The UK Daily Mail published a story with the misleading headline “Humans DID live with dinosaurs…” The story then talks about placental mammals that coexisted with dinosaurs. This shows a lack of basic knowledge by the writer, the editors and anyone else involved in the story. Placental mammals are not humans. They are a large group of mammals that give birth to fully developed offspring. These ancestors were not human 65 million years ago or even 6 million years ago. They were not even primates, which had not evolved yet. The closest relatives of humans in the Cretaceous period were small, shrew-like animals. Some other branches of mammals were larger, like cats or dogs.

Just in case anyone thinks I am making up this unbelievably bad headline.   Here is the screen shot showing the daily mail and also an ugly grey box where there is a blocked ad. 

Also just in case anyone thinks I am not understanding what the Daily Mail is claiming.  

Saying that human ancestors lived with non-avian dinosaurs is true, but not very informative. It is also true that we live with avian dinosaurs, also known as birds, today. I could go and buy a bucket of Kentucky Fried dinosaur right now. That is the only way that the headline makes sense.  So, sure they could as easily say dinosaurs and humans live at the same time right now.  Clearly though the image above shows they have the misconception that the paper they read means humans, like "cave people " existing with dinosaurs...Flintstones style. 

Yabba Dabba Doo! 

The Diversity of Mammals

Mammals are not all the same. There are different kinds of mammals. Placental mammals are familiar to us. You, dear human, are a placental mammal. Our species reproduces when the female carries a baby inside her uterus, an organ that evolved from the same one that other animals use to lay eggs.

There are also marsupial mammals that have a very short pregnancy and then give birth to a baby that grows up in an external pouch. If you live in the Americas, you probably have seen a possum. That is how they reproduce.

There are even some mammals, called monotremes, that lay eggs and produce milk in a way that resembles sweating. An example of them is the duck-billed platypus, which has a venomous spur on its heel that it uses to fight for mates. Monotremes are very ancient and rare mammals.

Before the dinosaurs, there were other animals that were similar to mammals, but not quite. They dominated the land in the Permian period. The most famous of them is Dimetrodon, which is often mistaken for a dinosaur by children. Dimetrodon of which there were many species lived more than 100 million years before T-Rex, 295-270 million years ago.

If we go back even further, we can find a common ancestor with the dinosaurs, or even with the fish. The fact that we had ancestors that lived with dinosaurs does not mean that humans, or any members of the genus Homo, Australopithecus or any primate at all, lived with dinosaurs. The Daily Mail should change its headline.

This is the same paper that will put forth a veteran biology prof supposedly fired for teaching that sex is determined by XX XY (which in normal circumstances it is that simple but Transpeople exist because not all circumstances are normal or simple). The UK Daily Mail shows their true colors with publishing this article. I’d not be surprised if they try to say there is proof for Noah’s flood, as a literal world wide event, next.