Fossil deemed bird, not dinosaur

New research finds that the earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx, is in fact a bird, not a dinosaur as some scientists had suggested. However, the line between feathered dinosaurs and birds remains fuzzy. 

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    This image shows the skeleton of a recently discovered dinosaur dubbed Aurornis xui that roamed China during the middle to late Jurassic period. A new study finds the discovery restores the fossil creature Archaeopteryx back to the “bird” branch of the evolutionary family tree.
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The creature called Archaeopteryx (ahr-kee-AHP'-teh-rihx) was widely considered the earliest known bird. That status was called into question two years ago by Chinese scientists, who proposed yanking it off the "bird" branch of the evolutionary family tree and moving it onto a closely related lineage of birdlike dinosaurs.

Now an international team led by the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences believes Archaeopteryx should indeed be considered a bird.







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