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History never ceases to surprise us with the age of time and the discoveries that come to light. The latest one has been in Chicago, where a fossil has been found that gives several clues that were not known until now about the theory of evolution and natural selection of birds.
The fossil found in Chicago is Archaeopteryx, a key element in Darwin's theory of evolution, which provides valuable information about the transition between dinosaurs and modern birds. This discovery has been studied by experts at the Field Museum and is very well preserved.
This fossil is tiny, smaller than a pigeon, and was found in the Solnhofen limestone in , being in the hands of someone completely private, reaching the museum in 2022. The researchers, thanks to super-advanced technologies such as computed tomography and ultraviolet light, were able to observe invisible tissues within the fossil, as they glow under this type of lighting.
This revealed what the bones of the palate are like and helps to understand how the movement of the beak of modern birds evolves independently, also observing the tissues in feet and hands, saying that the animal walked on the ground and climbed trees
In addition, another finding was the long tertiary feathers on the arm, which allowed the opening in the wing to be closed, thus facilitating flight, differentiating Archaeopteryx from other non-avian dinosaurs and indicating that it may have been the dinosaur capable of flight. This finding concludes that bird flight may have evolved more than once in dinosaurs. Experts say this is just the beginning of something big to discover.