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Published: 2010-05-02 00:57:13 +0000 UTC; Views: 5709; Favourites: 11; Downloads: 34
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There's no way ceratopsians are dinosaurs! They are much too different! Ceratopsians have a rostral bone and horn-shaped jugals, dinosaurs don't! Besides, they've existed as two separate branches since the Jurassic! Okay, I acknowledge the fact that ceratopsians were descended from dinosaurs, but that doesn't make them dinosaurs; I think they've diverged far enough to not be dinosaurs, thereby proving that I fail biology forever because nothing is ever a different group from its ancestors! We don't say dinosaurs have horns, we say ceratopsians have horns; we don't say vertebrates have horns, either, but I think ceratopsians are vertebrates but not dinosaurs for... no good reason! Sure, all paleontologists except the CAND (Ceratopsians Are Not Dinosaurs) crowd (who at least try to justify themselves by claiming the paraphyly of Dinosauria) agree that ceratopsians are dinosaurs because they fit in the definition of Dinosauria (Passer domesticus, Triceratops horridus, their concestor, and all descendants of that concestor), a ceratopsian (Triceratops horridus) is even used as a specifier in the definition, and what I've said doesn't even violate that definition, but I still don't think ceratopsians are dinosaurs, because I can shape the definition of dinosaur to fit whatever I want even though I can't! (I think pterosaurs are dinosaurs!)Related content
Comments: 57
Albertonykus In reply to ??? [2010-05-02 01:08:15 +0000 UTC]
Thanks! I'm glad someone else agrees that ceratopsians aren't dinosaurs. I've also proven that terror birds didn't have feathers: [link]
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Albertonykus In reply to avpvjp [2010-05-02 02:24:20 +0000 UTC]
I'm happier with the terror bird one, too. (And, boy, ceratopsian hands are hard to draw thanks to a study made last year; they're supposed to point outwards with only three fingers on the ground.)
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Albertonykus In reply to avpvjp [2010-05-02 02:36:53 +0000 UTC]
Rather than having "proper" columnar quadruped hands like sauropods or eurypods (stegosaurs and ankylosaurs), they have splayed out toes and non pronated hands: [link]
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