Re: Rahonavis....Both!

[L Nyveen <lawrence@dsuper.net>]

At 1:31 -0500 24/2/99, Dinogeorge@aol.com wrote:

><< Personally, I reserve the word
> "bird" for avians, but some extend it to all avialans. "Bird" IS a
> vernacular term, after all. >>
>
>There are several interesting advantages to defining birds as "all archosaurs
>closer to extant birds than to crocodilians (and maybe turtles, for that
>matter)." For one thing, it stifles the debate on whether and which dinosaurs
>are birds and vice versa. >All< dinosaurs become birds according to this
>definition. Then all you need to debate are such questions as, "Which
>dinosaurs are not also >avialan< birds?"

Say what?  All this does is retain the same question using different terms.
Seeing as how it really screws around with the common term "bird", I don't
see any advantage to this definition at all.


Laurie Nyveen                                  lawrence@dsuper.net
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