Feathered dinosaur hands and feathers, "Archaeopteryx" was quite similar to "Compsognathus". Thus "Archaeopteryx" represents a transitional fossil. In 1868 he published "On the Animals which are most nearly intermediate between Birds and Reptiles", making the case. The first restoration of a feathered dinosaur was Thomas Henry Huxley's depiction in 1876 of a feathered "Compsognathus" to accompany a lecture on the evolution of birds he delivered in New York in which he speculated that the aforementioned dinosaur might have been in possession of feathers. The leading dinosaur expert of the time, Richard Owen, disagreed, claiming "Archaeopteryx" as the first bird outside dinosaur lineage.
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