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DinoGeorge wrote:
I don't think anyone has any chance of replacing the names "dinosaur" and "bird" with other terms, no matter what their ultimate phylogeny proves to be. About all we can do is expand or redefine the meanings of those terms phylogenetically to encompass all the forms, familiar and not so familiar, that properly belong to these groups. (Of course, the meaning of the term "properly belong" in this context is itself subject to debate...) {Yes, but we`re stuck with two currently valid major taxons "Dinosauria" and "Aves", sooner or later they have to clash, don`t you think? When do you stop calling it a bird? Now I`m assuming that Sauropodomorphs developed from a proto-bird with 5 digits on the manus, probably at what...the climbing stage, or early gliding stage? Can it be called a bird yet if it dosen`t have powered flight? Assuming we ever find this missing specimen, who will claim it , the ornithologists or the dinosaurologists?} Also George states:
If it turns out that sauropods and theropods are more closely related than either group is to ornithischians, then birds would be saurischians. But I'm pretty convinced that sauropodomorphs and ornithischians are more closely related than either group is to theropods (that is, share a more recent common ancestor than with theropods), so Saurischia as presently defined would become a synonym of Dinosauria as presently defined (and ornithischians would simply be a different set of saurischian descendants This early split between the ornithischian and
saurischian took place in the trees do you think??
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