Mammals only got yeeted to their own evolutionary tree branch 40 million years prior to those that would be considered reptilian (sorta dinos too) which was somewhere in the realm of 250 million years ago.
Meaninng the reptiles of today are ~5x further apart in time from dinosaurs, than dinosaurs are from their common ancestors to mammals.
I think we really should just not bother thinking in terms of current speciation concepts. They could have had jellyfish like tentacles dangling allover their skin and we’d never know.
Mammals are different than reptiles. A better comparison would be today’s reptiles.
Mammals only got yeeted to their own evolutionary tree branch 40 million years prior to those that would be considered reptilian (sorta dinos too) which was somewhere in the realm of 250 million years ago.
Meaninng the reptiles of today are ~5x further apart in time from dinosaurs, than dinosaurs are from their common ancestors to mammals.
I think we really should just not bother thinking in terms of current speciation concepts. They could have had jellyfish like tentacles dangling allover their skin and we’d never know.
A better comparison would be today’s birds, which descended from theropods and are the only remaining members of the clade Dinosauria.
Dinosaurs aren’t reptiles, they’re birds.
Birds aren’t real