It really is. I would venture to guess that 90% of Americans or more do not recognize that statement as factual.

I wouldn’t be sure about that for the under 40 crowd: the “dinosaur phase” is pretty common in kids, and the “birds are dinosaurs” is a big part of that.

One might think that. But other than the more enthusiastic dino crowd, I still find this is largely unknown by the general public (including the youngsters). Of course, I think this has more to do with less knowledge about what evolution is than anything else.

Ah, is Dinosaur Train less popular than my kid’s cohort implied? 😎 That said, Kate & I were basically Rock Stars when Kieran was in preschool & elementary school: the kids ate up all the paleo stuff with relish. (The times we did the “parents describe your jobs” days probably crushed the…

… proverbial souls of the other parents… 😈)

Anecdata but one of my quite smart and well read friends asked “so are birds really dinosaurs” once.

I think this is one of those things where people 1) default to a sort of pop-Linnean thinking about taxonomy and 2) don’t really see birds as part of a much larger group”-if we had civilized reptiles in a world where the only placental mammals were dogs and bats, they’d have the same problem!