[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.