Archaeopteryx = shares some things in common with birds.

Archaeopteryx = line went extinct.

Archaeopteryx = not the ancestor of modern birds.

Birds = came about through evolutionary means similar to that which caused archeopteryx.

And yes, I have read about the few scientists who have shown a lack of interest in the reptile to bird branch of the tree. However, even if birds didn’t descend from dinosaurs (genetics pretty much confirms that they did), that is not a blow to evolutionary theory at all.

We’re simply realizing our mistakes as it relates to the evolution of birds. But again, I doubt that this will become a majority view any time soon.

It’s an incomplete transition at that, because its line likely went extinct. Birds do not descend from Archaeopteryx, but it’s entirely likely that birds came about as a result of evolution in which the end result was similar to Archaeopteryx.

From what I have read, scientists are now questioning the dino-bird link:

“We now question very strongly whether there were any feathered dinosaurs at all.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/06
/000625231641.htm

“No good evidence exists that fossilized structures found in China and which some paleontologists claim are the earliest known rudimentary feathers were really feathers at all…”

“The theory that birds are the equivalent of living dinosaurs and that dinosaurs were feathered is so full of holes that the creationists have jumped all over it, using the evolutionary nonsense of ‘dinosaurian science’ as evidence against the theory of evolution,” he said. “To paraphrase one such individual, ‘This isn’t science . . . This is comic relief.’”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10
/051010085411.htm