 The initial discovery, a single feather, was unearthed in 1860 or 1861 and described in 1861 by Hermann von Meyer. It is currently located at the Humboldt Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. This is generally assigned to Archaeopteryx and was the initial holotype, but whether it is a feather of this species, or another, as yet undiscovered, proto-bird is unknown. There are some indications it is not from the same animal as most of the skeletons (the "typical" A. lithographica).
