Adding this to the list of suspicious, if not outright wrong, factoids in this book I’ve been reading. The author’s batting average is closing in on .500, which would be good for a baseball player but really lousy for a writer of supposed nonfiction.
Charles Sibley, who did a lot of early work on bird genetics, attempted to shoehorn his findings into a Linnean system while still recognizing the cladistic branches. Because he ran out of rankings, he was forced to recognize Ciconiformes, an Order that normally just includes herons and storks, as also including shorebirds, gulls, eagles, penguins, pelicans, albatrosses, and a whole grab-bag of others that normally get their own Orders or Suborders.
I’m fine with paraphyletic groups in informal usage, such as “dinosaurs” excluding birds, “fish” excluding tetrapods, and “apes” excluding humans.
Lest anyone think I am some sort of cladistics-nazi, I, too, am perfectly fine with informal paraphyletic arrangements, so long as it is made clear what groups are being included or excluded. I try to do this whenever I wax taxonomical, but there may well be lapses on my part. When I talk about “dinosaurs”, I’m usually referring to the same group of critters most folks think of when they hear the word. But when I say “Dinosauria”, I’m usually talking about the more formal definition of “dinosaurs” + Aves (or, more accurately, the published definition of “the most recent common ancestor of Triceratops and Passer, and all its descendants”).
Polyphyletic groups are right out, though 
It’s a false hierarchy, no scientist uses those terms for those groupings.
Well, since 99.99% of scentists use those Linnean groupings at time, you can say they are not “official” all you want. But then, what official group made dinosaurs into birds? OK, then go ahead and give me one real scientist that agrees that Theropods are a Infraclass. Just one Cite from Google Scholar, that is all I ask. I have given you several hundred scientists that agree with me. I mean what are you doing- raising the “Humpty Dumpty” defence= “a word means anything I say it does”.? :rolleyes: Get real.
It is fact, I have gave you numerous cites for it. Be silly all you want, you know you’re wrong here.
No, so far you have not pointed out a single error. You have repeated over and over and over that I have made errors, but you refuse to cite one example.
You say “voluminous” I say “slim”- so if we are just going by Official bodies, which Official body has ruled it is “voluminous”? Come on now, dude, if all the "error " you can find is a difference in degree, just roll over now. If I am that wrong you should have been able to smother me with facts and cites by now. I note not a single cite.
Again I request you stop with the Ad Hominen attacks, the general nonsense and the hijack. It isn’t becoming of you. Stick with the thread and the question at hand please.
Just as a point of fact, between 1973 and 2001, at least 90 papers have been published supporting the bird-to-dinosaur link, by at least 65 different authors. For the basal archosaur-to-bird link, there have been 33 papers published in the same time period, by at least 20 authors. So, either way you look at it, there’s about a 3:1 consensus among scientists that birds are dinosaurs, not counting anything published within the last 6 years. I would guess that, if anything, the ratio has increased since 2001.
I have conceded that “birds is dinos” is the current Scientific generally accepted Theory. In fact I have conceded this several times,and I listed the basal archosaur-to-bird link as “hotly disputed”. (Which is not quite the same as “totally disproved”, of course)
Still it’s hardly on the level of the Earth revolves around the Sun, is it? 
And there’s new and exciting fossils being dug every day. Who knows? Want my WAG? It will turn out more to be along the general lines of “dinos is birds” than “birds is dinos” with Ornithischia and Saurischia being (extinct) Orders within Aves. Not exactly mind you, but something along those lines.
And, although I will cheerfully concede your 3:1 ratio, there’s a 561:0 ratio in cites between “suborder Theropoda” and “Order Saurischia” compared to “Infraclass Theropoda”!
I agree, however, that the Linnean Rankings aren’t always useful. Cladistics can be a better tool, especially when questions like this come up.
Irrelevant to my point.
Again, completely irrelevant to my point.
Your cites are irrelevant to my point.
You have repeated over and over you have not made errors. I have pointed them out and explained them in posts 20, 24, 26, 31, and 38.
I refer you to **Darwin’s Finch’s ** post. I would also note that your own Wikipedia cite refers to birds as members of the Theropoda.
I haven’t made any ad hominem attacks. As I said before, you can stop the hijack yourself by stopping posting on the subject. Most of what you have posted is in fact nonsense, and I am certainly not going to refrain from addressing it.
Yeah I know. 
Note he is being taken somewhat seriously, even though with great doubt. But if some very interesting fossils (like those currently being found in China) are found he may yet turn out to be right. Anyway, I like it. Never bought the "huge lumbering lizard’ thing but hated the whole “dinosaurs flying south for the winter” :rolleyes: meme, and this would get rid of them both. Oh well. But thanks for that first cite, an interesting read. 
**
Colibri**-- Are you done yet? Can we get back to discussing the point here? Do you have anything to add?
As I’ve already said, as long as you refrain from posting erroneous information, I won’t have need to correct it.