Imagine finding a single 135 million year old
puzzle piece buried in the dirt. Just one piece.
Right. Just one tiny piece. You wipe it off and
immediately you declare to the world that you
have solved the entire picture. Welcome to the
Deep Dive. Glad to be here. You are the learner.
And today we are unpacking a really fascinating
case study from the taxonomic archives. We are
looking at how one. isolated fragment of bone
managed to ignite a nearly 200 -year scientific
identity crisis. It really is wild. Yeah, if
you've ever felt, you know, overwhelmed by trying
to get the right answer on your first try, this
story is absolutely for you. It's an incredible
journey through the history of science. We are
exploring the legacy of an extinct creature officially
known in the scientific literature as Palaeornis
cliftei. And our mission today is to trace how
the interpretation of this single fossil has
dramatically evolved. And fractured. And reformed
over centuries. It is a brilliant look at how
human knowledge is built, debated, and painstakingly
revised. Okay, let's unpack this. Because we
really need to set the scene before we get into
the Victorian drama of it all. Oh, there's plenty
of drama. So much drama. Our core subject for
this deep dive is a single humerus, which is
an upper arm bone. Right. And this bone was pulled
out of the earth in England, specifically from
a geological layer known as the Upper Tunbridge
Wells Sand Formation. Which dates it perfectly.
Exactly. We are talking about the early Cretaceous
period, right in the Valenginian Age. Which puts
this specific physical object at roughly 135
million years old. 135 million years. It was
just sitting in the ground for eons. just waiting
to completely baffle generations of the world's
top scientists. And that bafflement is precisely
why this deep dive is so valuable for you to
consider. This isn't just a list of dry historical
dates or some niche paleontological footnote.
Definitely not. This single arm bone represents
one of the very earliest discoveries of a pterosaur
ever made in England. That makes it a foundational
piece of a highly complicated puzzle. A puzzle
everyone wanted to be the one to solve. Yes,
and when you understand the chaotic history of
this bone, you understand the scientific method
itself. You see the flaws, the ego clashes of
early naturalists, and the eventual rigorous
corrections that bring us closer to reality.
So let's travel back to the 1830s and 1840s to
meet the person who pulled this puzzle piece
out of the ground. Gideon Mantell. Mantell's
quite the figure. He makes this initial discovery,
looks at this ancient upper arm bone, and comes
to a highly confident conclusion in his publications
from 1837 and 1844. He announces to the scientific
establishment that he has found a prehistoric
bird. A bird. A bird. He names it Palaeornis
cliftei. Now, going back to that puzzle analogy
we mentioned earlier, it is essentially like
finding a single corner piece of a massive jigsaw
puzzle, seeing a tiny patch of blue on it, and
telling the world, I have solved it, this is
a picture of the ocean. When in reality, it's
a picture of the sky. Exactly. He guessed the
whole picture wrong based on one fragment. What's
fascinating here is how the early scientific
community began to course correct, even back
in the mid -19th century. They didn't just let
it slide. No, they didn't. Mantell was undeniably
confident. But science, even in the 1840s, relied
on collaborative scrutiny. By the late 1840s
and 1850s, other scientists started looking at
that exact same physical bone. They wanted to
see it for themselves. Right. A scientist named
Giebel examined it in 1847. Then another incredibly
prominent and somewhat notoriously competitive
figure, Richard Owen, detailed it in publications
in 1846 and 1859. Richard Owen is always in the
middle of these historical debates. Always. And
they both looked at Mantell's supposed prehistoric
bird bone and realized it wasn't a bird at all.
It was a pterosaur. A flying reptile. Which is
a pretty massive taxonomic pivot. You have to
wonder how Mantell felt about his peers publicly
declaring, great job finding that ancient bird,
except it's actually a giant flying reptile.
Probably not great. But of course, this was the
Wild West of early paleontology. They couldn't
just gently correct his work and leave it at
that. They had to plant their own flags. Which
leads to the synonym soup. Massive synonym soup.
Gable decides to name the exact same bone Pterodactylus
orphilnus in 1847. Then Owen comes along and
says, no, I'm going to call it Pterodactylus
sylvestris. And this reflects the truly chaotic
early days of the field. You have to remember
the context of the era. No internet. No internet,
no centralized global database of fossils. Every
new set of eyes that looked at this upper arm
bone brought their own biases, their own interpretations,
and their own brand new classification. Everyone
wanted to be the discoverer. Exactly. And pterosaurs
in particular are notoriously difficult to classify
because in order to fly, their bones had to be
incredibly light, hollow, and fragile. So they
don't fossilize well. Over 135 million years,
those hollow bones tend to get crushed flat in
the earth. Yeah. So these early scientists were
looking at flattened, fragmented evidence and
tried to fit this very early English discovery
into their own individual frameworks. It was
a race to name and claim the ancient world. Here's
where it gets really interesting, though. If
you look at the official taxonomic registries
today, Right now, the recognized name of this
creature is Palaeornis glyphtii. But the word
Palaeornis is always written in quotation marks.
Always. Always. When I first encountered that
in the historical data, I thought it was a formatting
error. Why is a scientific name wearing permanent
air quotes? Because we have a parakeet problem.
A parakeet problem. That is the perfect way to
summarize it. It really is. So back in 1825,
a scientist named Viggers had already used the
genus name Palaeornis to describe a group of
parakeets. Which are modern birds. Right. Now,
those parakeets are currently considered a synonym
of the genus Cetacula, but the core issue remains.
The name Palaeornis was already taken. It was
off the board. Man. Mantell had accidentally
stolen a name that belonged to a cute modern
bird to name his fossil that he mistakenly thought
was an ancient bird, but was actually a prehistoric
flying reptile. It is a comedy of errors. It
really is. And Mantell was actually aware of
this naming collision. The historical records
show that in some of his later publications,
specifically around 1848, He tried to fix his
mistake. He tried to fix it. He attempted to
subtly tweak the name to Peleornathus as a replacement.
Wait, if he knew he messed up the name entirely,
why didn't he just start over from scratch? Why
try to sneak an ITH in there? It's very subtle.
It seems like such a lazy fix. Just, oops, let
me slide a couple of letters in the middle. Nobody
will notice. It does seem like a quick fix. But
unfortunately for Mantell, the rules of scientific
nomenclature are incredibly strict, deeply complex,
and sometimes very frustrating. I can imagine.
There's a rigid concept in taxonomy called a
preoccupied name. If a name has been validly
published for one organism, like Viggers did
with the parakeet in 1825, it cannot be used
for any other organism ever again. Even if the
first one gets renamed? Even if that first organism
gets reclassified later down the line. It is
a locked door. So Mantell's original name was
completely invalid from the very moment he sent
it to the printer. But the scientific community
still uses it today. Just with those quotation
marks. Yes. And that connects to a much broader
point for you, the listener, about how rigid
systems have to handle legacy data. Modern science
has to track the unbroken history of an idea,
even a flawed one. You have to know where the
idea came from. Exactly. So to acknowledge that
this bone has historically been discussed under
Mantel's name for over a century, but to simultaneously
flag that the name is scientifically illegal
because of the 1825 parakeet. They use the quotation
marks. It's like a warning label. It's shorthand
for the fossil, formerly and incorrectly known
as Peleornis. The name Peleornis clifty is essentially
locked in a permanent state of taxonomic limbo.
A ghost name. A ghost name that haunts the literature,
wearing those quotation marks and a permanent
badge of its own complicated history. It is like
the fossil has a permanent criminal record in
the scientific database. So we leave the mid
-1800s. The fossil is definitely a pterosaur,
not a bird. It has a stolen name. It has a bunch
of rival names from competing scientists. It's
a mess. You would think the scientific community
would sit down, look closely at the bone, and
sort it out definitively. Instead, we enter what
we can call the century of confusion, spanning
roughly from the late 1800s all the way to the
1970s. And this era is characterized by an intense
desire to categorize everything neatly, sometimes
at the vast expense of solid physical evidence.
We see this perfectly in the next phase of the
timeline. A scientist named Leidecker in 1888
and later Hooley in 1914 took a look at our lonely
little arm bone and tentatively referred the
specimen to... the genus Ornithochirus. They
started calling it Ornithochirus clifty, which
on the surface sounds like progress. It sounds
official. It sounds like they finally found its
correct family tree and put the mystery to rest.
It does sound official until you look at the
actual physical methodology they were using.
The actual science. The historical data highlights
a critical, almost unbelievable flaw in this
logic. Our bone, the specific physical object
we've been tracking, which holds the official
museum designation of holotype specimen NHMUK
2353 -2353a, didn't actually share any overlapping
parts with the holotype of the Ornithocaris -type
species. To put that in perspective for you,
a holotype is the absolute gold standard specimen
used to define a newly discovered species. If
you want to claim your random bone belongs to
a specific species, you have to compare it directly
to the holotype of that species. You need a one
-to -one comparison. It is like trying to prove
two cars are the exact same make and model, but
you only have a steering wheel for the first
car. And a back -left tire for the second car.
Exactly. You literally cannot make a direct physical
comparison. There is zero overlap. Yet, they
lump them together anyway. If we connect this
to the bigger picture, isn't it wild how human
psychology operates even within the strict, supposedly
objective bounds of science? We just want things
to make sense. Scientists, just like the rest
of us, crave order. They have a deep, fundamental
need to make data make sense and fit into neat
little boxes. During this Victorian and early
20th century period, there was a major tendency
to use certain well -known genera, like Ornithocaris,
as a wastebasket taxon. A wastebasket taxon.
It is the scientific equivalent of that one miscellaneous
junk drawer we all have in our kitchens. Yes,
the junk drawer. You don't really know where
the spare batteries, the random rubber bands,
and the paper clips are supposed to go, so you
just shove them all in that drawer and hope for
the best. That's exactly what they did. If you
had a fragmentary pterosaur fossil from roughly
the right geological time and place, and you
didn't know what to do with it, you just tossed
it into the Ornithocheirus bucket. They were
forcing data into existing categories just to
keep the filing system tidy, even if the physical
evidence didn't truly support it. And this precarious
filing system held together for decades. Generations
of researchers just accepted the junk drawer.
Until finally, in 1978, a scientist named Welmhofer
comes along. He actually looks at the drawer.
He critically examines the bone. He looks at
the glaring lack of overlapping physical evidence
with the holotype. And he basically just throws
his hands up. He officially referred the fossil
to Ornithocaridae inserticitis. In certicides.
It sounds incredibly dignified. It does. But
it is literally just fancy scientific Latin for
uncertain placement. It's the official peer -reviewed
way of saying we have absolutely no idea where
this thing actually belongs. After more than
a century of incredibly confident guessing, from
Mantell's prehistoric bird to Owen's flying reptile
to Hooley's ornithocaris, Wellhoffer finally
hit the brakes and admitted that they simply
didn't know. which is actually a very brave and
structurally necessary step in the scientific
method. It takes courage to say I don't know.
Acknowledging ignorance is the absolute prerequisite
for gaining new knowledge. By pulling it out
of the Ornithocaris wastebasket and labeling
it in Sertesades, Wilhenhofer essentially wiped
the slate clean. He reset the board. He signaled
to the next generation of paleontologists that
this 135 million year old arm bone was an unsolved
mystery, completely ripe for reevaluation with
fresh eyes and better technology. And the next
generation definitely delivered. This brings
us out of the century of confusion and right
into the modern era, stretching from the 2000s
all the way up to 2025. The modern era changes
everything. Modern science steps in, but now
they are equipped with vastly better comparative
frameworks, massive digital... digitized databases,
and a much deeper, nuanced understanding of pterosaur
anatomy. They take one look at those old Victorian
theories and realize how far off base they were.
The pace of discovery really accelerates here,
reflecting the modernization of the field. In
2009, a team of researchers, Witten, Martill,
and Green, decided it was time to rigorously
re -examine the original type specimen. Not just
reading the old papers. Right. They didn't just
accept the old notes or the legacy categorizations.
They looked at the physical fossil itself with
modern methodologies, and they realized very
quickly that Palaeornis clifty is not an ornithochirid
at all. So they moved it to a completely different
taxonomic family called Lungodectidae. And what's
really compelling is how they did it. The methodology
is key. They based this new placement on physical
similarities to other humeri, other upper arm
bones, that had actually been assigned to the
genus Lungodects by Hooley way back in 1914.
So the vital clues were there all along. Hiding
in plain sight in different parts of the museum
archives, just waiting for someone to connect
the dots. They finally found the matching steering
wheel, to use your earlier analogy. But of course,
the story didn't stop there. Taxonomy is never
truly settled as long as active research is being
conducted. It's a continuous process. In 2012,
and again in 2014, a researcher named Averinov
was conducting a massive reassessment of another
pterosaur genus called Ornithostoma. And while
he was deep in that research, he reviewed our
controversial little arm bone. And the taxonomic
ping -pong continues. Averinov decides it belongs
to a major clade called Asdarkoidia, though he
leaves its specific placement as indeterminate
within that broader. group. So just to recap
this wild ride. Please do. We have gone from
a bird to a generic flying reptile to an ornithocaris
junk drawer to, we don't know, to a lonka deck
today and now to an asdarkoidia. This raises
an important question. At what point do we finally
pin this fossil down with modern certainty? Because
moving our upper arm bone into the Asdarkordia
clade is highly significant. It really is. That
specific group is famous for including some of
the absolute largest flying animals of all time.
Placing it there completely shifts how we understand
its evolutionary relationships and its ecological
role in the early Cretaceous environment of England.
Well, to answer your question about when we finally
pin it down, how about the year 20 - 2025, because
the research provides one final triumphant update
to this saga right into the present day. Just
this year, researchers Comis and McDavid published
a massive phylogenetic analysis. And for anyone
who isn't spending their weekends reading taxonomic
journals, they essentially built a massive evolutionary
family tree using incredible modern tools. They
used a computer algorithm to compare hundreds
of tiny specific bone features across dozens
of different species to mathematically determine
who is related to who. They crunched all the
modern data, looked at all the evolutionary traits,
and they find We've finally recovered our much
debated bone as a sister taxon to a family called
Tapajardi, sitting right there within the Asdarkoidia
clade. A sister taxon to Tapajardi. That is an
incredibly specific and meaningful classification.
It's very precise. Tapajards are known for their
bizarre, elaborate head crests and very distinctive
beak shapes. By placing our 135 million year
old arm bone as a close relative to that specific
group, Thomas and McDavid have given it an incredibly
precise evolutionary address. It is no longer
lost in the junk drawer. Exactly. So what does
this all mean? We have tracked this single isolated
piece of bone from its discovery in 1837 all
the way to a high tech computer analysis in 2025.
What is the ultimate takeaway from almost two
centuries of taxonomic ping pong? If I were to
synthesize this entire timeline for you, the
core message is that science Science is never
done. We so often think of scientific facts as
these static, unchangeable monuments printed
in textbooks. Like they are carved in stone.
But the saga of Palaeornus cliffti perfectly
illustrates that knowledge is a living, breathing
process of continuous, sometimes agonizing refinement.
Mantel wasn't foolish for thinking it was a bird.
Not at all. He was working with the incredibly
limited context and tools of 1837. Lidecker wasn't
malicious for forcing it into the Ornithocharis
wastebasket. He was using the standard categorization
methods of 1888. They were just doing their best
with what they had. It took the collective generational
effort of Giebel, Owen, Hooley, Willenhofer,
Witten, Averinoff, Thomas McDavid, and countless
other unnamed researchers to slowly, painstakingly
chisel away the errors an inch closer to the
truth. Science isn't about being perfectly right
on the first try. It is about the fundamental
willingness to be corrected by the next generation.
That is a deeply reassuring perspective. And
I want to connect this directly back to you,
the listener. We live in an age of absolute intense
information overload. We really do. You are constantly
bombarded with sweeping claims, breaking studies,
conflicting headlines and massive data sets.
It can feel paralyzing. It can feel like if you
don't understand a complex topic perfectly and
immediately, you are falling behind. But you
aren't. Just remember this 135 million year old.
upper arm bone, it is a brilliant, tangible reminder
that it is entirely okay not to have the perfect
answer on the first try. It took the greatest
minds in the global scientific community nearly
two centuries, multiple re -evaluations, a stolen
parakeet name, and a whole lot of professional
arguing just to figure out where one single piece
of a puzzle belonged. Progress is messy. It involves
a lot of wrong turns, and that is exactly how
the process is supposed to work. It really is.
And as we wrap up this deep dive, I want to leave
you with a lingering thought to mull over on
your own time let's hear it we have just seen
how a single fragmented arm bone initially pulled
from the english dirt in the 1830s can still
be yielding brand new highly specific scientific
classifications as recently as 2025 simply because
we develop better tools and better ways of looking
at it Just by looking closer. So think about
this. What else is sitting quietly in the countless
dusty drawers of our global museum archives right
now, just waiting for someone to walk in, look
at it with fresh eyes, and completely rewrite
its story? The puzzle is never truly finished.
Keep looking for those pieces, stay curious,
and we will catch you on the next deep dive.