Lay people have a point that the current system of classification is a pain for nonprofessionals. For example when a cumulus cloud evolves into a cumulonimbus it is no longer a cumulus cloud. When a person grows up they are not longer a kid. Why are mammals still therapsids when they are obviously so different. And why are what used to be called therapsids now the clunky nonmammalian therapsids. Talk about exactly the kind of run away technojargon that is well known the drive nonscientists away from science. Likewise why are iguanodonts not that rather than nonhadrosaurid hadrosauroids. Or the good old prosauropods now the dull and boring tongue twister nonsauropod sauropodomorphs which pretty much slaps lay folks in their face, while forcing people to get used to a new and confusing scheme when the older system would work fine if rigorously defined (such as prosauropods being sauropodomophs exclusive of sauropods). In my field guides I have had to deal with the problem of the lay unfriendly modern systematics and avoided it when practical.
I have found that this works. When people ask me about birds being dinosaurs I point out that bats are flying mammals, right? After they nod yes I say birds are flying dinosaurs and suddenly their eyes light up. I may go on to explain more of the details at least until they start getting that glazed eye look, or worse their heads go clunk on the table.
Not good at all is how some now want paleozoologist me who is in the real know to tell them the actual dope about how aliens of course killed off the dinosaurs to pave the way for humanity. Thanks Discovery Communications and A&E.
-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas Johansson <andreasj@gmail.com>
To: dinosaur-l@usc.edu <dinosaur-l@usc.edu>
Sent: Mon, Apr 12, 2021 12:50 pm
Subject: Re: [dinosaur] Why birds are living dinosaurs
An interesting reaction Iâve encountered when trying to explain phylogenetic classification is denial that biologists are entitled to change the principles of classification.
On Mon, 12 Apr 2021 at 14:17, Thomas Richard Holtz <
tholtz@umd.edu> wrote:
Because in modern biological classification you don't stop being a member of a group just because you start to be something new as well. In modern classification all groups are clades (monophyletic groups: an ancestor and all of its descendants, no matter how transformed).
Aves didn't stop being part of Dinosauria when they became birds as well. Chiroptera didn't stop being part of Mammalia when they became bats as well. Tetrapoda didn't stop being part of Osteichthyes when they became tetrapods as well.
And people say ignorant things because they are literally ignorant: they don't know that classification has changed, and so operate under an old typological-based thinking rather than genealogical-based thinking.
Good day!
If you were to answer this question, how would you put it? Because birds evolved directly from the dinosaurian ancestors? Because they still carry the dinosaur genetic heritage? Because they are in fact a specialised group of living maniraptoran theropods? I've heard some people say ignorant things like "birds can not be dinosaurs, because they are so different, mostly very small and there is no way that such an agile warmblooded insulated animal could be a descendant of something like T. rex".
Thank you for your thoughts! Tom
--
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
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Andreas Johansson