James's theory on dinosaurs

Do you understand how cladistics and phylogeny work?

Do those concepts arbitrarily predict equivalence in high-level behaviors, such as boat-building, between dinosaurs and birds?

Alright, birds are dinosaurs. This should also be brought to attention, "From the point of view of cladistics, birds are dinosaurs, but in ordinary speech the word "dinosaur" does not include birds. Additionally, referring to dinosaurs that are not birds as "non-avian dinosaurs" is cumbersome."

Alright, birds are dinosaurs.

Glad you agree.

Quote from: sillyrob on March 17, 2011, 04:47:37 PM

Alright, birds are dinosaurs.

Glad you agree.

With that being said, it is not incorrect to refer to non-avian dinosaurs as dinosaurs, and to refer to birds and dinosaurs separately.

Just like with squares and rectangles. I thought that was implied.

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 04:50:34 PM

Quote from: sillyrob on March 17, 2011, 04:47:37 PM

Alright, birds are dinosaurs.

Glad you agree.

With that being said, it is not incorrect to refer to non-avian dinosaurs as dinosaurs, and to refer to birds and dinosaurs separately.

The first part yes. The bolded part no, the distiction has to be made of avian vs non-avian.

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 03:26:52 PM

Do you understand how cladistics and phylogeny work?

Do those concepts arbitrarily predict equivalence in high-level behaviors, such as boat-building, between dinosaurs and birds?

It's a yes or no question, Ichi.

At any rate, I'm glad it's established that birds are a subset of dinosaurs, like squares and rectangles, excellent comparison.

So I gather that essentially the idea is: "Squares have four sides of equal length, therefore [?] rectangles have four sides of equal length."

Now, it seems like the [?] changes depending on whom you ask, but it's apparently either "it's possible that" or "it's not unreasonable to suppose that" or "".

My answer is yes, birds are dinosaurs.

Quote from: sillyrob on March 17, 2011, 04:57:59 PM

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 04:50:34 PM

Quote from: sillyrob on March 17, 2011, 04:47:37 PM

Alright, birds are dinosaurs.

Glad you agree.

With that being said, it is not incorrect to refer to non-avian dinosaurs as dinosaurs, and to refer to birds and dinosaurs separately.

The first part yes. The bolded part no, the distiction has to be made of avian vs non-avian.

Seeing as how one of the definitions of dinosaur is, "any chiefly terrestrial, herbivorous or carnivorous reptile of the extinct orders Saurischia and Ornithischia, from the Mesozoic Era, certain species of which are the largest known land animals," I don't see how referring to them separately is wrong. You're talking about from a classification aspect, but saying dinosaur and bird in conversation and debate is not incorrect.

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 05:15:16 PM

Quote from: sillyrob on March 17, 2011, 04:57:59 PM

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 04:50:34 PM

Quote from: sillyrob on March 17, 2011, 04:47:37 PM

Alright, birds are dinosaurs.

Glad you agree.

With that being said, it is not incorrect to refer to non-avian dinosaurs as dinosaurs, and to refer to birds and dinosaurs separately.

The first part yes. The bolded part no, the distiction has to be made of avian vs non-avian.

Seeing as how one of the definitions of dinosaur is, "any chiefly terrestrial, herbivorous or carnivorous reptile of the extinct orders Saurischia and Ornithischia, from the Mesozoic Era, certain species of which are the largest known land animals," I don't see how referring to them separately is wrong. You're talking about from a classification aspect, but saying dinosaur and bird in conversation and debate is not incorrect.

Yes it is.

Quote from: Around And About on March 17, 2011, 04:25:47 PM

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 03:26:52 PM

Do you understand how cladistics and phylogeny work?

Do those concepts arbitrarily predict equivalence in high-level behaviors, such as boat-building, between dinosaurs and birds?

It's a yes or no question, Ichi.

At any rate, I'm glad it's established that birds are a subset of dinosaurs, like squares and rectangles, excellent comparison.

So I gather that essentially the idea is: "Squares have four sides of equal length, therefore [?] rectangles have four sides of equal length."

Now, it seems like the [?] changes depending on whom you ask, but it's apparently either "it's possible that" or "it's not unreasonable to suppose that" or "".

There is a wide consensus among paleontologists that birds are the descendants of theropod dinosaurs. Using the strict cladistical definition that all descendants of a single common ancestor must be included in a group for that group to be natural, birds would thus be dinosaurs and dinosaurs are, therefore, not extinct. Birds are classified by most paleontologists as belonging to the subgroup Maniraptora, which are coelurosaurs, which are theropods, which are saurischians, which are dinosaurs.

Quote from: sillyrob on March 17, 2011, 05:28:59 PM

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 05:15:16 PM

Quote from: sillyrob on March 17, 2011, 04:57:59 PM

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 04:50:34 PM

Quote from: sillyrob on March 17, 2011, 04:47:37 PM

Alright, birds are dinosaurs.

Glad you agree.

With that being said, it is not incorrect to refer to non-avian dinosaurs as dinosaurs, and to refer to birds and dinosaurs separately.

The first part yes. The bolded part no, the distiction has to be made of avian vs non-avian.

Seeing as how one of the definitions of dinosaur is, "any chiefly terrestrial, herbivorous or carnivorous reptile of the extinct orders Saurischia and Ornithischia, from the Mesozoic Era, certain species of which are the largest known land animals," I don't see how referring to them separately is wrong. You're talking about from a classification aspect, but saying dinosaur and bird in conversation and debate is not incorrect.

Yes it is.

"From the point of view of cladistics, birds are dinosaurs, but in ordinary speech the word "dinosaur" does not include birds. Additionally, referring to dinosaurs that are not birds as "non-avian dinosaurs" is cumbersome."

Do I have to post it again? Read the bolded part.

So in ordinary speech I shall refer to rectangles as squares?
The distinction has to be made in order to be correct.

So in ordinary speech I shall refer to rectangles as squares?
The distinction has to be made in order to be correct.

That would be stupid because a square is a rectangle with four equal sides.

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 05:33:31 PM

So in ordinary speech I shall refer to rectangles as squares?
The distinction has to be made in order to be correct.

That would be stupid because a square is a rectangle with four equal sides.

What about calling squares rectangles?

Quote from: sillyrob on March 17, 2011, 05:36:41 PM

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 05:33:31 PM

So in ordinary speech I shall refer to rectangles as squares?
The distinction has to be made in order to be correct.

That would be stupid because a square is a rectangle with four equal sides.

What about calling squares rectangles?

The point you're trying to make is we either always speak scientifically or always speak commonly. I get it. Referring to avian dinosaurs as birds and non-avian dinosaurs as dinosaurs makes things easier. Every time it is brought up that birds are dinosaurs, it causes arguments and derailment. Seeing as how typing out avian and non-avian is just a waste of time and rather annoying, why cant there just be an agreement that there are birds and there are dinosaurs?

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 05:39:34 PM

Quote from: sillyrob on March 17, 2011, 05:36:41 PM

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 05:33:31 PM

So in ordinary speech I shall refer to rectangles as squares?
The distinction has to be made in order to be correct.

That would be stupid because a square is a rectangle with four equal sides.

What about calling squares rectangles?

The point you're trying to make is we either always speak scientifically or always speak commonly. I get it. Referring to avian dinosaurs as birds and non-avian dinosaurs as dinosaurs makes things easier. Every time it is brought up that birds are dinosaurs, it causes arguments and derailment. Seeing as how typing out avian and non-avian is just a waste of time and rather annoying, why cant there just be an agreement that there are birds and there are dinosaurs?

Because birds are dinosaurs! That's a big part of the debate. Surely if I claimed something about all rectangles, I would have to take squares into consideration. Not doing so wouldn't make any sense now would it Simmias

Quote from: sillyrob on March 17, 2011, 05:48:33 PM

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 05:39:34 PM

Quote from: sillyrob on March 17, 2011, 05:36:41 PM

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 05:33:31 PM

So in ordinary speech I shall refer to rectangles as squares?
The distinction has to be made in order to be correct.

That would be stupid because a square is a rectangle with four equal sides.

What about calling squares rectangles?

The point you're trying to make is we either always speak scientifically or always speak commonly. I get it. Referring to avian dinosaurs as birds and non-avian dinosaurs as dinosaurs makes things easier. Every time it is brought up that birds are dinosaurs, it causes arguments and derailment. Seeing as how typing out avian and non-avian is just a waste of time and rather annoying, why cant there just be an agreement that there are birds and there are dinosaurs?

Because birds are dinosaurs! That's a big part of the debate. Surely if I claimed something about all rectangles, I would have to take squares into consideration. Not doing so wouldn't make any sense now would it Simmias

You're impossible. I understand that. I'm not arguing that fact with you anymore. I'm saying for the sake of making things easier, why cant birds mean flying feathered creatures and dinosaurs mean giant reptile creatures that died out 65 million years ago? You're just being difficult to be difficult now.

Because pterosaurs could fly but are not dinosaurs.
Birds are dinosaurs.

Surely we wouldn't want to invoke irrelevant organisms would we Cebes?

Because pterosaurs could fly but are not dinosaurs.
Birds are dinosaurs.

Surely we wouldn't want to invoke irrelevant organisms would we Cebes?

Surely we wouldn't want to purposely overlook words like feathered would we?

Quote from: Ichimaru Gin :] on March 17, 2011, 05:54:44 PM

Because pterosaurs could fly but are not dinosaurs.
Birds are dinosaurs.

Surely we wouldn't want to invoke irrelevant organisms would we Cebes?

Surely we wouldn't want to purposely overlook words like feathered would we?

>Implying no pterosaurs had feathers and that all birds have feathers.

Anyway, my point is that this theory takes an evolutionary subset and arbitrarily applies a specific behavior to the entire ancestral set. Can any other proponent of this theory apart from Ichi the Broken Record (i.e. someone with solid reading comprehension skills) justify this?

Anyway, my point is that this theory takes an evolutionary subset and arbitrarily applies a specific behavior to the entire ancestral set. Can any other proponent of this theory apart from Ichi the Broken Record (i.e. someone with solid reading comprehension skills) justify this?

Birds are dinosaurs.

Anyway, my point is that this theory takes an evolutionary subset and arbitrarily applies a specific behavior to the entire ancestral set. Can any other proponent of this theory apart from Ichi the Broken Record (i.e. someone with solid reading comprehension skills) justify this?

I suppose extant phylogeny can answer some of those questions for us.

Why do birds need boats if they can fly?

Quote from: Around And About on March 17, 2011, 06:03:47 PM

Anyway, my point is that this theory takes an evolutionary subset and arbitrarily applies a specific behavior to the entire ancestral set. Can any other proponent of this theory apart from Ichi the Broken Record (i.e. someone with solid reading comprehension skills) justify this?

I suppose extant phylogeny can answer some of those questions for us.

It should also be brought to attention that birds did not evolve from all dinosaurs. For all of this to be even a possibility, the non-avian dinosaurs that may have used tools would have to be theropods, since that is the sub-order that avian dinosaurs evolved from. We're narrowing shit down now. What we need to do is find out what non-avian dinosaurs might have built boats, based on fossil records, and find out if they are theropods. If they are not, we'll have to explore a new route.

How about ornithopods?

"They reached their apex in the duck-bills, before they were wiped out by the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event along with all other non-avian dinosaurs. Members are known from all seven continents, although the Antarctic remains are unnamed, and they are generally rare in the Southern Hemisphere."

Oh, and this clarifies something about their Order:

"They are known as the 'bird-hipped' dinosaurs because of their bird-like hip structure, even though birds actually descended from the 'lizard-hipped' dinosaurs (the saurischians)." -Wikipedia

Why do birds need boats if they can fly?

Because their wings get tired, and they can hardly stop to rest when they're over water.

How about ornithopods?

"They reached their apex in the duck-bills, before they were wiped out by the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event along with all other non-avian dinosaurs. Members are known from all seven continents, although the Antarctic remains are unnamed, and they are generally rare in the Southern Hemisphere."

Oh, and this clarifies something about their Order:

"They are known as the 'bird-hipped' dinosaurs because of their bird-like hip structure, even though birds actually descended from the 'lizard-hipped' dinosaurs (the saurischians)." -Wikipedia

Interesting, however that order seemed to have either died out, or evolved into an animal that we haven't yet found the connection to. We must concentrate on theropods only.

By the way, why did the birds cross the ocean?

To get to the other tide. 



Anyway, my point is...how did non-therapod dinosaurs get on all of the continents?