Feathered dinosaur is possible that feathers first developed in an even earlier group, in light of the discovery of pycnofibers of pterosaurs. Crocodilians also possess beta keratin similar to those of birds, which suggests that they evolved from common ancestral genes. Shortly after the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species", British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley proposed that birds were descendants of dinosaurs. He compared the skeletal structure of "Compsognathus", a small theropod dinosaur, and the 'first bird' "Archaeopteryx lithographica" (both of which were found in the Upper Jurassic Bavarian limestone of Solnhofen). He showed that, apart from its
Ancestor Ancestor An ancestor is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent, and so forth). "Ancestor" is "any person from whom one is descended. In law the person from whom an estate has been inherited." Two individuals have a genetic relationship if one is the ancestor of the other, or if they share a common ancestor. In evolutionary theory, species which share an evolutionary ancestor are said to be of common descent. However, this concept of ancestry does not apply to some bacteria and other organisms capable of horizontal gene transfer. Some research suggests