The transformation of lumbering ground-dwelling dinosaurs into agile flying birds may have seemed fanciful in the 19th century, but it now represents a poster child for evolution. The dinosaurian ancestry of birds had been suspected ever since Archaeopteryx was unearthed from a slate quarry in Germany more than 150 years ago. This famous transitional fossil had wings and feathers like a bird, but retained a long reptilian tail, toothy jaws, and legs with sickle-shaped claws like those of carnivorous dinosaurs.
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