are dinosaurs reptiles?

Answer 1

they are also thought to be close to many avian species. that raptor/ t-rex arm bend is like wings not arms or legs.

Answer 2

Most classifications do indeed include the dinosaurs in the group known as reptiles.

However 'Reptilia' itself is a classification which many taxonomists refer to as a 'waste-basket' group. It is sort of a default group that anything that doesn't fit in with another, defined group automatically gets tossed into.

There are no defining characteristics for the group - no single feature you can point to and say 'that is a reptile'.

So the reptile classification contains such diverse groups as turtles, lizards, dinosaurs, crocodilians, pelycosaurs, mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs and snakes.

This is a group that contains loggerhead turtles (obligate aquatic swimmers with no skull fenestrae and a beak-like mouth), cobras (terrestrial venomous predators with highly fenestrated skulls and needle-like teeth), velociraptors, sauropods, and pterodactyls.

Pretty much the only thing they have in common is that they lay eggs (except those that have live birth, like many snakes, and ichthyosaurs), don't have fur (except possibly synapsids and pterosaurs), don't have feathers (except some theropod dinosaurs), and don't have an endothermic metabolism (except probably those theropods again).

There have been several attempts to work up a better classification scheme for the reptiles, but they become hopelessly complex and confusing fairly quickly, as systematists try to determine what exactly makes an "Order" instead of a family, and where to put things like mammals and birds that are really off-shoots of specific reptilian lineages.

So the short answer is yes. Dinosaurs are reptiles.

Answer 3

Are dinosaurs reptiles?
> Yes one of those simple questions that I have a hard time answering without
> boring the heck out of everyone. So, I thought I'd leave it up to the
> experts, who have probably answered this question to droves of school children
> in simple language. The kind of simple language that would be good for a TV
> special aimed at a very general audience. Sometimes knowing a lot about a
> subject makes the simplest question difficult. And I thought I'd never need
> that "Handy Answers" book...shame,shame,shame.

Answer: yes

Old System of Classification (Linnaean): Reptilia includes all
land-dwelling vertebrates which lay eggs with shells except for birds
(Aves) and mammals (Mammalia).

New System (cladistic/phylogenetic): Reptilia includes the most recent
common ancestor of turtles, crocodiles, snakes, lizards, and tuataras,
plus all of that ancestor's descendants. Dinosauria is a subset of this
(and Aves a subset of Dinosauria -- hence Aves is part of Reptilia, too).

I think Bakker's Linnaean classification might be the only one that
excluded Dinosauria from Reptilia.

Answer 4

Dinosaur, one of a group of extinct reptiles that lived from about 230 million to about 65 million years ago. The word dinosaur was coined in 1842 by British anatomist Sir Richard Owen, derived from the Greek words deinos, meaning “marvelous” or “terrible,” and sauros, meaning “lizard.”

Answer 5

some of the dinosaurs were reptiles and some were not. some of the dinosaurs were fish. there is evidence that some of the dinosaurs may even have been warm blooded.

Answer 6

Sort of.

Halfway between reptiles and birds.

There's something about cavities in the skulls. All reptiles have a certain number, whereas all dinosaurs have either one more, or one less.

Answer 7

No, dinosaurs are now thought to be more closely related to birds. Originally they were thought to be reptiles; dinosaur means "Giant Lizard".

Some are thought to have had feathers and some species were definitely warm-blooded (no modern reptiles are warm-blooded, only mammals and birds)

Answer 8

No, dinosaurs ARE not reptiles. They WERE reptiles!

Answer 9

yes, dinosaurs were reptiles.
the word dinosaur itself means"terrible lizard".
and lizards are reptiles.

Answer 10

Let's say kind of walking reptiles : )