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.