Re: Most popular/common dinosaur misconceptions

[mike@miketaylor.org.uk (Mike Taylor)]

Jura writes:
 > Regarding the whole "birds are dinosaurs" argument
 > that comes and goes on the list, both HP Tim Williams
 > and HP Jaime Headen gave mention that calling birds
 > dinosaurs is equivalent to calling bats
 > [...]
 > I feel it is a false comparison.
 > Calling a bird a dinosaur is a completely different
 > thing from calling a bat a mammal. It is more akin to
 > calling a mammal a therapsid, or a snake a lizard.
 > It's attempting to lump two large and diverse groups
 > (both of which were originally named based on
 > morphological criteria) into one, strictly for the
 > sake of monophyly.

You've got me interested.  How exactly do you feel that the
bats-are-mammals case is different from the birds-are-dinosaurs case?
Judging purely by appearances, it seems to me that bats differ from
"typical mammals" about as much as birds do from "typical dinosaurs";
is it is this assertion that you disagree with, or are you arguing
that birds should be kept separate from dinosaurs (and bats kept as
mammals) purely because of the historical precedent?

To put it another way, if bats when first recognised had been
considered a separate class from mammals, would you now be arguing for
them to be kept separate or moved inside?  And if non-avian dinosaurs
were alive now and birds had originally been described as dinosaurs,
would you be arguing for them to be removed from that group?

 _/|_    ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor  <mike@miketaylor.org.uk>  http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "The notion of a ``record'' is an obsolete remnant of the days
         of the 80-column card" -- Dennis M. Ritchie.