#xkcd No. 3204
Date: 2026-2-6
Title: Dinosaurs And Non-Dinosaurs
Alt text: Staplers are actually in Pseudosuchia, making them more closely related to crocodiles than to dinosaurs.
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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Bony fish specifically but I'd argue that the common name for the clade bony fish is misleading and that bony fish aren't a subtype of fish but rather a clade of animals descending from a subset of the non-clade category of things we call fish. Not all fish belong to a single clade we can call fish, bony fish descend from one of these unrelated things we collectively refer to as fish.
Basically, I would say the term fish is more like our term for tree (representing a niche rather than clade) unless you would argue all vertebrates are fish. We are a member of the clade bony fish so we are bony fish but we do not fill the same niche as fish so aren't a fish. So "Bony Fish" is a noun distinct from bony (adjective) fish (noun).