Re[2]: dinosaur flatware

["Cunningham, Betty" <bcunning@nssi.com>]

     > but one of the biggest challenges I face is convincing people that 
     >pterosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, and pelycosaurs 
     >(e.g., _Dimetrodon_) are NOT dinosaurs. 
     
     My Significant Other and I were arguing over some educational CD Rom 
     stuff that I was annoyed with and he thought was ok.  The topic of 
     discussion was the Microsoft's error of calling a Pteranodon a "flying 
     dinosaur".
     
     He argued that this was ok to do in an educational product if the 
     product was understood to be general.  I disagreed.
     
     He felt that this was putting the term "dinosaur" on this vast group 
     of prehistoric animals that became extinct at the KT and that this was 
     the generally percieved definition of "dinosaur".  I disagreed that 
     this was a correct thing to do in an educational product.
     
     After I explained to him JUST how unrelated (and by how many millions 
     of years) the two were, he changed his mind.  What worked to convice 
     him was my comparison of iguanas and squirrels, and saying that to 
     claim a 'tree-climbing iguana' is a 'squirrel' was the same as 
     claiming a pteranodon was a 'flying dinosaur'.  I think this helped 
     him grasp something he had never made a point to study, and which was 
     certainly never covered while I was in elementary school, nor high 
     school, here in the states (not even in my Geology or Biology 
     classes).
     
     WE on the list know these are all different, but it takes a comparison 
     to something broadly known and not extinct for most mundane folk to 
     'get it'
     
     -Betty Cunningham