Re: Bird/Dino Definitions

[Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu>]

Quoting Philidor <philidor11@snet.net>:

> The struggles with terminology in trying to include dinosaurian ancestry
> when referring to birds are apparent.  The categories being used include
> - dinosaurs
> - dinosaurs with bird features (dino-birds, as I read others' comments)
> - birds with dino features (bird-dinos, if you like)
> - birds

Since English compounds are almost exclusively right-headed (a whalebird, for 
example, is a kind of bird, not a kind of whale), I think it will be less 
confusing if we switch the definitions of "dino-bird" and "bird-dino".

Nick Pharris
Department of Linguistics
University of Michigan