state in case of war.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: Constantine was faced with the difficulty of determining where Greece's support lay. His first concern as King was for the welfare and security of Greece. He rejected the early appeal from Kaiser Wilhelm that Greece should march on the side of Germany and stated that Greece would remain neutral. Sophie, Constantine's queen, was popularly thought to support her brother Kaiser Wilhelm, but it seems that she was actually pro-British; like her father the late Kaiser Frederick, Sophie was influenced by her mother, the British-born Victoria. Venizelos was fervently pro-Entente, having established excellent rapport with the British and French, and was convinced that German aggression had caused the war and that the Allies would quickly win the war.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: Both Venizelos and Constantine were keenly aware that a maritime country like Greece could not, and should not, antagonise the Entente, the dominant naval powers in the Mediterranean. Constantine settled on a policy of neutrality because it seemed the path that best assured that Greece would emerge from the World War intact and with the substantial territorial gains it had won in the recent Balkan Wars.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: In January 1915, the Entente made proposals to both Bulgaria and Greece to side with it. Bulgaria would take eastern Macedonia from Greece (with Drama and Kavala), while Greece in exchange would gain land in Asia Minor from Turkey after the war. Venizelos agreed but Constantine rejected the proposal.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: Constantine claimed his military judgement was right, after the outcome of the Allies' failed operation of landing on Gallipoli. Despite the popularity of Venizelos and his clear majority in Parliament for supporting the Allies, Constantine opposed Venizelos. Venizelos actually wanted Greece to participate at the Gallipoli operation, but after military objections by the General Staff (Ioannis Metaxas), the King rejected the idea.


title: Constantine I of Greece

text: In autumn 1915, Bulgaria joined the Central Powers and attacked Serbia, with which Greece had a treaty of alliance. Venizelos again urged the King to allow Greece's entry into the war. The Hellenic army was mobilized for defensive reasons, but Constantine claimed that the treaty had no value in case of a global war, but only of Balkan issues. Furthermore, he supported that according to the treaty, Serbia should mobilize 150,000 soldiers against Bulgaria, something that it could not do at that time.