THE LIFE STYLE OF ARCHAEOPTERYX (AVES)

Authors

  • Andrzej Elzanowski Institute of Zoology, University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw.

Abstract

The lack of modern flight adaptations and flight maneuverability makes both ground-up take off and arboreal foraging of Archaeopteryx extremely improbable (even if trees were present in a part of its habitat). A combination of heights-down take-off and ground foraging necessitated a swift terrestrial escape to a launching site and probably climbing elevated objects. Archaeopteryx does not show any distinctive cursorial specialization and the leg intramembral ratios suggest a slow-pace to multimode (i.e., using various gaits) forager, similar in behavior to today's tinamous and most galliforms. Archaeopteryx was an escape runner, not a cursorial predator. The limbs of Archaeopteryx and (non-avian) theropods reveal substantial functional differences, which make their similarities even more likely to be synapomorphic.

KEY WORDS. Archaeopteryx. Birds. Paleobiological reconstruction. Flight. Locomotion. Foraging. Jurassic.

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Published

2015-10-01

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2001)

Section

Thematic Volume

License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a CC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.