Archaeopteryx Issue Resolved

A raven-sized creature that lived about 150 million years ago is back on its perch, a new study says.

Widely pegged as the earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx’s status was called into question two years ago by Chinese scientists. They proposed yanking the prehistoric creature off the “bird” branch of the evolutionary family tree and moving it onto a closely related lineage of birdlike dinosaurs.  

Now an international team led by the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences believes Archaeopteryx should indeed be considered a bird.