Many paleontologists think the feather came from archaeopteryx lithographica, a creature that, with its feathered wings and sharp-toothed mouth, bears features of both dinosaurs and birds, making it a herald of the evolutionary transition between the two groups.
Carney and a team of colleagues compared the feather with the fossil remains of other feathers found with archaeopteryx fossils more recently, and they claim that the debate is now settled: The feather belongs to archaeopteryx.
Although the debate about whether the feather belonged to archaeopteryx has persisted, it came into greater focus in 2019 when other scientists argued in a paper that the feather might have belonged to another winged dinosaur species.
After overlaying an outline of the 1861 feather atop a fossil archaeopteryx wing, the team also found that the feather fits onto the wing perfectly.
They additionally point out that the feather comes from the same fossil site as four archaeopteryx specimens later unearthed near Solnhofen, Germany.
Although the feather could fit somewhere on archaeopteryx, it doesn’t mean that feather didn’t come from another dinosaur, he said.
“To me, ultimately, the important thing is that this feather belonged to a small-winged Jurassic animal that could fly pretty well, regardless of whether it was shed from the wing of archaeopteryx or another bird,†he said.