Why dont we call birds dinosaurs?

Question

Birds are decendants of dinosaurs like humans to apes. According to paleontoligists dinosaurs exist now as birds so why do we call birds birds and not dinosaurs?

i knew about birds being dinosaurs long ago. The horizon programme today just refueled it and so i was wondering why don't we call birds dinosaurs.

haha Kaya i love that! Smily sticker going your way :P

Answer 1

Well, there's a certain arbitrary quality to classification. What it boils down to is "Here's a bunch of things that all are alike in some ways, but they're different from this other bunch of things. So, we'll call the first bunch fish and the second bunch birds." It was recognized pretty early that dinosaurs had some characteristics similar to birds, and now it's pretty well accepted that birds are in fact descended from a branch of the theropod dinosaurs. That doesn't mean that birds _are_ dinosaurs, though. They're different enough in enough ways to be defined as their own group, just as mammals are different enough from mammal-like reptiles to be in a different group.

Answer 2

As mentioned previously birds evolved from dinosaurs and have a number of distinguishing features, even if you do compare them to the most birdlike dinosaurs (ex archeopteryx , the missing link). First of all birds do not have teeth; they have a beak, they do not have a long bony tail (at most a stump), they are homeothermic: which means they can regulate their body temperature (until the debate, warm vs cold blooded dinosaurs is resolved anyways), they have a modified respiratory system which is unique to birds, the skeletal structure of birds is highly modified (modified for flight, birds that don't had ancestors that could fly), birds have specialized feathers which allow flight, whereas the closest thing in dinosaurs (so far) are simple contour and down feathers. These are a few of the differences.

Answer 3

yeah we can. But if you want to indicate the generation deference in evolution then you cannot do that. As it would be a blunder ! If you call them dinosaurs instead of calling them as birds then i hope we can call ourselves as apes !

here's a more scientific reason :

Birds are the direct descendants of meat-eating dinosaurs in most scientists' opinions. Living reptiles like crocodiles are relatives of dinosaurs, but they came from animals that developed before dinosaurs, so they are just cousins of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs aren't birds or reptiles. They're dinosaurs, a separate, special group. Some living animals, like reptiles, look a lot like what we imagine dinosaurs to be, but that's just a coincidence. Reptiles all have bent legs, and dinosaurs have straighter legs. Dinosaurs walked with their legs underneath them — that's one way to tell a dinosaur is a dinosaur.

eg:
1. Pterosaurs - had hollow bones similar to birds.

2. Archaeopteryx - had feathers similar to birds.

3. Rapator - had same style of hand motion that is similar to birds wing flapping.

Answer 4

To add to all the answers above, we descended from bony fish if you want to get right down to it (or, to quote a fish specialist and evolutionary biologist who I've heard lecture, "We are bony fishes."). But there have been so many changes in our lineage along the way that we're evolved into a class of our own.

My guess is they are following the same train of thought with birds. Though they did descend from dinosaurs, they've changed drastically and those changes merit their placement in a different category.

Answer 5

Have you just been watching Horizon? Not a bad programme, though as a series it is not as good as it used to be "when I were a lad".

I suppose because we knew what birds were longed before we discovered dinosaur fossils.

Answer 6

Because they're birds now. They haven't been dinosaurs for many many years. They come from them but they have differentiate themselves so much that are a different class right now.

Answer 7

It's true that birds are the closest living relatives to dinosaurs, but they are in their own Class (Aves).

Answer 8

Well, the real answer is because we named them birds before we knew there had been dinosaurs.

Answer 9

humans aren't exactly descendents of apes (common misconception), we're descended from a common ancestor...it's also not proven 100% that birds are descendents of dinosaurs, after all, we weren't around to do testing on dinosaurs when they were alive and watching them when they evolved into birds

Answer 10

dinosaurs mean big lizards. birds are animals that fly and they don't eat each other