The first bird was in fact a dinosaur, say U.S. researchers.
The team of Gregory Erickson and his colleagues from the University of Florida studied with microscopic fossilized femur and tibia bones from the Archaeopteryx. It turned out that the Archaeopteryx has so far been seen as the first bird to have had similar characteristics to more Dinosaurs.
Millions of years ago dinosaurs had very different metabolism from that of modern birds. Maturity take years and the same pattern of development was observed in Archeopteryx and its closest relatives, the researchers explain, cited by USToday.
To be more understandable, the development of Archaeopteryx continued for years, not months as in current birds.
Archaeopteryx lived on Earth 150 million years ago. Fossil fly is essentially open for the first time in Germany in 1860.
