1 However, the study of archaeopteryx has never stopped.

2 Paleontologists also debated whether Archaeopteryx could fly.

3 "If Archaeopteryx were discovered today, I don't think you would call it a bird. You would call it a feathered dinosaur," says Carrano.

4 Chinese scientists have successively discovered ten archaeopteryx - type fossils in the Beipiao region of Liaoxi this year.

5 Witmer adds that with Archaeopteryx dethroned, more recently discovered fossils, including Epidexipteryx, Jeholornis and Sapeornis, become candidates for the world's oldest bird.

6 Some paleontologists now say Archaeopteryx may have been a feathered non-avian dinosaur.

7 Like fossils of whales with legs, Archaeopteryx seemed to capture a moment in a critical evolutionary metamorphosis.

8 Archaeopteryx has a hallowed place in science, long hailed as not just the first bird but as one of the clearest examples of evolution in action.

9 With Archaeopteryx likely removed from the bird family tree, a few other prehistoric species now become the world's oldest known birds.

10 The earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx, lived during the Jurassic,[] the period before the Cretaceous.

11 Archaeopteryx was discovered in 1861, two years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species.

12 Maybe Archaeopteryx wasn't on the direct ancestral line to birds, but was part of an early experimentation in how to build a bird-like body.

13 Archaeopteryx, widely regarded as being the world's oldest known bird, has just been knocked off its scientific perch, since new research concludes this feathered animal was, in fact, a dinosaur.

14 Except some with the birds similar characteristic, the archaeopteryx has the beastly foot class dinosaur's characteristic.

15 Named for ARCHAEOPTERYX LITHOGRAPHICA, the first reptile to develop the feather for flight, freeing itself from the constraints of the horizontal world.

16 Now, renowned Chinese palaeontologist Professor Xu Xing believes his new discovery has finally knocked Archaeopteryx off its perch.

17 Recently, however, the supposed "world's oldest known bird, " Archaeopteryx, was found to be a non-avian dinosaur.

18 Moreover, its bone structure was similar to that of Archaeopteryx.

19 On a cautionary note, he adds that the next feathered fossil unearthed in China could easily restore the premier status of Archaeopteryx.

20 For years, skeptics had raised the so-called temporal paradox: there were no feathered dinosaurs older than Archaeopteryx, so birds could not have arisen from dinosaurs.

21 Prof Mike Benton from the University of Bristol, UK, agrees that the new fossil is about the closest relative to Archaeopteryx that has yet been found.

22 Perhaps the time has come to finally accept that archaeopteryx was just another small, feathered, bird-like theropod fluttering around in the Jurassic.

23 The reality is, that next fossil find could kick Archaeopteryx right back into birds. That's the thing that's really exciting about all of this.