Once again: dinosaurs are not birds and birds are not dinosaurs.
That's akin to saying that beloved character actor Margo Martindale is a prehistoric fish or that a prehistoric fish is beloved character actor Margo Martindale.
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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You seem to have stumbled on the fact that fish is not a useful term because you cannot come up with a consistent definition of fish that doesn't include beloved character actor Margo Martindale without excluding things that are obviously fish. It's the same with "tree".
You are correct that dinosaurs are not birds, but birds are dinosaurs in the same sense that you are a mammal.
Here's the thing. You said a "birds are dinosaurs."
Is it in the same clade? Yes. No one's arguing that.
As someone who is a scientist who studies birds, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls birds dinosaurs. If you want to be "specific" like you said, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing.
If you're saying "dinosaur clade" you're referring to the taxonomic grouping of Dinosauria, which includes things from ankylosauruses to herrerasauruses to jackdaws.
So your reasoning for calling a birds a dinosaur is because random people "call the feathered ones dinosaurs?" Let's get tyrannosauruses and deinonychuses in there, then, too.
Also, calling someone a human or an ape? It's not one or the other, that's not how taxonomy works. They're both. A bird is a bird and a member of the dinosaur clade. But that's not what you said. You said a bird is a dinosaur, which is not true unless you're okay with calling all members of the Aves class dinosaurs, which means you'd call blue jays, ravens, and other birds dinosaurs, too. Which you said you don't.
It's okay to just admit you're wrong, you know?
Are you responding to my post or one you made up? You seem to be putting a lot of words in my mouth.
Of course I mean clade. Of course humans are apes. Of course scientists say birds are dinosaurs. You even say that "no one is arguing that." And that's exactly how taxonomy works.
Scientists say "non avian dinosaurs" amazingly often. That statement doesn't make any sense unless birds are dinosaurs.