Archaeopteryx - Dino of the Week 7
Archaeopteryx, meaning β'"ancient wing". Coming from the Late Jurassic, this dinosaur is most well known for being the transitional between dinosaurs and birds. However, rather they are ancestors to modern birds or just relatives to those ancestors is debated. They still have more features in common with dromaeosauridsΒ andΒ troodontids than to birds. They do have flight feathers but mostly likely they were weak fliers and often glided. They were tiny, the largest species only being comparable to a raven. Archaeopteryx was technically originally described in 1861 from a single fossilized covert feather. In 2011, a study found that the melanosomes in this feather indicated that it was black in coloration. I drew this before I found out, good thing I made the wings a brownish black. I also used ornate hawk eagles and ravens as my bird references.
