It would have been funny if as soon as we discovered feathers were basal or nearly basal to dinosaurs we had just renamed dinosaurs “birds,” in accordance with the lay definition of the term, which is essentially “lays eggs and has feathers” (plus maybe “has a beak”). It would stop people confusing non-dinosaur animals that fit the lay, non-taxonomic definition (”paleoartists draw it sort of reptile-like, and it’s extinct”) being confused with dinosaurs, and imagine the rewritten museum plaques. “Tyrannosaurus Rex was an 8.4 ton bird that lived over 65 million years ago.” “Argentinosaurus was the largest bird to have ever lived, at more than 70 tons.” “While the overwhelming majority of paleontologists believe birds are birds, a small minority continues to argue that birds are not, in fact, birds.”
we can do this! there’s still time!
