Do-While Jones Dinobirds Tabloids are publications sold in supermarkets that put misleading pictures and sensational captions on their covers to stimulate sales. Using that criteria, the February 1998 issue of Scientific American is a tabloid. Only later were they co-opted and refined for flight by the group recognized as birds. That all depends upon who makes the definitions and who evaluates the criteria.
Classification is subjective.
In the introduction to her latest book, Harriet Ritvo says, As anthropologists have repeatedly pointed out, the classification of animals, like that of any group of significant objects, is apt to tell as much about the classifiers as the classified. Her book is a real eye-opener about the subjectivity of the classification process. She discusses the problems with all the various classification systems tried over the years, including those based on where the creature lives, what it eats, shape of its head, number of cerebral lobes, reproductive system, internal organs, and foot shape. By the time you finish reading the first chapter you will be thoroughly convinced that the classification of animals is determined more by personalities and politics than anything else. The authors of the Scientific American article have established some criteria that define what a dinosaur is.