Dinosaur renaissance "reptiles" and birds. Shortly after the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species", British biologist and evolution-defender Thomas Henry Huxley proposed that birds were descendants of dinosaurs. He cited skeletal similarities, particularly among dinosaurs, the "first bird"—"Archaeopteryx"—and modern birds. However, in 1926, Gerhard Heilmann wrote his influential book "The Origin of Birds", in which he dismissed the dinosaur–bird link, based on the dinosaurs' supposed lack of a furcula. Thereafter, the accepted hypothesis was that birds evolved from crocodylomorph and thecodont ancestors, rather than from dinosaurs. This removed dinosaurs from a central role in debates about the origin of
Specimens of Archaeopteryx the feather. "Archaeopteryx lithographica" was initially named for this original feather, rather than the full skeleton that was found around the same time, and the feather was originally the formal type specimen and holotype for the species. There are obvious problems with this idea, such as the fact that the feather may have come from a juvenile, or possibly another species altogether. The distal obtuse angle at the tip is not a feature found on the feathers of any other "Archaeopteryx" skeleton with integument imprints. It is possible, however, that the strange angle of the tip is an artifact caused