Quote Originally Posted by MesiDoomstalker View Post

EDIT: Modern birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than Humans are to chimpanzees.
I'm calling foul on that one. Nope, nope, nope. Humans and chimps are RIDICULOUSLY close to each other, you have no idea. One of the questions that has been floating around for a long time (and will never be answered because ethics of science are a GOOD thing) is "if a human and a chimp attempted to produce offspring, would there be no result whatsoever or a sterile hybrid?"

Meanwhile, "modern birds" and "dinosaurs" is a different categorical comparison entirely. "Modern birds" is a HUGE group of animals, and same with dinosaurs. Not only is it a faulty comparison, but I am pretty sure it's wrong anyway. I haven't sat down and looked for the data so I recognize it's *possible* that I am mistaken, but there is no way (to my understanding of biology) that as diverse a group as "dinosaurs", while undertaking an EXTREME shift in environment, would not cause a small set of phenotypes to be selected for almost exclusively - which then leads to inbreeding, certain traits being expressed nigh-exclusively, and then mutating.

In short, consider the ramifications of that claim. A chimpanzee, which has 99% of the same DNA as a human, and only started to diverge... what, a few million years ago? I think it's somewhere around 5? Now compare that to, I don't know, a coelophysis and a hummingbird, which have something like a 210 million year difference.

Yeah, no. Birds are direct descendants of dinosaurs, there's no doubt about that, but your claim is along the lines of "I have more genetic background in common with a chimpanzee than I do with some dude from Russia*!"

*Bonus points if you have russian heritage. I just picked a country out of my mental hat.