dino-chicken

[Nietzsche]

Dinosaurs were reptiles, but not lizards.
Dinosaur - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Note:
I prefer to think of dinosaurs as different from (descended from) reptiles.
But I don't know nuthin.

Fair enough, but I'm pretty sure it's still kind of under debate exactly how to classify them. It's honestly too foggy to say one way or the other for certain.

The problem is that what we think of in regards to clades simply don't work with the knowledge we have now. There's too much overlap. It's especially difficult with fish. What is a fish, really? It's a scaled, water-breathing vertebrate...right?

But, if that's the case, where do we put the 'fish' that can breathe oxygen? Are they amphibians? If so, where does fish end and amphibian begin? In fact, where does amphibian end and reptile begin? In every animal grouping there exists many species which have equal amounts of traits that you could use to justify their inclusion into two or more clades.

If anything, dinosaurs might be the easiest ones to classify, if only because we have relatively few specimens. And in that regard, based on what we do know about dinosaurs...they're birds. Or rather, birds are dinosaurs. A dinosaur has its legs directly beneath it, rather than splayed like reptiles. A dinosaur is warm-blooded, again rather than like cold-blooded reptiles. A dinosaur also has feathers*, or at least proto-feathers.


*It is becoming more & more obvious that all dinosaurs, or at least all dinosaurs past a certain point, had some manner of feather-like covering at one point in their lives or another.

 

[Riverwolf]

The problem is that what we think of in regards to clades simply don't work with the knowledge we have now. There's too much overlap. It's especially difficult with fish. What is a fish, really? It's a scaled, water-breathing vertebrate...right?

But, if that's the case, where do we put the 'fish' that can breathe oxygen? Are they amphibians? If so, where does fish end and amphibian begin? In fact, where does amphibian end and reptile begin? In every animal grouping there exists many species which have equal amounts of traits that you could use to justify their inclusion into two or more clades.

If anything, dinosaurs might be the easiest ones to classify, if only because we have relatively few specimens. And in that regard, based on what we do know about dinosaurs...they're birds. Or rather, birds are dinosaurs. A dinosaur has its legs directly beneath it, rather than splayed like reptiles. A dinosaur is warm-blooded, again rather than like cold-blooded reptiles. A dinosaur also has feathers*, or at least proto-feathers.


*It is becoming more & more obvious that all dinosaurs, or at least all dinosaurs past a certain point, had some manner of feather-like covering at one point in their lives or another.

Wikipedia's article on birds lists them as "theropod dinosaurs". As a person who was a t-rex at the age of 4, and a raptor at the age of 9(saw Jurassic Park in theaters when I was 5), and who was beaten over the head with the fact that "ALL DINOSAURS went extinct!" throughout my childhood, that SERIOUSLY just... blows my mind. Birds are dinosaurs, and have been all this time... as far as scientific reclassification goes, that (plus the fact that it turns out current evidence says t-rex did hunt and wasn't just a scavenger) not only makes up for Pluto, but saying it's overcompensation is understating.

And then I hear this:

...and some people think the feathers on dinosaurs makes them "less scary". Sure, they may not be dragons, but then again, there's a plethora of dragon-slayers in all the world's lore. I don't know of many roc-slayers.

 

[Nietzsche]

...and some people think the feathers on dinosaurs makes them "less scary". Sure, they may not be dragons, but then again, there's a plethora of dragon-slayers in all the world's lore. I don't know of many roc-slayers.

Funny thing about the feathers; It's entirely possible to have our cake & eat it too.

It is entirely possible(and I would say even likely) that the climate the dinosaur lived in would decide exactly how 'feathered' it was. A Tyrannosaurus that lives in an environment that's hot year-round would for instance(barring hatchlings) likely only have a sparse covering of feathers for mating display or what have you, while one that lived in a colder climate would be feathered tip-to-tail. Obviously there will be other species that have feathers all the time(and vice-versa) regardless, but I'd wager the majority of larger dinosaurs' feathers would be climate-dependent.

 

[gnostic]

Funny thing about the feathers; It's entirely possible to have our cake & eat it too.

I just rather not eat feather cakes.

 

[MormonChainMonteCarlo]

Horner's part of the faculty of my former uni (MSU). He's been absorbed in the dino chicken experiments for quite some time. Real interesting stuff there!