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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • The fundamental problem is that cladistic terms will kind of inevitably become general descriptors of any lifeform that looks/behaves similarly, which is immediately clear when you look at any scifi/fantasy stuff.

    If an alien animal fills the same niche as salmon do on earth, then we’re gonna call it a salmon, and poof suddenly it’s no longer monophyletic.


  • IMO it’s either basically just lizards, which i think is perfectly fine since dinosaurs and even crocodilians aren’t that reptilian to me.
    Or reptile has nothing to do with phylogeny and is instead just a physical description, like “fish” and “tree”.

    Really the only thing that seems particularly similar between lizards and crocodilians is that they have a splayed posture and scaly skin, which is kinda like grouping together humans with ostriches and kangaroos because we walk upright on two legs…