Associate Professor Gregory Erickson of the Department of Biological Science is the first author on a groundbreaking study showing that the ancient archaeopteryx is not as birdlike as scientists previously thought. Instead, Erickson, along with Associate Professor Brian Inouye and others, say the bird is more of a feathered dinosaur. Their findings were published in the Oct. 9, 2009 issue of the online journal PloS One and were featured in The New York Times the same day.

“We set out to determine how archaeopteryx grew and compare its growth to living birds, closely related non-avian dinosaurs, and other early birds that came after it,” Erickson said in a Florida State news release.

What the group found surprised them. The bones the juvenile archaeopteryx were not fast growing like the bones of birds. Instead, microscopic images showed the ancient cells and blood vessels of the archaeopteryx were slow growing and that the process of maturation took years, similar to that of dinosaurs. While researchers had already known that modern birds are descended from dinosaurs, “almost nothing had been known of archaeopteryx biology,” Erickson said. “From these findings, we see that the physiological and metabolic transition into true birds occurred millions of years after archaeopteryx. But perhaps equally important, we’ve shown that avians were able to fly even with dinosaur physiology.”

To read the FSU news release, go to http://www.fsu.edu/news/2009/10/09/first.bird/ To read the The New York Times article, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/science/09fossil.html