Were there Dinosaurs in the Bible?

Hi crashfrog, If we are talking Linnaean classification, the Dinosaurs are reptiles. If the dinosaurs were warm-blooded, then some reptiles were warm blooded. Cold-blood is not a defining character of reptiles any more than egg laying is, despite all extant reptiles being poikilothermic.Were we to find a warm blooded lizard today, it wouldn't necessarily merit placement in it's own genus, let alone placing it in a completely new class.Dinosaurs were reptiles all the way.Also, there are only three extant egg laying mammalian species, the platypus & two species of echidna, these are the only members of the monotreme order.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

crashfrog, For exactly the same reason that anything gets classified in the Linnaean system, they possess enough characters that as a body are common to the class reptilia. In exactly the same way that lizards, crocs, plesiousaurs, pterosaurs, & turtles get classified as reptiles. Remember, we aren't talking cladistics & synapomorphies that all "reptiles" must possess in order to be considered reptilian. Take undifferentiated teeth, for example. Turtles have beaks. Toothed whales have undifferentiated teeth, too. But overall, taken in conjunction with scaly skin, egg laying etc is is an indicator of "reptilian-ness". Same goes for warm/cold bloodedness. Certainly it would make the headlines, but a warm blooded lizard found today, that possessed all the other key indicators would still be classified a reptile.I've checked the more recent sources on my bookshelf, & they all agree Dinosaurs are reptiles.You can of course hypothesise that cold/warm-bloodedness is such a key indicator that it warrants a class level move, but you need to convince everyone else of that. Science is a consensus activity.This is an analogy, since cladistically reptiles don't exist at all. But I doubt putting a single character state "warm-blood" into a cladogram that has hundreds of character states to consider, is going to see dinosaurs shifted anywhere else than where they are already on the generally accepted cladogram (represented all amniotes clades).There is no reason warm-bloodedness rules out a reptilian classification in and of itself.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Hi crashfrog, I think you are conflating/confusing the two methods of classification. The Linnaean system lumps everything together into groups regardless of their monphyletaly, & names them. Cladistics only names monophyletic groups, & since "reptile" is paraphyletic, not monophyletic, it's in the dustbin. The word that replaced "reptile" (in a sense), is "amniote", & since birds & mammals are also amniotic, it is a valid monophyletic group. Dinosauria is a monophyletic group (that includes Aves), so in this sense, dinosaurs aren't reptiles, because they don't exist.If, however, you are going to jump back to the old Linnaean system, & say crocs are reptiles, then in order to be consistent, dinosaurs are reptiles, too.Birds are birds, not reptiles under the Linnaean system, & Aves/Dinosaur/Amniote under the cladistic system.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

crashfrog, There's a suite of characters that are considered reptilian, brain case structure, jaw structure, etc. it's not just eggs & scales. Dinosaurs are in possession of as many reptile characters as the next reptile. Turtles have beaks, it doesn't make them birds, nor warrant a new taxon outside of class reptilia. It's less objective than the cladistic system, IMHO.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

crashfrog, An excellent question that deserves an equally good answer. Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't