Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Archaeopteryx
/ˌɑːkiˈɒptərɪks/noun
A late Jurassic feathered animal with teeth, claws and a bony tail, close to the origin of birds.
The Greek roots
ἀρχαῖος
archaîos
ancient, primeval
πτέρυξ
ptéryx
wing
Literally: “ancient wing”
The story of the word
Hermann von Meyer named it in 1861 from one feather out of the Solnhofen limestone, before any skeleton was in hand. The species name lithographica records what the quarries were for: the stone is so fine-grained that printers used slabs of it for lithography, which is also why the fossils hold the imprint of individual feathers. Darwin's Origin had been out two years, and a bird with teeth landed in the middle of that argument.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1861
Same family
archaeologyarchaichelicopterpterodactyl
In a sentence
The Berlin Archaeopteryx is still the specimen everyone reproduces.
Archaeopteryx had claws on its wings and a mouth full of small sharp teeth.