#xkcd No. 3204
Date: 2026-2-6
Title: Dinosaurs And Non-Dinosaurs
Alt text: Staplers are actually in Pseudosuchia, making them more closely related to crocodiles than to dinosaurs.
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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Taxonomically speaking, birds are dinosaurs.
There isn't a place to put a line between them - all the things that make birds "birds" also apply to dinosaurs.
A super fun fact is that of the two main types of dinosaur, Saurischia ("lizard-hipped") and Ornithischia ("bird-hipped"), birds actually evolved from the lizard-hipped group.
That’s pretty hip.
Isn't that the same logic that technically describes all vertibrates as fish?
Bony fish specifically but I'd argue that the common name for the clade bony fish is misleading and that bony fish aren't a subtype of fish but rather a clade of animals descending from a subset of the non-clade category of things we call fish. Not all fish belong to a single clade we can call fish, bony fish descend from one of these unrelated things we collectively refer to as fish.
Basically, I would say the term fish is more like our term for tree (representing a niche rather than clade) unless you would argue all vertebrates are fish. We are a member of the clade bony fish so we are bony fish but we do not fill the same niche as fish so aren't a fish. So "Bony Fish" is a noun distinct from bony (adjective) fish (noun).
*bony fish
We are closer to your average fish (I don't know any specific ones) with bones than they are with sharks (non-bony, cartilage!)
Herrings, salmon/trout, cod/haddock are all bony fish.
In particular, ray-finned fish are bony fish:
I'm sure I can think of vertebrates that have things that make them "them" that don't also apply to fish. For example do any fish have hips of any type? If not i can use "hip or not" to group vertebrates distinctly.
It's similar to the process that lets me differentiate vertebrates from invertebrates in the first place. squishy worm, worm with teeth, worm with jaws, worm with backbone etc.