[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.

[madmountaingoat]

If someone asked for a dinosaur fossil and you showed them a small winged thing embedded in a rock they likely would be confused too. Wind the clock back 65 million years to before the Cretaceous extinction event. The first bird like dinos appear in the Jurassic, ~100 millions year before the extinction. The time of the dinosaurs was full of small and large dinos adapted to all sorts of niches. In the end the flying therapods were the survivors.

We clearly have different view points, but I've enjoyed the discussion.

[lazide]

I think we’re actually both in agreement, actually.