A New Discovery May Have Knocked Archaeopteryx Off The 'First Bird' Perch

As little as 15 years ago, the boundary between birds and dinosaurs was a fairly sharp one. On one side was Archaeopteryx, a 150 million-year-old magpie-sized creature from Bavaria, southern Germany, long considered the world's first bird. On the other was Deinonychus, an emu-sized meat-eating dinosaur or theropod, and a member of the group known as Dromaeosauridae.