Oldest Fossil Feather Ever Found Came From The Archaeopteryx Dinosaur

The earliest fossil of a feather ever found has been stuck to the ground for roughly 150 million years. Ever since it was discovered, over a century and a half ago, pretty much everything about it has remained unsettled.

Scientists have been trying to pin the feather on a Late Jurassic dinosaur for years now, and the debate hit its newest wave of turbulence in 2019, when a team of researchers argued the fossil belonged not to the Archaeopteryx lithographica - famous for being 'the first bird' - but to a different unknown species altogether.

Other experts aren't so sure. New research claims the isolated feather is indeed shaped like the primary feathers of Archaeopteryx. What's more, the feather was found at the same fossil site as four Archaeopteryx skeletons.

The location alone is a better explanation than an irrefutable new species, the new paper argues; after all, as the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. 

"[The 2019] study's alternative taxonomic hypothesis is a hypothetical undescribed dinosaur, a position that circumvents the burden of proof and cannot be falsified," the researchers explain.

Matching up the feather with multiple Archaeopteryx specimens, some of which come from the same fossil site, the new paper argues the ancient feather could, in fact, fit on an Archaeopteryx wing.

In both size and shape, they say, its range resembles the upper major primary covert feathers (outer feathers that help smooth the airflow over the wings and tail) of other Archaeopteryx, which have been found with feather imprints elsewhere. Read the free article.