• FishFace@piefed.social
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    16 hours ago

    It’s not that shocking given that all birds have feathers, and almost no dinosaur fossils had feathers until fairly recently (and they’re still rare as I understand it).

    The connection was made in the 19th century, it just didn’t become mainstream until the 60s.

    And pet peeve: “birds are dinosaurs” is only true cladistically speaking, but ordinary English is not cladistic. There is such a thing as a fish and anyone who says there isn’t can fuck off.

    • sangeteria@lemmy.ml
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      7 hours ago

      Honestly I’m of the opinion that “fish” should only refer to bony fish anyway; sharks should be their own thing. But also yeah, let people live lmao

      • iocase@lemmy.zip
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        3 hours ago

        Yeah I totally agree. It’s like grouping humans in with rhinos because we’re both mammals and have 4 limbs. Sharks are so ancient they diverged extremely early and are weird as fuck. I keep learning new and interesting ways sharks are almost alien compared to bony fish. Like how they use high urea content in their blood to lower the osmotic gradient dehydrating them (salt water sucks water out of your gills) so they turn ammonia into Urea to keep some dissolved compounds around to balance the osmotic pressure.