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Comment by lostmsu | Hacker News Reader

When they were building their taxonomy, why did not they name its level, that includes both what they now call "dinosaur" and pterosaurs "dinosaur", and come up with a different name for their "dinosaur", if it is a common conception?

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You seem to think the word was in use prior to the development of taxonomy, but the word "dinosaur" began as a specific taxonomic term, coined by Richard Owen. From the outset, it was recognized that not all Mesozoic reptiles were dinosaurs.

If conformance to common usage is an important taxonomic principle, then maybe taxonomists should put the label "fish" in their taxonomies so that whales and cuttlefish are included, as these were commonly regarded as a type of fish prior to the development of scientific taxonomy? This example shows why this principle does not work in general: "fish" would then include a great many species - including ourselves - that are not regarded as fish by anyone.

Well, for starters, as you can see from the graphic, you'd be getting a lot more than just "pterosaurs" if you did that, given that they are in fact quite distantly related, with several other layers of non-dinosaurs inbetween.

The goal of creating the taxonomy was presumably to create clear categories for research and scientific publications. I doubt they cared what an average person called a dinosaur, like the author of this article seems to, so the issue you're worrying about probably didn't seem important.

It's almost as if the conception didn't come to be until _after_ the names for these things existed!

I doubt that specialists are keen to adapt their terminology to reflect popular usage and would much prefer things to work the other way around. It looks like the word we should be using is 'avemetatarsalians'?

If one can't pedantically correct people then why even bother being an expert.

I think the "common conception" comes from Land Before Time and Jurassic Park, it seems almost everything we learned about dinosaurs from those movies is wrong.

Edit:

I just looked it up and discovered both were made by Steven Speilberg...

Nah, pterodactyls and such were commonly taught to children to be dinosaurs before Jurassic Park and Land Before Time came out.

Source: was child before 1988.

Where do you think it originated then?

Can you link to a source with some detail on what was wrong with those films? Particularly Jurassic Park?

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/feb/08/jurassic-par...

Or search: "Jurassic park wrong about dinosaurs"

This doesn't seem very strong to me.

OK, so I have been misinformed about velociraptor - I'll picture it smaller and with feathers. And brachiosaurus might not have been able to made a sound or stand on hind legs.

But I don't think that these relatively small details have left a generation woefully misinformed about dinosaurs.

If there are major things wrong with the film - if, for example, dinosaurs weren't as "bird-like" as the film made them seem (that seemed to me to be a major overture), then sure, I'd really like to read about that.

Look up what A t-rex looks/acts like now. No roaring, running, licking, had feathers and freckles:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/rex-was-ginger-freckle...

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/T-Rex-Likely-Could-Not-Roa...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/t-rex-couldnt-sti...

https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/tyrannosaurus-rex...

To be fair to Jurassic Park, I'm not sure its pterodactyls were explicitly claimed to be dinosaurs, and much of the film talked about non-dinosaur extinct species being resurrected as well (eg, ancient plant life).

Maybe it wasn't the filmmakers intent, but they have plausible deniability here. :)

Exactly. I am pretty certain, no such claim was made by the movie. And although it mixes a bunch or eras together, it does not claim to have just brought back dinosaurs.

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