Peter Wellnhofer Peter Wellnhofer Peter Wellnhofer (born Munich, 1936) is a German paleontologist at the "Bayerische Staatssammlung fur Paläontologie" in Munich. He is best known for his work on the various fossil specimens of "Archaeopteryx" or "Urvogel", the first known bird. Wellnhofer's other work includes "The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Pterosaurs". "Wellnhoferia", a bird closely related to "Archaeopteryx", or a species of the Urvogel itself, was named in his honor. In 2007 a special meeting of pterosaur experts in Munich was dedicated to Wellnhofer, describing him as "the foremost authority on pterosaurs for the last four decades." The meeting produced a festschrift in
Specimens of Archaeopteryx skeleton of a feathered animal from the same lithographic shale deposits, which would later be known as the London specimen. Coincidentally, von Meyer proposed the name "Archaeopteryx lithographica" for the feather, but not for the skeleton. Therefore, the official name of the animal was originally linked to the single feather rather than any actual skeleton, and is formally considered the original holotype. Though 1860 is often the year named for the feather's discovery, there is no proof of this date, and some authors consider it more likely to have been found in 1861, as it seems reasonable that von Meyer's