ifightalotformyfriends:

spookymunculus:

mister-skulls:

wagwias:

Two kinds of people:

People who took the news of feathered dinosaurs like this:

And those who took it like this:

I hate it when people say “science ruined dinosaurs” as though dinosaurs are just some pop culture monster invention and not real things that existed and that we are continuing to make new discoveries about

my favorite thing about feathered dinosaurs is the resulting taxonomic clusterfuck regarding the biological relationships between dinosaurs, birds, and reptiles. there’s a lot of disagreement about whether or not birds are just “glorified reptiles” (ornithologists and herpetologists can get really nasty over this. no one fights dirty like a biologist) and how to alter or even scrap altogether the class Reptilia to accommodate new understandings of how birds and dinosaurs are related and how they are both related to the traditional class of reptiles as a whole.

by some interpretations of molecular and fossil data, birds aren’t just descended from dinosaurs but are literal fucking dinosaurs themselves on the same branch (Paraves) of the evolutionary tree as Deinonychus. the national symbol of america is a goddamn dinosaur. we keep tiny colorful versions of Velociraptor in cages in our homes and teach them to mimic rude words to scandalize guests. there is a reason birds of prey are called raptors – they are the same damn thing, they even look a lot the same. flying dinosaurs brutally clawing prey to death in our own backyards and then shitting it out on our cars. nature is amazing.

Was just talking about this in class today, birds are hella interesting