Re: Do you believe?

brian@xxxxxxx (Brian Tung) wrote in news:d75nu0$pcs$1@xxxxxxxxxxx:

> Llanzlan Klazmon wrote:
>> > > 4. that Dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago?
>> >
>> > That's what the evidence shows us.
>>
>> Well no. The cladists say that dinosaurs are still alive and
>> flapping. We call em birds these days.
>
> I saw the same assertion on the Berkeley site, too. I'm not sure
> I agree with that, although it's just a semantic issue: The terms
> "bird" and "dinosaur" have much stronger colloquial connotations
> than scientific ones. In particular, I don't think "dinosaur" has
> been a widely recognized scientific term for some time. It just
> refers to a collection of species (in two families, I think).
>
> Keeping that in mind, just because any clade that includes dinosaurs
> must also include birds doesn't mean that birds are dinosaurs.

Yes it is a semantic issue i.e the agreed naming of the containing clade.
Saying that birds are dinosaurs is really no different to saying that
humans are mammals.

The tree of life web site has birds within Dinosauria. The closest types
of commonly known (to the general public) are the Velociraptor and
Tyrannosaurs (some of these actually appear to have had feathers).

See http://www.tolweb.org/tree?group=Dinosauria

Klazmon

>
> I must admit, though, that it is kind of cool to contemplate that
> some remnant of those giant beasts are all around us, even today.
>
> Brian Tung <brian@xxxxxxx>
> The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
> Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
> The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
> My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt

.

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