It’s so cute to see a thread where people ask random questions about Komodo Dragons, and someone doesn’t just exasperatedly link to Komodo dragon - Wikipedia
Those were simpler times.
This discussion is fascinating, and I respect the passion, knowledge, and integrity of all involved. But I have to he honest, I’m just not going to spend the time to grasp all the subtleties. I’m telling my daughter that pterosaurs were flying dinosaurs, the fine distinctions are not worth worrying about, and if she someday proves me wrong in spectacular fashion I will have turned out to be a good parent in spite of myself.
Teach the controversy!
But why would you tell her that instead of the much more interesting fact that there were a lot of other interesting creatures around in the Mesozoic besides dinosaurs? (And there were - and are - flying dinosaurs, but they were birds, not pterosaurs). It’s also interesting that there were lots of aquatic reptiles that were not dinosaurs, including ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mososaurs - the last of which were gigantic swimming lizards (literally).
I’m mostly kidding of course. And she knows that birds are dinosaurs, though in general ancient living creatures and their taxonomy don’t interest her a lot.
Wow, I’m so sorry. We will keep your family in our thoughts.
Screw the reptiles - the late Cretaceous was also the last hurrah of the ammonites. And quite a hurrah it was…
Am I the only one who finds that “artist’s rendition” hilarious?
By Jessica, Age: 7 1/2
No, no, you are definitely not.
Tell me that’s a joke by whoever wrote that article.
The extinction of the ammonites might have had a lot to do with the extinction of the mosasaurs, since they were one of their main foods.
Interesting. The asteroid theory still gets a lot of media play. Can you recommend a book I could bring myself up to speed with regards to this?
I think what **Shagnasty[\b] meant by his comment was not that there wasn’t a catastrophe (there was; probably more than one - both an asteroid strike and massive vulcanism were among the various catastrophes that occurred at the end of the Cretaceous), but rather that dinosaurs did not, in fact “die out”, as commonly told. Birds are among us, and, since they are dinosaurs, dinosaurs are still around.
Here is an interesting new old bird.
The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions - Peter Brannen
Covers all five mass extinctions, including the one that killed most dinosaurs, and discusses the volcano versus asteroid debate.
If the article is correct, this bird probably has no living descendants because its wing joints were fused in a different way than modern birds.
There were all sorts of birds in the Cretaceous that ended up going extinct, and our modern birds are the one lineage that avoided extinction. Or to put it another way, “modern birds” is a synonym for “all the kinds of birds that didn’t go extinct at the end of the Cretaceous”.
re: pterosaurs being dinosaurs:
Well, the Washington Post does. I saw this some time back and it annoyed me:
“First the exhibition manager leaped for joy. Then she looked more closely at the captions…number four will shock you.”
What this thread obviously needs now is a long discussion of the distinction between the technical and commonly understood meanings of “fractal”.