In 2012, Carney—then a graduate student at Brown University— led a study of the fossil feather to discern both its color and particular place on Archaeopteryx ’s wing.

Credit: Nature, 2025, O’Connor et al.© ZME Science Illustration showing Archaeopteryx in life, including its tertial feathers that would have helped it fly. Credit: Michael Rothman.© ZME Science ...

The museum acquired this Archaeopteryx specimen in 2022, and at the time, museum president and CEO Julian Siggers called it “the Field Museum’s most significant fossil acquisition since SUE ...

Dinosaurs Scientists uncover new secrets of rare feathered fossil showing early bird evolution Study using UV light and CT scans shows the 150 million-year-old specimen had specialized flight feathers ...

That’s why Archaeopteryx is such an important species. At 150 million years old, it’s quite possibly the oldest potentially free-flying dinosaur that we know of. Unfortunately, scientists don ...

An artist’s illustration of what Archaeopteryx may have looked like when it inhabited the planet about 150 million years ago. On Monday, the Field Museum unveiled an extremely rare fossil ...

When a fossil preserves an animal’s complete body in a death pose, seeing it is observing a snapshot in time. Several such fossils exist for Archaeopteryx — the earliest known bird — and now ...

The Field Museum’s iconic T. rex, Sue, may be a little jealous. There’s a new exhibit in town, Archaeopteryx, and it’s “perhaps the most important fossil ever discovered,” museum ...

When the first Archaeopteryx fossils were found in the early 1860s, they created a sensation, not least of all because just a year before, biologist Charles Darwin had published his theory of ...

What appeared to be a bird feather was pressed into 150-million-year-old limestone. Von Meyer labeled it Archaeopteryx, meaning old wing, and a full skeleton was found shortly thereafter.