Re: Dinosaur = extinct animal

["Andrew Gray" <aj.gray@mail.com>]

>Oh, you'll have to go considerably further than that.  I think in general
>usage, dinosaur is a cognomen for "extinct animal".

>You might even have to expand that definition to include animals that are
>still alive, but have been around for some time

There ARE dinosaurs (or at least animals directly descended from them) alive
today - over 8,000 different species of them! They're probably flying about
outside your window as you read this.

Technically, this means that mammals - with a mere 4,000 species - never did
'inherit the Earth' after the K/T. We're still living in the Age of the
Dinosaurs!

>I have never heard anybody claim that prehistoric humans were
>dinosaurs, though I could be wrong.

Although I too have never heard it said that humans evolved from dinosaurs,
I do recall once seeing an exhibit at the London Natural History Museum,
which speculated that the theropod dinosaurs would have evolved into a
super-intelligent, fully upright, human-like state if they had not been
wiped out. The exhibit included a model of what a 'dinosaur man' might look
like, with brown mottled skin and a face like a that of a coelurosaurian
dinosaur but the shape of a modern man.

Andrew Gray