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NewTime
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07 Dec 2017, 5:49 pm

The word "dinosaur" is commonly used colloquially to refer to any prehistoric reptile including those that aren't taxonomically classified as dinosauria such as pterosaurs. Pterosaurs are often considered colloquially to be a type of a dinosaur.



naturalplastic
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08 Dec 2017, 1:38 am

That is true. Folks tend to lump pteradactyls and plesiosaurs in with dinosaurs even though neither the flying, nor the swimming contemporaries of the dinosaurs were technically "dinosaurs".



Last edited by naturalplastic on 08 Dec 2017, 1:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

Darmok
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08 Dec 2017, 1:41 am

And do you know who coined the word dinosaur?


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naturalplastic
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08 Dec 2017, 1:42 am

That is so. In fact those little bags of "toy plastic dinosaurs" weve all played with include this animal which actually predated the dinosaurs, and is actually a closer kin to humans than it is to the dinosaurs.

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Kiprobalhato
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08 Dec 2017, 2:39 am

Darmok wrote:
And do you know who coined the word dinosaur?


Ah yes, Sir Rupert M. Dinosaur, OBE. (1879-1955)

fine chap, very influential in the fields of taxonomy and paleontology. a bit egotistical to name the whole clade after himself though.


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naturalplastic
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08 Dec 2017, 10:52 am

He was the granddaddy of the pop singer, TV star, and one time gf of Burt Reynolds, Dinah Saur!



NewTime
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08 Dec 2017, 5:51 pm

Now for the person who actually coined the word. It was Sir Richard Owen (July 20, 1804 – December 18, 1892).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Owen



Darmok
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08 Dec 2017, 7:15 pm

NewTime wrote:
Now for the person who actually coined the word. It was Sir Richard Owen (July 20, 1804 – December 18, 1892).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Owen

Exactly right. And with that bit of historical trivia in our heads, we can now understand a cultural reference in Moby-Dick that 99% of readers miss:

But by far the most wonderful of all cetacean relics was the almost complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year 1842, on the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken credulous slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the fallen angels. The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile, and bestowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But some specimen bones of it being taken across the sea to Owen, the English anatomist, it turned out that this alleged reptile was a whale, though of a departed species. A significant illustration of the fact, again and again repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but little clue to the shape of his fully invested body. So Owen rechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and in his paper read before the London Geological Society, pronounced it, in substance, one of the most extraordinary creatures which the mutations of the globe have blotted out of existence.


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The Musings Of The Lost
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10 Jan 2018, 5:19 am

Modern birds are dinosaurs


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10 Jan 2018, 8:27 am

Darmok wrote:
And do you know who coined the word dinosaur?

Richard Owen


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10 Jan 2018, 8:33 am

To be honest, I'm starting to dislike the word "dinosaur" because of how obviously archaic it is.

The word dinosaur means "terrible lizard".

In the last hundred years, we have discovered that dinosaurs were not lizards and they were not all terrible. The closest living relatives of dinosaurs are birds. Additionally, the smallest dinosaurs were smaller than humans, so not all of them were supergiant.

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^^^
Dinosaur? Yes. Terrible lizard? No and no.


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10 Jan 2018, 8:44 am

NewTime wrote:
The word "dinosaur" is commonly used colloquially to refer to any prehistoric reptile including those that aren't taxonomically classified as dinosauria such as pterosaurs. Pterosaurs are often considered colloquially to be a type of a dinosaur.


I also dislike it when people describe pterosaurs as "flying dinosaurs" and describe plesiosaurs as "water dinosaurs".

In reality, the real flying dinosaurs are birds, which means that the real water dinosaurs are ducks.


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10 Jan 2018, 9:45 am

I find it amusing how birds developed from saurischian- lizard hipped- dinosaurs rather than ornithischian- bird hipped- dinosaurs.


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naturalplastic
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10 Jan 2018, 10:08 am

The Musings Of The Lost wrote:
I find it amusing how birds developed from saurischian- lizard hipped- dinosaurs rather than ornithischian- bird hipped- dinosaurs.


I have noticed that irony as well.

Older books (like the Time-Life nature series our family had) divide the dinosaurs into two large groups: the ornihischian (bird hipped) and the saurisuchian (lizard hipped). But it was the lizard hipped dinos that gave rise to the birds, and not the bird-hipped ones. Go figure.



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10 Jan 2018, 10:22 am

naturalplastic wrote:
The Musings Of The Lost wrote:
I find it amusing how birds developed from saurischian- lizard hipped- dinosaurs rather than ornithischian- bird hipped- dinosaurs.


I have noticed that irony as well.

Older books (like the Time-Life nature series our family had) divide the dinosaurs into two large groups: the ornihischian (bird hipped) and the saurisuchian (lizard hipped). But it was the lizard hipped dinos that gave rise to the birds, and not the bird-hipped ones. Go figure.


It isn't that unbelievable if you look at evolution as a whole.

Evolution sometimes makes shocking swerves. For example, cetaceans are mammals and pandas are bears that don't eat meat.


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10 Jan 2018, 10:27 am

DarthMetaKnight wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
The Musings Of The Lost wrote:
I find it amusing how birds developed from saurischian- lizard hipped- dinosaurs rather than ornithischian- bird hipped- dinosaurs.


I have noticed that irony as well.

Older books (like the Time-Life nature series our family had) divide the dinosaurs into two large groups: the ornihischian (bird hipped) and the saurisuchian (lizard hipped). But it was the lizard hipped dinos that gave rise to the birds, and not the bird-hipped ones. Go figure.


It isn't that unbelievable if you look at evolution as a whole.

Evolution sometimes makes shocking swerves. For example, cetaceans are mammals and pandas are bears that don't eat meat.

Yes, but its just a funny little thing


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