The bulk update request #10978 is pending approval.

remove implication herrerasaurid (13) -> dinosaur (57790)
remove implication sauropodomorph (2311) -> dinosaur (57790)
remove implication theropod (29813) -> dinosaur (57790)
create implication herrerasaurid (13) -> saurischian (1)
create implication sauropodomorph (2311) -> saurischian (1)
create implication theropod (29813) -> saurischian (1)
create alias saurischia (0) -> saurischian (1)
create implication saurischian (1) -> dinosaur (57790)
create alias feather_dinosaur (5) -> feathered_dinosaur (3938)
create alias feather_dino (0) -> feathered_dinosaur (3938)
create alias feathered_raptor (297) -> feathered_dinosaur (3938)
create implication furred_dinosaur (70) -> furred_scalie (37368)
create alias furred_dino (0) -> furred_dinosaur (70)
create alias sauropods (3) -> sauropod (2285)
create implication herrerasaurus (21) -> herrerasaurid (13)
remove alias herrarasaurus_(species) (0) -> herrarasaurus (0)
remove implication herrarasaurus (0) -> herrerasaurid (13)

Reason: I have gone through a bunch of dinosaur posts, and several times around the tag relationship tree. I have double checked the BURs that set it up in the past, and while they did a ton of good work, there's a lot of inconsistency left (mainly in sauropods, but not only), and just a bunch more new dinosaur species/genera have been posted that aren't attached yet. So I figured I'll shoot my shot at cleaning it up.

This specific BUR is just part 1 to clean up the tags relating directly to dinosaur, but also cleans up most of saurischia as well by proxy. I intend to get into the more granular groups in subsequent BURs under this forum post.

Things to note:
- Herrerasaurids are weird. They've been regarded as Theropods for the longest time, and the most recent source from 2017 does indeed list them as that. Having said that, there's been a lot of talk about them potentially being Sauropodomorphs instead. I think leaving them implying neither of these two groups is the safest bet
- This BUR structure goes with the assumption that the naming scheme from the ornithischian tag is the one intended to be used. It is weird that in this specific case we don't use the english name that's available. If it's an oversight and it's deemed that this naming convention should be flipped around I will gladly do that instead

Necessary followup once this goes through

alias herrarasaurus -> herrerasaurus
alias herrarasaurus_(species) -> herrerasaurus

The bulk update request #10979 is pending approval.

remove implication ceratopsian (5778) -> ornithischian (11612)
remove implication pachycephalosaurid (279) -> ornithischian (11612)
create implication ceratopsian (5778) -> marginocephalian (0)
create implication pachycephalosaurid (279) -> marginocephalian (0)
create alias marginocephalia (0) -> marginocephalian (0)
create implication marginocephalian (0) -> ornithischian (11612)
remove implication hypsilophodon (111) -> ornithischian (11612)
remove implication iguanodontid (133) -> ornithischian (11612)
remove implication leaellynasaura (13) -> ornithischian (11612)
create implication hypsilophodon (111) -> ornithopod (3894)
create implication iguanodontian (0) -> ornithopod (3894)
create implication iguanodontid (133) -> iguanodontian (0)
create implication leaellynasaura (13) -> iguanodontian (0)
create implication oryctodromeus (1) -> ornithischian (11612)
create implication chilesaurus (1) -> ornithischian (11612)
create implication minimocursor (1) -> ornithischian (11612)

Reason: Part 2 - cleaning up Ornithischia

- Ceratopsians and Pachycephalosaurians are grouped together as Marginocephalians. This is just like how stegosaurian and ankylosaurian are grouped as thyreophoran
- Hypsilophodon, Leaellynasaura, and Iguanodontids are all ornithopods, so they're kicked down to imply that instead of implying ornithischian directly. Leaellynasaura and Iguanodontids are also Iguanodontians (belonging to Iguanodontia) - this tag is helpful in grouping non-hadrosaur ornithopods together (pretty much everything is either Iguanodontia or Hadrosauridae)
- Oryctodromeus is the only Thescelosaurid on the site as far as I can find, and those are in a pretty weird spot taxonomically (technically they should be Ornithopods I believe, but most sources don't list them as such, so they're banished to just being Ornitischians)
- Chilesaurus and Minimocursor aren't assigned to any more granular group than Ornithischia

The bulk update request #10980 is pending approval.

Reason: Part 3 - Ornithopods

- Dryosaurids aren't Iguanodontids. Them being Iguanodontids would mean they're in family Iguanodontidae which... a family can't be inside another family
- Dryosaur is a common term referring to Dryosaurids and/or the genus Dryosaurus
- Camptosaurus, Tenontosaurus, Lurdusaurus, Zalmoxes, and Mantellisaurus are all Iguanodontians. Uteodon is in a weird spot, because it's sometimes regarded as a synonym of Camptosaurus, but I think it's fine to stay
- Barsboldia, Tsintaosaurus, and Magnapaulia are Hadrosaurids
- Nanyangosaurus is a Hadrosauroid, but I think it's easiest to just tag it straight as an Ornithopod. The same is true for Orthomerus, except that one also happens to be dubious
- Pegomastax is a Heterodontosaurid, which is an oddball family of Ornithopods that doesn't fall under either Hadrosauroidea nor Iguanodontia

These (and all further) sources come from https://paleobiodb.org, but I believe most that don't relate to Iguanodontians can also be just found on Wikipedia

The bulk update request #10981 is pending approval.

Reason: Part 4 - Thyreophora

- Same as with the Dryosaurids above - a family can't be inside another family. Nodosaurids are Ankylosaurians, not Ankylosaurids
- Gastonia, Panoplosaurus, Denversaurus, Nodosaurus (shocker), Stegopelta, Edmontonia, Hylaeosaurus, Borealopelta, and Polacanthus are all Nodosaurids
- Scolosaurus and Anodontosaurus are Ankylosaurids
- Stegouros is a Parankylosaurian (that still falls under Ankylosauria, though, so it fits). NOT a misspelling of Stegosaurus
- Kunburrasaurus is... not a thing. Kunbarrasaurus, however, is an Ankylosaurian described in 2023 that doesn't seem to be assigned to any family at all
- Adratiklit is a genus of Stegosaurians described in 2020
- Isaberrysaura has been reassigned to Stegosauria in 2020 as well

Necessary followup once it's approved:

imply nodosaurid -> ankylosaurian

The bulk update request #10982 is pending approval.

Reason: Part 5 - Unimplicating the ceratopsians so they can be split into families

The bulk update request #10983 is pending approval.

create implication ceratopsid (12) -> ceratopsian (5778)
create implication centrosaurine (6) -> ceratopsid (12)
create implication chasmosaurine (6) -> ceratopsid (12)
create alias centrosaur (0) -> centrosaurine (6)
create alias centrosaurinae (0) -> centrosaurine (6)
create alias chasmosaur (0) -> chasmosaurine (6)
create alias chasmosaurinae (0) -> chasmosaurine (6)
create implication protoceratopsid (0) -> ceratopsian (5778)
create implication leptoceratopsid (0) -> ceratopsian (5778)
remove implication rubeosaurus_ovatus (1) -> rubeosaurus (2)

Reason: Part 5.5 to include the family tags before I start re-implicating the species tags. I think if I tried it in one BUR it'd error out

Also unimplying the rubeosaurus species tag here and going to alias it away. There's no reason to have a separate species and genus tag for an animal that only has one species in the genus.

Followup

alias rubeosaurus_ovatus -> rubeosaurus

The bulk update request #10984 is pending approval.

Reason: Part 6 - Re-implicating the ceratopsians into 3 separate families and 2 subfamilies (plus leaving the oddballs with no families out)

The bulk update request #10985 is pending approval.

create implication spiclypeus (6) -> chasmosaurine (6)
create implication torosaurus (5) -> chasmosaurine (6)
create implication achelousaurus (1) -> centrosaurine (6)
create implication centrosaurus (5) -> centrosaurine (6)
create implication lokiceratops (1) -> centrosaurine (6)
create implication avaceratops (1) -> centrosaurine (6)
create alias crittendenceratops_krzyzanowskii (1) -> crittendenceratops (0)
create implication crittendenceratops (0) -> centrosaurine (6)
create implication stegoceras (1) -> pachycephalosaurid (279)
create implication homalocephale (2) -> pachycephalosaurid (279)
create implication micropachycephalosaurus (1) -> ceratopsian (5778)
create implication tianyulong (1) -> marginocephalian (0)

Reason: Part 6.5 - including Marginocephalians that weren't attached before

- Yes, despite the name, Micropachycephalosaurus is a Ceratopsian and not a Pachycephalosaurid
- I figured there's no reason to have both a genus and a species tag for Crittendenceratops because the genus has only a single species anyways
- Tianyulong was described as a Heterodontosaurid in 2009, but in 2020 it's been reassigned to Pachycephalosauria. Wikipedia does not reflect this yet

The bulk update request #10990 is pending approval.

Reason: Part 7, but I expect sauropods to take several BURs. Starting to clean up old sauropod tags.

- Saltasauridae falls under Titanosauria. So do Argentinosaurus, Bonitasaura, and Puertasaurus, but they aren't assigned to any specific family
- Bruhathkayosaurus is nomen dubium, but if we want to tag it then it's usually assigned to Titanosauria
- Titanosauria, Brachiosauridae, and Camarasauridae all fall under Macronaria
- Alamosaurus falls under Saltasauridae
- Bellusaurus and Omeisaurus both fall under Mamenchisauridae
- Bajadasaurus falls under Dicraeosauridae. Dicraeosauridae, in turn, alongside Diplodocidae falls under Diplodocoidea

The bulk update request #10991 is pending approval.

Reason: Part 7.5 - Omeisaurus (it didn't fit...) and currently unattached sauropodomorphs

- Sidersaura and Nigersaurus fall under Rebbachisauridae, and that in turn falls under Diplodocoidea
- Europasaurus falls under Camarasauromorpha. We don't really tag that, nor do I think we need to, but it's a group under Macronaria
- Sauroposeidon is a Titanosauriform, but not a Titanosaurian. Falls under Macronaria
- Unaysaurus falls under Plateosauridae
- Barosaurus falls under Diplodocidae
- Rapetosaurus and Tapuiasaurus fall under Saltosauroidea. Similarly to Camarasauromorpha, we don't tag it but it's under Titanosauria
- Quaesitosaurus falls under Nemegtidae, and that under Titanosauria. However, as Nemegtidae has only two recognized dinosaurs in it, I think it's a redundant tag
- Jobaria is a sauropod but does not fall under any groups worth tagging
- Brachytrachelopan is a dicraeosaurid
- Pantydraco and Eoraptor fall directly under Sauropodomorpha
- This is a great opportunity to alias prosauropod away, since that tag just means the same thing that searching sauropodomorph -sauropod does. It's not an actual taxon, it's just all sauropodomorphs that aren't sauropods

The bulk update request #10994 is pending approval.

Reason: Part 8, it's time to get on with theropods. This is gonna take a while, because there's lots of them we don't have attached

- Anchiornis falls under Troodontidae
- Eudromaeosauria is just a group that includes most common raptors. There's no real reason to have it tagged outside dromaeosaurid
- Guanlong falls under Protoceratosauridae, and that family is under Tyrannosauroidea. But we don't tag Protoceratosauridae, and frankly, I don't want to tag it either. That family is a mess, and a lot of things included under it aren't always considered to be under it
- Torvosaurus falls under Megalosauridae
- Now the kicker here is Allosauroidea. I've seen carnosaur on a post, and upon digging it's just a synonym of Allosauroidea. That superfamily encompasses Allosauridae, Carcharodontosauridae, Neovenatoridae, and Metriacanthosauridae, as well as Monolophosaurus who doesn't really know where to go so it's just tagging along EDIT: carnosaur seems to be used primarily as a Warhammer tag. It definitely should get a disambiguation. There's at least one post that's misusing it already.
- I am also including the tag for Ornithomimosauria here, since we've got 3 non-ornithomimid ornithomimosaurs on the site already
- This also includes aliases for some terms that mean the exact same thing some other tags already do - ceratosaur, dromeosaur, and compy

Necessary followup once this goes through:

alias eudromaeosaurian -> dromaeosaurid

The bulk update request #10995 is pending approval.

Reason: Part 9 - New theropods. This will likely need more than one BUR

- Sinosauropteryx has its own family, but it is the only species there. So it doesn't really matter
- Hesperornithoides and Sinornithoides fall under Troodontidae
- Nothronychus falls under Therizinosauridae
- Achillobator and Sinornithosaurus fall under Dromaeosauridae
- Mononykus falls under Alvarezsauridae. I thought it was the most well-known one of the bunch, kinda surprised the family tag exists and it's not there yet
- Saurophaganax falls under Allosauridae. Sometimes it's considered a synonym of Allosaurus, but it's not official yet so it gets to stay
- Becklespinax is a mess is what it is. Altispinax, despite the similar name and confusion, is a separate mess. Coelurus and Tanycolagreus are close behind, because they're not assigned to any particularly granular taxa
- Falcatakely belongs to Enantiornithes, which is an oddball group of Theropods that's not attached anywhere yet
- Pycnonemosaurus belongs to Abelisauridae
- Struthiomimus belongs to Ornithomimidae
- Chirostenotes belongs to Caenagnathidae
- Moros falls under Tyrannosauroidea
- Elaphrosaurus falls under Noasauridae
- Deinocheirus and Pelecanimimus are non-ornithomimid ornithomimosaurs
- Irritator belongs to Spinosauridae. So does Suchomimus, and I really don't believe we need the tag to have a suffix

Followup needed

alias suchomimus_(species) -> suchomimus

The bulk update request #10996 is pending approval.

Reason: Part 9.5 because there's so many theropods

- Yi Qi is an oddball theropod. It belongs to a specific family, but these species are pretty niche and I don't expect them to ever appear. I think going straight to theropod is fine
- Scipionyx falls under Compsognathidae, and there's only a single species so having these two tags separately is redundant
- Ubirajara is a weird case. It was described in 2020 (or 2021?) in a legal fiasco, meaning that technically the papers describing it are actually not valid. Mainly because they've been removed. It was described as a Compsognathid back then, but nothing really happened with the species since except for the fossil being returned to Brazil. It is currently not present in any taxonomic sources, but the animal nevertheless does exist
- Ornitholestes is... weird. According to C. Hendrickx and O. Mateus 2014, it's a compsognathid. But in 2021 there was supposed evidence it's an oviraptorosaur. I'll just leave it as a theropod
- Ilokelesia, Spectrovenator, and Rugops are from Abelisauridae
- Bicentenaria is a Coelurosaur, but we don't have a tag for those
- Tyrannomimus is another non-ornithomimid ornithomimosaur
- Shuvuuia is from Alvarezsauridae
- Shanag is a microraptine dromaeosaurid
- Adasaurus is a dromaeosaurid
- Lythronax is a tyrannosaurid
- Urbacodon, Hypnovenator, and Mei Long are troodontids
- Metriacanthosaurus, in a shocking twist, is a metriacanthosaurid
- Poekilopleuron is weird. Some sources call it a synonym of megalosaurus, but supposedly last year it was placed in Allosauroidea in some studies. Safest to leave it as just a theropod
- Duonychus is a fresh therizinosaurid described this year
- I am unaliasing megaraptorid and megaraptoridae from theropod here, because these are actual valid theropod families. Doubly so because there's two separate species of megaraptorid on the site - this tag can and should be used
- Similarly to Scipionyx - Pyroraptor, Troodon, and Masiakasaurus only have a single species each, so having a species and genus tag for them is redundant. Doubly so for Pyroraptor, where the species tag used is a typo

Followup necessary:

unimply megaraptor -> theropod
imply megaraptor -> megaraptorid
imply maip -> megaraptorid
alias megaraptoridae -> megaraptorid
imply megaraptorid -> theropod
alias masiakasaurus_knopfleri -> masiakasaurus
alias troodon_formosus -> troodon

NOTE
There's also dromeathomimus, but I have no idea what the hell that is. The only results google gives for that name are various porn and/or furry sites that use the word as a tag

The bulk update request #10997 is pending approval.

remove alias stygimoloch (6) -> pachycephalosaurus (245)
remove alias dracorex (0) -> pachycephalosaurus (245)

Reason: The 10th and final part of non-fictional dinosaur tags I've found on the site. I left it for last because I think this one, unlike the others, might be questionable

Unaliasing Stygimoloch and Dracorex from Pachycephalosaurus

Despite what Wikipedia did by merging their articles, these two are NOT objectively synonymous animals. The wikipedia article even says "possibly" dubious, and notes the possibility that, even if Stygimoloch is the same genus, it could be a different species entirely.

There are many other dubious genera on the site, some like troodon being perfectly comfortable in the place they sit at with hundreds of attached posts. I disagree that Stygimoloch and Dracorex should be treated differently.

And, for the most important reason - these three species are quite literally always depicted in completely different ways, so they can very easily be discerned via TWYS. Even if it turns out that these three represent different growth stages of the same animal, with how different their skulls look and how differently they're depicted they do warrant separate tags, similar to how caterpillar or tadpole exist.

Necessary followup

imply stygimoloch -> pachycephalosaurid
imply dracorex -> pachycephalosaurid

The bulk update request #10998 is pending approval.

Reason: Apparently part 11 because there's way too many stray oviraptorosaurs for me to ignore

Aaand I needed a place to put Eustreptospondylus in.

EDIT: And Yungavolucris is another Enantiornithine I found. The dinosaurs never end.

EDIT2: Citipati needs to be migrated to an artist suffix, because the word is a genus of Oviraptorid in itself and it's too confusing this way.

EDIT3: Look at that, there was an untagged Imperobator post. And turns out Halszkaraptor wasn't attached either. This is going great

EDIT4: It's been 5 days and two new dinosaur tags have been created. It's gonna keep on coming isn't it

NOW this should be all of the non-fictional ones. I sure hope, at least. There's some broader group tags I still haven't touched because I didn't figure they're really necessary or worthwhile, but for individual genera these are all I could find

Holy shit. Some impressive paleontology work there.

The bulk update request #11402 is pending approval.

create implication kileskus (1) -> tyrannosauroid (7911)
create implication jiangjunosaurus (1) -> stegosaurian (2060)
create implication orthomerus (1) -> hadrosaurid (3786)
remove implication coelophysis (31) -> theropod (29813)
create implication coelophysid (2) -> theropod (29813)
create implication coelophysis (31) -> coelophysid (2)
create implication procompsognathus (4) -> coelophysid (2)

Reason: It never ends

My man is on a mission

since we're already on the topic of dinosaur taxonomy, this might sound pedantic, but uhh... what about birds?

I know for the sake of tradition and implications it makes sense, but it's always _kinda_ bothered me that we just exclude them from theropod essentially "because reasons". I kinda wish there was something we could do to solve it...

I don't really want to change the definition or the implications way from what it currently is, but I dunno, would anyone be opposed to changing to maybe changing the name to prehistoric_theropod or something?

dba_afish said:
I don't really want to change the definition or the implications way from what it currently is, but I dunno, would anyone be opposed to changing to maybe changing the name to prehistoric_theropod or something?

Then you'd have to include similar naming exceptions in all higher orders like saurischian or dinosaur. Personally I think it's entirely redundant, and it seems I'm not the only one with this sentiment given the conversation on my synapsid BUR

However, this conversation has to happen at some point - where exactly do we draw the line? I intend to go after crocodylomorphs once I'm done with dinosaurs and pterosaurs, and that group needs a more thorough taxonomical revision regarding the level of granularity we do, given the extant species are a tiny fraction AND we have very far removed ancestors of theirs present on the site already.

dba_afish said:
since we're already on the topic of dinosaur taxonomy, this might sound pedantic, but uhh... what about birds?

I know for the sake of tradition and implications it makes sense, but it's always _kinda_ bothered me that we just exclude them from theropod essentially "because reasons". I kinda wish there was something we could do to solve it...

I don't really want to change the definition or the implications way from what it currently is, but I dunno, would anyone be opposed to changing to maybe changing the name to prehistoric_theropod or something?

You could instead append modern_theropod for birds.

bugabond said:
However, this conversation has to happen at some point - where exactly do we draw the line?

Personally I think the line should be drawn at the exodus of Homo Sapiens from Africa, as that also coincides with the extinction of Neanderthals. Since colloquially I think those are what people would consider to be the cavemen in history. I think the real razor there should also be if a specific species lived before and past that era they should not be labelled dinosaurs. Them being affectionately referred to as Living Dinosaurs gives the idea that your species needs to be extinct to truly fit into the label of an actual dinosaur or ancient creature.

nin10dope said:
You could instead append modern_theropod for birds.

I think prehistoric_* is the more accepted tagging convention (e.g. prehistoric_species) compared to modern_* (which can be somewhat vague if applied to other things; modern as in post-2000? post-1950? etc).

Personally, I think renaming the current dinosaur tag to prehistoric_dinosaur, and then having bird and prehistoric_dinosaur imply dinosaur isn't a bad idea. If all these implications are worthwhile because they're "correct", then it is correct to say birds are dinosaurs as much as a theropod is a saurischian. prehistoric_dinosaur would then function as the "classic" idea of what a dinosaur is.

Or we could just alias dinosaur to prehistoric_dinosaur to clarify it's for the older extinct species from before written history, and not bother with the technicalities of modern birds still being dinosaurs, since this discussion keeps coming up from time to time.

I mean, modern/prehistoric split is entirely nonapplicable and unwarranted.

If a split was to happen you'd be looking at avian/non-avian, as it is in most dinosaur taxonomy. Splitting by time periods when it comes to dinosaur-bird relationships is never going to work because there's too much overlap.

But again, I really do think it's entirely redundant. Nobody searches for dinosaurs thinking they're going to see a penguin or a chicken. I think there's too much dissonance between correct taxonomy and accepted definitions of terms here for this to be useful.

bugabond said:
I mean, modern/prehistoric split is entirely nonapplicable and unwarranted.

If a split was to happen you'd be looking at avian/non-avian, as it is in most dinosaur taxonomy. Splitting by time periods when it comes to dinosaur-bird relationships is never going to work because there's too much overlap.

But again, I really do think it's entirely redundant. Nobody searches for dinosaurs thinking they're going to see a penguin or a chicken. I think there's too much dissonance between correct taxonomy and accepted definitions of terms here for this to be useful.

What's the dissonance for accepted definitions that aren't correct?

watsit said:
I think prehistoric_* is the more accepted tagging convention (e.g. prehistoric_species) compared to modern_* (which can be somewhat vague if applied to other things; modern as in post-2000? post-1950? etc).

Personally, I think renaming the current dinosaur tag to prehistoric_dinosaur, and then having bird and prehistoric_dinosaur imply dinosaur isn't a bad idea. If all these implications are worthwhile because they're "correct", then it is correct to say birds are dinosaurs as much as a theropod is a saurischian. prehistoric_dinosaur would then function as the "classic" idea of what a dinosaur is.

Or we could just alias dinosaur to prehistoric_dinosaur to clarify it's for the older extinct species from before written history, and not bother with the technicalities of modern birds still being dinosaurs, since this discussion keeps coming up from time to time.

would you suggest that all birds be tagged as feathered scalies then? There is a limit as to how much complete taxonomic accuracy makes sense for a furry booru, especially as you get into the higher levels.

pleaseletmein said:
would you suggest that all birds be tagged as feathered scalies then? There is a limit as to how much complete taxonomic accuracy makes sense for a furry booru, especially as you get into the higher levels.

well, scalie is already not a real taxonomic group anyway, it's a word entirely formed through furry tradition and, honestly, the tag's current definition is just kinda funky as it is.

if we wanted it to be relatively sensible, we could just use it as a way to seperate reptiles that normally have scales from ones that normally have feathers.

I just don't think tagging birds as reptiles is practical or advisable, even if its technically accurate.

pleaseletmein said:
I just don't think tagging birds as reptiles is practical or advisable, even if its technically accurate.

Agreed. It's not a user-sided benefit. People looking up reptiles are not looking for birds and vice versa.

pleaseletmein said:
I just don't think tagging birds as reptiles is practical or advisable, even if its technically accurate.

yeah. what I'm saying is that if we're not going to that anyway scalie is kinda pointless it's just:

• scaled reptiles (which is already the definition of reptile)
• also fictional reptiles because we don't directly consider those reptiles, I guess (even though we don't do that for mammals or fish or arthropods or amphibians)
• oh yeah, it also includes some types of amphibian... sometimes... maybe? the wiki specifically says that salamanders count for some reason, but no amphibians actually imply scalie.

it's essentially just a tag that is one part wrong two parts redundant.

dba_afish said:
since we're already on the topic of dinosaur taxonomy, this might sound pedantic, but uhh... what about birds?

I know for the sake of tradition and implications it makes sense, but it's always _kinda_ bothered me that we just exclude them from theropod essentially "because reasons". I kinda wish there was something we could do to solve it...

I don't really want to change the definition or the implications way from what it currently is, but I dunno, would anyone be opposed to changing to maybe changing the name to prehistoric_theropod or something?

I still stand by my statement in the thread linked by Bugabond above. From a different thread:

Just because taxonomically two groups are related genetically doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea for them to be so tagged on e621, which is used by a lot of users whose idea of zoology is fairly limited. An example is birds. They are technically dinosaurs, specifically theropods, but we don't tag them as such, mostly to reduce confusion and reduce tag bloat. A justification for this is that birds have diverged so much from other dinosaurs that what constitutes a bird and what constitutes a dinosaur are two different things in the public mind, even among trained zoologists.

In the same post, I also likened evolution to a transformation sequence:

Transitional forms are like a character in mid-transformation, a mix of the character's starting and ending species, but not entirely either one. We'd tag them as both, even though pictures showing the post-transformation character would not be tagged as the pre-transformation character's species. Because isn't that what evolution boils down to? A constant, long-term transformation sequence?

So, basically, dinosaur and bird are just opposite ends of a transformation sequence, much like human and wolf would be at opposite ends of a werewolf transformation sequence. And, just as there's werewolf for the parts inbetween, there's avialan (should we care to adopt it) for creatures like the opposite birds and hesperornitheans that are too birdy to qualify as classic theropods but aren't modern birds. (Although, to be fair, birds also qualify as avialans.)

bugabond said:
... where exactly do we draw the line?

There actually is a very convenient time where we can draw the line — the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event some 66 million years ago. We can say without the shadow of a doubt that those critters have been all birds since then and that no non-bird dinosaur has lived since then. So, creatures like Gastornis and the various terror birds of South America are definitely on the bird end of the transformation sequence. Anything before then but too birdy to count as classic Deinonychus-like theropods could be tagged as avialan, even birds, which could imply theropod if we'd like.

I don't think we need to overthink this so much.

I think my 'drawing the line' comment didn't really go through as I intended it. I was aiming to use the dinosaur-bird conversation as an example. I firmly believe that splitting avians/non-avians and synapsids/non-mammal synapsids can be done without an umbrella tag joining them, because when people search for one, they usually don't intend to search for the other, and adding an umbrella would just interfere with natural searches.

The issue I have specifically is with pseudosuchians and what's gonna happen in cases of those. You have cases like desmatosuchus and then you have the modern nile crocodile, which would both fall under the umbrella. Do we make a pseudosuchian tag encompassing both? Realistically, this one wouldn't interfere with natural searches - if someone wants crocodilians, they search for crocodilian, not pseudosuchian, but it still feels weird to make a singular exception for this case.

Anyways, I am kinda just rambling here because I was hoping I could get an answer for this before dinosaurs were finished and I moved on to the other extinct critter tag relationships. I'd rather get this discussion done before I prepare a BUR for them.

bugabond said:
I think my 'drawing the line' comment didn't really go through as I intended it. I was aiming to use the dinosaur-bird conversation as an example. I firmly believe that splitting avians/non-avians and synapsids/non-mammal synapsids can be done without an umbrella tag joining them, because when people search for one, they usually don't intend to search for the other, and adding an umbrella would just interfere with natural searches.

I agree.

Anyways, I am kinda just rambling here because I was hoping I could get an answer for this before dinosaurs were finished and I moved on to the other extinct critter tag relationships. I'd rather get this discussion done before I prepare a BUR for them.

The dinosaur/bird thought is incidental to this thread. I think your BURs are fine as is.

clawstripe said:
I still stand by my statement in the thread linked by Bugabond above. From a different thread:
In the same post, I also likened evolution to a transformation sequence:
So, basically, dinosaur and bird are just opposite ends of a transformation sequence, much like human and wolf would be at opposite ends of a werewolf transformation sequence. And, just as there's werewolf for the parts inbetween, there's avialan (should we care to adopt it) for creatures like the opposite birds and hesperornitheans that are too birdy to qualify as classic theropods but aren't modern birds. (Although, to be fair, birds also qualify as avialans.)
There actually is a very convenient time where we can draw the line — the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event some 66 million years ago. We can say without the shadow of a doubt that those critters have been all birds since then and that no non-bird dinosaur has lived since then. So, creatures like Gastornis and the various terror birds of South America are definitely on the bird end of the transformation sequence. Anything before then but too birdy to count as classic Deinonychus-like theropods could be tagged as avialan, even birds, which could imply theropod if we'd like.

I don't think we need to overthink this so much.

I didn't want to change any tag relationships or anything, though, this is all kind of tangential to the question of the tag's name.

I didn't want to change where any lines were drawn on any species of theropod, just make it slightly more clear that there was a line drawn and where that line was. prehistoric_theropod is for everything before birds, and theropod would be aliased to that.
bird is for the remaining species of theropod.