I once saw a crossword clue
Daggers drawn (6)
Answer: obelii.
“Staplers are actually in Pseudosuchia, making them more closely related to crocodiles than to dinosaurs.”
Given the amount of paper I no longer handle in my life due to e-damned-near-everything, I think a stapler was an odd choice for a non-dinosauric thing. They sure seem dinosauric in my home office.
But he couldn’t make the crocodile joke if he’d drawn, e.g., a ladder or bucket or … .
Unless the ladder fell over
The pterosaur story today mistakenly said they were dinosaurs-I had to ask a mod to fix the title twice, once for it misspelling “dinosaur” then when I read the article to change that to pterosaur.
I thought that the current consensus did put the pterosaurs and quetzelcoatls in Dinosauria?
I would have liked to have seen some edge cases. Like, mammoths or smilodons definitely aren’t dinosaurs, but seem more dinosaurish than squirrels do. Or procompsognathids are dinosaurs, but seem less dinosaurish than brontos but more than pigeons.
What definition are you using for “dinosaurish”? Because any theropods like compys are very much archetypically “disosaurish” to me.
Misusing “dinosaur” for “prehistoric animal”.
Part of what makes dinosaurs seem like dinosaurs is being large. Small dinosaurs, therefore, seem less dinosauric.
And I thought being a dino had more to do with the anatomy of the hip bones! Which comes in two subgroups, Saurischia (lizard-hipped) and Ornithischia (bird-hipped).
Pterosaurs have another type of hip. There is a hole missing. They do have a common ancestor, but they split:
Several times.
Size is secondary for this cladogram.
A common colloquial usage of “dinosaur” is a huge, weird-looking, animal that’s gone extinct.
There are five distinguishing characteristics all dinosaurs have. Three of them involve holes in the skull and, honestly I can never remember what they are. The other two are an upright stance (as opposed to sprawling)* and a hinge ankle (flexes in only one plane).
*So don’t glue a sail on the back of an iguana and expect it to pass in your movie.
I would have thought the Jurassic Park films would have changed that attitude (it’s not one I ever had, though)
How about a hat, or a brooch?
Penny’s is having a sale!
Oooh, look! It’s like a big Tylenol in the sky!