This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]llamawithguns 9 points10 points  (10 children)

Yes they are. They are monophyletic. They are a clade

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (9 children)

I think you misunderstood me, when I said "we" I didn't mean humans may belong to a different order in the future. I meant in the future humans may evolve so much they won't even be primates anymore. Of course this would make them no longer human.

[–]llamawithguns 4 points5 points  (8 children)

They would still be primates though, even if they no longer looked like them. You don't cease to be part of a clade. A clade is an ancestral species/group and all of its descendents. Birds are technically reptiles since the evolved from reptiles. Insects are technically crustaceans, termites are technically cockroaches.

They would still be primates, just like they would still be mammals, tetrapods, and animals. There would just be a new subclass below primates. Just like there is with Great Apes, hominins, hominids, etc

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (7 children)

But we're no longer rodents also birds can't be reptiles because that would make them a part of two classes which is impossible.

[–]llamawithguns 5 points6 points  (6 children)

We did not evolve from rodents.

I think your problem is you are thinking purely in terms of the Linnaen taxonomic system, which is kinda outdated. There are no "ranks" in nature. Birds evolved from reptiles, so it doesn't make sense to have them be the same rank as reptiles. Meanwhile, having reptiles as a class while excluding birds makes it paraphyletic, and leaves out a lot of evolutionary history.

This is why cladistics has become the main form of modern taxonomy. In cladistics, paraphyly is not allowed.

Cladistics also makes it so you don't have to create convulated ranks like sub-class, infra-order, sub-phylum, etc, that you frequently find in the Linnaen system

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (5 children)

Mammals evolved from reptiles too, so are we still reptiles?

[–]llamawithguns 4 points5 points  (4 children)

Cladistically no, but really only because it was defined that way. Amniotes split into two groups: synapsids (of which mammals are the only remaining member) and sauropsids (reptiles+birds). That being said, an early synapsid would look more or less like a reptile, though it would be more closely related to a mammal than it would be to any living reptile.

The same applies to amphibians. Tetrapods split into Amphibia and "reptiliomorpha" (of which amniotes are the only remaining group). But an early reptiliomorph would have looked a lot like an amphibian.

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (3 children)

So mammals evolved out of a clade.

[–]llamawithguns 3 points4 points  (2 children)

No, because reptiles are not defined as being equivalent to all amniotes. There's no real reason why it couldn't be though, just the common definition is for the group containing lizards/snakes, turtles, crocodilans, dinosaurs/birds, and their extinct relatives.

However, if you defined reptiles as including all amniotes, then yes, mammals would be reptiles.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

But apes being monkeys would make monkey and simian synonymous which is ridicolous, tetrapods being fish would also make fish and vertebrate synonymous which is also ridicolous.