Clade Explorer
Navigate the dinosaur family tree
Interactive phylogenetic tree showing major dinosaur clades from Dinosauria down to genus level. Explore how groups like theropods, sauropods, and ornithischians are related.
Dinosauria
Sir Richard Owen, 1842 — "Terrible Lizards"
All dinosaurs belong to the clade Dinosauria, which splits into two major orders based on hip structure: Saurischia ("lizard-hipped") and Ornithischia ("bird-hipped"). Ironically, birds evolved from the lizard-hipped branch.
阅读说明
点击任意演化支可展开其子类群并查看示例物种。该系统树展示了从恐龙总目到科级的主要分类。引号中的名称显示词源（希腊语/拉丁语含义）。
How to Use
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1
Open the phylogenetic tree
The tree loads at the Dinosauria node, divided into the two primary clades Saurischia and Ornithischia. Click any node to expand it and reveal the subordinate taxa below.
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2
Navigate to a taxon of interest
Use the search bar to jump directly to any family, genus, or species. The tree will expand and highlight the path from Dinosauria down to your target, showing all intermediate nodes.
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3
Compare sister groups
Select any two terminal or internal nodes to open a comparison panel showing diagnostic characters, temporal ranges, and geographic distributions that distinguish the two groups.
About
Phylogenetics is the scientific discipline that reconstructs the evolutionary history of organisms by analysing shared inherited characters. For dinosaurs, the foundational work by Jacques Gauthier in 1986 established the cladistic framework that all subsequent research builds on, placing birds firmly within theropod dinosaurs and clarifying the relationships among major groups. The two-part division into Saurischia and Ornithischia, first proposed by Harry Seeley in 1887, remains the standard framework, although a 2017 analysis by Matthew Baron and colleagues proposed a radical rearrangement that has been both supported and challenged by subsequent studies.
Phylogenetic trees are hypotheses, not facts, and they change as new specimens are described and as analytical methods improve. Large datasets with hundreds of taxa and thousands of characters now allow statistically robust tests of relationships that would have been impossible with earlier methods. Bayesian inference methods, which incorporate information about evolutionary rates and stratigraphic age, are increasingly used alongside parsimony analysis to produce time-calibrated trees.
Understanding phylogeny matters for interpreting almost every other aspect of dinosaur biology. Reconstructing soft tissue anatomy, physiology, behaviour, and ecology in extinct taxa depends on identifying the closest living relatives from which functional comparisons can be drawn. The clade explorer on DinoFYI provides a navigable version of the current scientific consensus, with nodes annotated by the diagnostic characters and key references that underpin each grouping.