CLADISTICS ruined my life
yall joke but this is actually a serious conundrun with cladistic-based classification
The choice is this:
Birds are reptiles
Or crocodilians (and probably turtles) ARENT
That’s it, that’s the choice
What if Bird and reptiles are two different things that came from the same thing
Nope
Because you can’t group (lizards, snakes, tuatara, turtles, crocodilians) without also including (birds)
So if you don’t want to include birds in reptiles then you have to leave out some things we’ve called reptiles
birds are dinosaurs though, full stop. we’ve already defined what a dinosaur is and it includes birds. but reptiles isn’t really defined so much as thrown against a wall angrily.
But don’t turtles and alligators have more in common with modern reptiles than modern birds have in common with modern reptiles? I’m not trying to contradict, I’m trying to understand. Mammals and reptiles have a common ancestor as well, but we do not make them the same group.
It’s not about having things in common. It’s about common ancestry, which is how we classify animals in light of extinct species, which defy trait-based classification.
And, the common ancestor of [lizards, snakes, tuatara, turtles, crocodilians] by definition is also the common ancestor of birds. It is NOT the common ancestor of mammals.
So, either we decide that Tuatara Lizards and Snakes are the only reptiles, or we include birds as reptiles. Or we just decide reptiles are no longer a thing.
