Although Not Every Ones Idea Of Fun,

as a kid back in the late 1950s,

I used to spend so much time at the Natural History Museum in London it was almost my second home, the dinosaur and whale halls being my favourite galleries, so I have just noticed some thing I would have made a bee line for that went on display last week, a fossil Archaeopteryx lithographica that was first discovered in 1861, it is famous for being the fossil that confirmed Darwin’s theory of evolution, it is a of a feathered bird, it shows both bird and reptile features and was discovered just two years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859,

my copy was printed a bit later in 1998! but back to Archaeopteryx (meaning ancient wing), it lived 147 million years ago during the late Jurassic Period, it had a bird-like feathered tail and wings along with a reptilian long bony tail, teeth and three claw-like fingers, the discovery of this fossil in 1861 was a breakthrough, giving the first snapshot of evolution in action between two major groups, it later became a key piece of evidence in demonstrating that birds are the descendants of dinosaurs, what fun days I used to spend at the museum.