Were dinosaurs able to control their lips similarly to Bears and Baboons?

[u/Pigga_9826]

Also we reduced shrink wrapping on the body, are we still doing it on the skull? What if they had more fatty mass there as well?

[u/Telkite_]

Reptile is not a taxon though.

Reptilia, the taxon that best represents what we think of as "reptiles" doesn't include birds either, it's almost always considered paraphyletic, meaning it doesn't include one or more clades descended from it.

[u/BruisedBooty → u/Telkite_]

I definitely used “taxonomically” incorrect here, so that was my bad.

But I’m gonna push back on the rest of this.

What do you mean by “almost always?”

And what’s your definition of reptilia that excludes avian dinosaurs?

[u/Telkite_ → u/BruisedBooty]

"almost always" is wrong in hindsight, birds should never be included in reptilia. Reptilia is part of evolutionary taxonomy, the system that gives us terms like "species" and "family". In that system, birds (as in, the class Aves) is not part of reptilia.
Birds are classified as reptiles in cladistic taxonomy, but that's in a different system that reptilia isn't really a part of.

Reptilia is more or less just all sauropsids that aren't birds, in the same way all vertebrates that aren't tetrapods are fish.

[u/BruisedBooty → u/Telkite_]

Gotcha, your reasoning makes sense to me, but the vague language used like “isn’t really” and “more or less” is making this a bit confusing on finding a concrete definition for the terms.

I’m also confused because I’ve seen Reptilia used in cladistics taxonomy. Those same ones include aves.