this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
17 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

If you’re confused: Birds are dinosaurs, crocodiles aren’t; note the “closest living relatives”

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's like being related to your family. Most people would consider your relatives to be related to you.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Are octopus related to octopus? I mean technically they’re 100% related, but also they aren’t related as related implies not being. Depends on your interpretation.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Are you saying octopus are all incest babies? Scandalous.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Ah sorry, the genome of octopus’ mating is only 99.99 something % similar. Not 100%. Rounding reflex.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Am I my closest relative?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 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 3 months ago* (last edited 3 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] 6 points 3 months ago

"Brother, am I not your relative?"

silently dies

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 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] 28 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The joke is that birds aren't only related to dinos, but are dinos themselves.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes and the cruel part is... Pterosaurs are not Dinosaurs!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

It might be easy to brush off my complaint as a case of paleo-pedantry, but word choice matters. "Dinosaur" is a word for a specific group of creatures united by shared characteristics and which had their own evolutionary history—it is not a catch-all term for anything reptilian and prehistoric.

We have known about this distinction for a long time, and I bet that your average 10-year old paleo fan would know not confuse the groups.

https://xkcd.com/2501/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So, it's a joke about the fact that both are essentially dinosaurs?

.. nope, I got nothing ..

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

Here's my take:

Low IQ: crosc looks like dinos so they are the cloests living relative to dinos. Mid IQ: birds are direct descendents of dinos so they are the closest living relatives to dinos. High IQ: since birds are direct descendent they are just dinos, not a relative. Which makes crocs the next closest living relative to dinos/birds.