h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

...is the BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs.

I watched "The Making of WwD" last night and the first episode was on Monday. Fantastic stuff. Forget Jurassic Park, this one has real science in it too.

It's fascinating to see how precursors to some mammalian traits like live child birth were starting to evolve among basically reptilian creatures some 220 million years ago.

My question:

Do you believe these critters were in fact basically reptillian? My belief more and more is that at least some of them were basically avian. I feel that the ostrich and the emu are much closer to t. rex than the alligator or the komodo dragons. What's your take, si?

Sorry Nilchii, I'm sure my home page says 0 replies. I didn't see this until I checked your own page (time you added some content!)

Now then avia vs. reptilia. The critters I was referring to were aquatic reptiles, I think, that had evolved live child birth. My take is this

Reptilia ----------------------------------------------------------------------
..........................\-Dinosaur ---------------{extinction}
............................................... \-Avia--------------------------

Where mammalia come in, I'm not sure, did they separate from Dinosaur or Reptile? I suspect reptile, because some of them had already cracked the egg problem (ho ho).

Yeah, it is time I added content - I was just thinking about that...

I suppose in order to have this particular conversation, I should bone up on my paleobiology (pun intended ; ), but on the dinosaur/avian issue, what are the following critters?

Pterodactyl
Allosaur
Parrot
Velociraptor
Eagle
Deinonychus
Archaeopteryx
Emu

I see the problem as being spectrumatic, where you see something much more akin to valence shells, where at this point, dinosauria stops and avia begins...

Having said that, I went and tried to arrange my examples in a spectrum and I just can't, so you're probably righter than me : ) It's an interesting problem though...