It might be easy to brush off my complaint as a case of paleo-pedantry, but word choice matters. “Dinosaur” is a word for a specific group of creatures united by shared characteristics and which had their own evolutionary history—it is not a catch-all term for anything reptilian and prehistoric.
We have known about this distinction for a long time, and I bet that your average 10-year old paleo fan would know not confuse the groups.
Low IQ: crosc looks like dinos so they are the cloests living relative to dinos.
Mid IQ: birds are direct descendents of dinos so they are the closest living relatives to dinos.
High IQ: since birds are direct descendent they are just dinos, not a relative. Which makes crocs the next closest living relative to dinos/birds.
Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but huh?
Clearly I missed a briefing somewhere. I thought that crocodiles were from that era, or is that the joke that I’m somehow missing?
The joke is that birds aren’t only related to dinos, but are dinos themselves.
Yes and the cruel part is… Pterosaurs are not Dinosaurs!
https://xkcd.com/2501/
So, it’s a joke about the fact that both are essentially dinosaurs?
… nope, I got nothing …
Here’s my take:
Low IQ: crosc looks like dinos so they are the cloests living relative to dinos. Mid IQ: birds are direct descendents of dinos so they are the closest living relatives to dinos. High IQ: since birds are direct descendent they are just dinos, not a relative. Which makes crocs the next closest living relative to dinos/birds.