"I am writing to you regarding the raptor sighting in Georgia story that was published in April, 2009," says Emily. "I am doing a school project on the sighting, and wanted to hear your feedback. Do you believe that dinosaurs could still be alive?"
Answer: Emily, although it is possible that some species of dinosaurs might have survived up to the present day, I think it is unlikely. Here's why.... Read the rest of my answer.
What do you think?
Read my answer to Emily's question above, then vote below, answering...
Comments
Another far-fetched idea: Supposing there are time slips and people are actually seeing dinosaurs, briefly, before they return to their own time.
Crocodiles are dinosaurs. So yeah, they’re still alive.
Actually, I wrote a post on my blog a while back that is related to this topic.
http://histmyst.blogspot.com/2010/01/dragons-and-dinosaurs.html
But as I said in my previous comment, crocodiles are dinosaurs. It’s no secret that they walked the earth the same time T-Rex’s did, and they are still here today — they didn’t go extinct. Crocodiles may not have been the largest dinosaurs, but they weren’t the smallest either. And if you factor in their aggressive nature, they fit the description of “terrible lizard” well.
I voted that they’re living dinosaurs, but as the PP said, crocodiles are living dinosaurs, and I believe as well that Komodo dragons are either from that time or a close descendant. There was also that 70 million year old fish species found off the coast of India a few years back, just to name a couple examples.
Just as these ancients still roam our world (and most weren’t discovered until recent times) I still believe that there are lingering species that either have evolved little since the time of the dinosaurs or do remain unchanged, and we just have not found a substantial population to back up the sightings as of yet.
Excuse me, the fish I was referring to – the Cœlacanth – dates back to 410 million years ago, and was wiped from the fossil record some 70 million years ago. The first was found in waters off Southern Africa in 1938 and over 200 have been caught since then, in waters from Madagascar to Indonesia.
[http://www.living-fossils.com/3_1.php]
By definition, crocodiles are NOT “dinosaurs.”
They are reptiles, by definition animals that “creep /crawl.”
Dinosaurs by definition walked over their legs with some other definitive bony features.
It is commonly said that the crocodile and the Coelacanths are “living fossils” but they are not considered “living dinosaurs.” Birds . . . are!
I think you’re playing with semantics here, Carol. A dinosaur is a reptile. How a crocodile walks doesn’t make it any less of a dinosaur; many different types of dinosaurs walked in different ways. Regardless of what you want to call it or how you want to define it, a crocodile is a large reptile with leathery skin, the same as extinct species of dinosaurs. The difference is crocodiles didn’t go extinct.
As for a “living fossil,” it would make more sense to just ‘consider’ a crocodile to be a “living dinosaur,” since “living fossil” borders on being an oxymoron.
And, to be frank, to say that birds are “living dinosaurs” but crocodiles aren’t is rather absurd. The crocs walked at the same time the T-Rex’s did and have basically remained unchanged throughout the ages! Saying that crocodiles are not a living dinosaur but birds are sounds like evolutionary dogma to me — a dogma that would like to ignore the question of why crocodiles did not go extinct and have remained unchanged.
One thought I had about this sighting that hasn’t been mentioned is they could have seen an alien. Maybe I just watched to much Star Trek but in the different shows some of the characters did look like reptiles.
I also liked the idea of slips in time or the dino ghost. But this writter did sound sincere in telling what they saw. I just don’t think a dinosaur would still be alive in the area they saw this creature.
Jeff, not playing with semantics but with actual definitions and terminology of paleontology, tho I was not very explicit.
Crocodiles certainly look like dinosaurs! But there’s more to the definition of “dinosaur” than being a reptile with leathery skin. And yes, it DOES matter how it walks and why. Very much so.
Dinosaurs were reptiles, but not all reptiles were (or are) dinosaurs. Based on skull configurations, reptiles were divided into 4 groups: Anapsids, Synapsids, Euryapsids, and Diapsids. Dinosaurs were specifically diapsids (named for their 2 holes behind the eyes). Well, crocodiles are diapsids too. But still not dinosaurs because the terminology goes on to consider hips and legs and the structure of ankles, knees and feet. By definition, dinosaurs walked with their legs under the body, not splayed out to the side as in crocodiles.
So crocodiles don’t make the cut. But plesiosaurs and pterodactyls didn’t get to be dinosaurs either, just swimming/flying lizards.
Meanwhile, there is growing evidence that at least some (if not all) dinosaurs were warm blooded based on bone structure (such as Haversian canals) and growth rates. Crocodiles were not and are not warm-blooded. But it is now generally accepted that the saurischian branch of dinosaurs did evolve into birds (many discoveries now of feathered dinosaurs), an idea that was long suggested but popularized by paleontologist Robert T. Bakker and “Jurassic Park.”