non-avian
adjective
non-avi·an
ˌnän-ˈā-vē-ən 
variants
or
1
: not of or relating to birds : not avian
… assorted nonavian creatures whirring, buzzing and croaking.—
Richard Conniff
Richard Conniffnonavian anatomy
2
: of, relating to, or being a non-avian dinosaur
non-avian theropods
Examples of non-avian in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
The rocks preserve some of the last non-avian dinosaurs before Earth’s fifth mass extinction, including icons such as Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops.
—Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Jan. 2024
Since the discovery of a 65-million-year-old impact crater below the Gulf of Mexico, researchers have debated whether contemporary massive volcanic eruptions or the impact of the asteroid alone is most responsible for the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs.
—David Bressan, Forbes, 29 Nov. 2023
Ocean ecosystems also collapsed in the aftermath of the strike, and, like the non-avian dinosaurs on land, almost all the impressive marine reptiles that had swum the ancient seas disappeared.
—Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Nov. 2023
One large step forward came in the nineteen-eighties, when the geologist Walter Alvarez and his father, the physicist Luis Alvarez, put forth the idea that an asteroid strike had caused the death of the majority of non-avian dinosaurs.
—Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker, 6 Nov. 2023
The demise of non-avian dinosaurs is a lot like that.
—John Timmer, Ars Technica, 31 Oct. 2023
The catastrophic collision plunged the planet into a dark, cold winter, and in the aftermath of this disaster, known as the Chicxulub impact, 75 percent of living species, including the non-avian dinosaurs, went extinct.
—Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Oct. 2023
Their story is seldom told, overshadowed both by the success of the beaked birds and the charisma of the non-avian dinosaurs.
—Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Oct. 2023
These distant mammalian relatives also survived the Earth’s most famous mass extinction event: the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs on a spring day about 66 million years ago.
—Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 28 Sep. 2023
Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Jan. 2024
Since the discovery of a 65-million-year-old impact crater below the Gulf of Mexico, researchers have debated whether contemporary massive volcanic eruptions or the impact of the asteroid alone is most responsible for the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs.
—David Bressan, Forbes, 29 Nov. 2023
Ocean ecosystems also collapsed in the aftermath of the strike, and, like the non-avian dinosaurs on land, almost all the impressive marine reptiles that had swum the ancient seas disappeared.
—Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Nov. 2023
One large step forward came in the nineteen-eighties, when the geologist Walter Alvarez and his father, the physicist Luis Alvarez, put forth the idea that an asteroid strike had caused the death of the majority of non-avian dinosaurs.
—Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker, 6 Nov. 2023
The demise of non-avian dinosaurs is a lot like that.
—John Timmer, Ars Technica, 31 Oct. 2023
The catastrophic collision plunged the planet into a dark, cold winter, and in the aftermath of this disaster, known as the Chicxulub impact, 75 percent of living species, including the non-avian dinosaurs, went extinct.
—Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Oct. 2023
Their story is seldom told, overshadowed both by the success of the beaked birds and the charisma of the non-avian dinosaurs.
—Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Oct. 2023
These distant mammalian relatives also survived the Earth’s most famous mass extinction event: the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs on a spring day about 66 million years ago.
—Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 28 Sep. 2023
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'non-avian.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Non-avian.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/non-avian. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
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