Archaeopteryx - Bird or Reptile?

Archaeopteryx has been claimed to have more in common with reptilian dinosaurs than it does with modern birds, thus being depicted in some drawings with a reptilian face. These are some of its features, according to scientists: jaws with sharp teeth, three fingers with claws, a long bony tail, hyper-extensible second toes (“killing claw”), and feathers.

From left to right, top to bottom: Sulcavis geeorum, a small bird with its toothed beak; Pelagornis chilensis with a tooth-like beak; Hoatzin (Stinkbird) chick of the Amazon, with its clawed wings; Archaeopteryx; skeletal structure of a monkey showing a bony tail; Volaticotherium, a flying mammal pre-dating the Archaeopteryx; the killing claws of a predatory falcon.

We see that today's birds mostly lack teeth, but tooth-like serrations can be found in geese and other bird species. However, we see that there are other ancient birds (i.e. Sulcavis geeorum and Pelagornis chilensis) that also had teeth which were designed perfectly for their diet. Does that make them reptiles?

Regarding claws on wings, we can find one type of bird today, the Hoatzin (Stinkbird), in which the young chicks also have claws, being able to grasp onto branches before learning how to fly. The Jeholornis is another ancient bird that had claws on its wings, and also a long-boned tail. Does this make them reptiles? Killing claws are used by many carnivorous predatory birds, but that doesn't make them reptilian either. There are also many mammals which have long bony tails. One such newer fossil remains of a furry squirrel-sized mammal (Volaticotherium) dug in Inner Mongolia (China) suggests that mammals were gliding in ancient forests at least 125 millions ago (130-165 millions years ago). In that case, it would surpass the earliest known flying bird, Archaeopteryx, dated about 150 million years ago [Source].

Jeholornis is a long-tailed Avialian from China. It was 2.5 ft (70cm) and weighed about 20 lbs. One of the most completely known long-tailed Avialian birds. Known to eat both seeds and fish.

Finally, putting aside the controversy of feather forgeries, the feathers on the Archaeopteryx seem to hint that it was a bird. Can you think of any reptiles today that have feathers? Interestingly, we can find Pangolins that are mammals with scale-like structures. We can also find two mammals, such as Platypus and Echidna that lay eggs. Does this make them reptiles? Are they strange, or simply just designed for their environment? With all these varying features, we must consider that perhaps these diverse animals are designed according to their environment. And we must re-question the theory that birds emerged from reptiles--perhaps it was the other way around, or simply just a figment of the imagination, sparked by early religious evolutionists with their Darwinian beliefs.

The Archaeopteryx Evolutionist Forgery

Since the early 1980s, several prominent scientists have charged that the two Archaeopteryx fossils with clearly visible feathers are forgeries. Allegedly, thin layers of cement were spread on the mating surfaces (slab and counterslab) of two fossils of a chicken-size dinosaur, called Compsognathus (komp-sog-NAY-thus). Bird feathers were then imprinted into the wet cement.

The two fossils with feathers were “found” and sold for high prices by Karl Häberlein (in 1861 for 700 pounds) and his son, Ernst (in 1877 for 20,000 gold marks), just as Darwin’s theory and book, The Origin of Species (1859), were gaining popularity. While some German experts thought that the new (1861) fossil was a forgery, the British Museum (Natural History) bought it sight unseen. (In the preceding century, fossil forgeries from limestone quarries were common in that region of Germany.)

Is Archaeopteryx a forgery? Honest disagreements were possible until 1986, when a definitive test was performed. An x-ray resonance spectrograph of the British Museum fossil showed that the finer-grained material containing the feather impressions differed significantly from the rest of the coarser-grained fossil slab. The chemistry of this “amorphous paste” also differed from the crystalline rock in the famous fossil quarry in Bavaria, Germany, where Archaeopteryx supposedly was found. Few responses have been made to this latest, and probably conclusive, evidence. Read more here.