Re: Crocs and such(io)

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> It's interesting that tooth and jaw characteristics hold less weight (no
> pun) than leg posture when determining the criteria for dinosauria.

Crocs _retain_ some tooth & jaw characteristics that have also been retained
by many toothed dinosaurs. But retained ( = plesiomorphic) characters must
be ignored. Your five-fingered hands don't mean you're closer to opossums
than to the one-fingered horses. The leg posture of dinosaurs, however, is
something new ( = apomorphic), like the placental mode of reproduction that
links us with horses to the exclusion of opossums which _retain_ a short
gestation.

The basis for modern taxonomy is evolution. :-)