The Dinosaur Feather

birds as a group were related to each other or to dinosaurs or reptiles or any other animal. They had been put on earth, aerodynamic and fully-developed, by God.
Voilà
.
    The theory of evolution broke completely with the doctrine that the earth and all its organisms had been created by one divine being, and this was a huge challenge: how could people suddenly accept that evolution happened by itself, without God’s influence, just like that?
    The dream continued. The sun was now high above Solnhofen. After a quick consultation about today’s tasks and a cup of coffee as black as tar, they all got to work. Anna’s area wasa gentle slope behind the rest of the team and she had only to raise her head to see where the others were and what they were doing. The lithographic limestone slab spread out beneath her like a huge blackboard. She scraped, she eased away a couple of layers, she brushed sand and soil aside, she coaxed the earth; she took off her jacket and pushed up her sleeves. An isolated gust of wind from the south forced her to close her eyes to avoid the dust. When she opened them again and looked down, she saw the fossil. The wind had removed nearly all the excess material, and though another two layers needed to be removed before the creature would lie fully revealed, there was no mistaking it. Beneath her, bathed in the light from a yellow sun, lay
Archaeopteryx Lithographica
, one of the world’s most precious fossils. It was slightly smaller than a present day hen and had one wing beautifully unfurled. In this respect the dream was a bit of a cheat, she thought, because she instantly knew what she had discovered. She recognised the small bird from hundreds of photos; only two weeks ago, in the Vertebrate collection at the Natural History Museum, she had been studying the impression – which the Germans had reluctantly allowed a Danish palaeontologist to make – of the Berlin Specimen, as
Archaeopteryx Lithographica
was known. She recognised the flight feathers, which lay like perfectly unfurled lamella against the dark background, she saw the relatively large tail feather, the wondrously faultless location of the rear and front limbs and the arched position of its flawlessly formed skull, which made this specimen superior to anything else discovered so far. In 1861, the newly discovered London Specimen had been sold to the British Natural HistoryMuseum for £700. Now Anna had uncovered one of the ten most beautiful and significant fossils in the world: the Berlin Specimen.
    Her instinctive reaction was to punch the air and cry out in triumph to von Molsen, who was standing some distance away in deep thought, holding his pipe, but what she needed now was a plan. Anna had to beckon von Molsen in a manner that made it clear she had stumbled across something extraordinary, while simultaneously sounding sufficiently vague in her conclusion so von Molsen wouldn’t get the impression that she already knew what she had found. That really would make him suspicious.
    Von Molsen turned around instantly when she called him and came towards her with reverence. When he reached her, he knelt down by the excavation and stared for a long time at the fossilised animal that was emerging. Carefully, he worked on the last two layers of the limestone sediment, whereupon, with great awe, he traced the perfect body of the small bird with his finger. Anna knew that the bird was 150 million years old.
    ‘Well done, my girl,’ he said. When he turned to look at her, she noticed that one of his eyes was almost purple. Her find had shaken him to his core.
    ‘Mum?’
    Von Molsen laid his pipe on the ground, took out his magnifying glass and, right at this point when Anna absolutely didn’t want the dream to end, it started to dissolve.
    ‘Mum, I want to get into your bed,’ a little voice pleaded. Anna clenched her fists and woke up in Copenhagen.
    The light in her bedroom was dim. Lily was standing nextto the bed, in her Babygro, with a soaked nappy, which Anna Bella grabbed hold of as she swung the child into her bed. Lily snuggled up to her. It wasn’t even six o’clock yet. Pale, white dawn light was starting to creep in, but it would be another half hour, at least, before any objects would be visible. Her bed linen was freshly washed and it felt crisp.
    A figure was standing between the window and the door to the living room. It was Friedemann von Molsen. She couldn’t see his face, but she recognised the