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If birds are dinosaurs then what are dinosaurs?

theprestige said:
On the other hand, most of them can fly.
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Most birds, but not most dinosaurs.

We don't call a man that can fly a terrible man. We call him Superman.
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Because he was also good at being a man. He was more than a man. Chickens can fly, but we don't call them Supermen, because they're terrible at being men. They are less than men in every respect except flying, and that's not enough.
 
Ziggurat said:
Most birds, but not most dinosaurs.



Because he was also good at being a man. He was more than a man. Chickens can fly, but we don't call them Supermen, because they're terrible at being men. They are less than men in every respect except flying, and that's not enough.
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I'm charitably going to assume you hadn't had your coffee yet, when you typed this : )
 
Kurt Vonnegut:

What the white stuff in bird poop?
That's bird poop, too.


Mitch Hedberg:

I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.
 
sphenisc said:
Dinosauria are defined as the last common ancestor of Triceratops horridus, Passer domesticus and Diplodocus carnegii, and all of its descendants.

Some birds are flyers. All birds are dinosaurs. Therefore some dinosaurs are flyers. Similarly for swimmers.

Even for non-avian dinosaurs, their terrestriality is an observation, not part of the definition.
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I was about to make an argument about avian dinosaurs and contemporaneousness, but then I realised that avian dinosaurs were contemporaneous with terrestrial dinosaurs.

I was wrong. Thank you for the correction.
 
JoeMorgue said:
This is also why the nitpicking "Pterosaurs and aquatic mammals aren't dinosaurs!" thing is kind of annoying to me, as if "Dinosaur" is some super-specific scientific term.
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arthwollipot said:
That division [Ornithischia & Saurischia] is no longer recognised as fundamental. There are too many exceptions.
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I've parroted this talking point in the past without being able to explain why. I checked Wikipedia and it says dinosaurs are defined as the descendants of the last common ancestor of the Ornithischia and Saurischia, and this excludes pterosaurs and the conventional marine reptiles.
 
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arthwollipot said:
Ahem. *nerd snort* Technically, "thunder lizard" is the translation of the word brontosaurus. Birds aren't descended from brontosaurus. The words you're looking for are "terrible lizard".

The word "tetrapod" literally means "four limbs". What does one look like? Everything that has four limbs is a tetrapod. Some of them are bad ass killers, some of them are fluffy bunnies.
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Some are both.
 
Ziggurat said:
But not every tetrapod has four limbs.
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I'm not aware of one that doesn't. Like I said, it's the literal translation of the word. Care to enlighten me?

Oh, you might be thinking of things like whales, which are descended from four limbed creatures but whose hindlimbs have atrophied? Yes, that is a notable exception. Good point.
 
The extinct Moa are notable for being two-limbed birds. Not even vestigial traces of their wings remain.

Checkmate cladistics.
 
arthwollipot said:
I'm not aware of one that doesn't. Like I said, it's the literal translation of the word. Care to enlighten me?

Oh, you might be thinking of things like whales, which are descended from four limbed creatures but whose hindlimbs have atrophied? Yes, that is a notable exception. Good point.
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Another notable exception is snakes.
 
arthwollipot said:
I'm not aware of one that doesn't. Like I said, it's the literal translation of the word. Care to enlighten me?

Oh, you might be thinking of things like whales, which are descended from four limbed creatures but whose hindlimbs have atrophied? Yes, that is a notable exception. Good point.
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With whales, it sort of depends on how you count limbs. Snakes is more clearcut, though other exceptions have also been noted above.

Tetrapods are all descended from ancestors that had four limbs, but as a classification, they don't have to have four limbs anymore. I'm not aware of any tetrapods that have gained limbs, but plenty have lost them.
 
Eriophyid mites have four legs. They're quadrupeds, but not tetrapods.
 
I have to admit, it annoys me when ever I hear the phrase "non-avian dinosaurs". It adds nothing to to the conversation except nerd pedantry. We may as well talk about non-human apes.
 
ahhell said:
I have to admit, it annoys me when ever I hear the phrase "non-avian dinosaurs". It adds nothing to to the conversation except nerd pedantry. We may as well talk about non-human apes.
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Yes but this is the internet where you can't call something a dragon without a nerd screeching at you about how it's really a wyrim despite neither of those things actually existing so it's literally impossible to be wrong about them.

Ignoring pedantry on the internet is like a drowning man trying to save himself by ignoring the water in the Pacific Ocean. It's a good idea, but it's not going to work.
 
William Parcher said:
The idea is that birds are what they descended from and therefore are dinosaurs. So then dinosaurs too are whatever they descended from.

Surprise ... birds are dinosaurs and dinosaurs are what? If we are clever and accurate to say that birds are dinosaurs then what should we say that dinosaurs are in order to use that same logic with consistency?
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Dead Bird like Reptiles.
The Dead ones.
 
arthwollipot said:
Well, it is. Dinosaurs are specifically defined as terrestrial vertebrates. That means that they're not flyers, and they're not swimmers. Ichthyosaurs and pterosaurs are not dinosaurs. They're distinct groups of animals that just happened to be around at the same time.

That division is no longer recognised as fundamental. There are too many exceptions.

Basically everything that I learned from the dinosaur books I loved as a child in the 70s is wrong.
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It would mean whales and bats are not mammals for one.

But at least Ostriches are dinosaurs in that definition. Are penguins Ichthyosaurs?
 
Is a taco a sandwich?

Categories describe reality, they don't create it,

Is Pluto a planet? The answer is not "yes" or "not" but "Our definition of a planet wasn't good enough."
 
ponderingturtle said:
It would mean whales and bats are not mammals for one.

But at least Ostriches are dinosaurs in that definition. Are penguins Ichthyosaurs?
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Whales and bats clearly developed from other mammals though.

Dinosaurs diversified into the forms we are familiar with after the break with flying/marine reptiles.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Is a taco a sandwich?

Categories describe reality, they don't create it,

Is Pluto a planet? The answer is not "yes" or "not" but "Our definition of a planet wasn't good enough."
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The real answer is that our solar system does not have 9 planets.
 
Birds are dinosaurs and dinosaurs are lobe-finned fish.

That's pretty good. Each has a shocker and leaves the average person a bit disoriented. Then you just need a paragraph of explaining it and it's off to the races. But it probably won't work with a creationist.
 
arthwollipot said:
Dinosaurs are specifically defined as terrestrial vertebrates.
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Are they?

I checked Wikipedia, and while it does say, "They became the dominant terrestrial vertebrates after the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event 201.3 million years ago", that's a description, not a definition.

It's also a bit odd in that Wikipedia also describes them as reptiles, but then says that birds are dinosaurs, but birds are not usually considered reptiles.

So... don't use Wikipedia for definitions, I guess?
 
ponderingturtle said:
But not birds.
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What do you mean...

I'm saying there's an unbroken line from the first dinosaurs to birds. Flying reptiles had broken off into another branch before dinosaurs diversified. Birds are unrelated to flying reptiles.

On the other hand, bats and whales are clearly descendants of land mammals no question. To be analogous to the dinosaur-pterosaur relationship, bats would have to have descended from another line of synapsids or something.
 
Ziggurat said:
With whales, it sort of depends on how you count limbs. Snakes is more clearcut, though other exceptions have also been noted above.

Tetrapods are all descended from ancestors that had four limbs, but as a classification, they don't have to have four limbs anymore. I'm not aware of any tetrapods that have gained limbs, but plenty have lost them.
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I accept the correction.

JoeMorgue said:
Yes but this is the internet where you can't call something a dragon without a nerd screeching at you about how it's really a wyrim despite neither of those things actually existing so it's literally impossible to be wrong about them.
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The canonical example of which is Vermithrax Pejorative from the 1981 movie Dragonslayer, yes. But I disagree that you can't be wrong about the definition of a fictional thing. If you said that Gandalf was an elf, you would be wrong, despite neither Gandalf nor elves being real things that exist.

The issue with dragons and wyverns is murky, however, because only some sources define wyverns as dragonlike tetrapods, while others classify wyverns as a kind of dragon. As such, I personally find the argument over whether Vermithrax was a dragon or a wyvern to be somewhat spurious.
 
arthwollipot said:
Ahem. *nerd snort* Technically, "thunder lizard" is the translation of the word brontosaurus. Birds aren't descended from brontosaurus. The words you're looking for are "terrible lizard".

The word "tetrapod" literally means "four limbs". What does one look like? Everything that has four limbs is a tetrapod. Some of them are bad ass killers, some of them are fluffy bunnies.
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And some of the fluffy bunnies are bad ass killers.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, search for Bun-bun and prepare for a lot of web-comics. (Sluggy Freelance)
 
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