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The name thecodont is Greek for "socket-tooth", referring to the fact that thecodont teeth were set in sockets in the jawbones; an archosaurian characteristic that was inherited by the dinosaurs. While the taxon Thecodontia is obsolete, the term thecodont remains in use as an anatomical description of teeth in bony sockets; in addition to ...
A 2016 estimate put the number of dinosaur species living in the Mesozoic at 1,543–2,468, [24] [25] compared to the number of modern-day birds (avian dinosaurs) at 10,806 species. [26] Extinct dinosaurs, as well as modern birds, include genera that are herbivorous and others carnivorous, including seed-eaters, fish-eaters, insectivores, and ...
Ornithischia (/ ˌ ɔːr n ə ˈ θ ɪ s k i. ə /) is an extinct clade of mainly herbivorous dinosaurs characterized by a pelvic structure superficially similar to that of birds. [6] The name Ornithischia, or "bird-hipped", reflects this similarity and is derived from the Greek stem ornith-(ὀρνιθ-), meaning "bird", and ischion (ἴσχιον), [a] meaning "hip". [7]
A close relationship between birds and dinosaurs was first proposed in the nineteenth century after the discovery of the primitive bird Archaeopteryx in Germany. Birds and extinct non-avian dinosaurs share many unique skeletal traits. [1] Moreover, fossils of more than thirty species of non-avian dinosaur with preserved feathers have been ...
Thecodont dentition is a morphological arrangement in which the base of the tooth is completely enclosed in a deep socket of bone, as seen in crocodilians, dinosaurs and mammals, and opposed to acrodont and pleurodont dentition seen in squamate reptiles. [1] Notably, this appears to be the ancestral tooth condition in Amniota. [2]
Benton proposed the name Avemetatarsalia in 1999 to include all bird-line archosaurs (under his definition, all archosaurs more closely related to dinosaurs than to crocodilians). His analysis of the small Triassic archosaur Scleromochlus placed it within bird-line archosaurs but outside Ornithodira, meaning that Ornithodira was no longer ...
Avialae ("bird wings") is a clade containing the only living dinosaurs, the birds, and their closest relatives.It is usually defined as all theropod dinosaurs more closely related to birds (Aves) than to deinonychosaurs, though alternative definitions are occasionally used (see below).
This did not change when Richard Owen coined the term Dinosauria in 1842, because Owen did not recognise Thecodontosaurus as a dinosaur; in 1865, he assigned it to the Thecodontia. It was not until 1870 that Thomas Huxley became the first person to understand that it was a dinosaur, though referring it incorrectly to the Scelidosauridae. [19]