Re: [...] Archaeopteryx 10

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> I though that _Archaeopteryx macrura_ was explicitly applied by Owen
> (in 1862) to the London specimen (a skeleton).

Yes.

> Then as now, there was doubt over which specimen (the feather or
> the skeleton) von Meyer actually applied the name _Archaeopteryx
> lithographica_ to.

That was because von Meyer wrote a) in German and b) a paper about the 
feather -- in the last paragraph he goes like "oh, and a skeleton has just 
been discovered which could be called *Archaeopteryx*". It's all in the 
archives: von Meyer designated the London specimen, not the feather, the 
holotype.

(Owen didn't understand that, believed the feather was the type, believed 
the feather to belong to a short-tailed bird for reasons that escape me, 
somehow determined that the London specimen nevertheless belonged to the 
same genus, and coined the species name *A. macrura* for it to emphasize its 
oh so distinctive "big tail" in Greek.)

> To be a homonym

Did I write "homonym"? ARGH! Sorry!!!