If you’re confused: Birds are dinosaurs, crocodiles aren’t; note the “closest living relatives

  • Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radio
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    3 months ago

    Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but huh?

    Clearly I missed a briefing somewhere. I thought that crocodiles were from that era, or is that the joke that I’m somehow missing?

        • Codex@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          It might be easy to brush off my complaint as a case of paleo-pedantry, but word choice matters. “Dinosaur” is a word for a specific group of creatures united by shared characteristics and which had their own evolutionary history—it is not a catch-all term for anything reptilian and prehistoric.

          We have known about this distinction for a long time, and I bet that your average 10-year old paleo fan would know not confuse the groups.

          https://xkcd.com/2501/