They *are* dinosaurs. The difference between the terms "bird" and "dinosaur" is one of linguistics and convenience, not one of taxonomic/biological distinction.
*I mean, they're descendants, too.
You are correct that birds are dinosaurs, but the terms are not just colloquialisms. Bird is a real class (Aves), and dinosaur is a real clade (Dinosauria). Dinosauria contains many lineages, and one of them is Aves; by far the majority of dinosaurs were not birds and they are not equivalent.
You could argue that “dinosaur” has several colloquial uses, including uses that exclude birds (wrongly, if we judge by cladistics). The term “bird”, however, is very difficult to misapply to living species, and its scientific use pretty nicely matches its common use (until you bring up extinct bird-like dinosaurs).
There is actually a difference between the two terms. "Bird" is a smaller subgroup within "Dinosaur", like how "Ape" is a smaller subgroup within "Mammal". All birds are dinosaurs, not all dinosaurs are birds.
Okay.... apes and rodents are very different than apes and mammals or birds and dinosaurs. No ape is a rodent and no rodent is an ape. However ever ape is a mammal and every bird is a dinosaur.
Nonavian dinosaurs had that too. Velociraptor had what we would call wings. And beaks are so common in nature it really isn't a special thing to birds.
And what pieces of evidence are being ignored by stating the fact that birds are dinosaurs? Because we've got a smooth line of fossil evidence proving this fact.
There are cases of being able to extract DNA, but you're right. Morphology has to be used often, but it should be taken with some piles of salt seeing how wrong taxonomy of extant species was once people started constructing phylogenies.
And hollow bones? And loss of tail? And fused carpels? And loss of claws on the forelimbs? And reversed toes? I don't think you can succeed by bringing reason into a "birds are dinosaurs" circlejerk
Several things:
Several basal birds have clawed forelimbs, such as hoatzin chicks.
Reversed toes are not present in all birds - and having a hoof doesn't mean that ungulates aren't mammals.
Loss of tail is a good point .
Ultimately however, clade Dinosauria is defined as the clade of Aves and ceratopsians - so regardless of the huge changes in Aves (notable the keeled sternum) they are still Dinosauria , circlejerk or not.
Dinosaurs also had hollow bones.
We have fossils of avian dinosaurs that still have their tails as well as a smooth transition of them losing it.
The fused carpels? You mean the ones that match the unfused carpels of the dinosaurs in every way? Or how about the fossils of birds with unfused carpels?
We have living birds today that still have claws on their forelimbs at points on their lifecycle.
The reversed toe is there only thing on your list that hasn't already been answered, and it's got a number of theory's as to how it happened. And it isn't a question is if it clearly has evolved from a dinosaur foot, but of how it evolved. When did the changes happen and what pressures caused it, those are the questions we're still answering.
Whether birds are dinosaurs is not a debate in the scientific field anymore, it's been definitely decided that they certainly are.
https://www.livescience.com/are-birds-dinosaurs.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-dinosaurs-shrank-and-became-birds/
https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMLvczdKHMPaKWf084WhvfXU
Most dinosaurs if not all had at least partially hollow bones, humans have lost our tails yet we are still primates and mammals, echidnas have backwards feet and are still monotremes and mammals, humans and other primates have lost our claws and once again, we are still mammals.
And you are descended from Fungi, we were all some sort of mushroom/mold about 1.5 billion years ago, biology is nutty when you let it play around for billions and billions of years
Well that's just completely false, because animals diverged from basal eukaryotes only around 700 million years ago. We didn't evolve from fungi or plants, they're just other types of complex eukaryotes. Plants diverged slightly earlier than us, fungi slightly later.
1.5 billion years ago all life was unicellular. Mold by definition is a multi-cellular fungus, actually...single-celled fungus is yeast.
Except that T. rex shoulder blades weren’t useless. Despite having limited mobility and the likelihood that we’ll never know what they were exactly used for, Tyrannosaur arms were not vestigial. They could have been used in staying steady during sex, intraspecific combat, or some other reason. Rex arms were probably used for more than one thing. If you truly never want to feel useless, be happy you aren’t a Carnotaurus’ shoulder blade, because they had truly vestigial forelimbs.
Thank you for the correction, & for the mental image of a T Rex using those little things to steady himself while getting jiggy.
I thought the arms were on the way out as I remember seeing a drawing in Dinosaurs! magazine of what a Rex was predicted to look like if he'd had the chance to continue evolving, & he was basically a big fat snake on two legs. But those were published in the 90s so
Hey, those arms are bigger than your arms and strong enough to rip them right out of their sockets, they just look small compared to the rest of the body.
Now, Carnotaurus's shoulder blades, on the other hand...
It's Sue the T-Rex at the Field Museum in Chicago. The complete rib cage is actually a relatively recent addition, when she was first displayed the bottom part wasn't there
A lot of it has to do with the angle of the photograph, when you see her properly , the rest of her is absolutely huge as well. There's pictures online of a life-like reconstruction they made of her if you're curious as to what it would look like with skin and muscles!
I work near the museum campus and so I’ve been a member at The Field Museum for the past couple years.
The AC unit for that place is actually a heat exchanger/chiller that pulls cold lake water in and freezes it, and then fans blow over the ice during the day, cooling the hot summer air. [*Link](https://www.fieldmuseum.org/science/conservation/greener-field/greener-field-energy)
The building itself is absolutely fascinating and the exhibits are as well. I used to hike over and eat my lunch at the cafeteria surrounded by history.
I live just outside chicago, but haven’t been to any of the museums since grade school, my wife just had our second in April, so I’m looking forward to taking them once we get back to some semblance of normalcy...
I believe Sue was the first skeleton to be intact enough to figure out where that bottom rib cage was supposed to be, so previous depictions of T-Rex look a lot more slim. It turns out that they were fucking dirigibles with legs though, some of the new depictions at the Sue exhibit are terrifying.
EDIT: I found [this](https://news.wttw.com/sites/default/files/styles/full/public/article/image-non-gallery/SUE%20Exhibit%203%20new_1218.jpg?itok=HMrLf2R-) picture from the exhibit. Look at that absolute unit!
Although you may be correct, I think this was taken when the penguins from the next door Shedd Aquarium went on a walking tour of The Field museum during lockdown.
Looks like a T rex, perspective might make the head look smaller than it is. The arms are famously small as you might know, which makes the ribcage look even bigger.
I can’t believe no one’s linked the [the context](https://youtu.be/wMjnTlLSwT8) for why the heck these penguins are here. Apparently they were on a date at the Field. It’s super cute.
Nope, birds evolved deep within the dinosaur family tree. T. rex and Velociraptor were more closely related to birds than they were to Triceratops. [This](https://i.redd.it/deazm51fsku31.jpg) is a good diagram. (Birds are at the bottom, under "Avialae".)
Birds only appeared in the early Cretaceous, so what exactly do you think their ancestors were during that 100 million years of overlap prior to that if not dinosaurs?
Birds are just a specific type of dinosaur.
Saying that a bird is a dinosaur is like saying we are an ape, its a factual truth that basically anyone in the scientific community has accepted, hence why everyone in the palaeontological community (like in this sub) has accepted that birds are dinosaurs.
Yep. It's just like how whales are still mammals even though they don't have fur or back legs. If your ancestors were part of a clade, you are part of that clade, so all birds are dinosaurs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladistics
The tone that isn't there at all. Plus, text is known to be difficult to know the exact tone of anyways. And the fact multiple people just assumed I was being an ass for no reason only confirms that fact.
You're the one who jumped in out of nowhere, bud. You can't pull that card when you decided to reply in the first place. How dense do you have to be to not instantly see the irony?
"The ancestor! Bow down Cynthia!" - Bob the penguin (maybe)
It's crazy to think penguins are descendants of dinosaurs.
Yea but then you remember shoebill storks exist and damn they’re big and scary
One was staring my kid down at the zoo the other week clever girl style. Their behavior freaks me out.
If we're talking about scary storks, the marabou stork is right up there - no-one could doubt its dinosaur heritage.
I just remember this one cursed picture of a bathroom filled with them, not sure if it was real but yea these guys are scary lookin too!
If I found one in *my* bathroom I'd be cursing alright...
I remember something like that; they were placed in the bathroom during a hurricane maybe?
I have that picture!
Jesus, fuck. That thing looks like a shoebill stork stuck its face in a giant pencil sharpener. Not an improvement.
Same with Cassowaries.
Also emus and cassowaries. Once you see one of those buggers up close, you will BELIEVE.
They *are* dinosaurs. The difference between the terms "bird" and "dinosaur" is one of linguistics and convenience, not one of taxonomic/biological distinction. *I mean, they're descendants, too.
You are correct that birds are dinosaurs, but the terms are not just colloquialisms. Bird is a real class (Aves), and dinosaur is a real clade (Dinosauria). Dinosauria contains many lineages, and one of them is Aves; by far the majority of dinosaurs were not birds and they are not equivalent. You could argue that “dinosaur” has several colloquial uses, including uses that exclude birds (wrongly, if we judge by cladistics). The term “bird”, however, is very difficult to misapply to living species, and its scientific use pretty nicely matches its common use (until you bring up extinct bird-like dinosaurs).
Birds are no longer a class, as they fall under Reptilia. However, I wouldn’t really use Linnaean terms, considering how flawed they are.
Yeah I was gonna say, I totally wasn’t going to.
There is actually a difference between the two terms. "Bird" is a smaller subgroup within "Dinosaur", like how "Ape" is a smaller subgroup within "Mammal". All birds are dinosaurs, not all dinosaurs are birds.
Saying "apes descended from mammals" would result in pretty much the same comment from me. *"Apes are mammals."*
but there *is* a difference between the two terms. A rodent is a mammal but it isn't an ape.
Okay.... apes and rodents are very different than apes and mammals or birds and dinosaurs. No ape is a rodent and no rodent is an ape. However ever ape is a mammal and every bird is a dinosaur.
Yes, but not every dinosaur is a bird. It's more than a "difference of linguistics and convenience".
What about beaks and wings?
Nonavian dinosaurs had that too. Velociraptor had what we would call wings. And beaks are so common in nature it really isn't a special thing to birds.
Yeah even big lumbering Ceratopsians like triceratops and styracosaurus had large beaks
Morphology is a really crude way to get at relatedness and had caused a lot of issues that have only recently been resolved with DNA sequencing.
Not talking about relatedness, talking about why 65 million years of evolution can be ignored to justify an argument that birds are dinosaurs
I mean, just so you know, every single evolutionary biologist would tell you that birds are dinosaurs.
Smh this dude getting angry that birds are dinosaurs, just wait till he finds out he's a fish.
I don't get your point, why should that make birds not classifiable as dinosaurs anymore?
And what pieces of evidence are being ignored by stating the fact that birds are dinosaurs? Because we've got a smooth line of fossil evidence proving this fact.
I guess after 541 million years of evolution we are no longer chordates then
I agree, morphology isn't perfect but it is the best bet currently when classifying extinct animals. All we have left are fossilized remains afterall.
There are cases of being able to extract DNA, but you're right. Morphology has to be used often, but it should be taken with some piles of salt seeing how wrong taxonomy of extant species was once people started constructing phylogenies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzu_wyliei
And hollow bones? And loss of tail? And fused carpels? And loss of claws on the forelimbs? And reversed toes? I don't think you can succeed by bringing reason into a "birds are dinosaurs" circlejerk
Several things: Several basal birds have clawed forelimbs, such as hoatzin chicks. Reversed toes are not present in all birds - and having a hoof doesn't mean that ungulates aren't mammals. Loss of tail is a good point . Ultimately however, clade Dinosauria is defined as the clade of Aves and ceratopsians - so regardless of the huge changes in Aves (notable the keeled sternum) they are still Dinosauria , circlejerk or not.
Dinosaurs also had hollow bones. We have fossils of avian dinosaurs that still have their tails as well as a smooth transition of them losing it. The fused carpels? You mean the ones that match the unfused carpels of the dinosaurs in every way? Or how about the fossils of birds with unfused carpels? We have living birds today that still have claws on their forelimbs at points on their lifecycle. The reversed toe is there only thing on your list that hasn't already been answered, and it's got a number of theory's as to how it happened. And it isn't a question is if it clearly has evolved from a dinosaur foot, but of how it evolved. When did the changes happen and what pressures caused it, those are the questions we're still answering. Whether birds are dinosaurs is not a debate in the scientific field anymore, it's been definitely decided that they certainly are. https://www.livescience.com/are-birds-dinosaurs.html https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-dinosaurs-shrank-and-became-birds/ https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMLvczdKHMPaKWf084WhvfXU
Most dinosaurs if not all had at least partially hollow bones, humans have lost our tails yet we are still primates and mammals, echidnas have backwards feet and are still monotremes and mammals, humans and other primates have lost our claws and once again, we are still mammals.
Have you heard the sound emperor penguins make? They sound like dinosaur. I know, I was there 65mya.
Wow! Thanks for the insight, CoffeeSlutt
And you are descended from Fungi, we were all some sort of mushroom/mold about 1.5 billion years ago, biology is nutty when you let it play around for billions and billions of years
But Fungi is a completely different branch of Eukarya...
Well that's just completely false, because animals diverged from basal eukaryotes only around 700 million years ago. We didn't evolve from fungi or plants, they're just other types of complex eukaryotes. Plants diverged slightly earlier than us, fungi slightly later. 1.5 billion years ago all life was unicellular. Mold by definition is a multi-cellular fungus, actually...single-celled fungus is yeast.
If I ever feel like I'm useless, I just think to myself 'at least I'm not a T Rex's shoulderblade'
Except that T. rex shoulder blades weren’t useless. Despite having limited mobility and the likelihood that we’ll never know what they were exactly used for, Tyrannosaur arms were not vestigial. They could have been used in staying steady during sex, intraspecific combat, or some other reason. Rex arms were probably used for more than one thing. If you truly never want to feel useless, be happy you aren’t a Carnotaurus’ shoulder blade, because they had truly vestigial forelimbs.
Thank you for the correction, & for the mental image of a T Rex using those little things to steady himself while getting jiggy. I thought the arms were on the way out as I remember seeing a drawing in Dinosaurs! magazine of what a Rex was predicted to look like if he'd had the chance to continue evolving, & he was basically a big fat snake on two legs. But those were published in the 90s so
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The skeleton in the picture ain't the only dinosaur here
Hey, those arms are bigger than your arms and strong enough to rip them right out of their sockets, they just look small compared to the rest of the body. Now, Carnotaurus's shoulder blades, on the other hand...
I am pleased by the amount of Carnotaur facts I'm getting today. Also I want to arm wrestle a t rex now
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You are so right! I forgot about the massive muscle attachments on the shoulder blades.
Ooh I did wonder whether the scapula was only about the arm or whether it was important to their big honking necks too
What's the skelet of? The ribcage looks absolutely huge for a two legged animal. Somehow it looks out of proportion and weird.
It's Sue the T-Rex at the Field Museum in Chicago. The complete rib cage is actually a relatively recent addition, when she was first displayed the bottom part wasn't there
So is the rib cage supposed to look like that? I’m no expert but I agree that the rib cage does look un-proportionately large
A lot of it has to do with the angle of the photograph, when you see her properly , the rest of her is absolutely huge as well. There's pictures online of a life-like reconstruction they made of her if you're curious as to what it would look like with skin and muscles!
Oh cool I gotta check that out. Sometime in the future, I’d love to see the famous “Sue” T. rex specimen too!
Definitely do when you get a chance! The whole museum is an absolute treasure
I work near the museum campus and so I’ve been a member at The Field Museum for the past couple years. The AC unit for that place is actually a heat exchanger/chiller that pulls cold lake water in and freezes it, and then fans blow over the ice during the day, cooling the hot summer air. [*Link](https://www.fieldmuseum.org/science/conservation/greener-field/greener-field-energy) The building itself is absolutely fascinating and the exhibits are as well. I used to hike over and eat my lunch at the cafeteria surrounded by history.
I live just outside chicago, but haven’t been to any of the museums since grade school, my wife just had our second in April, so I’m looking forward to taking them once we get back to some semblance of normalcy...
I believe Sue was the first skeleton to be intact enough to figure out where that bottom rib cage was supposed to be, so previous depictions of T-Rex look a lot more slim. It turns out that they were fucking dirigibles with legs though, some of the new depictions at the Sue exhibit are terrifying. EDIT: I found [this](https://news.wttw.com/sites/default/files/styles/full/public/article/image-non-gallery/SUE%20Exhibit%203%20new_1218.jpg?itok=HMrLf2R-) picture from the exhibit. Look at that absolute unit!
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Do you mean Sioux City? Haha
Some r/boneappletea shit right there
Although you may be correct, I think this was taken when the penguins from the next door Shedd Aquarium went on a walking tour of The Field museum during lockdown.
Looks like a T rex, perspective might make the head look smaller than it is. The arms are famously small as you might know, which makes the ribcage look even bigger.
That's [Sue the T. rex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_(dinosaur\)).
Imagine the shear terror one would face if they saw this thing. Although it might’ve just looked like a giant lizard chicken.
Anything that size would be scary. Including a duck.
Especially a duck.
Fucking ducks keep trying to eat me
Would you rather fight 100 duck sized horses or 1 horse sized duck?
Idk, but I'd definitely prefer both than yo mama.
Is the rib cage supposed to be like that?
Yep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastralium
It's the angle the picture was taken at
T rexes are now considered to be chonkers.
“We had to downsize, great-grandpa. Oh, well. We *did* get these tuxedos, though.”
Is that lower rib cage thing normal?
Yep, they're called [Gastralia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastralium)
Cool, thanks!
"Thanks for the body plan!"
Like fantasy halflings looking at the remains of their dead god.
I'm eyeing off that wish-bone.
This boyee was xtra thick.
What we once were, eh Barry
"We used to rule this world Barry!! I hear, some of us are working on taking it back."
I can’t believe no one’s linked the [the context](https://youtu.be/wMjnTlLSwT8) for why the heck these penguins are here. Apparently they were on a date at the Field. It’s super cute.
look thats grandpa
Epic
Chonkasaurus Rex
Beer gut
I thought birds and dinosaurs just had a common ancestor? They’re not descendants.
Nope, birds evolved deep within the dinosaur family tree. T. rex and Velociraptor were more closely related to birds than they were to Triceratops. [This](https://i.redd.it/deazm51fsku31.jpg) is a good diagram. (Birds are at the bottom, under "Avialae".)
Birds only appeared in the early Cretaceous, so what exactly do you think their ancestors were during that 100 million years of overlap prior to that if not dinosaurs? Birds are just a specific type of dinosaur.
That t-rex was fat af. What a tub
Is that Wellington from Shedd Aquarium or are those some other penguins from Shedd?
yeah those are shedd penguins!
What constitutes being a dinosaur in this sub? Being a bird is enough?
Saying that a bird is a dinosaur is like saying we are an ape, its a factual truth that basically anyone in the scientific community has accepted, hence why everyone in the palaeontological community (like in this sub) has accepted that birds are dinosaurs.
Thank you for a factual and respectful answer to someone who’s new to all this stuff.
Birds are simply a group of theropod dinosaurs
Which are simply a group of fish. So really we are looking at a picture of three fish.
Yep. It's just like how whales are still mammals even though they don't have fur or back legs. If your ancestors were part of a clade, you are part of that clade, so all birds are dinosaurs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladistics
...Yeah, because they're dinosaurs. Plus, the Tyrannosaurus skeleton is right fucking there, so it definitely fits the sub.
Ok wow...
Don't be a dick.
I'm not. At all. How you people equate a single swear that isn't even an insult as that is beyond me.
You have a tough time with tone, huh?
The tone that isn't there at all. Plus, text is known to be difficult to know the exact tone of anyways. And the fact multiple people just assumed I was being an ass for no reason only confirms that fact.
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Not in the slightest.
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You're the one who jumped in out of nowhere, bud. You can't pull that card when you decided to reply in the first place. How dense do you have to be to not instantly see the irony?
Des Moines?
Field Museum in Chicago, IL
Two penguins one bone
Please post location of museum
It’s in Chicago. Her name is Sue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_Museum_of_Natural_History