Chickens are constantly called living dinosaurs. Why aren’t Bats, Snakes, Apes ,Turtles…mostly all animals called living dinosaurs if there were versions of that same animal walking the earth millions of years ago?
In: Biology
Others have already pointed out most of the explanation, but let me try to add something that may have been missed.
You seem to be confusing two different terms people sometimes use the term “living fossil” to describe types of animal that a barely seem to have changed in appearance for millions of years.
Chicken are not usually considered living fossils.
A completely different idea is concept of dinosaurs.
The definition of dinosaurs includes all descendants of the first dinosaur. Birds are in that category.
When scientist want to talk about just the dinosaurs that people normally think of as dinosaurs they say “non-avian dinosaurs”. “aves” means bird, so that means “non-bird dinosaurs”.
Since chicken are birds and birds are dinosaurs and chicken are alive, chicken can be called living dinosaurs.
The ancestor of modern chicken that was around when all the other dinosaurs went extinct looked enough like living fowls to be recognizable as such but not similar enough to justify calling chicken living fossils.
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