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I do sometimes wonder if the term "non-avian dinosaur", or using 'theropod', 'dinosaur', 'saurischian', etc. to refer to both crown Aves and stem Aves (sensu lato) cause more confusion than they try to negate. I definitely find it useful to separate the traditional
dinosaurs from the birds, but the boundary between them is so fuzzy.
Someone who's actually published works about the end-K extinction, please correct me if this is incorrect, but I believe that the reason professionals refer to it as the "dinosaur extinction" has more to do with justifying the importance of their research to
non-paleontologists (inside and outside academia) than anything else. Is discussing why ammonites or rudists went extinct as exciting is speculation about T.rex's demise?
Certainly, the marine faunal turnover is as important as the terrestrial one - if ammonites persisted and continued diversifying to the present day, I doubt that teleost fish would be as massively dominant in the oceans as they are now (freshwater is a different
story)
Thomas Yazbeck
From: dinosaur-l-request@mymaillists.usc.edu <dinosaur-l-request@mymaillists.usc.edu> on behalf of dawidmazurek@wp.pl <dawidmazurek@wp.pl>
Sent: Monday, April 12, 2021 3:49 PM To: Paul P <turtlecroc@yahoo.com>; dinosaur-l@usc.edu <dinosaur-l@usc.edu>; tholtz@umd.edu <tholtz@umd.edu>; Poekilopleuron <dinosaurtom2015@seznam.cz> Subject: Odp: [dinosaur] Why birds are living dinosaurs I see two problems here (excluding the general confusion of lay persons):
1) paraphylethic groups are actually useful. The presence of a "non-avian dinosaur" term is an evidence;
2) professionals refer to K-Pg event as an extinction of dinosaurs.
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