> Isn’t the distinction sort of moot at this point? I seem to remember things setting into a “birds = dinosaurs” paradigm, although I am almost certainly oversi

> Isn’t the distinction sort of moot at this point? I seem to remember things setting into a “birds = dinosaurs” paradigm, although I am almost certainly oversimplifying things. Birds are dinosaurs. Specifically they’re the avian branch of the theropods. Distinction has to do with hip bone structure – for lizards the hip joint goes out sideways, for dinosaurs and birds it goes down (iirc). Then dinosaurs have that big bone between their legs whereas for birds it developed into a keel-bone I believe. We know dinosaurs had to have been sortof-birds because for a lizard to reach that size it would’ve had to live hundreds of years. Whereas birds have a period of rapid growth when young, which enables them to reach near full adult size in a single breeding season. Basically: All birds are dinosaurs but not all dinosaurs are birds.