My entire childhood I was taught dinosaurs were reptiles but in recent years I’ve read that many scientists believe they are closer to birds than reptiles. Please help me understand this.
In: Biology
Generally speaking, dinosaurs are Still reptiles.
That hasn’t changed.
What the big change was people discovering that a lot of, specially smaller velociraptor like ones, probably had feathers, or some kind of grandfather to feathers. And that birds evolved from these small dinosaurs that first started using these special scales, which become feathers, to glide around and eventually fly.
So, all modern birds and descended from dinosaurs, and some call them the last remaining dinosaurs.
But not all dinosaurs were the kind that gave rise to birds, for example, the super huge dinosaurs with the long necks and tails, brachiosaurus, those are still considered reptiles. And definitely are not birds. And are still dinosaurs.
The discovery was that birds are descended from dinos, and that some, not All, probably looked more like birds than we previously imagined.
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