Atheism is unreasonable

[Mister Agenda]

Except that group of animals from which mammals would later derive, and which had been called "mammal like reptiles" for about a century, are no longer called reptiles very much in the professional community. When they are still so called, it is not because reptile continue to be considered a sensical grouping of different lineages to which mammalian ancesters naturally belong. Instead they are so called out of habit and out of the fact that most people, due to long history of use of the term, know what you are trying to say if you say it, even if the term might imply things no longer thought to be true if taken to be a meaningful taxonomical term.

Basically, the group of animals formerly called reptiles really belong to 4 separate and distinct lineages. 2 of those lineages are definitely not more closely related to the others in the reptile group than they are to groups of animals that are traditionally not considered to be reptiles. So reptile is a term of superficial similarity. Not a term denoting fundamental relatedness.

Thanks for the clarification, I shouldn't have oversimplified. And I probably should have mentioned that dinosaurs have reptiloid ancestors as well.