What is the answer to the Fermi Paradox?

[Queequeg]

Simply because something looks like something else doesn't mean it is that thing.  Ichthyologists look like fish, but aren't fish.

People had this argument in the 90s and agreed that Pterosaurs are extremely closely related to last common ancestor of dinosaurs, NOT just can Archosaur that evolved along similar lines.

[Eddie Teach]

Ichthyologists look like fish, but aren't fish.

I suspect they look more like people.

[Razgovory]

A gorgonopsid is a good example. It just doesn't look like a or an onosaur. At all. There's maybe some vague resemblance to later pre-Dinosaur Triassic Crocodilomorph predators but one look at it's teeth and you know you're dealing with something different. By comparison the first pterosaurs and dinosaurs probably looked like shrews and bats. Obvious relationship.

I'm trying to see what your point is here, but you are missing me here.

Common sense in classification? If a neurologically complex creature had been around in the Triassic he would have called a primitive pterosaur a word related to dinosaur just like in Russian a bat is a flying mouse or an orangutang is a "forest person" in Malay.

You are basing this on the colloquial names per-industrial people have given to various animals?

[Razgovory]

Ichthyologists look like fish, but aren't fish.

I suspect they look more like people.

  I should have looked at that spell check a bit more carefully.

[Maximus]

Yep, the pterosaur line split off right before the most recent common ancestor of dinosaurs. That's why people who object to calling them 'flying dinosaurs' come off as so goddamn pedantic.

flying "dinosaur" is ok, "flying dinosaur" isn't. It's a bit like calling synapsids like gorgonopsids, dimetrodons and lystrosaurus dinosaurs. Colloquially they are, technically they are not.

edit: and spellus is right, which makes us synapsids too, in addition to being apes, monkeys, primates and mammals.

I was fairly certain that neither humans nor any other apes are considered monkeys. However taxonomy can change and you have made this claim before so I assume you have something to back it up. I would be interested in seeing it.

[Queequeg]

A gorgonopsid is a good example. It just doesn't look like a or an onosaur. At all. There's maybe some vague resemblance to later pre-Dinosaur Triassic Crocodilomorph predators but one look at it's teeth and you know you're dealing with something different. By comparison the first pterosaurs and dinosaurs probably looked like shrews and bats. Obvious relationship.

I'm trying to see what your point is here, but you are missing me here.

Common sense in classification? If a neurologically complex creature had been around in the Triassic he would have called a primitive pterosaur a word related to dinosaur just like in Russian a bat is a flying mouse or an orangutang is a "forest person" in Malay.

You are basing this on the colloquial names per-industrial people have given to various animals?

It's just common sense that these animals are related. On, like, a dozen levels that would have been completely, totally obvious to a hunter-gatherer plumped down in the Mid-Triassic. Let alone an Early Modern Naturalist. Anyone who could not discern more similarities between a protopterosaur and a protodinosaur than either with a squid is neurologically impaired. If one isn't a stupid, slow lizard like reptile with a tiny brain, the other isn't.

[Razgovory]

A lot of colloquial names for animals are inaccurate, such as "blackfish" for killer whales or "ant lion" which is not closely related to lions, a sea cucumber which isn't even a vegetable.

[Queequeg]

 

[Razgovory]

Yeah, well I really don't understand this "common sense" approach to classification of extinct animals.

[grumbler]

All roads with Raz lead to this destination.  I'd have thought you would have learned that by now.

[Queequeg]

Yeah, well I really don't understand this "common sense" approach to classification of extinct animals.

If it walks like a protodinosaur, looks like a protodinosaur and acted like a protodinosaur the odds are that it's at least a kissing cousin of a protodinosaur, and not some scaley stupid bat thing as closely related to a member of Anapsidia like a tortoise, as was your initial argument.

[Razgovory]

Yeah, well I really don't understand this "common sense" approach to classification of extinct animals.

If it walks like a protodinosaur, looks like a protodinosaur and acted like a protodinosaur the odds are that it's at least a kissing cousin of a protodinosaur, and not some scaley stupid bat thing as closely related to a member of Anapsidia like a tortoise, as was your initial argument.

My initial argument was that birds weren't reptiles and that reptiles aren't very bright.  They still aren't reptiles and reptiles still are pretty dumb.  Komodo dragons are suppose to be fairly smart though...

[Queequeg]

I don't think reptile is a useful word. It's paraphyletic and in common parlance synonymous with lizard (squamates) which leads to bullshit like what you are arguing.

[Eddie Teach]

I don't think it's commonly synonymous with lizards, as crocodiles and snakes are also well known to be reptiles.

[Queequeg]

Yeah, but when people say reptile they think cold blooded and stupid. I don't think the common ancestor of dinosaurs and pterosaurs were either.