Talk:Dinosaur

Real pictures needed.

All the dinosaur skeleton images are here. However, could you please add realistic pictures of dinosaurs? That would be nice! 111.88.15.147 (talk) 14:46, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Like this?

Agree, so we'll get the Wikipedia time-machine out of Larry Sanger's basement (he took it and the stapler when he left) and rev it up for Jurassic. But seriously, good idea, although some of the good film stills may be in copyright. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:56, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

i think he ment a piece of paleo art or a reconstruction. Clone commando sev (talk) 23:36, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 July 2020

In the line "a method modern paleontologists would find appalling because the explosions from the dynamic would potentially destroy any and all dinosauric evidence" - "dynamite" is incorrectly written as "dynamic" Neelabhs (talk) 15:08, 5 July 2020 (UTC) Neelabh

Seeing other problems with the writing of that sentence, I simplified it a bit. Just plain Bill (talk) 15:27, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

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Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:07, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 August 2020

In the "History of study" section, please change:

"Villagers in central China have long unearthed fossilized "dragon bones" for use in traditional medicines, a practice that continues as of 2020.[189]"

to

"Villagers in central China have long unearthed fossilized "dragon bones" for use in traditional medicines.[189]"

The source cited is a news article last updated July 2007, which is not a report of any specific incident. It contains no information from which can be determined when such incidents occurred (not even that they occurred in modern times), but which in any case must be prior to the 13 year-old article. Naylorfriend (talk) 08:58, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, the source is a bit vague. It does say that they've been doing it "for decades" so it must be somewhat recent, but even that is not that clear. – Thjarkur (talk) 09:21, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Dinosaurs are

Not reptiles, if we include birds as "feathered dinosaurs" - so what is the best way to resolve this inconsistency? If birds are a surviving lineage of dinosaur, but are indeed not dinosaurs because they are descendants (and thus "birds"), then Dinosaurs "were". A suitable analogy is that chimpanzees (Pan) are one of the class of great apes, but are not apes themselves...or, perhaps change "reptiles" to "a class of extinct reptiles and also modern birds"? Hires an editor (talk) 18:47, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

This really gets into exactly what the words "reptile" and "dinosaur" and "bird" mean. By layman terms, they are all mutually exclusive except for maybe "dinosaur" < "reptile". By modern scientific terminology, birds are dinosaurs, which are also reptiles. There have been many talk page discussions on this subject, but at least in my view the current article does a reasonable job of presenting current scientific thinking with the necessary caveats. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 19:38, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

birds are reptiles but not really. if you follow that birds are reptiles then humans are fish. Clone commando sev (talk) 23:29, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Again, there's a scientific basis behind saying something like that, but not a lay basis. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 00:02, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) But its in current scientific usage. If you look at Google Scholar, there is six thousand hits for non-avian dinosaurs, as scholars see birds as dinosaurs and thereby use the term "non-avian dinosaurs" if they want to exclude them. No such cladistic usage of "fish" exists, as far as I'm aware. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 00:10, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

ok a better example would be calling an early fish a cyanobacteria. Clone commando sev (talk) 00:13, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

But that's just literally not correct? Eukaryotes did not come from bacteria. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 00:30, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

oh i must be confused. i thought that cyanobacteria was the first life? Clone commando sev (talk) 00:36, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Surely you mean multicellular life? Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 03:27, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

yes. did eukaryotes evolve from cyanobacteria or are cyanobacteria the first eukaryotes? Clone commando sev (talk) 04:20, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Neither? It's in the name. Bacteria. "Eukaryote" doesn't mean "multicellular". Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 13:17, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Dinosaurs are reptiles. Birds are dinosaurs. Birds are reptiles. That's it. It's an open and shut case and anything else is inaccurate. 98.10.3.178 (talk) 03:05, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Dinosaurs are reptiles, birds are dinosaurs, so birds are reptiles. They are not separate from reptiles as the article now implies

This opening sentence is inaccurate from a scientific standpoint:

Dinosaurs are a class of extinct reptiles[note 1] and modern birds of the clade Dinosauria.

It is highly inaccurate to present birds as being separate from other reptiles. It goes against modern phylogenetic classification, in spite of what some people on here have stated. Their arguments make no sense if they are viewed scientifically and cladistically. I'd like to request that the opening sentence to be reverted to its previous state to read as follows:

Dinosaurs are a class of reptiles[note 1] in the clade Dinosauria.

This is all the opening sentence needs. It is accurate and the article explains the differences between dinosaurs and extant "traditional" reptile groups. Birds are not a separate class of animals in modern phylogenetic classification. They should not be presented as such in any accurate article any longer.

98.10.3.178 (talk) 03:03, 3 October 2020 (UTC)