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“Theoretically, a last common ancestor and all its descendants constitute a (minimal) clade. Importantly, all descendants stay in their overarching ancestral clade. For example, if the terms worms or fishes were used within a strict cladistic framework, these terms would include humans.”

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arctanthrope@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
so basically it’s a language problem, not a biology problem? people are incorrectly assuming that any group of species with a word to describe it must be monophyletic, and therefore include all unrelated species which would make it monophyletic?

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- iilwl@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I’m honestly surprised this isn’t better understood in this community, at least as an approach to the tree of life system of classification, with or without its merits. I didn’t go to college and went to public school that suppressed science education, but this was how I came to understand evolution and that all types of life had a universal common ancestor.
  
  I’m not speaking to the accuracy of the meme, and the science community at large has its criticisms of cladistics, but I’m not sure I would classify this as a problem of biology or language, or a problem at all. It is the most common method of evolutionary classification at this time.
  
  Keep in mind I’m a blue collar worker on my lunch break and not a scientist nor college educated. I just like to learn in my free time about a bunch of stuff.
  
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- lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  Pretty much. It helps if you think the word “dinosaur” has two partially overlapping meanings:
  
  Cladistic: every single descendant of the last common ancestor between the triceratops and a duck, including both. Plus pretty much any bird.
  
  Popular: a bunch of extinct animals like the T-Rex, velociraptor, triceratops, etc. Plus animals visually resembling them, regardless of cladistic classification. Notably, it does not includes Aves aka modern birds.
  
  So for example. Turkeys would fit #1 but not #2. Depending on the person, dimetrodons and pterosaurs would fit #2, but not #1 [see note]. A T-rex would fit both.
  
  NOTE: pterosaurs aren’t from the clade Dinosauria, but from a distantly related clade called Pterosauria. Dimetrodons are synapsids so they’re closer to us mammals than to Dinosauria.
  
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