this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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If you’re confused: Birds are dinosaurs, crocodiles aren’t; note the “closest living relatives”

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Though, isn't being part of a group the closest you can get in terms of relatedness?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Am I my closest relative?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I actually just learned this recently, but dinosaurs differ from reptiles in that dinosaurs have legs that are under their bodies whereas reptiles have legs that splay out to the side. So all mammals, and birds, with legs directly under their bodies are probably more closely related to dinosaurs then reptiles.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

No. Tetrapods and reptiles diverge well before dinosaurs. All dinosaurs are diapsids as compared to mammals, which are synapsids. A dimetrodon (the one with the big sail) is not actually a dino and is more closely related to humans than it is to dinos.

To expand on this concept, all dinosaurs and humans are technically considered bony-fishes as they are nested within the bony-fishes clade, osteoicthyes, but thats probably spelled wrong (this recently was used as a way of protecting some types of animals in a law that is supposed to protect fish as a category), and all birds are technically dinos, so when we refer to non-avian dinos, it just means dinosaurs excluding the birds!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

"Brother, am I not your relative?"

silently dies

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but huh?

Clearly I missed a briefing somewhere. I thought that crocodiles were from that era, or is that the joke that I'm somehow missing?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is dumb as rocks

The most charitable interpretation is “well crocodiles didn’t change in the last 100 million years but birds did so that means maybe crocs are closer since birds evolved to get farther away”

That’s dumb because both birds and crocodiles have been changing the whole time. Just because crocs look more similar to their fossils, doesn’t mean they haven’t been evolving/drifting/etc.

Same thing any time someone talks about “sharks haven’t changed”. It’s dumb.

This is some dunning Kruger shit.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago

It has nothing to do with if the said animal were evolving or not. Birds and Crocodilians are the only living animals of the Archosauria clade. Since birds are dinosaurs, technically they aren't their relatives. So Crocs are the closest living relatives of dinosaurs (and birds), since they belong in the same clade and shared a common ancestor more recent than anyone else alive.