The First Flight

Summary: Setting in an island archipelago in the Solnhofen Limestone, Germany 150 million years ago. An Archaeopteryx grows up on her island home and learns to take her first flight. Her ability of powered flight will be a stepping stone that will continue into modern-day birds.

Cast: Archaeopteryx (Focus), Compsognathus, Aurorazhdarcho, Ctenochasma, Cycnorhamphus, Pterodactylus, Rhamphorhynchus, Scaphognathus, and Mesurupetala.

The Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles has other collections than just dinosaurs, located on the Second level is a Hall full of taxidermied birds as Thomas is seen walking through the hall.

"This is one of the museum's oldest halls, the Ralph W. Schreiber Hall of Birds. It's also one of my favorites. Here people can learn about the adaptations of birds from around the world around 400 species. Birds are the most diverse land animals on earth and they owe their success to their ancestors, the dinosaurs." As Thomas explains, he approaches a taxidermied statue of a Hoatzin. "This bird is a Hoatzin from the rainforests of South America. They eat leaves and fruit which digest and store in an enlarged crop that can ferment its food and give off a fouling odor, which is why they are nicknamed "Stinkbirds". But it's babies that are quite unusual, they have two claws on each wing. Immediately on hatching, they can use these claws, and their oversized feet, to scramble around the tree branches without falling into the water. When danger comes, however, they can drop into the water and swim under the surface to escape, then later use their clawed wings to climb back to the safety of the nest. These claws lead them to a creature that was similar to them."

As he leaves, he appears on the second level of the dinosaur hall in the museum next to a skeleton display of a small bird-like dinosaur. "Archaeopteryx, hoatzins have been compared to this creature. Its name means "ancient wing" and goes by its German name "Urvogel" meaning primeval bird. This creature is a transitional fossil between the dinosaurs and the birds, they shared the following features with the dromaeosaurids and troodontids: jaws with sharp teeth, three fingers with claws, a long bony tail, hyperextensible second toes, feathers, and various features of the skeleton. But they are also small, have broad wings which have long primary flight feathers, and are capable of powered-flight. It was discovered just two years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. Archaeopteryx seemed to confirm Darwin's theories and has since become a key piece of evidence for the origin of birds, the transitional fossils debate, and the confirmation of evolution. Since then it is widely accepted that some dinosaurs were covered in feathers, birds were descended from the mighty beasts, and some were capable of flight. But what was it like in life? What would it be like to spread your wings and take…The First Flight!"

. . . . .

This is Europe 150 million years ago in the Late Jurassic, back then most of Europe was underwater with island archipelagos in a prehistoric ocean known as the Tethys Sea. One of the archipelagos would become the Solnhofen Limestone or Altmühltal Formation, in Germany. This included placid lagoons that had limited access to the open sea and where salinity rose high enough that the resulting brine could not support life. Since the lowest water was devoid of oxygen, many ordinary scavengers were absent. Any organism that fell, drifted, or was washed into the lagoons from the ocean or the land became buried in soft carbonate mud. Thus, many delicate creatures avoided consumption by scavengers or were torn apart by currents. At times, the lagoons almost dried out, exposing sticky carbonate mud that trapped insects and even a few small dinosaurs. The latitude was similar to Florida, though the climate was likely to have been drier. On land, it was a Mediterranean shrubland climate known for being semi-arid, and subtropical with a long dry season and little rain. The flora of these islands was adapted to these dry conditions and consisted mostly of low (3 m (10 ft)) shrubs along with cycads, conifers, and an absence of trees. In a pile of driftwood logs is a nest full of sticks, leaves, kelp, and sand, with downy feathers and broken bits of eggshells that belongs to a bird like no other, Archaeopteryx.

Its black and white feathers glisten in the warm rays of the sun with the iridescent feathers becoming bits of blue and violet. This male stands by with his mate and in the center of their nest are their twelve chicks. These parents have watched their eggs hatch and the chicks now active only depend on their parents to guide them to food and protection. They aren't the only ones.

They are part of a big colony of other Archaeopteryx who have nested on the side of a cliff close to the coast away from pterosaurs and land predators. The adults have made nests on the ground or in driftwood and brooded their eggs using their wings to shade them. Pterosaurs that fly by are hissed and mobbed by the paravian dinosaurs as they fly and chase them off and even perhaps kill the winged reptiles. The adults seeing the beach in front of them knew they must take their young to find food.

The male takes off into the air as the first to leave followed by his mate, and as they land on the ground. They wait for their chicks to drop down, the chick has hollow bones, small size downy feathers, and lightweight serve as protection. The chicks crept to the edge of the cliff, the first chick jumps off floating in the air before landing, and the second and third chicks were pushed off landing on the low-growing shrubs below, the fourth and fifth then follow suit, but the last chick is all alone and afraid chirping in fright. Seeing her siblings and parents down below, as the chicks rejoin their parents, she has no other choice, she takes a leap of faith. She slowly falls into a bush that cushions her landing. After slowly crawling down she rejoins her family.

But not all, chicks are lucky pterosaurs like Scaphognathus and Rhamporhynchus flying above snatch them from the air those that land on the water are pelted by the waves and drown, and those that land on the ground that didn't die on impact are attacked by Compsognathus that patrol the beach looking for strangler. The family sticks together as they leave the beach and enter their beachfront Shrubland home.

As the Archaeopteryx family walks through the scrubland, they encounter some of their flying neighbors. In the skies, pterosaurs filled the skies, they are the current rulers of this time. These are Pterodactylus, there is no such thing as a Pterodactyl. Pterodactylus was the first discovered pterosaur ever known, they were specialized carnivores feeding on invertebrates. They catch their prey on the wing with their high bite force and sharp teeth to catch their prey.

As the family continued their way, they came to one of the few freshwater pools on the islands to drink. Like a bird, they fill their beaks with water, then tilt their heads back, and use gravity to send the liquid into their digestive tract. The chicks which imprinted on their parents since the day they were hatched copy their every move. There are also some unusual residents in these freshwater pools.

Among them are these filter-feeding pterosaurs known as Ctenochasma. They have elongated and narrow snouts with numerous 400 or so long, thin, curved, and closely packed teeth, forming a comb that projects outward away from the jaws, forming a basket. They use those snouts to stir the water as they wade in the shallows to catch fish and small aquatic animals similar to spoonbills. This pterosaur even has its own family with many different species.

One of them is the unusual beaked Cycnorhamphus. The pterosaur has a very unusual jaw, with peg-like teeth at the blunter jaw tips and Stoute, jaw curvatures behind the teeth that form angled arcs away from the biting surface, forming an opening, and two soft tissue structures occupying this opening from the upper jaw that show mineralization. Like the Openbill stork, this pterosaur uses its jaws to hold hard invertebrates like mollusks and either crush or bisect them.

Another member of the Ctenochasmatoid pterosaurs is Aurorazhdarcho. They have a throat pouch and upper and lower interlocking teeth that form a basket for sieving food items from water, wading with the jaws open and closing them when catching individual prey, like most ctenochasmatoids.

Currently, these pterosaurs are sleeping as they spent most of their night foraging for food. The Archaeopteryx family then depart the scrublands and enter the coastal beaches of their island home. The ever-present squawks of the seagull-like pterosaurs fill the skies among them is Scaphognathus. They feed on fish in the ocean by diving for their food using their wings to swim down underwater. Another pterosaur is Rhamphorhynchus, but they're currently sleeping on the cliff face and spending most of their night fishing. This method of niche partitioning among the many species of pterosaurs helps avoid competition between them.

The male eyes on a sleeping Rhamphorhynchus. It slowly stalks the pterosaur and flies towards it attacking the pterosaur in its sleep. It lands on the pterosaur biting it in the throat, pinning it down with its sickle claw, and tearing up its wings as the pterosaur wakes up and tries to fly away. But it was too late, the pterosaur drops dead on the beach. The dinosaur descends upon its victim and breaks into its skull to feed on its brain as a source of protein as the male is joined by its family.

After experiencing its first meal out of the nest, the female chick is learning the ways of living on the island. Although Archaeopteryx might be the top predator in the skies of the island, they were about to meet its top land predators. As the family continues walking down the pathway. The adults twitched and they sensed something wrong. A flock of Compsognathus. These small dinosaurs are the largest land dinosaurs and predators of their environment although they are quite small. But they are formidable predators preying on lizards, small pterosaurs, and possibly Archaeopteryx.

The adults hissed, spreading their wings and shaking their feathers to intimidate the small dinos. The Compsognathus noticed them and started heading toward them; it became a standoff as the parents fiercely protected their young. The mother tells her young to head for cover as the chicks run off climbing up to the tallest small tree and scrubbing. The parents in a burst took off into the air some of the Compsognathus tried jumping after them. But luckily they managed to avoid getting snatched.

The Compsognathus flock gave up and went off to shore to find anything that washes onto the shore. This female chick has a long way to go before taking off into the air, but luckily she is safe with her family.

. . . . .

Months passed since the female Archaeopteryx's experience out of the nest. She had molted her downy feather fluff replacing it with flight feathers. She is ready to take flight, something she has been preparing after taking several attempts as a fledgling she is ready. She spots a Mesurupetala, a primitive dragonfly.

Dragonflies appeared during the early Jurassic, this is the time they are starting to diversify, although they once had distant relatives that were giants that lived during the Carboniferous. They are predatory insects that catch other flying insects on the wing and even their nymph stage in the water are formidable hunters. But these dragonflies become prey to larger predators from Pterosaurs, Compsognathus, and Archaeopteryx.

The female spots the flying dragon in a burst of speed, takes off from her perch, and flaps her wings to push itself in the air. On the downstroke, the wing forces the air down, pushing the bird up in the process. At the same time, the wing tip tilts forward to push the air back. Along with using her long broad tail feathers for balance and steering. It snatches the dragonfly with its beak, although it can fly it's a weak flier it flies down to scrub to perch on.

The female Archaeopteryx looks up at a flock of Ctenochasma flying in V-formation similar to migrating geese or other large birds today. For now, they coexist with each other in the skies. But by the end of the Cretaceous, the pterosaurs will be all gone, leaving the Archaeopteryx's descendants to fill in the void. Although she can allow flying in short bursts of speed like pheasants, one day in the future they would fly for long distances. As she stares up to the sky, her blue-green eyes zoom into the iris.

. . . . .

The iris zooms out revealing the brown eyes of the American Crow. This individual caws to other members of its murder. They are one of the most widespread and intelligent birds in North America, perching on an oak tree deep in the Sage scrub Saddleback Mountains of Orange County, California.

She takes off into the air with the rest of her murder flock, she is part of one of the largest colonies of crows in North America. Every evening the crows fly off to roost in the eucalyptus, pine, and sycamore trees at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo to sleep for the night. As she flies into the sunset, we are reminded that this is the future of the birds, the legacy that has been left by the Archaeopteryx that took her first flight living on within all birds across planet Earth. Even then the earth is still ruled by dinosaurs, as it was then in our Primeval Planet.

Trivia/References

-Archaeopteryx, Pterosaur, and Compsognathus behaviors are based on the fossil record and latest studies as well as the climate of the Solnhofen Limestone back in the late Jurassic.

-The Archaeopteryx looking up to see the Ctenochasma in a V-shape flying formation is based on the artwork from "All your Yesterdays" by Alvaro Rozalen.

-The Archaeopteryx eating the Rhamphorhynchus is based on Olmagon's artwork of Day 18 of the 30-day Dinosaur Challenge and the behavior of eating the pterosaur's brain is based on Great tits.

-Archaeopteryx chicks climbing away from danger are based on Hoatzin Chicks.

Note: This chapter has been updated to reflect the latest discovery that Archaeopteryx were ground-nesting dinosaurs that live in colonies. Originally the nesting behavior was based on owls and wood ducks in a scrub but is now inaccurate.

-54Godamora helped me out on his suggestion of Archaeopteryx nesting in driftwood logs and cliffs away from predators.

-The Scene is inspired by Prehistoric Planet Alcione and Mongol giant chick segments and speculative behaviors based on Barnacle Geese and Common Murres when the chicks fly down the cliffs and face threats from the waves, hard landings, and predators like Gulls and Arctic Foxes with the Rhamphorhynchus, Scaphognathus, and Compsognathus filling the roles

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The Next Story is Unlikely Allies starring Deinonychus.

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