All living birds share a common ancestor that would also be considered a bird, so they are a monophyletic group. Nevertheless, that group is deeply nested among euornithine ornithothoracine pygostylian avialian eumaniraptoran paravian metornithine maniraptoran maniraptoriform tyrannoraptoran coelurosaurian avetheropodan tetanurine averostran neotheropod theropod saurischian dinosaurs.
And bonus points if you can post a video on YouTube of you saying that.
Of course, Tom is right, but then *dinosaurs* are also dinosauromorph, dinosauriform, ornithodiran, archosaurian, archosauromorphan, archosauriforms. (Probably, I’ve not checked). We could go on, but ptobably best to stop there….
Complex and horrible though this all looks, it’s surprisingly useful at the front end of taxonomy and systematics when you are familair with the groups in question as each name is basically a shorthand for quite a lot of information regarding both anatomy and evolutionary relationships.
My post on birds and dinosaurs yesterday led to a little debate on Facebook, including this, from paleontologist Thomas Holtz:
And bonus points if you can post a video on YouTube of you saying that.
Of course, Tom is right, but then *dinosaurs* are also dinosauromorph, dinosauriform, ornithodiran, archosaurian, archosauromorphan, archosauriforms. (Probably, I’ve not checked). We could go on, but ptobably best to stop there….
Complex and horrible though this all looks, it’s surprisingly useful at the front end of taxonomy and systematics when you are familair with the groups in question as each name is basically a shorthand for quite a lot of information regarding both anatomy and evolutionary relationships.
Dave: you got the -morphan and -forms backwards at the bottom, but yes.
You can following along with these here (http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/G104/handouts/cladocombine.pdf) and here (http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/G104/handouts/completephyl.pdf). (However, these are so “last year” and don’t reflect the information from–for example–Tawa.)
very supercalifragilisticexpialidocious of him to say so…
And all of us tetrapods are (Sarcopterygian) fish that walk on land (or their descendants that went back to the water).
Oopsie, thanks Tom!