Re: KT boundry event


Augray wrote:


On what basis do you claim that they've evolved too much to be called
dinosaurs?. I'm hard pressed to think of *any* trait possessed by
living birds that wasn't present in some bird living in the
Cretaceous.

That does not make them dinosaurs. Dinos are extinct.



To call birds 'dinosaurs' makes no more sense than calling them fish.
Birds used to be fish, but are no longer fish.

What do you base this claim on? You keep repeating it, but give no
evidence to back it up.

For one, birds' respiratory system is unique. It is not shared by any
other group.

Absolutely false. Theropod dinosaurs in all likelihood had a
respiratory system very similar to that of living birds. See:

O'Connor, P. M., & L. P. A. M. Claessens. 2005. Basic avian
pulmonary design and flow-through ventilation in non-avian
theropod dinosaurs. Nature 436:253-256.

The book referenced below states that bird respiratory system differes
from all other groups.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312310080/sr=1-1/qid=1145453804/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1737020-1779102?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=books


The use of language is somewhat arbitrary. 'Fish' as it is now used, is
applied to a certain class of water-dwelling creatures with gills,
though not to all water-dwelling creatures with gills, nor to all
water-dwelling creatures (though it was in the past applied to
water-dwelling creatures with lungs).

Some salamanders have gills and are water-dwelling, but are not classed
as fish.

Birds as a group are sufficiently different from dinosaurs as a group
to merit separate nomenclature, which is a fait accompli.

You've given a single trait which is incorrect. At what point to you
believe this trait supposedly evolved?

'Modern birds' are not 'dinosaurs'. They belong to the group
dinosauria, but that Latin name is not synonymous with the common name
'dinosaurs'.

It is silly and pointless to reduce the number of distinctions.

It's not a case of reducing the number of distinctions, it's pointing
out that "birds are not dinosaurs" is an arbitrary distinction.

It's not any more arbitrary than the modern meaning of 'fish'. In the
past, 'fish'. could mean any water-dwelling creature.

Birds
are NOT dinosaurs; they are birds. Dinos are all extinct.

Birds are *indeed* dinosaurs, just as primates are mammals.

'Dinsosaurs' are all extinct. 'Birds' (i'e., modern birds) are
descended from a larger class of ancient birds, most of which died out
in the Cretaceous. All modern birds, even flightless ones, are desended
from flying Cretaceous birds. Birds originated among the earliest
dinosaurs, all of which were bipedal.

.

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