20 Francs Archaeopteryx

The Democratic Republic of Congo has become one of the more prolific issuers of themed collector silver in the modern era, producing wildlife and paleontology series almost exclusively for the European numismatic market — this piece has no meaningful circulation history in Kinshasa. The Archaeopteryx itself was first described by Hermann von Meyer in 1861 from the Solnhofen limestone of Bavaria, arriving in scientific literature just two years after Darwin's On the Origin of Species and immediately seized upon as physical evidence of avian evolution from theropod dinosaurs.

The .9999 fineness is atypical for struck silver coins of this weight class, where .999 is far more common.