Saurischia
Saurischia is one of the two orders of dinosaurs. In 1888, Harry Seeley classified dinosaurs into two main orders.[1] Their hip structure was why they were put into these orders. Saurischians ('lizard-hipped') and the ornithischians ('bird-hipped') have differences in the ways bones in the hip are put together.
| Saurischia Temporal range: Upper Triassic – Upper Cretaceous (non-avian)
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| Order: | Saurischia Seeley, 1887
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All carnivorous dinosaurs (the theropods) are saurischians, and so are the sauropods like Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus.
Birds are direct descendants of a group of theropod dinosaurs,[2] so they are a sub-clade of saurischian dinosaurs in modern classification.
Related pages
References
- ↑ Seeley, H.G. (1888). "On the classification of the fossil animals commonly named Dinosauria." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 43: 165-171.
- ↑ Padian K. (2004). "Basal Avialae". In Weishampel, David B. Dodson, Peter & Osmólska, Halszka (eds) (ed.). The Dinosauria 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 210–231. ISBN 0-520-24209-2.
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