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Dinosaurs And Non-Dinosaurs

|< < Prev #3204 (February 6, 2026)

Title text: Staplers are actually in Pseudosuchia, making them more closely related to crocodiles than to dinosaurs.

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Explanation

This comic explores the seeming paradox that certain extinct prehistoric species which are popularly thought of as being "dinosaurs" are, from a strict taxonomic viewpoint, not. It also takes into account the fact that all bird species are descended from dinosaurs and thus - again, from a strict taxonomic viewpoint - are themselves dinosaurs as well (see 1211). To illustrate this, Randall provides silhouettes of dinosaurs, of entities that are widely thought of as dinosaurs but are not, of entities that are not widely thought of as dinosaurs but are (i.e., birds), and, lastly, of entities that are neither dinosaurs nor thought of as dinosaurs (which is funny because it's so all-encompassing as to be practically meaningless, just like it would be if you replaced the word "dinosaurs" by any other plural noun, or adjective).

Clockwise from upper left in each quadrant of the image:

• Silhouettes in "seem like dinosaurs / are dinosaurs": stegosaurus, triceratops, tyrannosaurus, diplodocus, velociraptor
• Silhouettes in "seem like dinosaurs / are not dinosaurs": mosasaur, quetzalcoatlus, dimetrodon, plesiosaur, pteranodon
• Silhouettes in "don't seem like dinosaurs / are not dinosaurs": squirrel, stapler, bicycle, Cueball, pineapple
• Silhouettes in "don't seem like dinosaurs / are dinosaurs": penguin, egret, falcon, pigeon, ostrich

The title text is a further joke about taxonomy, seemingly predicated on the assumption that staplers are biological organisms (which they are not), and can thus be sorted into taxa. Pseudosuchia is in fact the clade that encompasses all crocodilians, and staplers bear a certain resemblance to the open mouth of a crocodilian.

The original Linnaean taxonomy did at first have a top-level classification for "mineral" taxonomy, in addition to those for animal and plant, which in its broadest sense might allow one to assign a stapler a taxonomic relationship with dinosaurs.

Transcript

[A 2x2 chart containing various animals and objects.]

• Left column: Are dinosaurs
• Right column: Are not dinosaurs
• Upper row: Seem like dinosaurs
• Lower row: Don't seem like dinosaurs

[Top left (seem like dinosaurs, are dinosaurs):]

[Top right (seem like dinosaurs, are not dinosaurs):]

[Bottom left (don't seem like dinosaurs, are dinosaurs):]

[Bottom right (don't seem like dinosaurs, are not dinosaurs):]

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