[lazide]

Dinosaur literally means ‘terrible lizard’. It was originally coined as a description for the large, extinct, giant lizards. T-Rex, etc.

That it has later come to encompass things like seagulls is more a bait and switch on the public, than the public being idiots.

You might as well beat up on someone for calling Pluto a planet. Oh wait, it technically is again? My bad. Oh wait, it’s technically a dwarf planet. My mistake again!

Clearly, I’m the one who is an idiot, and it has nothing to do with experts causing confusion because it gets them headlines/justifies their existence and makes them feel superior to everyone else.

[madmountaingoat]

Bait and switch? Idiots? We are just saying we expect more from science communicators. Adding "non-avian" before the word "dinosaurs" wouldn't have made the article inaccessible to folks who haven't internalized the whole notion of clades.

[adolph]

Do penguins and cassowary count as "non-avian dinosaurs?" The videos of cassowary definitely give me Jurassic Park vibes.

In any case, many people are aware birds are not extinct. As a result, a claim of a "mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs" would implicitly not include "avian dinosaurs." Adding the "non-avian" qualifier does not assist in describing the particular global change to which the article refers.

[madmountaingoat]

It would however help to not perpetuate the misconceptions that all dinosaurs were killed at the end of the Cretaceous.

[lazide]

Would it? Because all the Terrible Lizards (or what anyone could reasonably call something one) DID go extinct then. [https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/when-did-dinosaurs-become-extinct].

Honestly, I think it’s just paleontologists sticking to the Dinosaur name because it gets them funding. ‘Doing a dig for dinosaur bones’, or being a ‘Dinosaur specialist’ is a lot more sellable than ‘expert in late Cretaceous avian precursors’, or digging for ‘bird precursor fossils’.

Which is what non ‘terrible lizard’ dinosaur studies are about.

Egyptology has a similar problem. Everyone wants to be known as someone who studies the pyramids, because being the dude that digs in the middens near a random Mastaba for a pharaoah nobody ever heard in the middle of desert that no tourist will ever want to visit is a lot harder to sell, even if it is better actual archeology.

[lazide]

Funny you skipped over all my actual examples, eh? How are seagulls ‘terrible lizards’?

Isn’t the public perception the actually more honest one?

[madmountaingoat]

Back in the 1800s when the name Dinosaur was coined no one suspected their connection to birds. The point has never been that the word, in most peoples minds, doesn't conjures up pictures of t-rex and triceratops. There's no argument there. The point is that someone writing an article for Ars should have not have perpetuated the common misconception that they all went extinct.

[lazide]

All the ‘terrible lizards’ DID go extinct.

[madmountaingoat]

Not the clade of 'terrible lizards'. Paleontology accepts the cladistic view and so should a popular science article.

[lazide]

The clade has been expanded well beyond its literal, historic, or popular understanding.

Which is why the popular science article is confused, because the articles point is actually more correct from a popular point of view, while being at odds with the technical (but weird) newer definition.

Because the ‘terrible lizards’ DID go extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, and what ended up evolving from their not really terrible, and not really land bound brethren at the time, while still with us, weren’t generally what any reasonable person would call a Terrible Lizard.

The taxonomy argument is a technical one that for the most part only interests people whose sole job is arguing about taxonomy. Which is a thing, but c’mon.

Which is why stuff like this exists and isn’t really wrong. [https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/when-did-dinosaurs-become-extinct]. Because 99.99% of people looking for Dinosaur Bones are going to be really really confused if you hand them some chicken drumsticks. Even if technically it is correct.