Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palaeontology

Certain Japanese user claiming Tyrannosaurus is not capable of binocular vision

It seems that certain user edited Japanese Wikipedia article of Tyrannosaurus only to propose their own theory that Tyrannosaurus is not capable of binocular vision.[1] Here are deletion request of files,[2] if possible please join the discussion. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 06:25, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

List of Fossil Sites

The List of fossil sites includes many entries with neither wikiarticles nor references. In order to improve wikipedia:verifiability, as well as begin to make a case for systematic inclusion criteria, we need to start by removing the entries without supporting citations or associated articles. But such entries could make a good starting list for those looking to create articles about fossil sites and/or fossil bearing formations. Would it be appropriate to make a table on this page of the entries removed from the List in the hopes that they might be added back once verified? If not, does anyone have suggestions on where such a table should go to be most useful? Elriana (talk) 10:45, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Would it be better to leave them, but then just add some "citations needed" tags? Cougroyalty (talk) 15:43, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if we should better just delete that page. The page lists many regions, islands, and so on, but these are not really "fossil sites". Instead, a "site" is a very local outcrop, and there are so many of them that such a list will not work. We should stick with the Lists of fossiliferous stratigraphic units, and maybe have lists of notable sites for particular units. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 16:16, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I've looked into it to save it a little more than a month ago, and I have some opinions on it : the page don't really knows its scope ; if we were to update it to an acceptable level, it would take years, would never be really finished and would be insanely long ; while informations provided are unsourced they do reflect real formations and as such should be kept with a citations needed if the page has to be kept ; the Lagerstätte article does it kinda better ; we could make the task more doable by dividing it by periods or even by stages, and even as that it would technically require us to eventually list every single conodont and foraminiferan-bearing formations. Also, I may add, while the task is daunting, it is not outside of my capabilities, although a little help is appreciated. Larrayal (talk) 01:22, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

We can have inclusion criteria that include some sort of notability, not just that fossils exist in a particular place. Elriana (talk) 05:50, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

First of all, the list would have to be reduced to just fossil sites, not regions, national parks, islands, formations and so on, which are larger units and not fossil sites per definition. Second, what unambiguous and objective selection criteria would you choose that are supported by reliable sources? See WP:LSC. Third, WP:NLIST requires that the topic has been treated as a group by independent sources. Do we have such sources? It is much easier to find sources that discuss dinosaur fossil sites, or vertebrate tracksites, or fossil human sites. But fossil sites in general is an incredibly broad scope covering multiple disciplines. If such a source is difficult to find, it might question how useful such a broad list really is; what's the point of mixing foraminifers with a ancient human fossil site? Jens Lallensack (talk) 11:44, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

We’re getting well off the topic here. What constitutes a ‘site’ is a discussion for the talk on that page. Different communities have very different thoughts on the matter.

What I am asking here is whether there is an appropriate place where the entries removed from that list should be kept? Of particular interest to this project would be those entries that are definitely sites but lack current articles and the major formations for which no site (not even a well-known type locality) has an article.Elriana (talk) 11:58, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

The obvious place for such entries would be the respective formation articles (e.g., Morrison_Formation#Sites and quarries). Jens Lallensack (talk) 13:52, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

And where do we put the removed entries in the meantime? If someone has to go through each destination one by one before we remove the entries from the original list, the cleanup will never get done. I’m trying to clean up the list in an efficient manner while preserving the information in a form that can be used to flesh out other lists/categories/articles.

Since no one here (so far) seems to have a suggestion for where the information should go in the short term or how to systematically sort and/or use it, I will place the removed entries in Talk:List of fossil sites for now. Elriana (talk) 09:33, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, we should not move information without source into other articles anyways … Jens Lallensack (talk) 10:57, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

The List of fossil sites has distinct navigational use cases that the Lists of fossiliferous stratigraphic units simply do not serve. For starters, the stratigraphic units can’t be sorted by time period.Elriana (talk) 11:01, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Dispute over Homo floresiensis

There is a dispute over how the classification section at Homo floresiensis should be structured and how much weight should be given to different origin hypotheses. Please participate at Talk:Homo_floresiensis#Classification_debate if interested. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:31, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (species)

I think most of you are aware, but there hasn't been a formal notification yet, so: An RfC to adopt a subject-specific notability guideline regarding the notability of species has been opened at Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline..--Licks-rocks (talk) 20:59, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Gembone#Requested_move_16_August_2024

Hello! I have requested a move of Gembone. Because the article and its talk page are very rarely edited and have "fewer than 30 watchers", I am notifying relevant Wikiprojects. -sche (talk) 17:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Nomination of List of important publications in geology for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of important publications in geology is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of important publications in geology (3rd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

Kevmin § 22:37, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

List of Ice Age species preserved as permafrost mummies

So the List of Ice Age species preserved as permafrost mummies was finally created (first time I see a student project do something good here) after it had long been listed as a wanted article, following discussion here:[3] Question is whether that is a wholly appropriate title, which could be made more concise? And could it be nice to expand it so there are lists of notable specimens under each taxon? FunkMonk (talk) 10:51, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

The title could probably be improved upon, even though I don't really have a suggestion for it. Perhaps it could be nice to turn the list into a table so that some more information can be provided? Images, some basic information on the taxon, where the mummy was found, etc. The Morrison Man (talk) 11:56, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that could be cool, it's pretty bare bones now. I don't know how to do any of that, so here's hoping this will spread awareness to some who do like doing this kind of stuff... FunkMonk (talk) 12:14, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zahrisaurus (2nd nomination)

Malkani dinosaurs, again. (See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palaeontology/Archive 14#Muzaffarabadmachli, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palaeontology/Archive 16#Deletion requests of Malkani taxa, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dinosaurs/Archive 35#Taxa named by Malkani.) Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:02, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Revamping the Palaeo PeerReview

I am thinking about a new approach to our Palaeo Peer Review, one that is focused on collaborative editing.

The problem with the existing Palaeo Peer Review is that it is not really distinct from the normal WP:Peer Review; the process is kind of the same, i.e. participants leave comments and wait for the nominator to fix them. In contrast, we also have the Palaeontology Collaboration and the Dinosaur Collaboration; these were great because of the community effort, but just don't work and have been inactive for years now. Maybe it is time to try something new that combines the advantages of the Peer Review (flexibility; fast feedback; a main author behind the article) with those of a WikiProject collaboration (community effort).

The goal of this is to get more folks into article writing, by making such writing easier and more fun. Also, we encourage collaborative working on articles while improving communication within the WikiProject and also making the WikiProject more attractive to new editors.

It could work the same way as the existing PeerReview, except for that we focus on editing the article directly instead of listing minor issues on the review page. On the review page, we could document what we did, and discuss problems that cannot be solved by quick edits. The goal would be to bring the article at least to B-class. This requires that the original nominator of the article acts as main author to push it forwards and, most importantly, addresses any comments. This hopefully sparkles spontaneous collaborations, sometimes with editors becoming more heavily involved so that they may become co-nominators if the article is finally nominated at WP:GAN or even WP:FAC.

Maybe we would need a new name for it, like "Palaeo collabs" or "Palaeo article workshop". This whole idea is quite preliminary; I would like to know what you think about it, and if you would be interested in participating in such a thing. Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:35, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

• Sounds like a nice reorientation that can probably be of wider use. Like I wrote on Discord: "One thing I've noticed is that many editors feel best writing about specific subtopics within a topic, so they'll often work on specific sections and leave the rest. In some case I've reached out to such editors when I was expanding articles so other editors could work on those sections while I worked on some of the perhaps more complicated sections, and there have come some nice articles from it. So perhaps this could also be a way to facilitate that kind of collaborations, where someone dives into some specific part of the article without having to do the burden of working on everything else". FunkMonk (talk) 16:24, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

  I think this is an overall improvement over the current review style for even things like Good Articles. Featured articles makes sense for people to critique and have discussions over improvements and layperson details, but all lower levels of "status" review I feel like it is more beneficial to allow people to implement the changes they see to make an article better. Things like rewriting sentences for clearer phrasing shouldn't need the original nominator to handle on their own. It should speed up processes and allow for more consistency, I'm in favour. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 18:33, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

  I'm also in favour of this. It might also help in making bigger projects less daunting to tackle, like taxa with many species, complicated histories, etc. Maybe also a good way to handle those old Featured Articles we still need to reassess and improve? The Morrison Man (talk) 19:14, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

First draft

Thanks, everybody. I went ahead and created a draft: Wikipedia:WikiProject Palaeontology/Article workshop. If anyone likes to edit the text, its concluded from here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Palaeontology/Article Workshop/Header. Once everybody is happy with it, I will activate it and retire the deprecated project pages, including the Palaeo Peer Review, with a note pointing to the new site. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 01:01, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if he old paleo PR should just redirect to there to preserve old links and archives? FunkMonk (talk) 08:17, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I was planning to put a warning box on the old Palaeo PR page as well as the old collaboration pages, noting that these projects have been retired and that we have the Workshop instead taking over these functions. Other than that, I thought we should preserve the original pages including the archives instead of turning them into redirects (to make it easy to re-activate them if needed). Maybe we could include an "history" section in the workshop page, with a little chronology and links to the old initiatives and archives? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:27, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

That sounds like the most practical solution to me at least. I've made some slight edits to the introductory text at the top of the page. The Morrison Man (talk) 09:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I added a "History" section and archives; we could just continue adding to the Peer review archives, I hope. How does that look? And btw, the Palaeo Peer review resulted in 43 reviewed articles, helping with promoting 6 GAs and 3 FAs. Not bad, but I think we can do even better! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Looks good! We shouldn't forget to also change the main project pages accordingly once the workshop is fully operational. The Morrison Man (talk) 23:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Yep, it's on my list! I will activate it tomorrow unless there are any concerns. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:07, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I think this'll be great as a tool to promote collective contributions, like a little noticeboard people can look at and see where it might be worth helping out without the feeling they're making any specific commitment. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 01:16, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Article workshop up and running

I was bold and did all the changes I thought were necessary. The Article workshop (shortcut: WP:PALEOAW) is up and running. Links were added to the templates and bars. I added inactivity notices to both collaboration pages and the peer review, so that newbies will not be confused by dead pages. Those notices are ugly, and if anyone likes to change them, please do.

That said, the Article workshop is open for submissions! Don't forget to add it to your watchlist, so you won't miss any action! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 23:25, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Excellent! I think it also cleans up the bar at the top of the WP:PALEO page quite nicely. Building off this, maybe it would also be valuable to invest in something like WP:MILHIST has at their academy for our project? We could do with a central place of information on how our articles work/should be written, and it would also give us an incentive to decide on some universal structuring. The Morrison Man (talk) 18:01, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

For my part, whenever I want to know how to write and structure an article, I look at the most recently promoted featured article (FA) on a close topic. The FA process significantly influences, or at least constrains, how we write articles at a high level. The advantage of the FA process here is that it provides external feedback from non-experts that allows (or forces) us to adjust or writing to meet the needs of the readers. Another advantage is that it is dynamic, as new FA nominations often result in reconsiderations of long-standing practises. I don't know, but if we have our own central guidelines, maybe we risk ending up with something too rigid that will not properly evolve over time and does not serve actual readers needs? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:28, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I thought we had it already for the palaeo project, but could be helpful to have something like the dinosaur project "article sections"[4] guidelines here? FunkMonk (talk) 18:36, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

McMenamin's taxa

Seems User:Zhenghecaris (contribs) is adding information about taxa described by Mark McMenamin (who is famous for Triassic Kraken hypothesis) from Clemente Formation, and trying to create own articles. That include, Zirabgtaria, Korifogrammia, Clementechiton (which is supposed to Ediacaran chiton) etc. Those taxa are described in those books[5][6] and searching in Google Scholar results it is only supported by McMenamin and not discussed in other researches. This user also reverted my deletion in Evolution of the eye, which claimed Clementechiton as the earliest animal with eyes, originally added by one of the supposed sockpuppet of Mark McMenamin (Earthjewels830). So should those information be retained? As Shenzianyuloma, despite poorly described and not supported by other researchers, those taxa seems still available names. (Although those are described in his own books and unreviewed, so maybe can be nomen dubium? I am not sure about those rules.) However, even through claim as earliest mollusk or trilobite-like animal is quite surprising, none of them are used in other researches about origin of existing groups. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 08:41, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I didn’t know, is still okay to write such content with notices about the situation? Zhenghecaris (talk) 20:52, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe you have opinion for that @Headbomb:? Should those taxa valid and enough to have mentions in articles? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 09:43, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I think nobody trusts McMenamin because of the Triassic kraken thing so everyone thinks his taxa are invalid. Zhenghecaris (talk) 15:29, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

If you think so why you continue to adding that? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 22:41, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I think they are still valid taxa. Zhenghecaris (talk) 19:50, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

If the taxa are supported by nobody aside from McMenamin himself, they shouldn't have their own articles. Clementechiton, for example, is only mentioned by him in his own books, and until other papers or other publications recognize that taxa, it shouldn't have a page yet. Fossiladder13 (talk) 23:23, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Also it is no need to put like "this seems invalid because author is famous with Triassic Kraken theory" or something because no reference says like that. If researchers don't approve of it, there's no need for Wikipedia to acknowledge it. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 15:41, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

It seems like other paleontologists ignored McMenamin’s new taxa from the Clemente Formation and forgot about them without considering them invalid. Zhenghecaris (talk) 20:45, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

McMenamin's work is somewhat questionable. He's advanced various fringe theories, like the Triassic Kraken, and Near Eastern discovery of the New world before Columbus. My own opinion is that if any taxa he has named have been largely ignored by other researchers then they don't warrant standalone articles. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:47, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I went to remove mentions of those things now. Also what about Shenzianyuloma, cause it is only mentioned by descriptions by McMenamin and another single paper by other authors[7] in controversial MDPI? It is not mentioned in other vetulicolian-related papers other than by McMenamin since 2019. This preprint by McMenamin[8] have critical comments and the evaluation is not good. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 07:42, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

If that vetulicolian gets an article Clementechiton deserves one too. Zhenghecaris (talk) 12:42, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

I think the suggestion here is that that veticulicolian probably shouldn't have an article, either. I'm strongly against the inclusion of these taxa on the site, not because of any other hypotheses proposed by McMenamin "tarnishing" his reputation, but simply because these do not seem to be accepted taxa among secondary sources despite the extremely massive implications they are suggested to have (with the exception of Shenzianyuloma, which in this case is the reason it is of special note). Plenty of researchers are wrong about all kinds of things, sometimes hilariously so, and that alone does not invalidate their other work, but if what should be extremely revolutionary or noteworthy genera are flat-out ignored by other working researchers I'm inclined to say they should not be treated as valid genera. Gasmasque (talk) 14:59, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Now started more wide-range discussion in Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Precambrian_chitons_and_another_reports_by_Mark_McMenamin. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 15:38, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Informal reassessment of Thescelosaurus

(Copy-pasted from WikiProject Dinosaurs): Hi, I don't normally participate in dinosaur articles, but other members have brought up the idea of bringing older dinosaur GA/FA articles to modern quality standards without taking them to reassessments formally, so here's the link for participation: Wikipedia:WikiProject Palaeontology/Article workshop#Thescelosaurus. PrimalMustelid (talk) 01:03, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Taxonomy at WP:Fishes

I recently proposed that we change the Taxonomy used at WP:Fishes. The proposal was open for three weeks and received unanimous approval from the editors who took part. The WP:Fishes page has been updated Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes#Taxonomy . Apologies that notification was not put here about this proposal, that was an oversight on my part. It was notified to the WikiProject_Tree_of_Life Quetzal1964 (talk) 20:54, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate explicitly stating that FOTW may be substituted if sufficient recent work shows it to be inaccurate regarding extinct lineages. I've updated several of my pages to cite FOTW5 (although in these cases it does not deviate from general consensus anyway). Relations regarding higher-level extinct fish lineage taxonomy, IMO, should not give any single source too much weight as so many wildly different hypotheses are accepted among different researchers (especially regarding entirely extinct lineages/clades/grades/polyphylies(?) such as Placodermi, Acanthodii, Palaeonisciformes, and several extinct orders of Elasmobranchii/Euchondrocephali. Thank you for discussing this over here as well, even if there aren't all that many dedicated extinct fish editors. Gasmasque (talk) 15:10, 2 November 2024 (UTC)