About the size of a crow, the first fossil was found in a Jurassic limestone quarry in Bavaria in 1861. It had the clawed fingers and long bony tail of a dinosaur, with the wishbone and feathered wings of a bird. For more than a century people have argued about archaeopteryx . It is difficult for a non-paleontologist to appreciate the heat with which this seemingly dry question has been, and is being, argued. Boiling more than a century of ferocious argument down to a few lines, the preponderance of evidence favors a dinosaur ancestor.
Archaeopteryx is remarkably like a therapod dinosaur called velociraptor .
As in all good scientific fights, evidence hasn't discouraged dispute. Despite a mountain of evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs, a few scientists I will call the die-hards still refuse to accept this conclusion. Its guys like these that make science fun. The first of these, called sinosauropteryx , has no wings, but is covered with a light feather-like fuzz. A dinosaur with a feather coat.