this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
1149 points (99.4% liked)

Science Memes

17730 readers
3659 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] Malfeasant@lemmy.world 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Reptiles ... penguins

Hold on...

[โ€“] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 14 hours ago

Yup. Birds are reptiles! If you want to define a monophyletic clade that includes crocodiles and lizards, there is no way to do that without also including birds. To define a clade, you take the evolutionary tree and make a "cut" somewhere on it. Everything below that cut is part of the same clade, you can't selectively remove some branches but not others, unless it's by changing where you make your single cut.

So in this diagram:

collapsed inline mediaClade diagram of all tetrapods, including amphibians, mammals, and groups of reptiles including tuatara, lizards, snakes, turtles, crocodilians, and birds. The diagram has a green circle around the reptiles other than birds, labelled "reptiles". "A" is labelled at the last common ancestor (LCA) of all mammals. B at the LCA of all amniotes (mammals & reptiles), and C at the LCA of all reptiles, including birds.

The green circle notwithstanding, you would usually define reptile as a cut at the "C" on the diagram. You could put the cut at Lepidosauria, but that would mean crocodiles and turtles are no longer considered reptiles either.

A more zoomed-in look would show that after crocodiles and birds branched apart, you also get another branch where pterosaurs branch away from dinosaurs, and that birds are one of many branches and subbranches of dinosaur.