• BussyGyatt@feddit.orgOP
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      5 days ago

      didnt i read that birds are a direct lineage offspring of dinosaurs? i think that one is actually not made up. hm, wait. does it count as extinct if you produce offspring that survive but they arent your species anymore? or is that just dead.

      • Insekticus@aussie.zone
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        5 days ago

        Na, dinosaurs still exist today as birds. Hence why palaeontologists refer to the prehistoric dinosaurs as “non-extant dinosaurs” so as to exclude the Aves clade.

      • Deconceptualist@leminal.space
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        5 days ago

        Yeah actual answer is that only the non-avian dinosaurs died out (along with many other creatures, including some that folks mistake for dinos like pterodactyls and plesiosaurs).

        But birds are obviously still around today and they are true dinosaurs according to most biologists/zoologists/geneticists/etc.

        ‘Species’ is an astonishingly hard thing to define though so I’m not gonna touch that one.