User talk:Diucón

Re: Lepospondyli

Thanks! I'm actually working on some more lepospondyl reconstructions right now using the figures in The Order Microsauria as a reference. I'll be sure to make use of the images in some of the links you provided as references for my upcoming lepospondyl illustrations. Smokeybjb (talk) 02:13, 4 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've submitted some new reconstructions to WikiProject Palaeontology's Paleoart Review. You seem to have a lot of expertise with prehistoric amphibians, so please help review them for accuracy if you can before I finish the reconstructions and upload them. Smokeybjb (talk) 20:49, 11 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I asked David Marjanović on his talk page if he could provide some input for the reconstructions, but it seems he hasn't been active on Wikipedia for almost a year, so I'm not sure if he'll respond. Smokeybjb (talk) 14:22, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Images

Thanks for you interests in my illustrations. I am posting new ones on my website at palaeocritti, and will be certainly adding more amphibians there. Cheers. ArthurWeasley (talk) 18:18, 17 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Greererpeton

Hi, amphibians are in the Superclass Tetrapoda, so although I'd forgotten that when I undid your edit, your changes were anyway unnecessary. Mikenorton (talk) 12:41, 5 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I notice that you reverted back. Does this mean that the Palaeos website is wrong when its says ~~"Greererpeton was one of a number of eel-like tetrapods"~~ and that the Colisteidae are "usually considered very primitive members of the temnospondyl order"? I have no special knowledge here, so I may well be showing my deep lack of understanding, I can only go on what is in the sources that I can see. Mikenorton (talk) 16:10, 5 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hongshanornis

Hi Diucón, thanks for your message, and you're English is fine! ;) Glad you like my dinobirds, this is also my main area of paleo interest. If I ever get more professionally into it than I am now, it would definitely be in this field. The key to drawing good Mesozoic birds and dinobirds I think is recognizing the way soft tissue and integument affect the appearance of the animal. Too many people give only minimal feathers or try to re-capture the spirit of "traditional" maniraptorans, like those drawn by Greg Paul, with the sinewy muscles and s-curved necks. In reality, even (especially?) in birds with more filamentous feathers like the kiwi and some vultures, the curve of the neck and the outline of the skeleton is nearly completely hidden. I do still begin with a skeletal but only for proportions, the exact anatomy is meaningless for life restorations of birds, only the exposed parts (beak, eye, legs, manual digits if present) and the feathers themselves. I think the key is understanding the feather anatomy of modern birds, and going from there. As for your request, coincidentally I already started on Hongshanornis a few days ago, but have been too busy to make much progress. I'll submit it to Wikipedia for critique when it's done. Along the lines of actually taking a photo of a bird and altering it into a dinosaur, that's beyond my skill set, but others have done it very successfully, as here: [1] MMartyniuk (talk) 04:55, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Epidexipteryx

Hi Diucón, the proportions are based on the skeletal reconstruction by Ville Sinkkonen which I believe is pretty good and close to the image of the fossil published in Nature. Your main complaint is I think the feather volume which appear too thin. On that I must agree with you and the reason it is so is that by the time I did the reconstruction my skills in CGI was limited and did not know how to add feather volume to the 3D model so I've chosen to add rather short downy feathers like fur covering the animal. If you don't like the image, please feel free to remove it from the article. Cheers. NobuTamura (talk) 23:49, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bird of prey phylogeny

Interesting! As it happens, I'm working on this stuff as part of my thesis. Without going into too many details, there are a few persistent problems (Henicopernis is definitely part of the Hamirostra group, while Pernis is not etc). The trouble is that there are so many isolated old lineages that you'll get serious rooting problems in molecular studies (as well as some "normal" long-branch attraction; Pernis is unpleasant in this regard, and Spilornis elgini is really bad).

Essentially the outgroup of many lineages seems to attach at the wrong point in the ingroup... I haven't been able to figure out whether caracaras or forest-falcons are closer to true falcons; depending on what locus you use it flips around and we don't have Neohierax data which really sucks... I guess that would do a lot to stabilize things! So what I will be researching is whether this can be overcome. For example, does Macheiramphus stabilize the Harpiinae, or does it cause them to fall apart?

In any case, if you haven't seen it, this fantastic thesis has a lot of data that have not yet been published (and never will it seems - I am desperately trying to contact the author, but she seems to have quit biology completely and even pulled the sequences from GenBank... what a pity!) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:17, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Lepospondyli papers

Thanks for the links! I'm thinking about making some illustrations of Tambaroter and Altenglanerpeton soon. Reptile Evolution has some good skeletals, but the site was made by David Peters and I'm not too confident in their accuracy... Smokeybjb (talk) 17:03, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Do you have email enabled through Wikipedia? If not, I think you can send me a message through Special:EmailUser, and I can reply so you can get my address. Smokeybjb (talk) 19:29, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:54, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed deletion of Trimerorhachidae

The article Trimerorhachidae has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

This article has been around since 2008 and there are still no sources for this article. Also I tried looking for sources on this topic and I couldn’t find anything so I doubt the topic is notable.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. CycoMa (talk) 16:07, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]