Excerpts from
Taking Wing: Archaeopteryx and
the Evolution of Bird Flight (1998)
by Pat Shipman
The very first Archaeopteryx to be recognized was a
feather impression dark and clearly delineated on
the pale, honey-colored limestone slab. Hermann
von Meyer first announced the specimen in 1860.
It was a small thing, a feather only about 60
millimeters long and 11 millimeters wide, or about
2.5 inches by one-half inch . . .
No other single, isolated find could have proved so
neatly the existence of an ancient bird. Feathered
wings are uniquely avian. Flying or flightless, large
or small, northern or southern, forest-dwelling,
plains-living, or aquatic, all birds have feathered
wings and nothing else does. In truth, feathers and
wings comprise the quintessence of birdness, even
if the point had not been so clearly evident before
1861. There could be no serious question about the
sort of creature from which this feather was derived.
Drawing by Gerhard Heilmann (1916)
Any niggling doubts that there might have been in 1861 were quickly resolved by the
finding of one of the three most important specimens, the one destined to be known
as the London Archaeopteryx. Within a month or two of the finding of the feather,
Hermann von Meyer announced the existence of a fossil skeleton of Archaeopteryx
lithographica, a name he coined that means “ancient wing” and also refers to the
lithographic stone that preserves the wing. The suffix “pteryx”—meaning wing—is a
common one among formal names of bird species. By choosing this name, von
Meyer did more than immortalize one of the fossil’s main features . . . He declared it
to be a bird despite some unmistakably reptilian features. He also made the London
fossil the type specimen of the new genus (Archaeopteryx) and species
(lithographica) . . . .
But the skeleton of the bird (or not-bird, to those who opposed von Meyer’s view)
was not in von Meyer’s possession. It was part of a collection belonging to Carl
Häberlein, a local physician and amateur antiquarian who sometimes accepted
fossils in lieu of payment from the quarrymen he treated. In 1862 his hoard
numbered 1,703 other fossil specimens, including 23 reptiles, 294 fishes, 1,119
invertebrates, and 145 plants . . . The catch was that Häberlein had not only a
collection by also a beloved daughter, who in 1862 needed a dowry. Häberlein
decided to open the question of where Archaeopteryx was to nest; he put the entire
collection up for sale. As he doubtless hoped, he provoked a brisk international
scrimmage as the prestigious museums of Europe vied to acquire this prize . . . .
While he waited for offers to come in, Häberlein nurtured an aura of mystery about
his Archaeopteryx specimen, the crowning glory of his collection. For a while, no
one was allowed to make drawings or photographs of it, but this secrecy spawned
rumors that it as a fake. In a sense, the accusation was hardly surprising, given the
half-reptilian, half-avian status the specimen was purported to show. Archaeopteryx
was a rather neat fulfillment of the predictions of the new and highly
controversial theory of evolution first published just a few years earlier.
Accidentally finding a perfect transitional form between birds and reptiles was an
occurrence too fortuitous and too well-timed to be believed by the skeptical.
Eventually Häberlein permitted a select few scholars to inspect his prize, so as to
certify its genuineness and heighten interest.
The currency of arguments over evolutionary theory had an enormous effect on the
status of Häberlein’s Archaeopteryx. In England, Charles Darwin’s book The
Origin of Species had been published only two years earlier, in 1859, and florid
public debates were raging . . . Darwin’s audacious theory implied not only that
humans were mammals, like all others, but that they, too, were subject to the
evolutionary laws of Nature.
In 1860, as Thomas Huxley was still stoutly defending his friend Darwin’s thesis in
England, The Origin of Species was published in a German translation made by
paleontologist Heinrich Bronn. His was a translation with a difference. Prior to
1860, evolutionary ideas had met with scathing opposition in Germany that was
orchestrated by Rudolf Virchow, then the most important man in German biological
science. Aware of Virchow’s strong disapproval of evolutionary theory, Bronn made
two insidious changes in Darwin’s thesis. First, he omitted Darwin’s most pregnant
sentence—“Light will be shed on the origins of man and his history”—and the only
one in which he addressed the inflammatory issue of human evolution . . . . Second,
Bronn appended to Darwin’s text a series of his own criticisms of the theory, some
fair and others far less so, in an attempt to insure that no intelligent reader would read
and accept Darwin’s words too readily. Once Bronn’s translation was published,
Virchow and his followers attacked Darwin’s book, as might have been expected . . . .
When the first Archaeopteryx was found, natural history had been an immensely
popular hobby for several decades. Fossils and ferns, birds’ eggs and beetles, and
other specimens of every sort were being avidly collected and classified by dozens of
keen amateurs and many scientists alike. In 1853 and 1854, life-sized models of
extinct animals, including a then-new and improved reconstruction of the dinosaur
Iguanodon, were placed in the gardens of London’s Crystal Palace. Originally
designed to house the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Crystal Palace was
reconstructed at Sydenham, where it and the dinosaurs were a popular tourist
attraction . . . . A few years later, in 1859, the publication of Darwin’s book
catapulted his theory into the intellectual spotlight, and his ideas quickly became the
main topic of conversation among the many throughout Europe who had a scientific
interest. One of the more telling arguments against The Origin of Species was this: if
over time there has been a gradual transmutation or evolutionary change of one type
of organism to another, where are the transitional forms? Indeed, the gap between
reptiles and birds was often cited as an unbridgeable gulf for which no intermediate
form could be imagined or found. Darwin himself foresaw this objection, entitling
the sixth chapter of his book “Difficulties of the Theory” and dealing first of all with
the “absence or rarity of transitional varieties,” especially in the fossil record.
“But,” Darwin writes, voicing may readers’ doubts, “as by this theory innumerable
transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless
numbers in the crust of the earth?” He answers the question in the tenth chapter, “On
the Imperfection of the Geological Record” . . . .
The striking contrast between the vastness of the sedimentary record and the scarcity
of fossils can only mean this, Darwin reasons: only a tiny proportion of all of the
creatures that once lived on the earth have become embedded in sediments,
fossilized, and then found and recognized by learned scientists. The expectation
of finding a perfectly graded series of transitional forms recorded in the rocks of the
earth is thus probably a vain hope. The fossil record preserves only intermittent
glimpses of the millions of life forms that have inhabited this earth, not a complete
record.
Thus when the first Archaeopteryx skeleton was announced to have a mixture of
avian and reptilian features, it fulfilled the hope of finding a truly transitional
form. The specimen became the cause célèbre of both sides, the believers wanting to
display the specimen and prove their point and the nonbelievers hoping to refute its
transitional status. Who was to have control of the specimen and thus the
immense power of making the first scientific interpretation of the specimen? A
fervent attempt was made to keep the specimen in Germany, where it would be
placed in the state collection in Munich. But J. Andreas Wagner, a professor of
zoology at Munich University and a kindred spirit to the great pathologist Virchow,
objected. Wagner could not believe that a transitional form existed between reptiles
and birds, and therefore Archaeopteryx could not be one. In 1861, although he had
not yet seen the specimen for himself, Wagner expressed his views in a paper
delivered to the Munich Academy of Science, called “A New Reptile Supposedly
Furnished with Bird Feathers.” Its title
gives away Wagner’s main point. He
ignored von Meyer’s name for the
specimen, which had precedence according
to the rules of nomenclature, and proposed a
new one, Griphosaurus, to reflect his view
of the specimen as a feathered reptile.
Wagner added at the end of his paper:
In conclusion, I must add a few
words to ward off Darwinian
misinterpretation of our new
Saurian. At first glance of the
Griphosaurus we might certainly
form a notion that we had before us
an intermediate creature, engaged in
the transition from the Saurian to
the bird. DARWIN and his
adherents will probably employ the
new discovery as an exceedingly
welcome occurrence for the
justification of their strange views
upon the transformation of animals. But in this they will be wrong.
The controversy had taken wing.
Wagner’s damning view did little to help the movement to keep Archaeopteryx in
Germany. In the end, the British Museum (Natural History) procured the skeleton,
which was henceforth known as the London Archaeopteryx. Together with the rest of
Häberlein’s collection, the British Museum paid £700, of which an astounding £450
was for the Archaeopteryx itself. The fee was paid in two installments in 1862 and
1863. This was perhaps the only time in history that a paleontological discovery
contributed to a young lady’s dowry, and a very handsome contribution it was. [2126]
1) How did the Archaeopteryx fossil fit into the debate regarding Darwin’s Origin of
Species and the question of transitional forms?
2) What does this episode tell us about the nature of scientific change? Is it just a
matter of the facts “speaking for themselves” or do scientists always interpret
their evidence? Explain.