Flight seems to have evolved independently several times in dinosaurs, including the avian lineage and ones such as the bizarre four-winged Microraptor.
Linneaus of course never defined dinosaurs. And he defined bats as primates, rhinoceroses as rodents, and lumped elephants together with sloths and anteaters. His class Amphibia included frogs, lizards, snakes, sharks, and lampreys. If he had been aware of feathered dinosaurs, he undoubtedly would have classified them as birds. Trying to use “Linnaean taxonomy” will give you a lot of problems.
What else on this planet breaths like a bird?
Only one thing that we know of, that is no longer on this planet.
And the bird is not this thing, and this thing is not the bird, except they are the same.
So perhaps, this thing, it never left.
Did T-Rex become a bird? no T-Rex died, big top of the food chain things generally die, not adapt, Big anything generally dies, big things in general seem less suited for huge adaptation and survivability to rapid changes, and besides he was never a “BIRD” to begin with.
But his little cousins, they didnt die. They are not him, but they are like him, but they are small and quick and nimble and quick to adapt and don’t require a lot of food or habitat to keep alive, they can survive long enough to make a few mechanical adaptations, they did not become “BIRDS” they always were them.
Probably someone should come up with some new names, and the word reptile has kind of become spoiled and prejudiced towards all things that are cold blooded, and crawl on slayed legs or on their belly and has become synonymous with lizard.
The fact that while All lizards are indeed reptiles, all reptiles are Not lizards is lost on the majority.
Then again so is the idea that Dinosaur is NOT Lizard.
Strange people do so much better understanding mammals
There’s no real problem using the terms “reptile,” “bird,” and “fish” in ordinary conversation. People understand what you mean. It’s only when you start getting into more technical discussions like this one that you have to define your terms more carefully.
I don’t think anyone thinks that turtles or alligators are lizards.
Oddly enough, however, snakes are lizards, taxonomically speaking.
No, by *every *scientific definition and every *informed *lay one, even predating the popularity of cladistics. None of the early researchers considered them dinosaurs, nobody who knows anything does now either.
Only the publishers of the shittier sort of “dinosaur” kiddie books and the makers of cheap plastic dinosaur toys call pterosaurs dinosaurs. But then, they also do that with Dimetrodon, so fuck 'em.
Also other weird, nameless things. The ones I remembered well and googled to find are this one and this one, but I recognized this one when I saw it, too. (All links from here.)
No, I said 300 years ago, they often were’t considered animals.
“Define “animal” . Yes, Linnaeus defined Animal back in the 1700’s but in the OT and many other ancient writings “animal” does not include “fish”. So, for 4000 years, “fish” were not animals, but for 300 years they were- scientifically speaking.”
efinition of dinosaur
1
: any of a group (Dinosauria) of extinct often very large chiefly terrestrial carnivorous or herbivorous reptiles of the Mesozoic era
2
: any of various large extinct reptiles (as ichthyosaurs ) other than the true dinosaurs
dinosaur
noun [ C ] US /ˈdɑɪ·nəˌsɔr/
a reptile (= cold-blooded animal), some types of which were extremely large, that stopped existing a very long time ago
That is why we don’t let dictionary editors teach science classes. There are lots of things wrong with those definitions even in popular terms.
Two of the biggest are:
Not all dinosaurs (in the popular meaning) were large. Some were chicken or turkey size and there may have well been ones even smaller that haven’t been discovered yet.
To your average person with less than casual interest, which is probably 80 90 percent of the population? A dinosaur is a lizard, so is a snake, and a turtle is a shelled lizard, and a alligator is a big dangerous lizard from florida or austrailia.
They understand mammals a lot better
That isnt to say much, an Oppossum is still a nasty rodent to most, so is a raccoon
RodenciaCarnivorus ?
On the evolution of flight question, I’ve also seen speculation that the two major lineages of bats might also have evolved flight separately, and that the most recent ancestor of all bats might have been a glider, not a true flyer.
Bakker and Galton proposed dinosaur monophyly in 1974.
