this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
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It's cladistics.
"Theoretically, a last common ancestor and all its descendants constitute a (minimal) clade. Importantly, all descendants stay in their overarching ancestral clade. For example, if the terms worms or fishes were used within a strict cladistic framework, these terms would include humans."
so basically it's a language problem, not a biology problem? people are incorrectly assuming that any group of species with a word to describe it must be monophyletic, and therefore include all unrelated species which would make it monophyletic?
I'm honestly surprised this isn't better understood in this community, at least as an approach to the tree of life system of classification, with or without its merits. I didn't go to college and went to public school that suppressed science education, but this was how I came to understand evolution and that all types of life had a universal common ancestor.
I'm not speaking to the accuracy of the meme, and the science community at large has its criticisms of cladistics, but I'm not sure I would define this as a problem of biology or language, or a problem at all. It is the most common method of evolutionary classification at this time.
Keep in mind I'm a blue collar worker on my lunch break and not a scientist nor college educated. I just like to learn in my free time about a bunch of stuff.
the cladistic approach developed for a reason
you know, two organisms might look similar at first, but what's often more important is the set of internal features, such as biochemistry, tolerance of toxins, etc.
if you take all these internal features, you find that they're well-preserved within evolutionary groups; but not within groups that merely look alike
Pretty much. It helps if you think the word "dinosaur" has two partially overlapping meanings:
So for example. Turkeys would fit #1 but not #2. Depending on the person, dimetrodons and pterosaurs would fit #2, but not #1 [see note]. A T-rex would fit both.
In other words if your kid asks you "I want to see the dinos on a screen!", do not bring them to see a rotisserie chicken being roasted. I repeat, do not. They're using "dino" for meaning #2.
NOTE: pterosaurs aren't from the clade Dinosauria, but from a distantly related clade called Pterosauria. Dimetrodons are synapsids so they're closer to us mammals than to Dinosauria.