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Re: Combined answer: smallest ANCIENT non-bird dinosaur - was what I was asking



Indeed, almost as if later workers made poor extrapolations becaues
they assumed that Ichthyornis and Hesperornis were "birds"...

Marsh wasn't so fooled. He recognized _Ichthyornis_, _Hesperornis_ and _Archaeopteryx_ as birds, and put them outside the crown-group.

Yes, and some later workers really thought they were inside the crown-group. It was a disagreement about phylogeny, not about nomenclature.


As a general statement, I think you're overstating just how many unjustified suppositions are made about a fossil taxon simply because it's labelled a "bird". We know that _Archaeopteryx_ (in particular) has become the subject of a "steaming pile of anti-scientific tripe"; but such tripe will always emerge when someone has an agenda to push. Any tweaking of nomenclature (such as restricting the name Aves to the crown-group) will not make a jot of difference.

It might, but just insofar as it could lead to the replacement of one such pile by another!


I apologize in advance, because this is probably OT, but the original derivation of Pluto (to the Romans) and Ploutus (to the Greeks, better known as Hades) was 'ploutos' (Gk =wealth), and alludes to the mineral riches that lay deep within the earth. Classical writers pictured Pluto/Hades almost literally sitting on a pile of gems and valuable metals. This older meaning ('wealth') is preserved in the word 'plutocrat', whereas 'plutonic' references the underworld deity Pluto.

So Pluto and Plutus are etymologically related after all?

Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised. After all, black, blank, blue, blond, German Blei "lead", and apparently German blöd "dumb" are all related... "black is white", as the linguists say...