Archaeopteryx

Archaeopteryx (from the Greek archaios, ancient; pteryx, a wing), the oldest known fossil bird, is found in the lithographic limestone of Solenhofen in Bavaria, which is of the age of our Kimmeridge Clay. It was about the size of a rook: like all known Secondary birds, it was furnished with true teeth; and like the unhatched ostrich, it had claws on its wings; but, unlike all other birds, its tail was prolonged in a lizard-like manner with a pair of feathers from each caudal vertebra. It is, therefore, the type of a distinct order, the Saururae, The head is preserved in the Berlin Museum, and a fair specimen of the rest of the body in the British Museum.