How do we reconcile the order of creating animals betweeen Genesis and science?

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6932/does-the-torah-encoded-age-of-the-universe-match-science#comment53788_6932

The Genesis 1 creation account conflicts with the order of events that are known to science. In Genesis, the earth is created before light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants before any animals. The order of events known from science is just the opposite

This question is about the cosmic events (stars, planets, etc). The current question is about the animals.

I checked the bible again

20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So according to bible, birds are created before land animals (like reptiles). Science says that reptiles are are around before birds. Birds evolve out of reptiles.

How do we reconcile this?

I could match that ground animals mean mammals but that's pretty much stretching it. I could think that fish indeed show up first, and they are keep evolving even after the animals are being created. However, birds are descendants of ground reptiles.

So science says the sequence seems to be

1. fishes


2. reptiles (including ground reptiles)


3. birds


4. mammals

while Genesis says the sequence is

1. fishes and birds (day 5)


2. ground reptiles and mammals

Hmm... almost a match but not quite.

Answer

The Rambam says that the details of the chapter of the Creation (I suppose, Gen. 1 and 2) should not be taught to the masses lest they misunderstand or twist what it means (Guide to the Perplexed, 2:17). An implication may perhaps be drawn that the literal reading is not all that there is to the story of Creation and that, perhaps, it should not be taken as literal 24 hour days. It may not be discussing chronological order of physical creation but rather a more mystical discussion of the order of potential for creation. Some commentators say that the potential for everything was created in the six days, but it wasn't until the events in Genesis 2 that their reality was realized. And that reality might have been realized in a nature-veiled setting of 4.5 billion years of Earth, from guiding conditions for the first life to form until the desired present-day beings exist, all from a seemingly natural history.