Comment on little hopper
tetris11@lemmy.ml 3 months agobirds are the continuation of the theropod dinosaur lineage.
humans are the continuation of the early synapsid lineage also present at the time (which later gave rise to the early mammal progenitor).
when people say birds are dinosaurs they mean the lineage didn’t branch as much as it did for humans, which I think is more survivorship bias than anything.
flerp@lemm.ee 3 months ago
People say birds are dinosaurs because every living thing is in every clade of it’s ancestors which means they are dinosaurs. They’re also a lot of other things from all of the other clades so they’re not saying that birds are just dinosaurs, but that they are part of Dinosauria and every other clade of their ancestors and so too will all of their descendants be.
tetris11@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Yes, one could say birds have skeletons in the same manner. I guess I’m just trying to understand what the opposing position before was the great revelation birds are dinosaurs was uttered. I’m perpetually confused by this expression.