You Suck LA Times!

It's not often that a major (or formerly major) newspaper has worse editing than the BSD but LA Times has out done itself. Yesterday the LA Times stated

“(Pryor's) tall and long, like a pterodactyl,” Mays said, referring to the prehistoric winged bird.

This has any number of things wrong with it. First, the correct clade (group) is pterosaur not pterodactyl (unless Mays, a renowned paleobotanist, was using the ancient greek term for the clade). However the bigger issue with all of this was how the LA Times attempted to explain the term. Pterosaurs were flying reptile not birds as anyone knows (and I'm not even going to start with the winged bird phrase - umm what birds don't have wings?) This is frankly a breach of the public trust and much more damning a slap at the paleontological community. Dear LA Times please hire some editors and stop sucking. Also please hire reporters that can ask decent follow up questions to Mays....like what kind of pterosaur does Pryor resemble...rhamphorrhynchus or quetzalcoatlus?

(h/t Doc Sat)

Update:
Just to clarify. Dinosaurs and more specifically avian dinosaurs (better known as birds) are not pterosaurs. While pterosaurs are closely related to dinosaurs and existed at the same time they are not dinosaurs. Secondly, dinosaurs are not extinct as avian dinosaurs (birds) still exist today. The cladogram above I think should clarify the relationships and would recommend to the LA Times to publish this and possibly a 12 part series on why they were wrong.