Re: Dinosaur Genera List update #192

[Ronald Orenstein <ornstn@rogers.com>]

At 11:41 PM 07/09/02 +1000, John Conway wrote:
> My point was that whether birds are dinosaurs can be a question of 
> classification, as much as phylogeny. Classification isn't science, 
> because it can neither be verified or falsified (but that does not 
> necessarily make it a pseudoscience either).

Well, not really.  If you accept that birds are part of the dinosaur clade 
then birds are dinosaurs, in the same way that we are primates, placentals, 
mammals, synapsids, tetrapods, sauropterygian fishes, chordates and animals 
(to cover just some of the nested ranks).  "Bird" is a perfectly valid term 
even in the cladistic sense.  "Dinosaurian bird" is useless because all 
birds are dinosaurs.  "Non-dinosaurian bird" is meaningless for the same 
reason.  "Non-avian therapod" is useful because there are therapods that 
are not birds and therapods that are.  But for the modern maniraptorian 
descendants, "bird", without any qualifier, does the trick quite nicely.


--

Ronald I. Orenstein                           Phone: (905) 820-7886
International Wildlife Coalition              Fax/Modem: (905) 569-0116
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