Postcranial pneumatization in Archaeopteryx

Brooks B. Britt, Peter J. Makovicky (), Jacques Gauthier and Niels Bonde
Additional contact information
Brooks B. Britt: Museum of Western Colorado
Peter J. Makovicky: American Museum of Natural History
Jacques Gauthier: Yale University
Niels Bonde: Institut for Historisk Geologi og Palæontologi, Københavns Universitet

Nature, 1998, vol. 395, issue 6700, 374-376

Abstract: Abstract Pneumatization of the postcranial skeleton by the lungs is thought to be a hallmark of the avian skeleton, and to be an adaptation for flight by reducing weight. Pneumatic features have, however, remained elusive in the primitive avialan Archaeopteryx lithographica. The hollow long bones of Archaeopteryx were first interpreted to be pneumatized1, but this interpretation was later rejected because of an absence of pneumatic foramina in these bones that connect their interiors with the respiratory system2,3,4,5,6. Pneumatic features have also been recognized in the axial skeleton of many non-avialan theropod dinosaurs (and some other archosaurs of the bird clade). The purported lack of postcranial pneumatic features in Archaeopteryx has been interpreted as a primitive condition of avialans; this raises doubts about the homology between postcranial pneumatic features of birds and non-avialan theropods7. Here we re-examine two specimens of Archaeopteryx. These specimens show evidence of vertebral pneumaticity in the cervical and anterior thoracic vertebrae, thus confirming the phylogenetic continuity between the pneumatic systems of non-avialan theropods and living birds.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/26469 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:395:y:1998:i:6700:d:10.1038_26469

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/26469

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().