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
Most recent common ancestor all of the modern population. Due to pedigree collapse, modern individuals may still exhibit clustering, due to vastly different contributions from each of ancestral population . Most recent common ancestor In biology and genealogy, the most recent common ancestor (MRCA, also last common ancestor (LCA), or concestor) of any set of organisms is the most recent individual from which all the organisms are directly descended. The term is also used in reference to the ancestry of groups of genes (haplotypes) rather than organisms. The MRCA of a set of individuals can sometimes be determined by referring to an established pedigree.