How do we know that elephants are not dinosaurs?

Question

Silly question, I know. But my hubby and I took the kids to the zoo recently, and just looking at the elephants, it reminded me of dinosaurs. How do we know they are not dinosaurs?

Answer 1

Because they are mammals

Elephants give live birth, have hair and feed thier young with milk

Dinosaurs do none of of these

Answer 2

becuz they are mamals and they are not dinosours. but dinos could be mamals too you never know about stuff like that sometimes wird stuff happens like that

Answer 3

dinosaurs are mostly reptiles not mammals like the elephant is.

Answer 4

Check his teeth.  In dinosaurs  and reptiles all the teeth are the same shape, varying only in size.  Mammals have different shaped teeth for different functions.  

Check his respiration.  Dinosaurs  are extinct, hence do not breath.  If the animal is breathing it is not a dinosaur although it is not necessarily an elephant.

Answer 5

Elephants are relative newcomers compared with dinosaurs. Being placental mammals, they have none of the physical characteristics that we normally associate with dinosaurs. It's easy to compare them with the big sauropods like brachyosaurus. Both are big, lumbering vegetarians but that's where the similarity ends. Elephants have a number of physiological attributes that dinosaurs hadn't developed, the placenta being just one. Elephants are also far more intelligent than dinosaurs, having a much bigger brain pan and it's been proven they have phenomenal memories. All dinosaurs share certain skeletal similarities that mammals don't have but I'm not a paleontoligist so I couldn't name them for you. Mammals as a group are far more highly developed and versatile than dinosaurs ever were. After all, mammals survived that meteor impact 65 million years ago and none of the big dinosaurs did. Granted, the mammals back then were small, shrew-like critters but they were able to take advantage of food sources and habitats that dinosaurs couldn't and therefore it was the mammals that survived.