Dinosaurs Live intro 02: Order of Dinosaurs

Saurischia and Ornithischia are the two orders, or basic divisions, of dinosaurs. In 1888, Harry Seeley classified dinosaurs into two orders, based on their hip structure. Saurischians ('lizard-hipped') are distinguished from the ornithischians ('bird-hipped') by retaining the ancestral configuration of bones in the hip.


SAURISCHIA
Saurischians are distinguished from ornithischians by their three-pronged pelvic structure, with the pubis pointed forward. The ornithischians' pelvis is arranged with the pubis rotated backward, parallel with the ischium, often also with a forward-pointing process, giving a four-pronged structure.

All carnivorous dinosaurs (the theropods) are saurischians, as are one of the two primary lineages of herbivorous dinosaurs, the sauropodomorphs. At the end of the Cretaceous Period, all non-avian saurischians became extinct. This is referred to as the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. Avians (modern birds), as direct descendants of one group of theropod dinosaurs, are considered to be a sub-clade of saurischian dinosaurs in phylogenetic classification.

In his paper naming the two groups, Seeley reviewed previous classification schemes put forth by other paleontologists to divide up the traditional Order Dinosauria. He preferred one that had been put forward by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878, which divided dinosaurs into four Orders: Sauropoda, Theropoda, Ornithopoda, and Stegosauria (these names are still used today in much the same way to refer to suborders or clades within Saurischia and Ornithischia).

Seeley, however, wanted to formulate a classification that would take into account a single primary difference between major dinosaurian groups based on a characteristic that also differentiated them from other reptiles. He found this in the configuration of the hip bones, and found that all four of Marsh's orders could be divided neatly into two major groups based on this feature. He placed the Stegosauria and Ornithopoda in the Ornithischia, and the Theropoda and Sauropoda in the Saurischia. Furthermore, Seeley used this major difference in the hip bones, along with many other noted differences between the two groups, to argue that "dinosaurs" were not a natural grouping at all, but rather two distinct orders that had arisen independently from more primitive archosaurs.[2] This concept that "dinosaur" was an outdated term for two distinct orders lasted many decades in the scientific and popular literature, and it was not until the 1960s that scientists began to again consider the possibility that saurischians and ornithischians were more closely related to each other than they were to other archosaurs.

ORNITHISCHIA
The ornithischian hip structure is superficially similar to that of birds, which led Seeley to name them "bird-hipped dinosaurs," though he did not propose any specific relationship with birds. He termed saurischians "lizard-hipped" dinosaurs because they retained the ancestral hip anatomy also found in modern lizards.

However, as later study revealed, the hip structure possessed by modern birds actually evolved independently from the "lizard-hipped" saurischians (specifically, a sub-group of saurischians called the Maniraptora) in the Jurassic Period. In this example of convergent evolution, birds developed hips oriented similar to the earlier ornithischian hip anatomy, in both cases possibly as an adaptation to a herbivorous or omnivorous diet.

This division, which has generally been accepted, is based on the evolution of the pelvis into a more bird-like structure (although birds did not descend from these dinosaurs), details in the vertebrae and armor and the possession of a 'predentary' bone. The predentary is an extra bone in the front of the lower jaw, which extends the dentary (the main lower jaw bone). The predentary coincides with the premaxilla in the upper jaw. Together they form a beak-like apparatus used to clip off plant material.

The ornithischian pubis bone points downward and toward the tail (backwards), parallel with the ischium, with a forward-pointing process to support the abdomen. This makes a four-pronged pelvic structure. In contrast to this, the saurischian pubis points downward and toward the head (forwards), as in ancestral lizard types. Ornithischians also had smaller antorbital fenestrae (holes in front of their eye sockets) than did saurischians, and a wider, more stable pelvis. A bird-like pubis arrangement, parallel to the vertebral column, evolved independently three times in dinosaur evolution, namely in the ornithischians, in the therizinosauroids and in bird-like dromaeosaurids.

Ornithischians shifted from bipedal to quadrupedal posture at least three times in their evolutionary history and have been shown to have been capable of adopting both postures early in their evolutionary history.