How many reptiles do you know that have the breastbone of a bird (necessary for flight)The absence of a sternum (breastbone) in this creature was held up as the most important evidence that this bird could not fly properly. (The sternum is a bone found under the thorax to which the muscles required for flight are attached. In our day, this breastbone is observed in all flying and non-flying birds, and even in bats, a flying mammal which belongs to a very different family.)
However, the seventh Archopteryx fossil, which was found in 1992, had the breastbone that was long assumed by evolutionists to be missing This fossil was described in Nature magazine as follows:
"The recently discovered seventh specimen of the Archaeopteryx preserves a partial, rectangular sternum, long suspected but never previously documented. This attests to its strong flight muscles." (Nature, Vol 382, August, 1, 1996, p. 401)
This discovery invalidated the claims that Archopteryx was a half-bird that could not fly properly.
Moreover, the asymmetric feather structure of Archopteryx is indistinguishable from that of modern birds and indicates that it could fly perfectly well. As the paleontologist Carl O. Dunbar states, "because of its feathers [Archopteryx is] distinctly to be classed as a bird."(Carl O. Dunbar, Historical Geology, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1961, p. 310)
Another fact that was revealed by the structure of Archopteryx's feathers was its warm-blooded metabolism. Reptiles and dinosaurs are cold-blooded animals whose body heat fluctuates with the temperature of their environment, rather than being homeostatically regulated. A very important function of the feathers on birds is the maintenance of a constant body temperature. The fact that Archopteryx had feathers showed that it was a real, warm-blooded bird that needed to regulate its body heat, in contrast to dinosaurs.
It is true that Archopteryx had claws on its wings and teeth in its mouth, but these traits do not imply that the creature bore any kind of relationship to reptiles. Besides, two bird species living today, Taouraco and Hoatzin, have claws which allow them to hold onto branches. These creatures are fully birds, with no reptilian characteristics. That is why it is completely groundless to assert that Archopteryx is a transitional form just because of the claws on its wings.
Neither do the teeth in Archopteryx's beak imply that it is a transitional form. Evolutionists use deception by saying that these teeth are reptile characteristics, since teeth are not a typical feature of reptiles. Today, some reptiles have teeth while others do not. Moreover, Archopteryx is not the only bird species to possess teeth. It is true that there are no toothed birds in existence today, but when we look at the fossil record, we see that both during the time of Archopteryx and afterwards, and even until fairly recently, a distinct bird genus existed that could be categorised as "birds with teeth".
The most important point is that the tooth structure of Archopteryx and other birds with teeth is totally different from that of their alleged ancestors, the dinosaurs. The ornithologists L. D. Martin, J. D. Steward, and K. N. Whetstone observed that Archopteryx and other similar birds have teeth with flat-topped surfaces and large roots. Yet the teeth of theropod dinosaurs, the alleged ancestors of these birds, are protuberant like saws and have narrow roots. (L. D. Martin, J. D. Stewart, K. N. Whetstone, The Auk, Vol 98, 1980, p. 86)
These researchers also compared the wrist bones of Archopteryx and their alleged ancestors, the dinosaurs, and observed no similarity between them.
All these findings indicate that Archopteryx was not a transitional link but only a bird that fell into a category that can be called "toothed birds".
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