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The ornithologist Alfred Russel Wallace and the controversy surrounding the dinosaurian origin of birds

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Abstract

Over many years of his life, the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) explored the tropical forests of Malaysia, collecting numerous specimens, including hundreds of birds, many of them new to science. Subsequently, Wallace published a series of papers on systematic ornithology, and discovered a new species on top of a volcano on Ternate, where he wrote, in 1858, his famous essay on natural selection. Based on this hands-on experience, and an analysis of an Archaeopteryx fossil, Wallace suggested that birds may have descended from dinosaurian ancestors. Here, we describe the “dinosaur-bird hypothesis” that originated with the work of Thomas H. Huxley (1825–1895). We present the strong evidence linking theropod dinosaurs to birds, and briefly outline the long and ongoing controversy around this concept. Dinosaurs preserving plumage, nesting sites and trace fossils provide overwhelming evidence for the dinosaurian origin of birds. Based on these recent findings of paleontological research, we conclude that extant birds indeed descended, with some modifications, from small, Mesozoic theropod dinosaurs. In the light of Wallace’s view of bird origins, we critically evaluate recent opposing views to this idea, including Ernst Mayr’s (1904–2005) arguments against the “dinosaur-bird hypothesis”, and document that this famous ornithologist was not correct in his assessment of this important aspect of vertebrate evolution.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Carol Abraczinskas for formatting and improving the figures, and Carol Abraczinskas and Paul Sereno for providing Fig. 8. Mick Ellison (American Museum of Natural History) kindly provided the photograph used in Fig. 7. Davide Bonadonna provided the artwork shown in Figs. 4 and 6. For comments on this manuscript, we would like to thank Alex Dececchi, Simone Maganuco and the reviewer, Daniela Schwarz-Wings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, University of Chicago, 1027 East 57th Street, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Nizar Ibrahim

  2. Institute of Biology, University of Kassel, Heinrich-Plett-Str. 40, 34132, Kassel, Germany

    Ulrich Kutschera

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  1. Nizar Ibrahim
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  2. Ulrich Kutschera
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Correspondence to Ulrich Kutschera.

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This article is a contribution to the Special issue Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913): The man in the shadow of Charles Darwin—Guest Editors U. Kutschera, U. Hossfeld.

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Ibrahim, N., Kutschera, U. The ornithologist Alfred Russel Wallace and the controversy surrounding the dinosaurian origin of birds. Theory Biosci. 132, 267–275 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12064-013-0192-5

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