#birds are reptiles

[peregrinethegryphon]

Comparing Superficial Traits From Opposite Ends of the Sauropsid Family Tree Through a Visual Medium to Make a Point

~OR~

Bird Are Reptiles: The Gifset

Footage Sources: (x)(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

What other, if any, critters are dinosaur descendant? Is my ball python related to dinosaurs nearly or distantly?

only birds are dinosaur descendants

other reptiles, aka crocs, lizards, snakes, tuatara, and turtles, are all cousins of dinosaurs, but not their descendants

in fact, here's some helpful wikipedia diagrams

[mitchelldailygames]

Heroes of Song Tangent: The Wild Jumble of Reptiles

OK. Heroes of Song has furrikin, which are anthropomorphic mammals and avikin which are anthropomorphic birds. I know different species of birds tend to be more similar to each other than mammals do, but when broadly handling abilities, it feels fine. Be a big, strong elephant furrikin or a small, quick mouse furrikin. Be a big strong cassowary avikin, or a small, quick hummingbird avikin. Or buck convention and mix it up. It didn't feel like something that would take anyone out of the game too much.

I want to give the same treatment to amphibians and reptiles down the line. Amphibians seem like they'll fit the conventions from above no problem.

It's thinking about reptiles that messes me up. Because do you know what falls under class Reptilia in current understanding of taxonomy? Birds.

Apparently, crocodiles are more closely related to birds (and dinosaurs) than other reptiles. But I know that functionally, a crocodile character would fit better lumped in with lizards and iguanas and such than it would with chickadees. OK. Evolution has some wild secrets, but hand-waving that away for this game doesn't seem insurmountable. It makes naming the folk a little trickier, because I don't want birds to be accidentally lumped into the name, but that's not a huge deal.

So I was over the whole, "Birds are reptiles," thing. And then I thought, "You know what would function way differently than a lizard person? A turtle person."

Because of course people are going to want to play as turtle people! There's no way there's not going to be a four person game group of all turtles with a game master giving them a rat person as a mentor! And what do you tell those players when they pick the scalykin folk (working name) and there's no option to have a freaking shell?!

I don't know. I don't really want to make a whole different group of folk for only turtles and tortoises. Maybe that will just be an advanced player option: "Instead of regeneration, your Defense is increased by 2." That seems like a slippery slope toward more complexity than I'm going for. What's to stop the feature creep of eventually having a different folk move for rhinos' horns, crocodile jaws, and different kinds of robots? "What's to stop the feature creep?" is the eternal question.

It's really not going to be a problem for the main rulebook. I was thinking about putting in a lizardfolk enemy to round out that list, and I still might, but I think for right now I'm just noting it down as a problem for future me to work out.

The world is weird; kindness matters.

--Daily

[aplpaca]

Bruh,,,,

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

"Cretaceous Blue Moon," a composite artwork from 2013. A gathering of male Elasmosaurus show off their strength by lifting their heads high out of the water during a bloom of bioluminescent plankton.

[claypigeonpottery]

I decided to fully break my four cracked pieces and kintsugi them

[kittyoverlord]

If you want some real messy taxonomy get into arthropods.

CLADISTICS ruined my life

[herpsandbirds]

Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea), family Ardeidae, order Pelicaniformes, and a Checkered Keelback (Fowlea piscator), family Colubridae, struggle over a fish in Telangana, India

photograph by Sunny Inaganti

[salty--sloth]

Can you explain either birds or crocodiles are reptiles?

This ask is in regards to a tag on a recent post where I said "either birds are reptiles or crocodiles aren't" to add context

Birds are a fun weird group that are very closely related to reptiles (because they are reptiles) but no one wants to group the two together based mostly on looks. But looking at the taxonomy, the closest relatives to avians (birds) is crocodilians (crocodiles, alligators, etc). Crocs are actually closer related to birds than they are other species of reptiles. Heres a little evolutionary tree from a text book i have that shows it

Plus another tree i found off google that includes mammals and amphibians

Showing that birds are grouped in as a type of reptile. And that tag was just a little joke that anyone who says birds aren't reptiles would then need to say that crocodiles (the closest relative group to birds) are also not reptiles

[puppyeared]

wanna see a magic trick? 🪄🎩

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

So would non avian dinosaurs if alive still, be studied under herpetology or ornithology?? Also isn't ornithology just a type of herpetology since birds are reptiles ?? Sorry this is so stupid idk who else to ask

Well that’s the question right

All these fields were invented before we knew about phylogenetic relationships or even evolution

And they are mammal biased - we grouped amphibians and nonavian reptiles because they were cold blooded, even though turns out mammals and reptiles are equally close to amphibians (ie not that close)

In a world where non-Neornithine dinosaurs persisted, our conception of EVERYTHING would be different

So these groups would have been defined differently to begin with

Like, the right answer is Ornithology… but who knows?

[chimeride]

A hydra, but each head has jaws and teeth specialized for different food like a one-creature set of the Galapagos Finches

[todaysbird]

another call for a weird interview!

I’m doing a piece for Modern Farmer on python farming as a proposed solution for more carbon-friendly farming than traditional livestock, and why some people are advocating for pythons as a food source despite the ‘ick’ factor. i’m looking for a range of viewpoints, so I’d love to talk to people who:

have any knowledge about python farming

have worked extensively with pythons in a research setting

have hunted pythons where they are invasive (like the Everglades)

have eaten python/have cooked with it

have pet pythons (I’d love to hear what pros and cons you find in python farming!)

if your experiences are different but you think you could be a good interviewee, please still reach out!

DM me directly with your experience if you’d like to be interviewed. Please contact me by 8/2/2024 to be considered!

[bogleech]

TOP TEN DINOSAURUSES

maybe you're wondering my most tenned favorite dinosauruses??? The science study of dinasacacers is called "dinosaurusology" by leading experts like myself, and it is constantly changing as we make new uncoveries almost every tuesday when we find new bones in my cousin rob's garage (he hasn't thrown anything out since the 90's!) As such bear in mind that up to two facts I am about to share could become dated over the course of the next century, however as both the king and queen of science this will only be true if I'm still available to approve the new facts. If I'm dead or kind of tired then nobody will ever know what's true anymore so you should be nice to me. #10: OVIRAPTOR

OVIRAPTOR was a good model for what all dinosacans were like: it was a wrinkly lizard that slithered in filthy dirt and had difficulty standing upright because its bones were made of rocks. This is why we have the term "the stone age," so be grateful you're living in "the bone age!" Oviraptor's name means "eggs velociraptor" because it was a kind of velociraptor that stole eggs. It didn't know what to do with them because nobody invented cooking yet and raw dinosaur eggs were disgusting, so every oviraptor starved to death.

#9: IGUANADON

This was the last known photograph of IGUANA DON (not to be confused with his cousin iguana dan) when george washington invented photographs 2 million years ago. Don was an ugly disgusting hilarious lizard monster with one horn on its nose and he died because he evolved a dining room in his torso exactly the right size for 21 cavemen to walk in and eat his kidneys. This was not helped by don's instinct to sleep on a big porch under a chandelier.

#9 DIMETRODON

DIMETRODON was the most common dinosaur of jurassic, which was the fifth and final era of dinosaurs after the ice age but before the ediacaran. In fact dimetrodon was the very last dinosaur to ever exist on earth before they were all eaten to death by the ediacaran's dominant predator: a species of swirly looking weird rock. Nobody knows why these swirly looking weird rocks died out, but it's most likely because dimetrodon was so poisonous from its diet of entirely pufferfish. You can tell it was a sea dinosaur because of its fish fin! #8: PTERADACTYL

PTERODACTYL was a regular dinosaur until it got married to a species of bat and its bat wife laid a bunch of pterodactyl eggs! This woodcut is however inaccurate: flying would not be invented until president obama discovered the first airplane in 1998, so pterodactyl couldn't possibly have stayed in the air and just immediately fell. The long 900 million year reign of the pterodactyl abruptly ended when the last one finally hit the ground (it took longer in those days because the oxygen disaster made so much more air) #7 SNORKASAURUS

SNORKASAURUS was completely unique among all dinocaurs by having a really long neck. It was one of the largest creatures to ever roam the earth at over 7 feet tall, or exactly 12 meters to those of you living in Liberia or Myanmar! This is the last known photograph of snorkasaurus, giving birth to the first cavemen. Snorkasaurus went extinct because all of them did this instead of making baby snorkasauruses. This is because like all dinosaurii they had only a tiny peanut for a brain, and nobody was around to give them 'the talk' because that wasn't invented yet.

#6 SMILODON

SMILODON was a very special dinosaurn because it was the first one to stand up on its hind legs after years of rigorous exercise and weight training. By inventing this new way of walking, Smilodon made it possible for the first monkeys to evolve! This is called "convergent" evolution.

#5 BULBASAUR

BULBASAUR was a majestic and beautiful species of neopet unfortunately disliked by the scientific community because it is the reason there are no flying dinosuars. Bulbasaur was the first ever flying dyanasar ever invented, 19 billion years ago on September 10, 2001, but the project was discontinued when its first test flight ended in a tragic accident. That's right: on September 11, 2001, Bulbasaur crashed into the stock market, causing the great depression that lead to the civil war :'( now to this very day, flying dinosarers are against the law.

#4 YOSHI

YOSHI is a type of dinersaulophus called a "bird," which was actually the second attempt by early neanderthal alchemists to manufacture a street legal flying dinnersauran, but the New Zealand government realized if dinophlofbuses can fly, then bats would no longer be special, and since bats are New Zealand's only major export it would have been an economic disaster. The queen of Australia (New Zealand's largest city) ordered the CIA to sand all of the wings off of these early prototype birds. Every bird tragically went extinct when it looked down, noticed how high up it was and remembered it could not fly, activating the effects of Earth's gravitational field.

#3 ANOMALOCARIS

ANOMALOCARIS was the dinosorcerous that discovered the first primitive cave painting of a modern day crab and invented carcinisation. All the other dinanders laughed at Anomalocaris for wanting to turn into a crab, but guess what??? Every single kind of dinosaur is dead but there's a crab still alive at 29, making it the oldest person in the world. Who's FUCKING laughing now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#2 EARL SINCLAIR

This is the last known photograph of Earl Sinclair, seen here as an uncredited extra in "Avatar 3: Lost in New York." Earl Sinclair was a sindonaur species that could disguise itself as a human by putting on sunglasses, a necessary adaptation in order to hide from the largest predator dancasore to ever live: Mellisuga helenae. However, near the end of the coal age, M. Helenae finally remembered that sunglasses hadn't even been invented yet. Look carefully, and you'll notice nobody is wearing sunglasses at all in this scene, making Earl Sinclair stick out like a sore thumb! If you're still having difficulty, here's a zoomed in image of this majestic thunder lizard:

Unfortunately......this wardrobe malfunction made Mr. Sinclair just as obvious to his ancient enemy, and the last Earl Sinclair's brains were sucked out on September 11, 2001, the darkest day in British history because he was the only one who knew the recipe to chicken mcnuggets (the only british food.) To this day all british people are extinct but you can still see their fossilized skeletons waiting in line at the department of motor vehicles.

#1 CONCAVENATOR

Concavenator was an Early Cretaceous carcharodontosaurid up to six meters in length with an unusual pointed crest on its back.

[boomartist]

Girls night 🍷 🫧

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

Here's my 2018 draft drawing of Crassigyrinus, for a reconstruction to accompany the redescription of its skull, by Porro et al ("Computed tomography and three-dimensional reconstruction of the skull of the stem tetrapod Crassigyrinus scoticus").