Archaeopteryx: A Prehistoric Rebel

Like most of my fellow students in elementary school, I went through a period of dinosaur infatuation. It was fantastic to discover, while learning cursive and the times table, that giant creatures had once inhabited the earth. To dream of dinosaurs and of oneself as a dinosaur was to free oneself of the helplessness of being a child forced to sit at a school desk, obey authoritarian adults, and eat in a civilized way at the dinner table. Dinosaurs provided a way out of the boring day-to-day routine of being a kid. Bill Watterson, in his seminal cartoon Calvin and Hobbes, was appreciative of the attraction of dinosaurs to imaginative children, drawing many strips of Calvin, like this one:










Because I was not alone in my infatuation, when my teacher taught her dinosaur lesson, the discipline problems ceased and were replaced by rapt attention and avid participation in all activities that shed more light on these prematurely-departed, enigmatic creatures. As a result of our studies, it was only logical that we developed preferences for certain dinosaurs. Girls generally liked the elegant and gentle Brontosaurus, while boys preferred the imposing Tyrannosaurus Rex. In particular, I liked Ankylosaurus, and later the more elusive Archaeopteryx.

Ankylosaurus appealed to me because, though a peaceful herbivore, he was armored like a tank and had a club for a tail. These defenses permitted Ankylosaurus to cultivate a mind-your-own-business and I’ll mind mine attitude that even the most formidable predator was ill-advised to ignore. In my own childhood Ankylosaurus fantasy, I would be trapped in the downtown of some major American city smashing through display windows and crushing cars with my deadly club, National Guard machine gun fire caroming off my back, in my escape from the municipal zoo. Though such ambition and violence was uncharacteristic for dim-witted Ankylosaurus, when threatened I felt certain he would defend his interests with passion.


Peaceful but prepared

For a childhood friend and I, dinosaur fever didn’t end with picture books, daydreams, and toy replicas. In the side yard of my house we started our own quarry where we would dig for hours after school. And to our surprise we made several important fossil discoveries. A femur here, a rib there, some toe bones, and then our greatest find: a skull from a yet to be recorded species. Of course, my parents indulged our obsession and humored our efforts. For what we had dug up with pick and shovel were chunks of leftover concrete that had be poured there along with gravel, etc. from the foundation and patio of the house.

The ability of children to transform a rules-based, constrained, and over-defined physical world into fantasy, entertainment, and invention is a unique talent that we as adults need to revive and incorporate into our lives. A return to this stage of guileless curiosity can provide us with relief from the frustration and suffering we experience daily and the cynicism and apathy that often overwhelm our thinking as a result. What children know, intuitively, is that illusions are essential to a healthy active mind, and that surprises and mystery are what we thirst after to save us from the limitations of a routine existence.

Unlike the popular and well-documented Ankylosaurus, Archaeopteryx was a creature of mystery; it did not readily appear in the dinosaur literature I devoured with enthusiasm from the local library, nor did any come in those packs of multicolored plastic dinosaurs with which we would stage our prehistoric battles in the sandbox. What I did read about Archaeopteryx was often contradictory and hypothetical. Scientific opinion was divided on whether it lived on the ground, in bushes or by the water, if it used it wings for gliding or active flight, and whether it ran and flew (“ground up” hypothesis) or climbed and flew (“trees down” hypothesis). Later I learned that the Archaeopteryx was the earliest universally recognized bird, and the discovery of a complete fossil in 1861 (two years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species) made it a key piece of evidence in the debate over evolution. Because the Archaeopteryx had flight feathers, it was determined to be a transitional fossil between dinosaurs and birds. Though this was beyond the scope of our elementary school dinosaur lesson, what was fascinating to me as a child was the presence of a small bird-like creature in an ecosystem dominated by large terrestrial dinosaurs.

Archaeopteryx was truly an individual among its peers of the Jurassic Period. While petrosaurs where still flying with skin flap wings, Archaeopteryx was a prototypical bird that had survived by developing feathers before these became the standard of avian flight. Nevertheless, it was still not officially a “bird,” because it retained several reptilian characteristics including wing claws, a toothed beak, and a long vertebrate tail. In a world of creatures doomed to extinction, Archaeopteryx was a resourceful generalist that could thrive in different environments. The logic of Archaeopteryx evolution was this: Why remain on the ground when you can fly? Why not do both? Fly to escape danger and to reach other food sources, and use your claws and long legs to hunt on the ground. Though not thought to be a true ancestor of modern birds, Archaeopteryx is a close relative of that ancestor. There is something to be said for a rare and ancient creature that survived from the age of dinosaurs, through ancestors and descendants that include that crow outside your window.

As a kid, I though Archaeopteryx looked cool, and I liked the idea of having both claws and wings. I also admired how Archaeopteryx had created a unique hybrid identity by developing useful traits and discarding its dinosaur limitations. Though it may have been ignored, or considered a nuisance or occasional food source by the larger dinosaurs, Archaeopteryx had nonetheless hit upon an elegant solution to survival that its contemporaries had overlooked. What may have seemed ridiculous at first, the feather, turned out to be a revolutionary adaptation: one that continues to amaze and inspire the envy of modern humanity.


Archaeopteryx: A Prehistoric Rebel

What we can learn from Archaeopteryx is that unique ideas are seldom appreciated or adopted by the status quo, but that this need not be cause for despair. Contemporaries usually judge and treat harshly those who march to the beat of their own drummer and innovate where previous ideas have failed, are inadequate or altogether absent. People often criticize, mock and label what they don’t understand and consequently fear. While that is unfortunate, for those possessing the heroic audacity of Archaeopteryx, this need not be a hindrance, but an opportunity for progressive and successful adaptation to the changing demands of life.


Ankylosaurus takes on T-Rex in this video.
Click here for more on Archaeopteryx.

A Garden of One’s Own

It doesn’t get any more local than growing food in your own backyard and making everything by hand. Imagine how great it would be to have your own vegetable garden, fruit trees and livestock, and to make your own pasta, ice cream and beer. Still, I must admit that though I try to eat healthy and follow my own advice, there are certain foods I feel are best left to professionals to produce, pasta and ice cream falling into this category. While I have seen Italian women making ravioli by hand in a campground in Italy (I kid you not), I am not yet ready to be that hardcore about my food. And while I have helped an ex-girlfriend in Brazil make ice cream at her family’s house, I prefer to buy it ready on a stick. Home-brewed beer on the other hand is always worth a try; in spite of mixed results, I still have fond memories of making it with friends during college.

Though one could just as well prepare them by hand, in some cases it is more efficient to buy processed foods, provided they don’t contain harmful ingredients. I buy canned beans because I don’t have the foresight to soak dry beans, salsa because it costs the same or less than an equal weight of tomatoes, and hummus because I would either have to buy chickpeas canned, or soak them dry before preparing the hummus itself.

Though I may not be a back-to-the-farm purist, I like to know the origin, nature of preparation, and nutritional benefits of the food I eat. Meat-eaters, like myself, would gain valuable perspective over the slabs of shrink-wrapped flesh we poke at in the clinical lighting of the meat aisle if we witnessed, at least once, the slaughter and dressing of the mammals we eat. Similarly, if we observed the production of the processed foods we eat, we might question eating them at all. We also might see how we could make the food we enjoy healthier by preparing it ourselves.

While good cooking is an art form, it is also important to remember that we eat food for a reason: namely to provide our bodies with the nutrients they need to function. We need to put our preference for excessive salt, sugar and fat aside and learn to enjoy the complex and unique flavors of vegetables and fruit. We need to favor the inner nutritional value of food over its appearance.

Many of you, like me, may recall childhood memories of eating junk food and drinking soda, and college years spent surviving on instant noodles with the little MSG packet for flavor. Some of you may have also heard the urban legend about the student who contracted scurvy, due to a diet devoid of fruit and vegetables. Though this is an extreme case, many children and young adults in the United States do not receive enough nutrition in their daily diets. As a teacher I have noticed the effects of a poor diet of candy, cookies, chips and soda on young children; the sugar and caffeine high prevents them from sitting still or focusing their attention in class, while too much salt makes them irritable and hard to manage. While efforts have been made by government to ban junk food and soda vending machines in schools, and schools have tried to improve the nutritional value of their cafeteria menu, parents also bear the responsibility of providing kids with healthy food and snacks at home. In many cases, this requires that parents improve their own food culture and avoid the hazards of low-quality processed food and the temptation of convenience that the modern food industry promotes. One way to do this would be to plant a garden of one’s own and thereby gain hands-on experience with food production, while reaping a modest but healthy harvest of fresh fruits and vegetables.

When it comes to growing one’s own food one obviously needs a suitable yard or property, a favorable climate and good soil. Gazing out onto the lava rock garden of my rented apartment, I realize that I, like many Americans, currently have neither the space nor the property to achieve this dream. Today, many Americans live in urban areas, in suburban apartments without yards, or in subdivisions of small lots. In many cases, it is simply not possible to cultivate anything more than a few tomatoes and some herbs in the window sill or on the roof of an urban tenement, in a pot on the back porch of the apartment, or in a small part of the yard of the suburban home which isn’t already occupied with lawn and generic landscaping. Cleary, without a piece of land free of the concrete jungle of the metropolis and the sprawl of suburbia, it is nearly impossible to create even a moderate level of self-sufficiency and personal food security. Nevertheless, I think we could all benefit from growing a few vegetables in the spaces available to us, or through co-ops with like-minded neighbors.

In many cities across the United States, citizens are creating urban gardens to produce their own food. As a result, neighborhoods that were previously neglected and consequently prone to vandalism and crime have been revitalized. First Lady Michelle Obama has also shown that she values community and locally grown organic food by planting a garden (with the help of fifth-graders from a local elementary school) on the South Lawn of the White House. This garden sends a positive message to both the participating students and to the public that we can take control of our own diet and health, while respecting the environment and promoting community life.

Urban planners can take a page of inspiration from the First Lady and urban gardeners by including community gardens in their project master plans. A frequent problem with suburban planned development is the lack of access to goods and services, and an absence of community spirit. Imagine if new subdivisions included, in addition to required parks, areas dedicated to gardens that were proportionally large enough to provide each household with a box of seasonal vegetables once a month, or several times a year? On weekends homeowners could tend the garden along with their children, or while their children play in the adjacent park. They could also organize culinary events based on the harvest, using community facilities (to the extent these exist), or through rotating events held in private homes.

For people who are unable to have their own garden, many cities run farmers' markets where you can buy quality, small-scale produce from local growers, which is superior to what you’ll find in the supermarket. In addition, there is frequently more organic food on offer at these events. Farmers’ markets also give the opportunity to socialize with other people in the community: often a rare occurrence in a modern world typified by commuting, frequent relocation, and a preference for private artificial entertainment in the form of movies, television, internet, and video games.

Alternatively, it is possible to have a box of seasonal organic produce delivered to your door from local farms. While local, organic produce may not look perfect, it is usually superior in taste to what’s on offer at your local supermarket, which is harvested early for a longer shelf life, and bred to be uniform in appearance and to travel well. For the consumer this often means rock hard peaches, mealy apples, and cardboard tomatoes. No thanks! I’ll take taste over appearance any day.

The best thing you can do with your homegrown or local-bought produce is to share it with friends in tasty meals prepared for small dinner parties, or potlucks. The potluck is a great tradition because it allows us to take time out from our busy schedules to cook our favorite meals, eat together, and interact with our friends. More often than not, the food on offer is delicious and can inspire our own cooking. While we all have our culinary preferences based on culture, tradition, small epiphanies, habit and convenience, we become our better selves when we discover and appreciate different food and the people who prepare and share it with us. While sincere communication and mutual interests build friendship and understanding, food is still the fastest path to the heart.


Click here to learn more about scurvy.
Click here for more info on urban gardening.
Visit the White House Blog to learn more about the White House Kitchen Garden.