Like pterosaur , ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurus , Dimetrodon , while commonly mistaken for a dinosaur , isn’t actually a dinosaur . In fact , unlike pterosaurs , ichthyosaur and plesiosaurs , Dimetrodon is n’t even a reptile , but instead belongs to a diverse group of animals that includes all mod day mammal . Seriously .
According to Emily Graslie – host of the outstanding YouTube science channelThe Brain Scoopand Chief Curiosity Correspondent at Chicago ’s Field Museum – Dimetrodon is asynapsid , a chemical group of four - limbed , back - swot animate being that extends back 315 - million years on the tree of aliveness , along an evolutionary ramification entirely separate from reptiles and dinosaurs . And Graslie would know . She recently referred to Dimetrodon as a mammal - like reptile in front of a vertebrate paleomammologist and , well , it ’s a error she ’s been last down ever since in the form of the recently launched tumblr“ … Is Not A Dinosaur,”where she catalogue “ mismarketed toys that [ she really believes ] have negative impacts on our understanding of other non - mammalian diverseness ” :
mayhap I ’m wholly delusional but I think with a petty turn of fact - checking and a commitment to truth we can provide educational chance pretty much everywhere . Perhaps it is n’t such a big pot that “ dinosaur ” is a blanket , collar - all terminal figure to describe any and all prehistorical life – but I ’m convinced we ’d all value our early ancestral relatives a bit more if we had a more thorough understanding of how those lifeforms come to be .
Graslie expands in the video above , the late installment of The Brain Scoop . She drops a ton of knowledge on all things Dimetrodon and the unbelievable variety of synapsids , and ply some corking , easy - to - come after explanations on shuddery - sounding depicted object like phylogenetics and evolutionary relationships . It ’s great stuff .
[ The Brain Scoop| … Is Not a Dinosaur ]
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