Re: Ave Maria

[John Conway <john@pterus.net>]

On Monday, September 8, 2003, at 01:12  PM, zone65@bigpond.com wrote:

> This does make me wonder why the term Aves is still even used by 
> paleontologists... for that matter, why is 'bird' still used if 
> they're dinosaurs? Where is the distinction, and why? Is 'bird' now 
> just an informal term for feathery dinosaur? I imagine that birds 
> cannot be an 'order' of Dinosauria if such rankings have been 
> abandoned. Have zoologists also relinquished taxonomy ranks? Excuse my 
> ignorance, I ask on behalf of the befuddled masses....

Birds (interchangeable with the word Aves by most peoples usage) is a 
subset of the Dinosauria. Just as the set "spoons" are a subset of 
"cutlery". It doesn't stop the group from being any more real (which 
birds are).

Mike Taylor gave the semi-formal definition of aves:

>  The standard definiton of Aves is {_Archaeopteryx_ + Neornithes},

Which means _Archaeopteryx_ and  Neornithes and all the all the 
descendants of most recent common ancestor (which is a clade).

Hope this makes it a little clearer,


John Conway

"Science... never solves a problem without creating ten more." - George 
Bernard Shaw

http://users.tpg.com.au/adslkgts/