this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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How the fuck does that make any sense? Birds are dinosaurs but crocodiles aren't?
Biologists like using clades to describe things, these days. A clade is all the descendants of some common ancestor on an evolutionary tree.
That particularly means that they disfavor terms that refer to almost all of the descendants of something, but exclude one branch because reasons. Which does make sense, right? "Paraphyletic groups" are like saying "The Vanderbilt family is all the descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt... except for Anderson Cooper and his descendants".
So the technical definition of dinosaur, right now, is anything descended from the most recent common ancestor of triceratops, diplodocus, and the house sparrow.
That is dumb as fucking hell. I don't deny that is true, I just assert that it's dumb. Crocodiles are clearly dinosaurs while birds have diverged so much they can only reasonably be called descendents of dinosaurs and nothing more. You can look at them and tell.
Thanks for the insightful info though. I didn't know dinosaurs were painted with such a small brush. Does that mean pterodactyls aren't dinosaurs either?
I mean, that is not how it works. Also, crocodiles don't look like any dinosaur I can think of?
Classification is based on genetic relationships, not looks, so bats aren't birds, for example.