Dinosaurs >> Lizards

Chris Green said:

I have been told by an evolutionist

"Where do you think reptiles come from?
I will give you a hint they evolved from the dinosaurs."

What do you make of this?

Click to expand...

He's wrong.

The extant reptile groups have a history that takes them well before the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs and modern reptiles indeed share a common ancestry, but it is far further back than the dinosaurs themselves.

The only extant descendants of the dinosaurs are the birds. Consequently, birds are more closely related to crocodiles (which are the extant reptile group with the latest common ancestor with the dinosaurs) than either are to turtles or snakes - a fact born out by chemical analysis of their proteins - crocodile proteins are more similar to turkey than they are to turtle, a fact often presented mistakenly by creationists as damaging to evolution, whereas it actually reinforces the evolutionary history of the groups concerned derived from the fossil record. But I digress.

Think of it like this - Dinosaurs are Latin, modern reptiles are Greek, Russian, Welsh and Icelandic. These languages share a common ancestor with Latin (proto-indo-european) but are not derived from Latin. The birds in this example are Spanish, which is.

Karl - Liberal Backslider is completely correct.