This is a pedantic dismissal of the comment above. We all understood what he meant.

If your intent is to educate HN on the difference between species, genus, family, order, ..., perhaps do so more constructively?

I guess I just felt that there was quite a large number of dinosaur species for civilization to arise in, not to mention they were on land, so it might be weird to say sharks didn't develop civilization over a long period of time given the differences compared.

But I suppose you didn't understand what I meant.

I don't think any of that was conveyed by the phrase "Dinosaurs weren't a species" :)

I guess I do have a tendency to not specify everything but to just leave some things as implied, that said I think the amount of dinosaur species vs. the amount of shark species is strongly implied when saying dinosaurs is not a species in context.

The land thing was not as strongly implied but again one might consider it when thinking yeah dinosaurs aren't a species, neither are sharks but the numbers don't align...hmm,hmm oh yeah and also the dinosaur species covered many more possible environments.

Haha I do that too sometimes. But for perspective, it's quite a leap for me (and it seems most others reading this too), and not at all "strongly implied" by your statement, even in context. I'm sure that chain of inference might be natural and automatic with your style of thinking, but my mind naturally goes down a completely different path when confronted with your initial statement, so it's probably best to elaborate what you're actually implying to avoid miscommunication :)

To be entirely fair, neither is "shark" a single species...

But yes -- my point was that no shark species formed a civilization over that vast period, so it's hard to say whether any dinosaur species would have.

ok, fair enough.

But the plural of "species" is "species". When you are talking about one species, you say "species". When you are talking about multiple species, like all the species of dinosaurs, you say "species". "Dinosaurs were the dominant species" is correct, talking about multiple species. "Humans are the dominant species" is correct, talking about one species.

ok well I had to upvote that, despite it pointing out I'm an idiot.