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List of ice age species preserved in permafrost?

I just stumbled across an article about a complete cave bear found preserved in Siberian permafrost, and was baffled i hadn't heard of it before. And these days (with global warming and all), new incredible discoveries seem to be announced every other month, wolf and cave lion cubs, whole woolly rhinos, abundant mammoths, etc. So I was thinking that, to keep track of all these things, and what would also be extremely interesting to look at, would be either a list of ice age species preserved in this way, or perhaps even an article, though I think a list would be more feasible. A list could contain fields stating for example how many specimens of each has been found, where and when the first one was found, how much is preserved, etc. Another issue is whether it should maybe even be inclusive enough to cover other kinds of ice age soft-tissue mummies too, such as those found in caves and tar pits. I'll ping Abyssal, who has a knack for lists, and William Harris, who may have followed the frozen wolves and dog news, for input. FunkMonk (talk) 19:07, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I feel like the bulk would be bacteria and ichnotaxa (namely spores)   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  19:32, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't call those mummified, though, so maybe that should be the inclusion criterion. But I forgot to add that the List of fossil species in the La Brea Tar Pits is similar in scope, but more stripped down. FunkMonk (talk) 20:12, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, Funkmonk. I believe that we will be seeing many hundreds of these types of finds being discovered across the higher latitudes as global warming accelerates. Look at what has just occurred in Canada with temperatures reaching new records. I am not clear on this undertaking's objective: so we can keep a list, but to achieve what purpose? William Harris (talk) 22:07, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

To me at least, such a list would be very interesting for keeping track of what animals are known with such preservation, and when they were first found, as there doesn't seem to be any other comprehensive lists like this anywhere. And considering the media coverage every time such a find is announced, I think many others would appreciate such an overview. But as Jens states below, perhaps an article, or a combined article with a table list or similar, would be a better solution, which could also explain th mechanisms behind such preservation and the history of the discoveries. But as we discussed once when the idea of a dinosaur mummy article came up, what exactly the scope and criteria for inclusion should be is maybe hard to pin down, as well as a concise title. FunkMonk (talk) 13:04, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

• I agree this urgently needs better coverage in Wikipedia. I personally think that, ideally, we need an article here, as an article is more flexible and can focus on the most important finds and place them in proper context. A list is an option as well (ideally in addition to the article) if we can come up with a good concept. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 12:27, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

What would constitute the criteria for being listed? The complete remains? Remains not complete but able to offer an entire genome sequence? William Harris (talk) 00:42, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I think FunkMonk was suggesting to do something like "all Pleistocene vertebrate species that have been discovered in permafrost", and provide some info (e.g., notable specimens) for each. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:48, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, any species that has been preserved in a "mummified" state during the ice age, extinct or extant... FunkMonk (talk) 01:32, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Similar to this little fellow here? Dogor. William Harris (talk) 01:58, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Yep, and hell, if Ötzi had been a bit older, him too... But it can't be long before we find ice age humans preserved in that way? FunkMonk (talk) 02:11, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

As with some of the canines, if you should die beside an arctic river or its tributary then you will eventually end up in a permafrost deposit somewhere. William Harris (talk) 06:43, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I think it would be better if it focused on specific specimens rather than species Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:46, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Any idea which selection criteria we could use for such a specimen-based list that comply with WP:LISTCRIT? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:10, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I personally think a list of/article about species is much more interesting, to show the diversity of finds. If we have a list of notable specimens only, more than half of them would just be mammoths, and we already have some kind of very incomplete list with hazy scope for that at List of mammoth specimens... Notable specimens can be listed in a column for each species. FunkMonk (talk) 12:17, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

We could also add a small section about this on Mummy since the lead specifies its scope includes animals, but all it talks about is human mummies   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  21:37, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

There is animal mummy... but, as you can guess, it focuses exclusively on Egyptian animal mummies. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 23:43, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Just to weight in here, if something does happen with this, I would strongly urge an article structure over a list structure. I would say there isn't really a good correlation between permafrost specimens and List of fossil species in the La Brea Tar Pits, which is actually titled Paleobiota of the La Brea Tar Pits to match the other paleobiota of... lists. Those lists are united by the geologic formation and thus the original paleolocation that they lived in. Permafrost taxa, and to be truthful, as noted above only exciting mammals, are only united by the death in the artic factor and nothing else.--Kevmin § 00:26, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm with Funkmonk here, I think an article on list of species preserved in permafrost could be useful. They aren't only united by where they died, but by the manner of their preservation, which is noteworthy. Since we only rarely have articles on individual specimens, a list of species would be more useful. Let's try to avoid changing any existing round-peg articles into the square-hole topic we're working with, as well. Ornithopsis (talk) 01:02, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused Ornithopsis. Are you advocating for a List, or an article? They are two different structures. As I noted they are not united by location at all (Canada, Scandinavia, Russia (Europe, Western Asia, Eastern Asia)) only by general preservation style, and hyper-focused ONLY on large sexy mammals. This is a notable topic, but not something that should be presented as a list style wiki entry.--Kevmin § 02:18, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I think having an article or a list is not an either/or situation. Both could exist, filling different roles. I'm not super-invested in this situation (my knowledge of paleontology does not extend very deep into ice age mammals), but I think both a list and an article could be useful and interesting. The article could talk about stuff like how the stuff is preserved, how climate change affects it, etc. that would not be included in a list of species, whereas the list would be of interest to anyone wanting to know what species we have that information for. Ornithopsis (talk) 02:29, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

"Hyper-focused only on large mammals" – I don't see this. Every species that matches the inclusion criteria would be included. Maybe we have to restrict it to vertebrates (because we are talking about mummies), but the scope of every list needs to be restricted in some way. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 09:22, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

mummification is not limited to vertebrates though, its found in every taxon, just take a look at the mummified plants from the Buchannon Lake formation of Axel Heiberg.--Kevmin § 18:51, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Are any non-vertebrates from the permafrost commonly been referred to as "mummies" in the scientific literature? I think we can only include those that have been explicitly dubbed a "mummy", since the definition of that term is so nebulous. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:17, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, As I noted already the Eocene Lake Buchannon Formation fossils of Axel Heiberg are explicitly considered mummified. Same for fossils from several other formations and including insects and nematodes as well as plants. "Mummified" is not limited to just vertebrates.--Kevmin § 20:41, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

But those are not from the permafrost, right? They are Eocene. Do we have any from the permafrost? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:44, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

https://www.livescience.com/ice-age-bird-permafrost.html talks about a 46 ka Siberian horned lark mummy   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  20:50, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes I know that there are bird mummies, but are there any non-vertebrate mummies? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:52, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree small animals like birds and rodents should be included too (I also know of some squirrels found in ice age permafrost). The main criterion would be that they are natural mummies. FunkMonk (talk) 20:55, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

This talks about invertebrates clinging to mummified mammoths. I don't image invertebrates would ever find themselves close enough to the glaciers to be frozen (insect mummification always happens through amber?), and if they were they'd be the kind that thaw in spring   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  21:03, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks; in this paper, they seem to restrict the term "mummy" to the vertebrates only. If there are no non-vertebrate mummies from permafrost, I think we should not have any issues with the scope of the list. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:11, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

A list would be rather extensive both specimen-wise and species-wise, and I'm unsure if we'd be able to confidently compile a complete list unless someone finds an extensive literature review. So, I'd recommend article style   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:24, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think more than 20 ice age species are preserved this way. But that's also a good reason to make such a list, I don't think there are any complete published overviews like this, so it could potentially even be useful for researchers. FunkMonk (talk) 00:45, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I have seen sections of the "Origin of the domestic dog" article written word for word in a recently published book, and I know from my communication with evolutionary biologists that sometimes they do borrow some of the references provided on WP (they cannot be expected to be across multi-disciplines). William Harris (talk) 01:54, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Yep, I've also heard that some of the information is just much more accessible here than having to sort through massive literature, so that researchers actually start here instead. I know of one paper that lists some recent frozen ice age finds[1], but not of any comprehensive lists. FunkMonk (talk) 02:00, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

At least one study has shown that Wikipedia coverage of topic causes the papers cited by the article to be cited more often in the literature [2], which I think emphasizes the point that a collation of information such as this is potentially valuable. I think "list of vertebrate species known from permafrost mummies" is a perfectly clear set of criteria to make a list. Ornithopsis (talk) 02:18, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Kinosternon pojoaque

I hesitate to put my foot in what is sometimes a contentious area, but should the Kinosternon pojoaque stub article be merged into Kinosternon? The wrinkle is that Kinosternon pojoaque is extinct while Kinosternon is an extant genus. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 18:40, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I think most of us would agree, considering not much has been published on that specific species. But, Kinosternon appears to be in the middle of a merger right now so you should probably wait for that to settle down before proposing another one. Unless you wanna be bold and blank and redirect the page yourself   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  21:33, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I failed to recognize this is an extant genus. Like Homo or Panthera, extinct species should get their own article   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:33, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

It seems like pretty much every other species in the genus has its own page, including at least one other extinct species, so I see no particular reason why this species should be an exception. I don't really see any benefit to combining the pages in this case. The article on Kinosternon wouldn't benefit from having information on this species in particular while all other species have separate articles, so merging seems like it would be a net loss for Wikipedia's ability to cover the topic adequately. Ornithopsis (talk) 00:13, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I think that the article should be kept in this case, per Ornithopsis. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:15, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

As per Ornithopsis, extinct species in extant genera should have stand alone articles, even if there is little literature to work with. Typically the WP:Paleo practice has been such, and is how I deal with extinct species of plants or insects that are in extant genera.--Kevmin § 18:48, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. This is the clarification I was seeking -- how should extinct species in extant genuses be treated? --Kent G. Budge (talk) 22:43, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Kent G. Budge As noted above, we should create articles for an extinct species that is part of an extant genus, conceptually due to there being enough relevant unique information to write at least a start article.--Kevmin § 19:32, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Yanliao Biota

I've been having some issues with the Yanliao Biota related articles. Essentially there are two separate formations, the underlying Haifanggou Formation/Jiulongshan Formation and the overlying Tiaojishan Formation. The problem is that one of the main localities, the Daohugou Bed, has been considered part of both formations. It is currently considered part of the Haifanggou Formation. This makes maintaining two individual lists of paleobiota for each formation tedious. I therefore propose the creation of a new Paleobiota of.. article, something like "Paleobiota of the Yanliao Biota", or "List of Yanliao Biota", that can house the taxa from both formations to reduce confusion without having to maintain two separate lists. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:58, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

What to do when classification is suggested, but not formally made?

In the 2015 description of Wiedopterus, the genus was classified as Eurypterina incertae sedis because the only fossil only preserves the dorsal side of the body, missing the taxonomically important ventral side and appendages. Because of various features of the fossil, such as the general outline of the body, the position of its eyes, the first segment after its head being reduced in size as well as there being longitudinal ridges on the posterior segments of its body, etc., the descriptor stated that Wiedopterus was "probably" an adelophthalmoid, noting that the only species that was really (and not superficially) similar was Adelophthalmus sievertsi, which the Wiedopterus fossil was compared to more extensively than other species. Quoted: "[the fossils] probably represent adelophthalmoids", "The only Rhenish eurypterid with a carapace shape similar to the Bürdenbach fossil is Adelophthalmus sievertsi" and:

"This situation may indicate a closer relationship of Wiedopterus n. gen. with the adelophthalmoid clade. The possibility of an adelophthalmoid affinity for this fossil is further supported by its general body outline, an opisthosoma with moderate first order differentiation into a preand postabdomen, a reduced first tergite, and subrectangular anterior postabdominal segments showing longitudinal ridges. Again, in these characters, the Bürdenbach fossil is quite similar to the Emsian A. sievertsi (cf. Poschmann 2006). It furthermore shares rather centrally positioned lateral eyes with this taxon, an advanced character state within the adelophthalmoid clade (Tetlie and Poschmann 2008) and in line with the presence of a median eye tubercle in more derived Eurypterina (Lamsdell 2011)."

However:

"On the other hand, many aspects of its morphology, especially with regard to its appendages and ventral anatomy, remain unknown. This lack of knowledge currently precludes a proper systematic placement above the genus level."

The crux here is that Wiedopterus is formally Eurypterina incertae sedis but very strongly suggested to be an adelophthalmoid. In the taxobox, I put it as an adelophthalmoid, but with question marks, as I've seen in some other palaeontology articles. I think this is okay based on what I've seen elsewhere but Super Dromaeosaurus disagrees, so I'm asking here to resolve the dispute. Should we in the taxobox go with the formal taxonomical placement or is it okay to go with the strongly suggested, but not formally done, placement (with question marks)? Ichthyovenator (talk) 13:30, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Here I would personally look to other literature. This one paper doesn't seem definite enough for me to place it in that clade. If others beside the 2015 paper suggest adeophthalmoid affinities, I would put it under Template:Taxonomy/Adelophthalmoidea/?. Otherwise I would keep it incertae sedis. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 15:17, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Eurypterids don't see as much academic action as dinosaurs so there aren't any other papers to use here. Would it be best to just go with incertae sedis in the taxobox for now then? Ichthyovenator (talk) 15:26, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

So there are two papers suggesting a possible adelophthalmoid affinity, and no paper that just keeps it as Eurypterina incertae sedis without suggesting such an affinity? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:47, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Apparently there is only this single paper, which classifies the genus as Eurypterina? Then we should do the same imho, with Eurypterina as the terminal taxon (i.e., removing those question mark entries). --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:56, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes exactly, there is a single paper, which places it as Eurypterina incertae sedis but suggests adelophthalmoid affinity. Ichthyovenator (talk) 16:20, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I've changed it to incertae sedis as it seems to be weighting towards that being the better option. Ichthyovenator (talk) 16:57, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Subtle vandalism

Hey guys,

Can someone look through the contributions of this account? I reverted most of the account's contributions as many of the citations used do not exist, and the account became more bold about adding vandalism (like this). The account has been blocked as vandalism-only. Firsfron of Ronchester 19:14, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Is there a relation to User:Ophinocodon? Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 19:35, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't believe so; the Ophinocodon account has difficulty with spelling; the above account has been adding mostly fake citations until it became more bold today and started adding adult images in "citations". But we can look at Ophinocodon account, too, if need be. It seems like it's just a kid. Firsfron of Ronchester 19:41, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

While we're here, please examine the recent IP edits at the following:

• List of stratigraphic units with dinosaur body fossils
• List of stratigraphic units with few dinosaur genera

These are from the "Related changes" link in #Vandalism? above. Johnuniq (talk) 23:51, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

This is almost certainly just User:Extrapolaris, a well-meaning editor who was blocked for uploading copyrighted content a while back. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 00:20, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Any relation to 82.41.151.124 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)? Their edits look legitimate but their edit summaries are becoming concerning. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 20:23, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

82.41.151.124 is definitely Lapitavenator, you can tell because they have a Wolverhampton based IP, and a strong interest in obscure english castles. I'd really rather we didn't open a sockpuppet investigation though, as while they don't understand Commons copyright policy their edits on Wikipedia currently are extremely positive, and because their IP is relatively static a WP:DENY rollback would cause a lot of damage. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:13, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Taxobox conventions

At least in non-mammal articles, common practice for taxa that have been moved to new genera is to list the original binomial in the type_species field, not in the synonyms or type_species_authority fields. This is done at Mammoth, Mastodon, and Paraceratherium, and I did this at Aphelops. But in other mammal articles this is remarkably inconsistent: American lion and Procoptodon don't do anything, Irish elk and Woolly rhinoceros put it in synonyms, and so on. What should the convention be?

Pinging Porqaz, who changed the formatting on Aphelops. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 15:20, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

@Lythronaxargestes:I myself have seen articles listing the original binomial name in perentheses under the "new" name (Rusingaceros as an example). Honestly, most animal genera, living or extinct, have been described under a different genera back in the day. If we were to always list the original binomial name.... you'd have lions under Felis, Orcas under Delphinus, pretty much every rhino under rhinoceros... I dont think such a convention is practical. But this is just my opinion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Porqaz (talk • contribs)

I don't see why we are mixing species and genera here. "Type species" have always only applied to genera. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:47, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Even with genera, the type species of most extinct ones were originally lumped into living genera or an extinct wastebasket taxon. Prehistoric rhinoceroses for example were all under either Rhinoceros, Dicerorhinus or Chilotherium and Aceratherium. If the consensus is to put original name of type species in taxobox thats fine, but I'm pretty sure most genera taxobox with type species from before the 1900s will need to be updated. Porqaz (talk) 16:04, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

We can also have nominate subspecies (so lion would be Felis leo leo), but that's not normally included in taxoboxes for whatever reason   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  21:44, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

• I think there's some kind of standard in the literature which is the reason for the original binomials being used for type species, and if that's the case, we should follow it. FunkMonk (talk) 16:06, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

This has already been discussed at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life/Archive_49#Type_species_names_for_species_now_considered_to_belong_to_different_genera. The concensus was it that for genera articles, type species should always be labelled by their original name. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:21, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

• ICZN Recommendation 67B reads: "The name of a type species should be cited by its original binomen. If the name of the type species is, or is currently treated as, an invalid name, authors may also cite its valid synonym." (I'm not sure how to link directly to the section, but go here, click Chapter 15 and then Article 67). I see no reason not to follow this convention, although current Wikipedia practice is not very consistent. Plantdrew (talk) 16:23, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

• Question: Note that Mammoth lists the original species name under "Type species" (Elephas primigenius), which is technically correct. Also note that Irish elk does not use the "Type species" field because there is only one species. Instead, it says "Binominal name", where the currently valid name Megaloceros giganteus is provided. I think this is technically correct as well. Correct me if I am wrong, but don't we have an inconsistency here to start with, mixing "binominal name" and "type species" across articles? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:21, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

There is no inconsistency. Type species only applies to genera, binomial name only applies to species Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:29, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Of course, thanks. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:32, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

• As confused as I was myself, I can't imagine that most readers will not be confused about seeing the original (rather than the currently valid) name for the type species, as is the case, e.g., in Mammoth. I think that most readers will falsely assume that the name listed under type species (see Mammoth) is a valid name (since there is no hint that it is invalid). In my opinion, clarity is most important since we are a general encyclopedia. I would therefore argue we should always include both the original and current names, and make clear which is the current and which is the invalid name. (I know that the name is always linked to the current name (as Elephas primigenius links to Mammuthus primigenius in the taxonbox of mammoth), but that isn't apparent unless you click on the link) --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:46, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

I think an important consideration here is that the type species is part of the nomenclatural history of the genus and does not have any unique standing from a biological standpoint. As such, I think it's important to cite the original form as doing otherwise would misrepresent the nomenclatural history. My preference, if possible, would be to include the type species in its original form, regardless of whether it is valid, and if it is dubious, a junior synonym, or has changed form since its original form note so much below, and to list all the valid species below in the subdivision section—including the type species, if it is a valid species of the genus, but not if it is dubious or a junior synonym. So for example Diplodocus would be "Diplodocus Marsh, 1878; type species: Diplodocus longus Marsh, 1878 (nomen dubium); valid species: D. carnegii Hatcher, 1901, D. hallorum (Gillette, 1991)", Triceratops would be "Triceratops Marsh, 1889; type species: Ceratops horridus Marsh, 1889; valid species: T. horridus (Marsh, 1889), T. prorsus Marsh, 1890", and Tarbosaurus would be "Tarbosaurus Maleev, 1955; type species: Tarbosaurus efremovi Maleev, 1955 (junior synonym of Tarbosaurus bataar (Maleev, 1955)); valid species: Tarbosaurus bataar (Maleev, 1955)". Or something like that, depending on how exactly the formatting works best with the taxobox system. Ornithopsis (talk) 23:20, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5#Animals

I nominated some prehistoric animals for Level 5 Vital article listing. There are also some outstanding nominations also on living animals. Would appreciate your participation in the nominations. starship.paint (exalt) 02:45, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Not sure if it's related, but some of those listed already seems very arbitrary. How the heck is Brancasaurus vital if Plesiosaurus itself is not? If anything, it ranks as an obscure genus even among plesiosaurs... FunkMonk (talk) 02:52, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

@FunkMonk: - You can nominate a change too... you can propose a swap, or you can propose to add Plesiosaurus. I must say I have not heard of Brancasaurus until today. starship.paint (exalt) 03:40, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Meridiungulata and Sudamericungulata

Merge discussion over at Talk:Meridiungulata over Sudamericungulata, a clade proposed last month that contradicts molecular results. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:07, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Merge discussion for Ghughua Fossil Park & Mandla Plant Fossils National Park

From what I can find Mandla Plant Fossils National Park seems to be a made up park, probably created by the initial article author, A quick look at google maps shows that the purported location of the park is actually the location of the Ghughua Fossil Park. I suggest either wholesale deletion of this article, or redirection and history merge into Ghughua Fossil Park. I'm notifying recent editors of that article and relevant wkiprojects.--Kevmin § 01:38, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Muzaffarabadmachli

Could a fish person have a look at new article Muzaffarabadmachli? Lede describes the species as a dubious species for the dubious genus [...] Muzaffarabadmachli, which does not fill me with confidence. Single ref, link given goes to the wrong publication - the correct one (acc. to PBDB) appears to be something I cannot even link to due to blacklisting; that publisher is Scientific Research Publishing, a house of ill repute. No other hits in the literature except for original description. My impulse is to AfD for lack of reliable corroboration, but maybe I'm not looking in the correct areas. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:23, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

It's a Malkani taxon. That explains a lot. Goes in the same bin as Balochisaurus, Gspsaurus, and the rest of that crap. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 00:18, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

So... should this be merged to some list of informally named fossils (if there is one for fish)? If it's really dependent on a single deprecated source, that might make any retention difficult IMO. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 19:13, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

We just discussed Malkali taxa here [3]. I think they have to be removed from Wikipedia entirely if they haven't been named in a reliable source, for the reasons mentioned in that discussion. The "Open Journal of Geology" seems to be a predatory journal, making inclusion of any of its contents a no-go according to WP:Predatory. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:10, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

References

Now up for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Muzaffarabadmachli. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:20, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Geinitzia

I created an article on Geinitzia based on a Fossilworks page but, on seeing the genus described as a genus of extinct conifers, checked around some more and found that this is apparently the earlier use of the name: Fossilworks again. Google Scholar comes up with far more papers for the conifer genus than the insect genus. How should this kind of thing be handled? --Kent G. Budge (talk) 22:16, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Plants and animals sharing the same name is generally considered ok, see Pachycormus. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:22, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

A similar case could be Plagiolophus. FunkMonk (talk) 22:22, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, that's useful to know. I assume one creates separate pages "Taxon (animal)" and "Taxon (plant)" or something like it, then a disambiguation page. How should this be handled in the Taxonomy template tree? --Kent G. Budge (talk) 22:51, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, with the current trend in disambiguation term being Geinitzia (insect) and Geinitzia (plant). I went ahead and moved your article to Geinitzia (insect) and added another reference plus the species list from fossilworks.--Kevmin § 23:15, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll likely add the plant article shortly -- it turns out it was the plant being redlinked by the page I was editing (McRae Formation). How about taxonomy templates (Template:Taxonomy/Geinitzia)? Is there a way to disambiguate on the taxonomy tree? --Kent G. Budge (talk) 23:25, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Not a problem! For the taxonomy templates, you can go by either of the preceding end Florissantia (insect) examples give, or by the ones at Florissantia (plant) and Florissantia (insect). The automatic taxobox code follows this structure ​which effectively hides the page name with the taxon name,

• |link=Florissantia (planthopper)|Florissantia

and the taxobox can use the Florissantia (insect) disambiguated title. @Peter coxhead: can probably give better instruction on how to appropriately swap the templating around, but if i recall correctly youll want to create a new taxonomy template for each disambiguated name, and then tag the un-disambiguated template for deletion.--Kevmin § 23:46, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks, I'll do that. Should be an easy speedy deletion since it's the template creator requesting it. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 00:11, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

We don't have to flip restorations for cladograms etc.

A lot of life restorations have been reuploaded in flipped versions to be used in cladograms, templates, etc. (notably by Mariomassone and HFoxii), which is a valiant effort, but problematic because when the originals are modified to be more correct, the flipped versions usually aren't, and it's a mess to have to do the double upload every time an image is modified anyway. But it is also unnecessary, since there is actually a parameter that flips/mirrors images automatically when displayed, see for example the automatically flipped images at Template:Pterosauria, and see documentation at Template:MirrorH and Template:MirrorV. So I wonder if we should just refrain from the practice of flipping images as new versions and just use the parameter? Thanks to Trilletrollet for making me aware of this. FunkMonk (talk) 16:49, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. Just unnecessary cogs in the machine. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 16:53, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation, it really was extra work. I have already transferred the template to Russian Wikipedia, where I do most of my edits. HFoxii (talk) 13:06, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Nice that this can improve other Wikipedias too! Thought it was already built in. FunkMonk (talk) 13:08, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to mirror regular images in articles without also mirroring the captions, any ideas, Trilletrollet? FunkMonk (talk) 13:32, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

@FunkMonk: I dunno, I'm not really an expert on this topic. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 13:59, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Alright, I'll see if I can ask around somewhere, it seems it would be really useful if possible... Maybe I can just ping the editor who made the template; Vanisaac. FunkMonk (talk) 14:30, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

These temmplates are really just a CSS hack, with <div style={{MirrorH}}>...</div> and <span style={{MirrorH}}>...</span> tags applying the style to your content. But it is a "dumb" technology. They will flip all content inside the tags, so you will need to get a bit creative when adding captions. My suggestion would be to use something like {{Image frame}} to preserve the correct styling, but be able to split the image from its caption. VanIsaac, MPLL ^cont_WpWS 15:27, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, maybe it would be possible to add it to the regular image templates if asked for at the idea lab? Though past experience shows it can be a struggle to get anything done there... FunkMonk (talk) 15:44, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Archaehierax

Anybody willing to collaborate on creating an article for Archaehierax? It was published in the scientific literature on the 27th of last month, but kind of went ignored. The article is open-access and free to anyone, and seems to have a good amount of information on it. I am aware that the page Draft:Archaehierax sylvestris exists, but... it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I'll start the article here: User:Hiroizmeh/Archaehierax. Hiroizmeh (talk) 04:13, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Sure. You could list your draft or article in our Wikipedia:WikiProject Palaeontology/Peer review under "Fact checks" asking for collaboration; we can then go through it together. I recommend to just add a few sentences to your draft with the very basic information and then publish it, makes it more likely to get input then. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:17, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Molecular clock results in taxobox ranges

What are your thoughts on this? In my own reading of the topic, molecular clock results are basically useless without adequate calibration, due to the fact that molecular clock rates are so variable between lineages. There are also several controversies current in the literature, where deep molecular clock ages contradict the fossil record, e.g. the origin of Angiosperms. Should we even include them at all? Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:50, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Are there any articles with molecular clock ranges in the taxobox? I don't think molecular clock estimates should be included. Plantdrew (talk) 22:09, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Bird, Neoaves, Placentalia, Boreoeutheria, Laurasiatheria, Scrotifera, Ferungulata and Eulipotyphla all use molecular clock estimates in the taxobox. There's no record of modern birds before the Maastrichtian and no record of Placental mammals before the Paleocene. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:20, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Something weird...

While looking at the popular pages page for this wikiproject, I noticed something weird. Most of the list makes sense: Dinosaur, Dodo, Neanderthal, Tyrannosaurus, etc. are some of the top ones. But the number one spot is peculiar. Not only does does it double the number two spot and everything below, but it's something that I don't thing would be that big of a topic: Tullimonstrum. I thought it was a little unlikely that it was triple as "popular" as Tyrannosaurus. I opened the Pageviews Analysis in XTools for it, and it got even stranger. Of the total of ~330,000 page views for it for the past month, ~270,000 were on the specific date of September 14th, 2021. Does anyone know why Tullimonstrum would suddenly gain 1/3 of a million views on that specific date? Hiroizmeh (talk) 00:24, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

It can often be related to some meme, Youtube video, or whatever such site, mentioning something. FunkMonk (talk) 00:28, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

View spike is probably due to this reddit thread: [4]. Tullimonstrum is the kind of thing that can go viral repeatedly; it's not something most people have heard of before, but has an interesting story behind it. There was also a small spike on October 12, and a large one on March 17, 2016. Hitting the front page of reddit usually cause a short (~1 day) spike. Coverage in mainstream news usually causes a spike that lasts for several days. The 2016 spike was due to [5] which was covered in various new sources. Plantdrew (talk) 01:21, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Oh. I thought 300,000 in a day was big of a number to just have been from going viral, but, well, I guess not. Hiroizmeh (talk) 23:48, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

New Subsection Proposal

So, I was thinking it would be a good idea to have a subsection, probably best in the tasks or article alerts section, that lists uncreated gen. nov.(new fossil discovery) pages. It would be good to have one place to keep track of all of them. It would just list redlinks, or even draft namespace links, and once an article for one of them is created, it is removed from the list. A good format, I think, would just be:

• [[Draft:<Genus>]]: <Author>, (<date of publication>)<reference>

((most recent on top, oldest on bottom))

example:

• Paradoryphoribius: Mapalo et al., (6 October, 2021)
• Archaehierax: Mather et al., (27 September, 2021)

Reflist

The only thing is that a list like this would have to be kept track of and updated somewhat daily.

And of course, feel free to let me know if there's some other dynamic that has a similar purpose to this. And if not, let me know if this seems like a good idea or not. Hiroizmeh (talk) 23:48, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

I think the lists of years in paleontology already do that (just scroll through for hundreds of red links), would be a bit much to keep a parallel list updated. FunkMonk (talk) 00:03, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

20XX in paleontology already covers what you are suggesting. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:08, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

I guess I could've mentioned 'besides Years in Paleontology pages' in the comment. What I was thinking was a list to be used for WP:Paleo members to keep track of new articles for new taxa that are in need of being written. But yeah, Years in paleontology works too. And that brings up one more thing I was wondering about---what's your opinion on having the lists of new taxa there being in chronological order instead of alphabetical? I feel like it would be an overall more useful format, and new additions could easily be kept track of. What do you think? Hiroizmeh (talk) 05:46, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

That would be easy to do in cases where it is easy to determine the exact date of the publication of the article naming a new taxon. It would make me unsure what to do in cases of taxa named in journals with limited or no Internet presence, such as some museum bulletins - in cases of taxa named in such journals I sometimes learn about them years after the date of the publication, and I find it hard to narrow down the date of the publication to something more specific than the year (or sometimes the month) of the publication.--188.147.99.83 (talk) 08:35, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

I think it would be difficult to find exact dates for all of them, so it would be incomplete anyway, and therefore not really chronological. FunkMonk (talk) 18:45, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Alright. If anyone needs it anyway, I have an (incomplete) list at my userpage for reference.Hiroizmeh (talk) 15:44, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Basilemys reevaluation

The article for Basilemys is classified as a stub. However, I think it's worthy of a higher ranking. Does someone else have to evaluate it or can I do so myself? And if someone else has to do it, would someone be willing to? Thanks in advance, -Tim (talk) 09:13, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@TimTheDragonRider: you are more than welcome to start rating these yourself. Just follow the guidelines at Wikipedia:WikiProject Palaeontology/Assessment. It looks like Basilemys is already tagges as a B class now though. --awkwafaba (📥) 12:08, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Marília Formation split

Just letting you know that the dinosaur-bearing Serra da Galga and Ponte Alta members of the Marília Formation were recently split off into the Serra da Galga Formation, leaving Kurupi itaata as the only taxon from the redefined Marília Formation. I have proposed a split on the Marília's talk page. Your help is appreciated. Miracusaurs (talk) 02:20, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

This is probably more relevant for Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geology Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:37, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Google Books public domain question

Does anybody more familiar with copyright law than I know if a Google Books scan of a public domain work is itself public domain? I want to upload one of the plates from this text to Wikimedia Commons, but I want to make sure I'm in the clear copyright-wise. Ornithopsis (talk) 21:45, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Absolutely, sweat of the brow does not apply, see National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute. You're all clear to upload. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:47, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, doesn't matter who scanned or photographed it, copyright applies only to the artwork. The most important thing is to find out where and when an image was first published, and the date of death of the artist. FunkMonk (talk) 23:51, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Paleontology encyclopedias at AfD

I have nominated The Simon & Schuster Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Creatures and The Marshall Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals for deletion as they are unsourced and I cannot find substantial reviews about them. Feel free to participate if interested. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:12, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Vote for a new saber-toothed name

Before I make a formal move request, I've made a survey for what to call the article about saber-toothed predators instead of the too specific "saber-toothed cat" over at:[6] Opinions would be appreciated. FunkMonk (talk) 22:56, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

The move request has begun, and is already attracting ill-informed editors, so please have a look. FunkMonk (talk) 14:38, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Science Competition 2021

Hi! I would like to remind you all that Wiki Science Competition 2021 has started in many countries last week. It will last until November 30th or December 15th, depending on the areas.

WSC is organized every two years, and people from all countries can upload files (the goal are the international prizes paid by WMEE and WMCH) but specific national pages are also set up, for example for the USA or Ireland or New Zealand. Such national competitions (when they exist) act as an additional incentive to participate.

We expect a sitenotice to show up for all readers here on enWikipedia as well, probably during the second half of the month when all countries with national competitions are open for submission at the same time. In the meantime, if you are planing to upload some nice descriptive photos, infographics or videos to Wikimedia Commons, please consider submitting them using the WSC interface, you might win a prize.--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:42, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Australopithecine

Needs checking, esp. dates. Doug Weller talk 14:11, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Reliable sources noticeboard discussion about Encyclopedia of Life

Hi all

I've started a discussion on the reliable sources noticeboard about Encyclopedia of Life as a reliable source for Wikipedia, please share your thoughts here. I've added some basic information about EOL at the top of the section to help inform the discussion.

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 20:24, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Polar forest

My proposal to merge Polar forests of the Cretaceous into Cretaceous went nowhere, so I thought that I would revist the article here. I think this article has a somewhat unclear scope, and has issues with WP:SYNTH. I think it would be better if it were reforumulated to be about Polar forests as a general prehistoric ecosystem type, rather than focusing on the Cretaceous specifically, thoughts? Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:10, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Your merge proposal may go over better were there an actual polar forest article   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  06:59, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

I would support merging the article, as there is extensive overlap in scope with South Polar region of the Cretaceous; I am not especially convinced that Antarctic-Australian Cretaceous ecosystems and northern polar forests are really studied as any sort of unified topic that would warrant a distinct article. The former is far more extensively studied and that is under the scope of the more developed and well defined latter article. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 01:54, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Fossilworks down

Fossilworks has been down for nearly two weeks, with no explanation (technically the main page is still working, but all the others are not). Other mirrors of the Paleobiology Database, like Mindat, remain online. We currently have over 7,000 references to fossilworks per fossilworks.org  . If fossilworks goes offline permanently, we will have to migrate over the references to the Paleobiology Database website, presumably via bot. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:52, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Either that or just add a Waybackmachine mirror, which is routinely done to many working URLs already. FunkMonk (talk) 19:26, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Much of the functionality of fossilworks comes from clicking on related entries, like the locality information, which won't work with the wayback machine. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:28, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Internal links to other taxa at least work fine for me.[7] FunkMonk (talk) 20:13, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, but the locality link in the one you provided doesn't, which just goes to prove my point. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:19, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

GreenC has set up a bot to fix this, turns out there was an url migration where they added an additional string for whatever reason, but all of the links should be able to be fixed. Hemiauchenia (talk)

Yakemys

Article on just established genus, published in what appears to be a borderline unreliable journal (MDPI. Single source from a dodgy publisher - worth a critical look? I'll leave unreviewed for now. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:12, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

(Ping @Faendalimas:, topically :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:13, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I understand why people don't like MDPI journals generally, especially for stuff like medicine, but for paleontology I think they're fine. MDPI is borderline, far above outright predatory journals, and more like Scientific Reports, which also publishes lots of paleontology papers. We recently had a dinosaur, Issi described in MDPI, and I don't think anyone objected. Per WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES I think Yakemys should be kept. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:17, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

List of extinct plants

I have nominated the extremely poorly maintained List of extinct plants for deletion, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of extinct plants. Participate if interested, thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:34, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh, of course the Article Rescue Squadron adopts this one too... Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 03:11, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Disruptive editing by 4444hhhh

4444hhhh is engaging in disruptive editing. We've previously discussed their bizarre User:4444hhhh/Dinosauria Common where they gave dinosaurs fake common names, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Palaeontology/Archive_12#Dinosaur_common_names_list.

There is currently an in press publication at IScience regarding the taxonomy of South American gomphotheres (yes, this again). They got MtDNA out of Notiomastodon, as well as created a morphological tree of most prehistoric proboscidean taxa. [8] the paper as far as I can tell proposes no major taxonomic changes. Using this paper as a justification, 4444hhhh has been making massive taxonomic changes, including redirecting the whole Gomphothere article to Gomphotherium, without any serious consideration as to the consequences [9], and which isn't seriously justified by any of the papers contents. They also created a brand new article Rhynchotheriidae, which the paper in question makes absolutely zero mention of. There is only one mention of "Rhynchotheriidae" in the entire scholarly literature from 1953, so the clade name appears to be entirely original research. I propose that all of 4444hhhh's edits on this topic be reverted, and the Rhynchotheriidae article should be deleted. Hemiauchenia (talk) 07:36, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I think we should follow WP:NPA no matter the quality of an editor's edits. Concerning the edits, I would prefer if these are reverted, alone for the reason that the source appears to be still "in press"; we should not cite unpublished literature. --Jens Lallensack (talk)

It is not a personal attack if they are making stuff up. Wikipedia is not a venue for original research. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:44, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

The phrase "incompetent editor" is a clear personal attack. We need to avoid that at all costs, otherwise we will be in a very weak position should a major dispute arise. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:30, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I've removed the attacks, and replaced it with "disruptive editing". I've gone and reverted almost all of 4444hhhhs's edits on gomphotheres. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:41, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I would call their position of Stegodon a "major taxonomic shift" and Notiomastodon being an elephantid is pretty huge, but the paper does not commit to any implications of the former and the latter certainly isn't rewriting whole families worth of taxonomy for sure. Worth implementing the findings in the text of relevant articles, though, and taking a neutral stance on Notiomastodon. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 21:59, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I think you've got somethings mixed up, the paper does not state that Notiomastodon is an elephantid, but rather they state that it is a sister taxon to Elephantidae, which is the has been the consensus taxonomic position for gomphotheres for a long time, and not really a shakeup. As for placing Stegodon within living elephants, that's obviously unusual, but nothing we should change taxonomy about unless this becomes the broad consensus among workers. Stegodon also went extinct only about 10,000 years ago, so it's likely that we will be seeing molecular results from them in the coming decades. The gomphothere article arguably needs massive cleanup to discuss the broad history of the concept, but that's a lot of work and I don't have a lot of experience of the proboscidean literature. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:08, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Reforme the Inostrancevia page

While doing my research on gorgonopsians, I noticed a very strange thing: It seems that the article dedicated for Inostrancevia is strangely little developed. I mean, it is one the best known gorgonopsian to the public, with the peculiarity that it often cited as one of the best-knows animals of the Paleozoic (To tell you, he even appeared in several media that mention him), but the dedicated page seems to be very crowded. For comparison, the article on the related genus Viatkogorgon (which is a gorgonopsian almost unknown to the public) has a labeled article while it is known only by a single complete skeleton, Inostrancevia has two almost complete (which is a miracle for a gorgonopsian, because we usually only find skulls). If there are users who have good sources for this animal, I think we can get a well-polled article, even a labeled article, like the one on Viatkogorgon. (Amirani1746 (talk) 09:45, 9 December 2021 (UTC))

Yes, but as usual with any article, someone has to spend the time to do it. Viatkogorgon was expanded because it is a relatively simple taxon to write about. That is not the case for Inostrancevia, which has a huge, complex literature, and is therefore much harder to write about. FunkMonk (talk) 11:08, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Tyrannosaurus also has an enormous and complex literature, yet this did not prevent it from obtaining a labeled article. It's quite possible to get the same thing with Inostrancevia I think... (Amirani1746 (talk) 13:09, 9 December 2021 (UTC))

Tyrannosaurus, as one of the most famous extinct animals, is covered by many recent, popular, English language sources, whereas Inostrancevia is mainly discussed in obscure historical technical articles, many of them in Russian, not really comparable at all. Anyhow, nothing stops you or anyone else from expanding the article. FunkMonk (talk) 13:25, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

WikiProject Collaboration

I know there's a formal nomination page for these but it doesn't get much use so I figured I'd propose this here to catch more eyes. With it being one of the absolute most famous and important pterosaur taxa and an absolute truckload of new data dropping with the release of the monograph yesterday, I can't help but imagine that Quetzalcoatlus would make a perfect candidate for the first WikiProject Palaeontology collab in a while. Any interest? LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 00:11, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

That could be (for the lack of a better word, fun) to work on, along with maybe Inostrancevia.

And this brings up a question I've had that doesn't really have to do with this, but I guess I'll ask here because I don't want to make a whole new section for it. @FunkMonk and Hemiauchenia: (maybe they can give an explanation) What happened to the formal procedure for organizing collaborations on articles within WP:PALEO? Did what LittleLazyLass mentioned just... fall out of use? Hiroizmeh (talk) 00:27, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

It's still there[10], but I think those who worked on the last collab, Acamptonectes, were a little burned out after that dragged out. But I think it's still the best place to get support for things like these. FunkMonk (talk) 00:51, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I'll put in a formal nomination there, then. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 02:53, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Big John (triceratops)

I recently created a draft for Draft:Big John (triceratops). It recently sold at auction for a record price. Thriley (talk) 04:34, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Not sure why it needs a new article, not much to say about it other than it was sold for a lot of money. Specimens should be treated at the article about the animal. One could argue we might have a Specimens of Triceratops article, though, but I don't think individual specimens compare to those of Tyrannosaurus. FunkMonk (talk) 04:49, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

@FunkMonk: Now up for deletion, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Big John (dinosaur). Given that Thriley has engaged in canvassing by invoking the Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron – Rescue list (a group known to have strongly skewed views towards inclusion) participation would be appreciated. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:46, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

I brought this up on the AFD, but does an article along the lines of "private trade in dinosaur fossils" exist? It's a fairly significant controversy, after all, and does regularly come up in the news. It might be a sufficiently clearly-defined and notable topic to merit its own page—thoughts? Ornithopsis (talk) 20:23, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

• I think that an article Specimens of Triceratops would be difficult to source, and could only include some of the specimens due to a lack of sources. Instead, I would suggest to just add one sentence about Big John to the Triceratops article. When, at some point, the "History of discovery" section in Triceratops gets too long, it could become its own sub-article with all the details on individual specimens. We should, however, not give too much weight on this specimen because privately owned fossils are practically worthless for science.
• An article on private fossil trade is definitely important. We just need somebody who writes it I guess. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:31, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Fossil collecting kinda briefly covers it. I think if an article is to be written, it should cover the entire fossil trade, and not just dinosaurs, as the recent coverage I have seen tends not to cover dinosaurs exclusively, like this recent New York Times piece. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:35, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

That's a fair point. I'd support simply having "Fossil trade" be its own article. There's certainly more to say about it than a couple paragraphs in a more general article. It's not really my thing, but I'd contribute some work to it if we decided to make the article. Things that could be touched on could include the history of the private trade in fossils (including early scientific trade, e.g. Mary Anning), legality, ethics/controversy, places particularly associated with the fossil trade (e.g. Morocco, Burmese amber, western US), notable specimens and incidents (e.g. Sue, Nic Cage)... Ornithopsis (talk) 20:46, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

I created a fossil trade article[11] years ago, but it was so short that I just merged it where it is now as a section. It could just be reverted back and expanded from there. FunkMonk (talk) 21:04, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

I made an article on the Moroccan fossil trade specifically back in July, so there should definitely be enough material out there to do one on the industry as a whole. Ichthyovenator (talk) 07:35, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and resurrected the page, and started some expansion of it. It seems restoring the old page has triggered some copyright violation and unreliable source alerts, though, the nature of which I am uncertain of. Ornithopsis (talk) 20:07, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

I found this discussion after reviewing EranBot's tag of the page as a potential copyright violation. The site that it identified is a mirror of Wikipedia, and since the material is simply being restored from the history, there are no copyright or attribution concerns, as far as I can tell. DanCherek (talk) 20:16, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, the page was up for a few years before I redirected it again, so plenty of time for mirrors to pop up. FunkMonk (talk) 01:23, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

There's currently a thread at ANI about the Article Rescue Squadron, see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron_is_getting_problematic. Participate if interested. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:28, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

List of auctioned dinosaurs

I proposed a compromise solution at AFD of incorporating information about this specimen, and those like it, into a "list of auctioned dinosaurs" or something similar. I was wondering if anyone here had any thoughts on what to title the article and what its inclusion criteria should be. I'm inclined to think that the list should include all specimens that A) are Mesozoic or non-neornithean dinosaur fossils, B) were sold at an auction, or planned to be sold at one, and C) the auction of the specimen or plans thereof have been covered in independent, reliable sources. Thoughts? Ornithopsis (talk) 03:16, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. I assume dueling dinos will be included under those criteria? The guide price (if available) probably should also be included. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:52, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, Dueling Dinos was specifically one I had in mind as believing the criteria should be set to include. Guide price is a good idea. Ornithopsis (talk) 03:56, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I'd suggest List of dinosaur specimens sold at auction (see List of most expensive cars sold at auction, List of most expensive watches sold at auction). Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 04:42, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

• Nice proposal! FunkMonk (talk) 06:23, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and created a draft, Draft:List of dinosaur specimens sold at auction. There are doubtless others that I have missed. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:36, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I more in the specimens of Tyrannosaurus list were sold at auctions (Samson, perhaps Tristan, etc.). But perhaps not all at auctions. Wonder if the criteria should be more inclusive? FunkMonk (talk) 20:39, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I found reference to a BBC Story where a dinosaur nest from southern China was sold for $420,000 back in 2006. Since the eggs apparently have prenatal bones I thought this warranted inclusion, but perhaps not. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:48, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, this is awkward—I've spent the last couple of hours working on a draft of my own, and was just about to post it when I saw you had done so... Ornithopsis (talk) 20:49, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

How much does your list differ from mine? If it's better formatted I'll happily go with yours. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:54, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and copied mine in... It mostly has the same information, but there are a few gaps that need to be filled in. Thoughts on the formatting and information I've chosen to include? Ornithopsis (talk) 20:58, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Seems fine, listing the auction house seems good. It's currently missing the Allosaurus and Diplodocus that were sold in April 2018. But other than that it's mostly complete considering what I've been able to find via news coverage. I'm still not sure we should incorporate dinosaurs that were auctioned but failed to sell. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:13, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I think that if there are reliable sources revealing the planned auction of the specimen, it's worth including in the list—although perhaps it should be included in a separate section of the list. Ornithopsis (talk) 21:21, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

There's also the the issue of local v USD currency, large numbers of specimens are sold in euros. Not sure what to do about that one. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:27, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

There's got to be a standardized way Wikipedia handles information reported in different currencies, right? Converting it all to the same currency, if possible, would be best for comparing different items on the list, in my opinion. Ornithopsis (talk) 21:29, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for including the failed to sell section in a separate table. I'm about to go to bed, so if you want to fix up the table I'll stop treading on your toes. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:38, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the issue of whether to include unsold dinosaurs or not: there are a handful of unsold dinosaurs, such as Skinny the diplodocid and the Dueling Dinosaurs, that I think are remarkable enough to merit mention. I'm not sure what inclusion criteria to use for that besides the availability of reliable sources (obviously excluding auction promotional items), so I think it's better to allow any sourced specimen that wasn't sold to be included (although perhaps we don't need to expend excess effort on seeking out such examples to add). Ornithopsis (talk) 01:38, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

The problem is, there tends to be a lot of presale coverage, like there was of "skinny", but barely any of the failure to sell, because it's less interesting. Having gone through the news archives, there must be at least half a dozen triceratops skulls that went to auction but failed to sell. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:45, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

There was also a lot about the sale of Samson in 2009, which also isn't included yet. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:46, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Do Ebay sales count? In 2019, there was an explosion of coverage in April about someone trying to sell a "Baby Trex", but I can't find any followup coverage. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:18, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I think the list nearly complete, the only thing to do now is to translate the 2009 Canadian sales, (which I think are in Canadian dollars) into USD, otherwise it's ready to go live. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:13, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ornithopsis: List is complete, are we ready to go live? Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:56, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for all the work you've put into this! I'd like to go over the list and potentially make a few more tweaks before it goes live, which I'll do once I get the chance. Ornithopsis (talk) 22:03, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Weirdest thing I learnt doing this research is that someone paid 420 K for a nest of smuggled Chinese dinosaur eggs? Why???????????????? Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:57, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Ours not to reason why... I've provisionally added a column on the current owner of the specimen. Might be hard to fill out, but to the extent possible, it could be informative to give an idea of how often these things actually end up in museums. Ornithopsis (talk) 02:10, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

There are too many anonymous buyers and unclear chains of ownership to try to understand who owns these fossils without engaging in WP:OR. This is difficult even when trying to ask people and follow up on leads in real life, as the recent NYTimes article attests. On the same note, I am fairly sure that "Z-rex" is the same as Samson due to this being mentioned both directly in the current Specimens of Tyrannosaurus article and in some other places, but I can't find RS proof atm. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:18, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

You're right. "Current Owner" might be the information I want, but it isn't the appropriate information for this article. I suppose that in cases of a known change of owner, we could simply say so. Ornithopsis (talk) 02:22, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm now coming to regret my initial choice to organize it taxonomically; it's not always viable (fighting pair, unidentified nests), it's sometimes arbitrary, and it's perhaps not best for long-term ease of adding new information. Perhaps I should've organized it in chronological order by auction date from the beginning? Ornithopsis (talk) 02:32, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I think it should be ranked by highest price at top, as with other similar articles, like List of most expensive films. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:46, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I considered that, but unlike many such articles, the price is not necessarily the key piece of information. Also, in a few cases you've grouped together specimens sold at the same auction, and sorting it chronologically would help in keeping information on such cases organized. Ornithopsis (talk) 02:51, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

If we do it chronology wise, should we do it ascending or descending? Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:32, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I was thinking ascending, so that new entries can just be placed at the end and a reader scrolling down the list reads the entries in the order that they happened. Ornithopsis (talk) 03:45, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Regarding your earlier rhetorical question about why someone would spend that much money on dinosaur eggs, it turns out there's been research on that, apparently: [12]. As far as list order goes: if switching to chronological order sounds good to you, I'll go ahead and update it. Ornithopsis (talk) 04:18, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I am off to bed now, so I'll see you tomorrow. Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:21, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, this list certainly still has plenty of room for improvement, but I think it's reached the point where it's ready to go live. Ornithopsis (talk) 19:08, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ornithopsis: I agree for the most part, though we should have a consistent format for auction dates. If you want to give precise dates, I'd prefer using the sortable format used in List of most expensive cars sold at auction. where the written month is given as it is much less confusing. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:30, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I think we should give the full date when we have it; I don't really see any reason not to. Other than that I don't have any strong opinions about how the date should be formatted. I was just using the ISO 8601 format [13]. If you think writing the month out would be better, go ahead. Ornithopsis (talk) 19:41, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Article is now live. This might be the most comprehensive list of auction dinosaurs anywhere. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:41, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. Thank you for all the help, it's been a pleasure working with you! Just about the only thing I wish this article had was whether the specimen is currently owned by a public museum or private collector, but as we discussed above it might be hard to find reliable sources for the ultimate fate of many of these specimens. Ornithopsis (talk) 20:48, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

I just saw Draft:Dragon King (dinosaur skull) pop up on my watch list, if anyone wants to help it along. --awkwafaba (📥) 13:03, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Looks like someone has something they want to sell... FunkMonk (talk) 13:32, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, pretty clearly a SPA... Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 16:56, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

This skull is clearly even less notable than Big John, and I'd take it to AfD the instant if was published. For one thing, the coverage period was much briefer, and I couldn't find any coverage of whether the skull sold or not (I presume it didn't as it was always much harder to find coverage of failed auctions than it was to find the pre-sale coverage). Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:20, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Dragon King (dinosaur skull) has now been moved to mainspace. I've gone ahead and nominated it for deletion, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dragon King (dinosaur skull). Your participation would be appreciated. Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:18, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

AfD closed

The AfD closed with no consensus today. I think a redirect discussion is in order - the auction article seems to be ready enough. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 18:55, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd prefer that we wait at least a few weeks, like we did for Homo longi. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:57, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Agreed with Hemiauchenia. We should give the discussion a bit of cooling-off time before we discuss merging it. Ornithopsis (talk) 19:48, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

• There's a new article in National Geographic on Big John here that contains some more information on the specimen, and which I feel provides some "missing pieces". If the article must be kept, at least we now have a source that provides a fairly reliable "second opinion" to many of the claims made in the auction. Ornithopsis (talk) 03:05, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I still don't think the coverage is any more substantial in that of the 2018 Allosaurus that supposedly represented a new species (this was before the taxonomic revision paper that established A. jimmadseni ). The claims made in the article are essentially a rehash of every other time a dinosaur has sold at auction for over one million dollars/Euros over the last decade. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:29, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree, it's still a weak article (and this Nat Geo article refutes some of the arguments made by the pro-keep people, such as the alleged high quality and scientific importance of the specimen). I'm just bringing it up because it seems relevant to the debate and could help mitigate some of the questionable claims made. Ornithopsis (talk) 03:39, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Dunkleosteoidea

Hello, WikiProject,

This page was changed from a redirect to an article by a new editor and I was hoping folks from here could look it over since it won't go through the standard new page review. Many thanks in advance. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:20, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

It sure looks pretty similar to Dunkleosteidae, which it was clearly copied from... I guess the question is whether it needs its own page. Currently, it doesn't really look like it. Cougroyalty (talk) 22:25, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

There's no listed difference in taxic composition so this seems like an obvious merge unless there's non-dunkleosteid dunkleosteoids that aren't listed here. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions)

The cladogram at Brachythoraci appears to show some. So technically, yeah, they could be distinct. Cougroyalty (talk) 23:49, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

The Brachythoraci cladogram shows Dunkleostoidea to only include Dunkleosteidae and Panxiosteidae, but I know that Panxiosteidae is a pretty unstable clade (I think someone a few years back put it under Coccosteomorphi instead), and the only publication since 2017 I'm seeing even mention Dunkleosteoidea is [14] which says it's paraphyletic Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 19:42, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I think this is a pretty close-and-shut redirect. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 20:08, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Therapsid taxonomy

I've been having a conversation with Ornithopsis at User_talk:Ornithopsis#Re:Theriodonta about the higher level taxonomy of Therapsida. Apparently, most of the higher level taxonomy of therapsids has no consenus except for Eutheriodontia, and as such, they proposed that Theriodontia and Neotherapsida should be redirected to Therapsida. None of those articles are high quality in the slightest. I support the merge proposal, but wanted to hear others opinions. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:20, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

@Hemiauchenia: Kemp (2009) made a pretty good case for the 4 "eutherapsid" groups forming a polytomy, with Biarmosuchia possibly being a basal grade, and with any similarities between gorgonopsians and eutheriodonts likely being due to convergence. I've actually wanted to merge these pages for a while, I've just never gotten around to it. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 01:00, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Angielczyk and Kammerer [15] has a fairly up-to-date overview of the current state of affairs. I think that our approach should be to present the relationships between the five groups (Biarmosuchia, Dinocephalia, Anomodontia, Gorgonopsia, and Eutheriodontia) as essentially a polytomy, but to acknowledge the Hopson and Bargausen paradigm as the "conventional" view. Also, the therapsid navbox needs a major overhaul. I'd definitely support a merger of Neotherapsida into Therapsida, but having given it some thought, I weakly support keeping Theriodontia—it just needs to be heavily revised to be more about the history of the concept, and the current debate over its validity. Theriodontia has much more of a history as a taxon than Neotherapsida or Eutherapsida does—keeping Theriodontia is vaguely analogous to having Ornithoscelida, Thecodontia, Pachydermata, or Insectivora. Not only does Neotherapsida lack much of an interesting taxonomic history (it's basically just a label on a cladogram), but the page as it currently exists sucks. Ornithopsis (talk) 02:15, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and boldly redirected Neotherapsida to Therapsida, there's no content of value worth merging. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:21, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

I've likewise taken the liberty of changing Theriodonta's taxonomy template to "Therapsida" instead of "Neotherapsida"; if there's anything else with it coded as the parent group they'll need changing too. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 03:25, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

@Ornithopsis: The various therapsid clades actually used to have separate navboxes until sometime last year, when they were merged by User:Chermundy. I'll go ahead and split them again. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 02:38, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't believe taxo-nav-boxes are adding anything to articles, except themselves and their consequences, a disclaimer regarding my position. In this case a summary of the taxonomy seems to require prose with attribution [proper article content], presenting a nav box as npov would require a lot of workarounds. ~ cygnis insignis 02:59, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't require that many workarounds. For parent taxa, it can just be linked to the most neutral supertaxon. For child taxa, they can be listed in the most neutral arrangement (as is being proposed here). This is done on many articles with no problems whatsoever. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 03:14, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Hey Amirani1746 read this before reverting again. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:30, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

@Hemiauchenia: So as much as I want the Neotherapsida and Eutherapsida taxa to be merged with the Therapsida article, I absolutely do not share your opinion with the classifications of therapsids. The Theriodontia taxon, for example, is officially validated according to the majority of paleontologists (including Kammerer). I see absolutely no point in deleting all of these pages and cutting the last links... Amirani1746 (talk)

I can only find 30 references to the term Neotherapsida is used in the entire scholarly literature, compared to the 674 times that Theriodontia has been mentioned. It's not just my opinion but that of everyone else here that matters. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:58, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Amirani1746, a paper co-authored by Kammerer I already linked in this discussion specifically noted that the monophyly of Theriodontia is uncertain. Ornithopsis (talk) 17:17, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

After speaking with Kammerer on Twiiter he did tell me that the Theriodontia taxon was indeed valid(Amirani1746 (talk) 17:44, 5 December 2021 (UTC)).

You realize that we can't use the opinion of one researcher on social media to overturn a well-documented controversy in the scientific literature, right? Especially given that that researcher has fairly recently published a paper that explicitly acknowledges it as controversial. Ornithopsis (talk) 17:51, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Krammerer is arguably one of the most respected therapsid workers of the current era, but we can't use his social media opinion to determine taxonomy, only the scholarly literature. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:00, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

So, basically what this talk is saying is that Eutherapsida and Neotherapsida are no longer valid. Magnatyrannus (talk) 03:53, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Basically, yes. The status of Eutherapsida, Neotherapsida, and Theriodontia are all currently disputed. It is possible that some or all of them will become supported as valid taxa again at some point in the future, but for now we don't really know. Ornithopsis (talk) 05:18, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Wellnhopterus

So today, we finally got a formal description of Quetzalcoatlus sp. (it's now called Quetzalcoatlus lawsoni) In the same paper, specimen TMM 42489-2 was named as a new genus of short-snouted azhdarchid, Wellnhopterus. But there's a problem: that specimen was already named four months ago as the tapejarid Javelinadactylus. Looks like Andres and Campos named the same specimen independently, like another Barilium/Torilion situation. What do we do about this? Atlantis536 (talk) 08:00, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

The Principle of priority was made for situations like this. Because it was published first Javelinadactylus is the correct name. No opinion about the taxonomic classification. Hemiauchenia (talk) 08:07, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Are the formal publishing dates consistent with Javelinadactylus having priority? Who knows, either one of them might end up being formally published next year, for example. Atlantis536 (talk) 08:15, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Javelinadactylus has been formally published and not just in press it clearly has taxonomic priority. Hemiauchenia (talk) 08:27, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

But of course, let's wait for the literature to catch on before we redirect stuff. Atlantis536 (talk) 08:46, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there's any doubt it should be redirected. A bit surprised they didn't name the Q. sp. as a new genus... FunkMonk (talk) 10:19, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree that it should be redirected, just merge any information in Wellnhopterus into Javelinadactylus and address the study in Javelinadactylus. Hiroizmeh (talk) 15:52, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm 99% sure that Javelinadactylus doesn't have priority as it doesn't have a valid zoobank entry while Wellnhopterus does, so Wellnhopterus is technically the correct name while not being published first. Sauriazoicillus (talk) 15:49, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't believe the ICZN states a ZooBank registration as necessary for a name to be valid and available, just a valid publication, which Javelinadactylus possesses in priority. Hiroizmeh (talk) 15:56, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Whichever name it ends up as, we should make the taxobox more ambiguous, as each paper has a different higher level classification. FunkMonk (talk) 16:27, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and redirected Wellnhopterus because it's pointless to have two articles on the same topic. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:27, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I believe a valid printed publication is needed if just publishing takes riority, but zoobank registration is needed for online-only publications which the Javelinadactylus description paper is. If the Javelinadactylus paper was printed it would have priority, but by the looks of it, it wasn't, and neither does the zoobank link work, making it invalid. Sauriazoicillus (talk) 18:43, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't matter really what the current article title is. If 'Wellnhopterus is judged the valid name later, then we can just move the page. We do not need two identical articles on the same topic, that is not useful. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:45, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and moved the article title to the specimen number, TMM 42489-2, because this is for now the most neutral title until the nomenclatural issues are resolved. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:53, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Wouldn't "Javelina azhdarchid" or similar which it was referred to before it was named make more sense? It's about a taxon, after all. The current name is nonsensical to most readers. FunkMonk (talk) 18:58, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

The specimen is what it's really about, otherwise we are running into WP:SYNTH issues. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:09, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

The animal has been referred to as "Javelina azhdarchid" in the literature.[16][17][18] FunkMonk (talk) 19:19, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough. I agree. I've moved Javelinadactylus to "Javelina azhdarchid". Having two articles on the same material is pointless, Wellnhopterus should be merged. This material has been discussed prior to the naming of these two anyway. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:22, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Agree they should be merged. Another issue is of course the difference in classification, since the Javelinadactylus paper considers it a thalassodromine. FunkMonk (talk) 19:24, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Here's Darren Naish's take on the situation:[19] FunkMonk (talk) 02:55, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

If, as Naish is implying, the publication of Javelinadactylus was rushed out Aetogate style (does anybody else remember Aetogate?) to beat them to the punch then that's pretty shitty. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:01, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

That's the word going around twitter at the moment, yes. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 19:58, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

If, as has been claimed on twitter, the specimen wasn't even viewed in person by Campos when he wrote the paper, then that's just shoddy science. We will just have to wait and see. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:08, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Naish also since added to the blog post above that "I am reliably informed by Tyler Greenfield that Wellnhopterus brevirostris is now considered officially published, whereas Javelinadactylus sagebieli is still classed as an “advance online publication” and is thus not an “available publication” according to Article 9.9 of the ICZN. The name Wellnhopterus is thus the one we should use." FunkMonk (talk) 20:44, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Mortimer leans to the other side in the comments and Naish seems to agree things are uncertain at the moment. I think we're definitely right to stick with the neutral page name for now. Related note—shouldn't the page be called "Javelina azdarchoid" if we're trying to be neutral here? LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 20:54, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Problem is also that Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology is just incredibly slow. The Wellnhopterus paper was first submitted to the journal on 01 Nov 2017! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:58, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Article 9.9 of the ICZN covers preliminary versions of works accessible electronically in advance of publication [20]. I think what it is intended to cover are preprints and online "in press" publications. The Javelinadactylus paper was fully published online prior to the release of the Wellnhopterus paper, so I would take what Tyler Greenfield (who is a paleontology student who has no experience of actual taxonomc disputes) says with a massive grain of salt. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:59, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree, that's something I was confused about, how according to Naish, Greenfield calss the Javelinadactylus paper an "advanced preprint". ICZN articles 21.8.2&3 discuss "separates", which I was thinking could be what they meant to say. Apparently, a separate as defined in the ICZN glossary is basically a distributed/advanced portion of a preprint, which I don't believe the Javelinadactylus paper is either. I am not sure what Greenfield was trying to say, since as far as I can tell, Javelinadactylus has benn 100% validly published since July and is not an "advance online publication." Hiroizmeh (talk) 21:14, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I can attest on a personal note that Greenfield is well read on nomenclatural rules; he's even published four papers relating to nomenclatural corrections. Article 9 of the ICZN as you've linked is quite explicitly about publications that do not count as published. I do not see anywhere in Article 8 or Article 9 that indicates that preliminary online publications for papers to be published physically are considered the same as electronically published works (which are the ones that hinge on a Zoobank entry). Biologia published physically and this online version is an advance. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 21:20, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

The Article 9.9 links to article 21.8.3, which states Some works are accessible online in preliminary versions before the publication date of the final version. Such advance electronic access does not advance the date of publication of a work, as preliminary versions are not published. That's pretty clearly referring to "in press" articles, not published electronic-only publications. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:49, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, and the "Javelinadactylus" paper is the former. Biologia publishes physically and this an advance online version. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 22:33, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

The Javelinadactylus paper is clearly not "preliminary", but fully published online in its final form, with a 2021 date. As for whether that counts for the ICZN, who fuckings knows, I think we can agree to disagree on this one. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:41, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

If it is going to be published physically with a Volume and Issue but does not as yet have those that certainly sounds like it would be considered in press, i.e. preliminary. So it might be in its final form in terms of text, but is not fully published, which is what matters here. In which case the thusfar cited lines of the ICZN code are quite clear. Also note that it doesn't have an article identifier, which a validly published electronic article would possess in its citation. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 23:00, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Interesting comment by Christian Krammerer in response to Greenfield in the TetZoo comments: This is not the stated viewpoint of the Commission. ICZN Commissioner Frank-Thorsten Krell has addressed this very situation (see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274372707_A_mixed_bag_when_are_early_online_publications_available_for_nomenclatural_purposes), and things like volume number and pagination are explicitly stated to not be missing content that renders a paper "preliminary"; i.e. they are not necessary to establish the Version of Record from which point a name becomes available. The Version of Record is defined as follows: "A fixed version of a journal article that has been made available by any organization that acts as a publisher by formally and exclusively declaring the article ‘published’. This includes any ‘early release’ article that is formally identified as being published even before the compilation of a volume issue and assignment of associated metadata, as long as it is citable via some permanent identifier(s). This does not include any ‘early release’ article that has not yet been ‘fixed’ by processes that are still to be applied, such as copy-editing, proof corrections, layout, and typesetting." The Campos (2021) paper fulfills all of those criteria. I know it sucks, but Javelinadactylus is the senior name for this taxon. (Between "Wellnhopterus" and "Ingridia", it's been really bad luck for ol' Peter). Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:42, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Hmm, it's very annoying that everything hinges on the definition of "preliminary", something never specified in the code itself and instead apparently reliant on being specified by an external Comissioner. Hence why we're left with situations like ours where two parties can read the application of the code entirely differently in this situation. Regardless, I suspect if Javelinadactylus is indeed considered to have priority the ethical concerns will either lead to prevailing usage ignoring this or a petition being opened to suppress it. I doubt this debacle is over by any means. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 20:35, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

If you recall Aetogate (which if you can't there are plenty of archives on it at SVPOW and TetZoo and other places), there were essentially no consequences for Spencer Lucas and the names were not suppressed. I think the same results are likely in this case. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:40, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

There's basically been a collective agreement to avoid Ajancingenia, though. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 21:13, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

As well as Kulindapteryx and Daurosaurus, and Galveosaurus was ignored even prior to people realizing it actually didn't have priority anyways. There is not a clear cut method to follow here, we should wait to see what the "first reviser" uses as the name, and then follow the consensus regardless of whether we believe it is right in the eyes of the code or SVP ethics. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 21:57, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

"Javelina azdarchoid", or even "Javelina neoazdarchian" is the most specific classification that can be made while still remaining neutral, and I'd say a good name, although FunkMonk's argument for it being called "Javelina azdarchid" because it's been called that numerous times in the scientific literature is a good argument as well. I'd personally say either one is fine for different reasons, but I guess you can try to hold a vote or try to reach a consensus on what you guys decide. Hiroizmeh (talk) 21:01, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Ah, I hadn't thought of the point of what it's been referred to; in that case I concur with FunkMonk's argument and think that, given it's an article title, we should follow the actual common name (Javelina azdarchid) rather than making up what we think the best would be ourselves. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 21:39, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Cabrochu who has implied that they are Christopher Brochu, a Professor of Paleontology at the University of Iowa has been repeatedly adding an uncited interpretation of the ICZN taxonomy to the Javelina azhdarchid article. After it has been repeatedly removed, he seems to have taken it rather personally with me at my talkpage. I feel very uncomfortable, can other people respond to him too? Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:49, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Seems like you handled it pretty well? He also wrote on my talk page, but did not give an answer to my reply. FunkMonk (talk) 01:06, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

References

Harrisonavis

Could someone check whether this genus is currently treated as a synonym of Phoenicopterus, as suggested in PBDB [21]? If yes, the article should be redirected there. If no, article and box should be updated to monospecific genus & cover the single species. I don't know where to look for an authoritative take on the synonymy status of paleotaxa. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:41, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

They're separate per Mayr (2009) [22] and this seems to have been followed by recent scholarship [23]. The article is a mess though. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 17:15, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

All right, thanks. Will clean up a little then. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:06, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Morrison merger

Greetings all, I've come to the talk page to ask for some opinions on a suggestion i made yesterday to merge the article List of dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation into Paleobiota of the Morrison Formation. Seen as the discussion on the talk page of the latter has been silent for almost 24 hours i thought it best to take it here. Cheers, -TimTheDragonRider (talk) 11:49, 29 December 2021 (UTC)·

Draft:Telecrex

Another single source article waiting at AfC is Draft:Telecrex if anyone has any input on that. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 14:38, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

• It has been accepted by another reviewer KylieTastic (talk) 19:49, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Should we work to change unreliable reference of some pages?

There are many articles where some potentially untrustworthy websites are used as sources. "Prehistoric wildlife" [24] is a very famous website that always appear at the top of the search, but the information is not always reliable. For example, on this page[25], Jaekelopterus, that is a pterygotid, and it is explained in the paper too, is reconstructed as a Mixopterus-like eurypterid. Other than that, I feel that that website often exaggerate the size and write a size that is not in the source. (Example: Dinopithecus, Bandringa) Palaeos.com[26] is a website that details classifications in paleontology, but the information is generally outdated and hasn't been updated much in recent years. Also, some pages (for example this [27]) use the skeletal diagram by the infamous David Peters, so I don't think it's very reliable. And list of fossil amphibian sizes in Anglis.net [28] is used as a reference on several pages. However, apparently it is a private website and there is no source of information, so it is difficult to trust it. As for books, old books, especially "The Marshall Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals.", Are considered uncertain and outdated as sources and may need to be switched to new sources. Should these websites be removed from the bibliography and replaced with more reliable paper information? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 08:46, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

I believe I've done a few passes of removing all instances of Prehistoric Wildlife. I would say feel free to replace any further cites to it that you come across. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 09:42, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for that! How should we see the pages that instances are removed? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 10:23, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Controversial publication dates of scientific papers

There are many scientific papers that are announced in one year and published in the next or even in a few years. I believe that we need a clear consensus on what to do with such papers (or is it already there?). Just a random example: which name is correct, Eptalofosuchus Marinho et al., 2021 or Eptalofosuchus Marinho et al., 2022 (paper appeared on the Internet in 2021, but was included in a volume of Cretaceous Research published in January 2022[29])? And here's another case. The article describing the Papiliovenator was published in Cretaceous Research in 2021, but formally it is part of volume 130, which will be published in February 2022 [30]. Does this mean that the name Papiliovenator is not valid at the time of signing? HFoxii (talk) 11:49, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

@Atlantis536 has returned the category "Fossil taxa described in 2021" to articles Eptalofosuchus and Yanjisuchus (instead of "Fossil taxa described in 2022"). How correct is this? Technically, these two genera were described in 2022. HFoxii (talk) 12:07, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

For the record, I restored the dates to the years they first appeared online as I believe that to be a long-standing tradition; for example, Pilmatueia is part of the category "Fossil taxa described in 2018" even though it was formally described in 2019, and Tralkasaurus is part of "Fossil taxa described in 2019" even thought it was described in 2020.Atlantis536 (talk) 12:59, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

The matter of such papers was discussed in the past, e.g. it was one of the issues discussed in this thread: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Palaeontology/Archive_12#Attention_needed_at_2019_in_paleontology_and_2018_in_paleontology, though of course the solution suggested there is in no way a binding policy. A clear consensus would indeed be welcome.--188.147.34.98 (talk) 16:10, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

I should say this again, big thanks to the Poland based anonymous user who has tirelessly updated these lists for the last half decade. My opinion is that they should be included in the year that they were actually described, Rather than the year the the volume ostensibly came out. The reasons why I think this are the same as in the Wellnhopterus/Javelinadactylus discussion. I don't have any objections to the previous compromise where the taxa were included in both lists. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:22, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

And while you're here, Polish paleontology master, I suggest you create an account. With such a monumental task as collecting every minutia about every little new paper under the paleontological sun, I suggest it would be best for you to use a single account so we can keep track of your changes from a single place, instead of having to view the contributions of thousands of IP addresses that change multiple times a day in order to get the whole picture. That way, we'd also have a kind of paleontology paper newsletter! Atlantis536 (talk) 16:38, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

I would also like to thank the anonymous editor. I am satisfied with the compromise according to which taxa should be included in both lists should not be changed. However, taxa cannot have two publication dates and we should be guided by ICZN, not personal preference. In addition, due consideration should be given to articles where new taxa have not been described. Currently, no one applies the compromise applicable to taxa to them. HFoxii (talk) 16:54, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

The wording "Announced in X; the final version of the article naming it was published in Y" was phrased that way specifically to avoid authoritative statements regarding which year is the year of the publication, which carry the risk of being OR. As for papers which do not name new taxa, the view expressed in the previous discussion seems to be that the date of first (usually online) publication should be preferred. I can add that such papers are not relevant to the issues of nomenclatural priority, and I'm not sure the rules of ICZN regarding the date of publication even apply to them.--Macrochelys (talk) 17:23, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Years in Paleontology

On the Years in Paleontology pages; I think it would be a good idea to have newly named clades/nomenclatural acts other than genera and species presented in a table similar to the latter, or at least separated from the 'research' sections and in one place as a list. Thoughts? Hiroizmeh (Talk | Contributions) 17:49, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

• Sometimes new clades are mentioned in the Research section, such as Azhdarchomorpha and Alanqidae, but strangely, not when the paper that names the clades also names a taxon; for example Ypupiara is mentioned but not Unenlagiinia. My idea is to mention clades named simultaneously as taxa together; for example, "Ypupiara - A unenlagiinae dromaeosaurid. The type species is Y. lopai. The authors also name the new clade Unenlagiinia." Atlantis536 (talk) 01:04, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

  • Good idea. There should be at least some distinction and guarantee that clade names are listed. I didn't even know that 'Unenlagiinia' existed, thus kind of proving my point.

    Maybe we could do something like this (using 2021 in archosaur paleontology as an example):

New taxa

Higher Level

Name	Novelty	Status	Authors	Notes
a	clade nov.	in press	x, x, & x
b	fam. nov.	valid	a et al.

Genera and species

Name	Novelty	Status	Authors	Age	Type locality	Country	Notes	Images
Arackar	Gen. et sp. nov	Valid	Rubilar-Rogers et al.	Late Cretaceous (Campanian–Maastrichtian)	Hornitos Formation	Chile	A lithostrotian titanosaur sauropod. The type species is A. licanantay.
Arrudatitan	Gen. et comb. nov	Valid	Silva Junior et al.	Late Cretaceous (Campanian-Maastrichtian)	Adamantina Formation	Brazil	A titanosaur sauropod; a new genus for "Aeolosaurus" maximus.
Australotitan	Gen. et sp. nov	Valid	Hocknull et al.	Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian-? Turonian)	Winton Formation	Australia	A titanosaur sauropod. The type species is A. cooperensis.
Berthasaura	Gen. et sp. nov	Valid	De Souza et al.	Early Cretaceous (Aptian-Albian)	Goio-Erê Formation	Brazil	A noasaurid theropod. The type species is B. leopoldinae.

Looks good so far. I imagine we should add definitions as reference for future researchers, something like this (using Unenlagiinia as an example): Atlantis536 (talk) 05:26, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Name	Novelty	Status	Authors	Definition	Notes
Unenlagiinia	clade nov.	in press	Brum et al.	The most inclusive clade including Unenlagia comahuensis and Halszkaraptor escuilliei but not Microraptor zhaoianus or Dromaeosaurus albertensis.	Synonymous with Unenlagiidae in some topologies, e.g. Hartman et al. 2019

Discussion

The concern I have with this is that these lists may be unwieldy to maintain. In addition to new higher-level nomenclatural acts, it seems quite arbitrary to not include, e.g., re-definitions of existing groups. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 08:17, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I feel it would be useful to have, and its certainly not that much more to keep track of than new genera and individual studies that already are.

Redefinitions of existing clades could be presented something like this:

| Neornithischia | Clade redef. | Valid | Madzia et al. | <Definition> | <Notes> |

.*In fact, the Novelty Status would then be either Clade nov. or Clade redef. (or something sounding a little better).

I don't feel like this would be hard to maintain (honestly, we don't even need to necessarily have a table, it could just be a list), except for large review papers like Madzia et al. that are loaded with new clade definitions.

I feel like it would be a good idea from here on. I'd be willing to edit the 2021-further back years in paleontology pages, just wanted everyone else's input. Hiroizmeh (Talk | Contributions) 17:01, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I dont feel this is needed as a separate table section, (and I will note its very dinosaur/archosaur unique) We aren't here to provide definitions for future researchers, we are here to provide information to a broad general audience. Additionally most clades are not enforced by ICZN nomenclature, and are often erected willy-nilly. Redefinitions, new clade definitions etc should be covered under the research headers in prose form, while rank-based new taxa that include new genera or species should be covered in the tables, as has happened for the past 12 years.--Kevmin § 17:17, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

References

V. ivachnenkoi or V. ivakhnenkoi ?

Hello or good evening, to come back to the gorgonopsians, I noticed an anomaly about the species name of Viatkogorgon: some sources (sometimes very serious) describe the animal under the name of V. ivakhenkoi, but other sources describe it as V. ivachnenkoi (including Wikipedia). Would it be the result of a misunderstanding between sources, or simply of a synonymous taxon indicating in fact the same species? Apart from the fact that the paleontologist who named the animal did so to honor his college which bears the name of Ivakhenko, it will not surprise me that the first proposal is the right one, but I still hope to have answers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amirani1746 (talk • contribs) 18:26, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

@Amirani1746: Russian names can be romanised in multiple ways, Ivakhnenko and Ivachnenko are just different spellings. I don't have access to the paper that originally named the species, but according to Google Scholar, a 2004 paper by the same author spells it as V. ivachnenkoi. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 20:31, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Taphotaxon

While working through redlinks and potential redlinks in the El Paso Formation article, I came across Nuia as a particular kind of fossil found in the formation. It turns out that this is likely not a valid taxon, but is what Spencer G. Lucas describes as a taphotaxon, a distinctive form produced during diagenesis that does not actually reflect any taxonomic distinction. Nuia is probably a kind of distinctive cylindrical oolite formed around various species of threadlike cyanobacteria.

Has the concept of a taphotaxon actually gotten any traction in the paleontology community? Should there be an article on taphotaxons? How about Nuia?

Relevant references:

• Toomey, Donald Francis (1967). "Additional Occurrences and Extension of Stratigraphic Range of the Problematical Micro-Organism Nuia". Journal of Paleontology. 41 (6): 1457–1460. JSTOR 1302191.
• Lucas, Spencer G. (2001). "Taphotaxon". Lethaia. 34 (1): 30. Bibcode:2001Letha..34...30L. doi:10.1080/002411601300068198.
• Spincer, Ben R. (May 1998). "Oolitized fragments of filamentous calcimicrobes and the pseudofossil affinity of Nuia Maslov from the Upper Cambrian rocks of central Texas". Journal of Paleontology. 72 (3): 577–584. Bibcode:1998JPal...72..577S. doi:10.1017/S0022336000024355. S2CID 132686192.
• Vachard, Daniel; Clausen, Sébastien; Palafox, Juan José; Buitrón, Blanca Estela; Devaere, Léa; Hayart, Valentin; Régnier, Sylvie (July 2017). "Lower Ordovician microfacies and microfossils from Cerro San Pedro (San Pedro de la Cueva, Sonora, Mexico), as a westernmost outcrop of the newly defined Nuia Province". Facies. 63 (3): 18. Bibcode:2017Faci...63...18V. doi:10.1007/s10347-017-0497-9. S2CID 135094816.

Appreciate any suggestions what to write about Nuia or taphotaxons. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 17:35, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

This seems like a topic suited for the pseudofossil article as a subtype thereof. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 17:43, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

That sounds not unreasonable. However, taphotaxons as defined by Lucas can be trace fossils or body fossils; they're altered during diagenesis in a way that is distinctive but is not taxonomically significant. In the case of Nuia, there's a real cyanobacteria remnant there, but it has a distinctive oolite around it that does not always form but can form for diverse species. I suppose since Nuia refers to the oolite rather than the fossil, it could be characterized as a kind of pseudofossil. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 17:51, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Waukesha butterfly animal

I feel this is not a taxon that should have an article yet. Most of it is very synth, and we have typically avoided articles on undescribed organisms. I would suggest merging this into Waukesha Biota until it actually gets a formal description. @Hiroizmeh, Feline Hymnic, Fossiladder13, and Awkwafaba:.--Kevmin § 17:33, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

A redirect (maybe merge) to Waukesha Biota seems appropriate. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 17:44, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Ok that would make sense, but the whole reason I created this is so that people could learn about this organism. As far as I know there are very few pages on the internet that mention the creature. I dunno about this, but if others think it is a good idea, you guys can merge it Fossiladder13 (talk) 17:47, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

With the redirects in place, your prose will still be there for people looking, so you dont need to worry that they wont find it.--Kevmin § 19:15, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

If there is no other discussion I will tag the article with a merge template.--Kevmin § 19:14, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

UCMP photo database

I recently discovered that the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) has a photo database chock full of CC BY 3.0 fossil images (for example: [31]). There's already over 27,000 photos available[32] and I think they're still in the process of uploading their collection. Here's a custom query form to search by Linnean rank and other parameters: [33]. I think this could be a great source for any fossil taxon based on UCMP specimens. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 21:11, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Nice, but I wonder how we can download the full res images that you see when you zoom in? FunkMonk (talk) 22:56, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

It seems possible to just right-click and save? Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 23:42, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

It depends on the photo, but the "view full size" option, if it appears, seems to have the same resolution as the zoom browser option. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 00:02, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't see the full size button, cool! FunkMonk (talk) 01:35, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

About Magnatyrannus (was: Suffixes for clades)

Bears a public notice: Magnatyrannus, just because a group is named with a certain prefix nowadays, doesn't mean it automatically falls under the corresponding Linnaean rank. Look at the paper that named Daspletosaurini:

Dinosauria Owen, 1842

Theropoda Marsh, 1881

Tetanurae Gauthier, 1986

Coelurosauria von Huene, 1914

Tyrannosauridae Osborn, 1906

Tyrannosaurinae Osborn, 1906

Daspletosaurini clade nov.

— Voris et al. (2020)[34]

Modern cladistic taxonomy is not beholden to the Linnaean system at any level higher than the genus. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 04:53, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Magnatyrannus. You need to stop. Your edits are being constantly reverted and that is a signal to you that you need to stop what you are doing and align with other editors. Your combative attitude is not helping. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 05:20, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Magnatyrannus has massive competence issues generally, see Talk:Chiniquodon, where he provided no valid justification for his reversion for a redirect for a synonymous cynodont genus. Hemiauchenia (talk) 05:34, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

An intervention is clearly needed. I'm hoping that this will be it. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 07:00, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

@Hemiauchenia: I don't know if this would be of any help, but I know Magnatyrannus off-wiki, and he has displayed the same combative, self-promoting, dissent-ignoring attitude, trying to force me to edit cladograms I made and researched myself in order to fit his viewpoint. In light of that, I believe he is not WP:COMPETENT enough to edit Wikipedia. Atlantis536 (talk) 03:03, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

I think I've had enough. Hemiauchenia, Atlantis536, I'm game for an ANI thread if you are. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 22:41, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Lythronaxargestes: Go ahead. Atlantis536 (talk) 00:06, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

As a note @Hemiauchenia: has (temporarily?) retired.--Kevmin § 21:47, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Some scientists keep them as separate Magnatyrannus (talk) 22:06, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

• This is getting increasingly frustrating. I don't think I've seen a single edit by Magnatyrannus that wasn't disruptive and ignored consensus. Is it time to take action? They're wasting everyone's time. FunkMonk (talk) 20:02, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I think I can agree now. On the positive side, Magnatyrannus is very active and does make some good corrections, so I was hoping for improvement over time. But the percentage of bad edits is so high. And when pointed out, the lack of cooperation and communication is very frustrating. Here are some past examples of just some of my encounters: Talk:Mekosuchinae#Should_it_be_called_"Mekosuchidae"? (regarding clade names) and Saurolophinae (check recent edit history: trying to change the common name to Saurolophines, despite disagreement from myself and Kevmin). And just today, check out the recent edit history on Borealosuchus - Magnatyrannus was eager to immediately jump into an edit war without willing to engage in discussion. Shows lack of growth. A bummer. Cougroyalty (talk) 20:22, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree, as Cougroyalty already noted, @Magnatyrannus: does make some good edits at times. but having to sift though all the edits to verify there is actual support for each one is a huge disruption and times sink, plus additional basic skills such as backing edits with reference addition is actively being ignored at this point despite months of being told to include them.--Kevmin § 21:45, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

FunkMonk, Cougroyalty, Kevmin, Atlantis536 - would one of you like to start an ANI thread? I'm less active than you so you're probably a better judge of Magnatyrannus' overall behaviour. But I'd be happy to provide supporting arguments. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 22:26, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

I have no experience with those, but yeah, I think it's about time, if anyone knows the ropes. FunkMonk (talk) 00:59, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

I haven't really analyzed Magnatyrannus' entire edit history, so I don't think I'll be able to chronicle the entire scope of his disruption. But I can offer some cases if need be. Cougroyalty, Kevmin, you may go ahead. Atlantis536 (talk) 01:11, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Sadly I am totally inexperienced at ANI structure and writing, I would be able to support with diffs, but I dont know the needs of creating and shepherding one.--Kevmin § 01:49, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

I can maybe nominally be in charge of it if we can make a draft here first. FunkMonk (talk) 01:59, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

@FunkMonk: How about this?

Ever since he joined Wikipedia last year, Magnatyrannus has made over a thousand edits to dinosaur- and paleontology-related articles. While some of his changes are valid, a vast majority are subpar; among other things, he has rewritten pages and templates to fit his viewpoints of how dinosaurs are classified, going as far as to delete statements he personally disagrees with, (diff 1 diff 2) and has WP:EDITWARed to keep them (see here). He has shown a strong preference for his "offical classifications" and a stern refusal to accept alternate viewpoints and seek consensus (see here, here, and here). He usually doesn't communicate, but when he does, it's usually a mocking remark (diff 3 diff 4). He has also written personal attacks on the user pages of those who disagree with him (diff 5). It has become tiring for WikiProject editors to sift through his changes to determine which are valid and which are not. Off-wiki evidence shows his combative attitude spills over to external sites, so I believe he is not WP:COMPETENT enough to build an encyclopedia.

Also pinging Hiroizmeh and Trilletrollet, who have dealt with him before. Atlantis536 (talk) 02:19, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Looks good to me, if others agree, and we can get some diffs inserted, I'll go ahead. FunkMonk (talk) 02:24, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Uh, yeah, there's not really much point for me to add any more input to this discussion, but I can attest that they've been a little... difficult. Some diffs that I can think of from off the top of my head for reference:

• [35]
• [36]

Hiroizmeh (Talk | Contributions) 02:47, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Removing sourced statement because he personally disagrees with it: [37]

Rewriting template and deleting entries to fit personal viewpoint: [38]

Refusal to seek consensus: [39] [40]

Insistence on a personal "official classification": [41]

Mocking remarks: [42] [43]

Personal attacks on userpages: [44]

These are what I can remember on the top of my head. Atlantis536 (talk) 03:02, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

He's been doing a lot of edit warring on the Thescelosaurinae page too. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 03:09, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Diffs inserted into draft. I think it's ready to be brought to ANI. Atlantis536 (talk) 03:40, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

• ANI begun here, feel free to add further diffs and comments:[45] FunkMonk (talk) 12:49, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, Magnatyrannus has been indeffed. Seemed a bit harsh but we won't have to sift through their edits now. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 19:24, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm surprised it's an indef already, but well, I'm not going to protest it... He has the option himself anyway. FunkMonk (talk) 19:36, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Tbh I'm glad they're finally gone. The edit warring was getting quite obnoxious -TimTheDragonRider (talk) 20:39, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Uhhh, is there any reason to think that User:Chiniquodon sanjuanensis is Magnatyrannus reincarnate? I'm a little suspicious... Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 17:26, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

@Lythronaxargestes: Yeah, the similarities are pretty striking. They both seem to have an interest in South Park, for example. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 17:48, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Give them some rope and see if the behavior continues to match; if so, open a block evasion investigation. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 17:55, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

On a related note, I believe the IPs 174.91.89.140, 174.91.163.129 and 204.209.176.75 are/were used by Magnatyrannus, based on the strong similarities in their edits. 174.91.163.129 has made several edits after Magnatyrannus got blocked. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 23:31, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

User:Chiniquodon sanjuanensis looks like an open-and-shut case now. Proposed a very specific edit on Talk:Giganotosaurus that Magnatyrannus later implemented: [46] Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 01:59, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Sigh. Probably best open the sockpuppet/block evasion investigation. It won't stop all the IP evasions, of course, but semiprotection will help. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 02:33, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Participation welcome, though I think the case is pretty clear: [47] Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 03:27, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Paleobiology database/fossilworks again

Over at Palyeidodon, the new user HmmmSimon is insisting on including parameters from the paleobiology database that I would consider clearly erroneous. Palyeidodon is a toxodontid, a radiation of large terrestrial, rhinoceros-like herbivorous ungulates [48]. Despite this, the Paleobiology Database classifies its ecology as a "scansorial [i.e. tree living] insectivore", which HmmmSimon is insisting on including. I have no idea how the Paleobiology database came to this conclusion. According to this paper there isn't any postcranial material for this taxon known. In my opinion, which I have expressed previously, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Palaeontology/Archive_12#Is_the_Paleobiology_Database_(fossilworks__a_reliable_source? the Paleobiology database is useful for locality information, but for other things like temporal ranges and up to date taxonomy, it is extremely variable in quality. I think the ecology information provided by the Paleobiology database is probably the least useful information it contains and probably the most likely to be in error. I don't think this information should be included in the article at all. Thoughts? Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:47, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your concern Hemiauchenia. I had overlooked the absence of information that could tell us whether it was scansorial or not as well as the fact that there are no other scansorial toxodonts. I will remove these sections -HmmmSimon (talk) 12:29, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with this removal. PBD is very unreliable except for a few specific areas. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 15:01, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I use PBD quite a lot, for stubbing out redlinks to genera mentioned in connection with New Mexico geology. But I use it chiefly for its references -- and even as an editor working somewhat out of my lane, I'm distressed how often a paper doesn't really support what it's cited to support in PDB. Do not hesitate to ruthlessly edit my paleontology stubs. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 15:09, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

The ecology information is often surprising and an item that differs between fossilworks and paleobiodb. For instance, the lion is listed as "scansorial insectivore" at fossilworks and "scansorial carnivore" at PBDB. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:31, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Cathetosaurus page rename discussion

As the type species of Cathetosaurus, C. lewisi, is consistently regarded as a species of Camarasaurus in the scientific literature—making Cathetosaurus a junior synonym—I have opened up a discussion about either renaming the page to Camarasaurus lewisi or merging it with Camarasaurus. I would appreciate input from other editors on the topic. Ornithopsis (talk) 23:00, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Dinosauria

How reliable a source is The Dinosauria (Weishampel et al.)? This edit removes information sourced from The Dinosauria without explanation; all I can think is that the source is considered unreliable. Apologies if it's a dumb question; I'm not nearly as knowledgeable about paleontology as physical geology. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 16:26, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Presumably reliable?! perhaps it contradicts a detail of the nav box at teh end? ~ cygnis insignis 16:39, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

It is a standard textbook on the group, but might not be up to date, as the latest edition is from 2004. But certainly fine for historical info. In this case, the issue is whether Megapnosaurus is considered Coelophysis, an issue not yet settled. FunkMonk (talk) 16:52, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

It's currently reverted, for no edit summary at least. Whether those arrangements are explained in the articles I did not check, revert that if it is ~ cygnis insignis 17:14, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

My revert was queried at my talk, I referenced this discussion in reply and that was again reverted by ‎Augustios Paleo. I have not invested in what the concern is, but for my annoyance at another lack of edit summary in that reaction. ~ cygnis insignis 14:11, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

I've reverted and modified the text to make it clear what the issue is about. FunkMonk (talk) 14:26, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Weishampel et al have that distribution because of Megapnosaurus rhodesiensis, which was then classified as Coelophysis but has been proven to be distinct several times. I reccomend not using Weishampel et al's Coelophysoidea section due to large changes in basal Theropod classification. My sources are: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joa.12719 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322678118_Developmental_patterns_and_variation_among_early_theropods doi:10.5710/amgh.04.08.2017.3100 https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article-abstract/191/1/113/5861188 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Augustios Paleo (talk • contribs) 15:49, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Talk:Platycarya move discussion started

I have just started a move request discussion at Talk:Platycarya, please comment.--Kevmin § 15:14, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Like I commented there, probably better to just expand the scope to cover all the species. FunkMonk (talk) 15:25, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Except thats not the current practice for extinct species in extant genera (and hasn't been for going on 10 years now). When an extinct species is placed in an extant genus, the practice is that the species gets its own article, as that species is going to be distinct enough, geologically, temporally, and morphologically to have a full start level article. (eg Betula leopoldae, Carpinus perryae and Corylus johnsonii)--Kevmin § 15:39, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, I don't think we ever concluded anything in regard to such cases, so perhaps this could be a good occasion to discuss it further. At least for the California condor, most of the extinct species are covered at the Gymnogyps genus article, while the extant species (and one extinct) has a separate article. I think a more ideal solution would perhaps be to cover all the extinct species at the genus level, but it's of course up to discussion. FunkMonk (talk) 15:47, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

See, to me as an extinct insect and extinct plant article writer, that is too much rules creep. I don't feel that there is any reason to force the extinct species data into ANY extant genus article. The species detailed at Gymnogyps should be covered at Gymnogyps amplus, Gymnogyps howardae, and Gymnogyps kofordi, as the genus is extant, so the article is not on all the species, but on the genus (and DID have stand alones until Sept 2020). If I were to shoe horn in all the extinct species information into Omma, the article would be incomprehensible.--Kevmin § 15:56, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, it certainly is a difficult issue, which is why we need to discuss it. I think that, like with our guidelines for prehistoric species in general, we should not split by default, but when genus articles grow too long. So not ruling out separate articles, I just never think creating hundreds of stubs that will never go anywhere is a good idea, and serves little practical purpose. FunkMonk (talk) 16:01, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Funkmonk that the whole purpose of the paleo guidelines is to merge small stubs that are unlikely to be expanded, and to some extent whether or not the articles should be merged is based upon how much effort has been made to expand them. As for "extinct species" these are not necessarily an automatic merge either, for example there are recently extinct genera of Hawaiian honeycreepers where individual species have separate articles, and I have no problem with that. There is no hard guideline, and it has to be decided on a case by case basis. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:17, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh yeah, it should be noted that the palaeo guidelines only cover prehistoric species, not recently extinct ones, which are separate by default like extant species (usually a lot more is known about recently extinct species than about prehistoric ones). FunkMonk (talk) 16:24, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with what Hemiauchenia said. It should not be a hard rule, but rather just a general guideline. If there is enough information on the separate extinct species, and someone has the motivation to create separate species articles, that should be fine. In regards to Platycarya, if someone is willing to make the effort, then I agree with having separate genus and species articles, where the genus article can also talk about extinct species, and the species article can be dedicated to the one extant species. And if there is a lot of information about the separate extinct species, and someone takes the effort to make separate detailed articles for them, that should be fine, too. But until that, covering the extinct species at the genus article should be sufficient. Cougroyalty (talk) 16:38, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Re:FunkMonk: while many of the Hawaiian honeycreepers became extinct in the last two centuries, many also became extinct shortly after the initial Hawaiian settlement, and are thus "prehistoric" , this includes all of the species of some genera, like Xestospiza. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:52, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Alright, but in at least that case, it would be "safe" either way, being a distinct genus. I'd probably disagree with the two species in it being split off, for example. Recently extinct usually means since year 1500. FunkMonk (talk) 16:57, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Not all prehistoric species are equal though, for instance far more is known about the three species of Moa in the genus Pachyornis than will probably ever be known about those honeycreepers. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:34, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

tl:dr A guideline at this project is used to enforce the munting of individually notable taxa, any fossil species being merged (edited, abbreviated or blanked a redirects) into their 'parent' articles. This is now creeping into recent extinctions. ~ cygnis insignis 12:16, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Incorrect, a guideline at this project is used to merge fossil species with no inherent notability into their parent articles. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 15:06, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

That has not been my experience, todays example: The species of Smilodon are 'inherently notable', it would be an extraordinary claim to suggest otherwise, but a proposal to split that page was closed after a few days [49] with vehement opposition in support of this

:Strong oppose - all relevant information about the three species is already present here, and it passed WP:GAN and WP:FAC as such. Guidelines agreed on at WP:Palaeo state[50] that prehistoric species should be covered at the genus article unless the article grows too long, which is not the case here. Less is known about prehistoric species than extant ones, so it makes little sense to split short articles left and right simply for the sake of it, as proposed here. FunkMonk (talk) 10:37, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

So I'm saying I'm not incorrect ~ cygnis insignis 14:37, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Navbox for extinct genera

Hey, something I was thinking about for a long time. Until recently, most of my energy for Wikipedia was directed towards the creation of group navboxes - There's several gaps on those, particularly for cenozoic mammals and for true birds. However, the day I finished the anseriform navbox, I was contacted over a discussion within WikiProject Plants, [51]. The subject of this conversation was the removal, or at least the non-continuation, of plant navboxes ; since, to my knowledge, WikiProject Palaeontology may have a different view on it, I, at the time, promised to avoid creating new navboxes until the issue was debated within WP:PALEO. Now is the time. I encourage you to visit the WP:PLANTS project talk page if you want to participate here. I'm sorry in advance it that topic has already been debated here. Larrayal (talk) 03:49, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

What is the purpose of these templates? ~ cygnis insignis 10:06, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Did we establish a consensus for the introduction of such navboxes? Their downside is that they add considerable clutter to every article. And they are somewhat redundant to cladograms that we add to articles when available. I wonder if it would be preferable to restrict the use of these navboxes to higher-level taxa, where such a complete list of genera is obviously of more value? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 10:30, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I do think that navboxes add unnecessary clutter to articles, at least when phylogenies are present. I don't mind their presence, but wouldn't mind it if we stopped using them. If we do stop using them, I think a criterium for removing should be at least one phylogeny present on the page where it is removed. --TimTheDragonRider (talk) 11:31, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Such as a page with no taxobox? ~ cygnis insignis 11:45, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I have no idea what you mean by that, taxoboxes are seperate from phylogenies & navboxes. --TimTheDragonRider (talk) 11:49, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Pardon that, it was badly worded, my rephrasing at ec was "So okay at an article with no taxobox?", I'll take a little time to digest your reply. ~ cygnis insignis 11:52, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

It's currently fine to add navboxes to all articles, I'm just saying that if we were to start discontinuing their use and removing them, articles that previously had them and don't include phylogenies should get those. Sorry for any misunderstandings (or if i was coming off as rude) --TimTheDragonRider (talk) 12:01, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

That is an excellent suggestion, cheers, substituting their occurence with an improvement to each article and their arrangement here is a good use of everybody's time and energy. ~ cygnis insignis 12:26, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Personally I think navboxes are plenty useful and shouldn't go anywhere. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 14:36, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree. I like navboxes. If they are perceived to be adding too much clutter, they can be set to auto-collapse mode. Then the navboxes only takes up a single line, and then the user can click the "show" button to open them up. (I've done this for some of the larger navboxes.) Cougroyalty (talk) 15:29, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm in favour of navboxes, although perhaps a middle ground - perhaps structure them so that they'll be fairly agnostic to different taxonomies. Very stable taxa are included in subclades, everything else is just listed as a generic member of the superclade. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 15:36, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Navboxes are a tricky subject. I personally find them extraordinarily useful for quick navigation and a broad perspective on relationships, but I agree that there are some issues associated with them in a functional sense (not showing up on mobile, diluting the "what links here" section, etc.) and a subjective sense (how to present taxa with unclear relationships, etc.). One of the subjects brought up by the plant discussion regards navbox size, which is also relevant to this group since there have been a few mini-edit wars about the subject. I'm going to ping @Trilletrollet: and @Chermundy:. The former user has been very productive on paleontology navboxes, so we should hear their input in this conversation. The latter user (when they edited paleo articles often) was very fond of massive navboxes; although I personally strongly disagreed with that approach, they may have a perspective I'm not aware of. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 17:35, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

I feel that the technical issues (diluting the "what links here" section and unavailability on mobile) should really not be our problem: Clearly, the software needs to be fixed, not our articles. The same problems would affect all kinds of Naviagion templates across Wikipedia, but that is no reason to abandon them completely. Unrelated to that, I am also in favour of above suggestion to have the templates collapsed by default. The clutter they cause is an issue that had also been brought up at FAC, and collapsing would largely solve it. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:10, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

@Fanboyphilosopher and Jens Lallensack: I agree that navboxes should be collapsed by default. Also, some of the larger navboxes (such as Template:Theropoda) should IMO be broken up into smaller ones, as they're rather unwieldy in their current state. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 19:08, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. Since Chermundy has not been super active on paleo navboxes within the last year or so, I think this would be a good time to split up the large navboxes. The only reason I hadn't already was because replacing and remaking navboxes and editing every taxon in question takes a lot of effort (at least personally), and I did not think it would be worth it if Chermundy decided to recombine them without any input. Also speaking personally, I don't think it's necessary to collapse small navboxes by default, but collapsing should be the go-to standard for navboxes with multiple subgroups, multiple navboxes on the same page (which I think is already the standard), or particularly expansive single-subgroup navboxes. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 19:26, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

@Cougroyalty, Lythronaxargestes, Cygnis insignis, TimTheDragonRider, and Jens Lallensack: Please move this discussion to the already existing discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants#Oversized navigation template, where the problem of navbox violation of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH have been presented.--Kevmin § 16:33, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

But @Kevmin:, that proposal is specifically for the plants template, and as such would have no bearing on other WikiProjects? Maybe WP:TOL would be a better place if we want to have a discussion across WikiProjects? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 16:55, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Having read through the WP:Plants discussion, I don't really see much relevance to this wikiproject. The navboxes used as examples are ones I would agree with having removed, since they are simply lists of genera and species. The concerns of OR and Synth are not unreasonable, but saying they are the equivalent of "unsourced cladograms" is a bit beyond their functionality here, which is mainly displaying what is within what clade without anything in the way of internal relationships. I don't have much to add to the WP:Plants disussion, but I would have other things to say about paleo navboxes. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 18:12, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree. I just checked out the discussion over there about plants as well, and their navbox examples they brought up are pretty bad. The navboxes I am used to seeing are much better. For example, I've helped a bit with this one: Template:Extinct_Crocodilia, which is well maintained. And I personally created this one, which I am fond of: Template:Decapoda. I'll chime in over there. Cougroyalty (talk) 19:06, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Merge and split proposals for extinct Balearic mammals

See Talk:Hypnomys and Talk:Asoriculus. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:07, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Since these genera are Holocene, it would almost seem like they don't fall into the usual guidelines here I'd think. And none of them are tagged as part of this project actually, the latter not even with WP extinction. FunkMonk (talk) 13:12, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

You've clearly not bothered to carefully read the articles then, which clearly demonstrate that they are within the scope of the project. Hemiauchenia (talk) 14:22, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood my comment. Try reading it again, and please quit the needlessly belligerent attitude. FunkMonk (talk) 15:47, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

I have not misread your comment. The fossil record for the Balearic Islands is unusually good, and both Nesiotites and Hypnomys have fossil records spanning over 5 million years to their first arrival in the Balearic Islands during the latest Miocene/Earliest Pliocene, assigned to a number of fossil chronospecies spanning that interval, those species are clearly within the scope of the project. As all the species in question are prehistoric per palaeo guidelines they should all be treated at genus level. The Asoriculus/Nesiotites split proposal is separate and has more to do with currently accepted taxonomy. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:57, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Let me make it simple: the articles are not yet tagged as part of the palaeo projects yet, and one is not tagged with extinction. That does not mean that I don't think they should be, it simply means someone should add the tags, that's all. And again, please refrain from the aggressive remarks, it's becoming a nasty habit, and it's not adding anything of use to your discussions. FunkMonk (talk) 18:06, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Well, that's done, I've tagged them. As I said on the Stephanorhinus deletion page (which you are against too, Hemiauchenia), for me, articles covering Pleistocene species are quite good and even actually useful, as long as they aren't too fragmentary and relevant in literature. So I disagree with the deletion of Hypnomys, but I do believe we need to discuss stable guidelines for the species/subspecies articles from the Pleistocene in the future. Larrayal (talk) 22:52, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

FunkMonk I have no idea how my second comment could be construed as aggressive. I am just confused by your comments about them being Holocene species, given the fact that in the thread above you supported the merging of the two prehistoric Hawaiian honeycreeper species into the genus, which seems no different to me. As to Larrayal, I sympathise with your views, but the problem is that Hypnomys is largely an anagenic lineage of chronospecies that evolved in isolation for over 5 million years. There should be a single article focused on the lineage as a whole. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:08, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Is this figure of Utaurora fine to use?

User:Fossiladder13 recently uploaded some images from papers and somewhere, and some of them possibly have copyright issues.[52][53][54] And some of them are already deleted by themselves. Now that user uploaded figure of Utaurora. I don't know that image have no copyright issue, so I want someone to decide that. I should ping @Junnn11: for this. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 02:00, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

The journal article in which Utaurora was named was published under CC-BY-4.0, according to the Royal Society website, so as far as I am aware, there is no problem with using it. I don't know if there's anything that needs to be done to clarify that on Commons. Ornithopsis (talk) 02:05, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Fine to know that. Thanks! Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 02:06, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Nice to know that! I'm on the way of making reconstruction and diagram of Utaurora. I wonder if that's ok to make a derived version of this image with only Utaurora figured, I think that would be more suitable for the top image of Utaurora article (and this for comparison usage).--Junnn11 (talk) 04:24, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea. It's CC-BY, not CC-BY-ND, so derivative images should be OK. Ornithopsis (talk) 05:10, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for all the informations!--Junnn11 (talk) 06:23, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

"Ghost" french dinosaurs and speculative taxon in french fossil lists : what should be done ?

Hello. Recently, it has been ported to my attention that completely unknown spinosaurids had been on several pages This had led me and other people to a rabbit hole of discovery, showing the extent of the issues with several articles in the French Wikipedia paleontology section in general and by extension several non-french articles that probably translated it blindly, unaware of the completely made-up status of those taxon. These involves notably the french fossil list by country [55], Spinosauridae [56], and List of non-avian dinosaur genera [57], as well as various translations and variations of these list, including the dutch [58], basque [59], and catalan [60] articles. The list of incorrect taxa is for now, to my knowledge, including Giganospinosaurus laoensis, Olokanosaurus variensis, Minocepsosaurus oblugaris, Aiglosaurus, Ophpimimus, Errosaurus and Harpiavis (the two last being entirely made up and from a Speculative Evolution project [61][62].)

This issue goes far beyond french wikipedia, even if it seems that it may be the origin of the issue (for now, until longer research), and may virtually affect the paleontology sections of every languages - it isn't easy to locate and remove them all. The problematic species must be identified and their presence must be verified in every language. Moreover, as in the french Spinosauridae page that removed Olokanosaurus and Giganospinosaurus but not Minocepsosaurus, some of them may only include one or two false taxons.

Notifying User:P2N2222A because she was present as well during that constatation. What shall be done to resolve this issues, how can we identify easily the problematic taxa, and how can we remove them definitely from Wikipedia as a whole without forgetting one that may spread again like in the first time ? Larrayal (talk) 00:45, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

I have just removed all mentions of these fictitious taxa. HFoxii (talk) 10:28, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Synapsids are not reptiles

Slightly off topic, but I have nowhere else to write. There is an edit war in Wikimedia Commons in the category Montages of Synapsida. I believe that the inclusion of the category Synapsida as a subcategory of Montages of reptiles is incorrect, since it is now generally accepted that Synapsida and Reptilia (=Sauropsida) are sister taxa. Although I explained my opinion on the talk page, it was ignored and my edit was reverted multiple times by various editors. What to do in such cases? HFoxii (talk) 04:15, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

This is correct synapsids are not reptiles. Synapsids evolved from small lizard like animals like Archaeothyris. While reptiles are thought to have evolved from Reptiliomorpha and other amniote groups. Maybe contact the mods or maybe get people from Wikipedia to help reverse the edits. Fossiladder13 (talk) 17:10, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• On this note, am I the only one who thinks that the addition of some very specific human politicians[63] to the Synapsida taxobox image instead of a monotrome is pretty ridiculous? FunkMonk (talk) 15:08, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

  That is ridiculous. Looks like the editor who made the change has been reverted several times by different editors but continues to change the image back, could this not be resolved quite easily? Ichthyovenator (talk) 15:17, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

  Depends on whether this is interpreted as vandalism or as a content dispute. Looking at the image, I'd go with the former, and warn accordingly then follow up with administrators if it continues. Since I can't imagine a legitimate use of the image, perhaps a proposal to delete at Commons is in order as well. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 15:26, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

  I think it's seriously meant, judging on the uploader's other edits, just extremely idiosyncratic. FunkMonk (talk) 15:35, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

  The old collage of synapsids with tiger and echidna must be returned. Note that the image with politicans is also used in the article on mammals (File:Mammal Diversity 2011.png). As for the collage of mammals, here the use of a picture of a human seems to me quite reasonable, but it would be better if the person in the photo was not recognizable. The Bushman photo was removed from the collage due to someone calling it racist. Two more alternative versions of the collage with different images of people were also created (File:Mammal Diversity 2011-less depressing.png and File:Mammal Diversity 2011-less sexist racist authoritarian and corrupt humans.png). HFoxii (talk) 15:38, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

  Woah, yeah, that seems to be quite a can of worms. Well, I think whatever photo we use of specific humans in such a collage is going to be iffy, so I'm almost inclined to agree the last one with the pioneer plaque is the way to go for the mammal collage, as it also symbolises technology, but I don't think humans are needed in the synapsida collage. FunkMonk (talk) 15:42, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

  I agree that it's much less jarring in the mammal image, but the first alternative does seem better. The second (using the Voyager sketch) seems rather idiosyncratic in its own way. The synapsid version is just plain weird. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 15:44, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

  This is ridiculous. The user keeps on restoring the image because it's "more complete than any proposition". I can see an easy way out: it's to replace the politicians with the echidna. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 15:43, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

  Agreed. You might want to replace the image, then open a talk page discussion on it. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 15:44, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

  Done Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 16:05, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

  (edit conflict)

  Are you talking about the image or the future of liberal democracy? The picture of politicians is incongruous and more likely to confuse than enlighten. If the choice of humans is getting controversial and political, best not use humans as an example. A chimp would be a suitable and less rancorous representative of the group. —  Jts1882 | talk  16:08, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

  (chuckle) Are you sure we haven't already replaced our politicians with echidna? Seriously: A chimp would probably be a much better choice for the image. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 16:21, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

  Ok I have gotten a better image on the article (talk) 23:15, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

I am certain that the user who is edit warring on the synapsid image on Commons Amirani1746, is a sock of the banned user Prehistoricplanes (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who subsequently used the sock account Jaimelesmandarines (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). Prehistoricplanes is the creator of the collage containing Nixon in the first place, adding the Nixon image to the collage in their second revision. Both Amiriani1746 and Prehistoricplanes share an interest in Aviation (see Amirani's userpage), and an archive of Prehistoricplane's french userpage. Moreover, more than just editing in the same topic area, all three accounts share a specific interest in synapsid taxonomy and taxonomic templates. Also all three accounts have edited Template:Machairodontinae, with Amirani1746 reverting Lythronaxargestes to restore Prehistoricplanes preferred version. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:25, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

I have now opened a sockpuppet investigation, see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Prehistoricplanes. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:44, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

What a twist! Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 21:40, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Indeed, I wasn't expecting them to wait a good year and a half to come back. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:53, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

They have now been indefinitely blocked on enwiki and have self-admitted that they are a sock of Prehistoricplanes in their unblock request. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:29, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Good effort! FunkMonk (talk) 20:49, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

And I have put a better photo on the article of synapsids Fossiladder13 (talk) 19:47, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Continuing issues

Offending image

.

The Nixon image is still used in the collage in the infobox Mammal article. Attempts to remove this have been reverted on commons, because the previous version used was of San people, which has been rejected as not representative of modern humans (see also at Talk:Human for rejections of making San the infobox image there). I don't have strong opinions about the inclusion/exclusion of the San, but I think that the inclusion of the Nixon image, as with Synapsia is inapppropriate. Is there an easy fix to this? Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:47, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

I like the proposed solution of using a chimp to represent primates, if making up the new image isn't too hard. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 19:19, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

The main issue is finding an image with an appropriate aspect ratio to replace it with. I like the chimp idea also and think that would be the most appropriate replacement. I think it would be easier to make a fork and upload a new commons image, rather than bother with the hassle of replacing the current commons image, which might disrupt other wikis who are using the image. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:24, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Help with finding A Ctenacanth cladogram

Hello I am editing my article on the Carboniferous aged Ctenacanth, Dracopristis Hoffmanorum. In order to expand the classifications section of the article, I was trying to find a cladogram. I can’t seem to find one of these fish, if someone could help if I wanna be great. Or even help adding in the article would also be great. Thanks Fossiladder13 (talk) 13:12, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

My god the typos “of someone could help that would be great” is what happens when you use microphone Fossiladder13 (talk) 13:13, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

What about all or part of figure 11 in Hodnett et al (2021), which is currently cited six times in the article. —  Jts1882 | talk  14:33, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

User:Jts1882 you would think that, but that article had no cladogram in it that I could add to the page. You would think it did because if this is a article naming the specimen it should have a cladogram. Fossiladder13 (talk) 15:17, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

User:Jts1882 Never mind, it actually has form of cladogram, but it is very bizarre in design Fossiladder13 (talk) 15:33, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Name of Siberiaspidoidei and various taxon

In page of Amphiaspidida and Siberiaspidoidei, there are description like Siberaspidoidei, Siberaspididae and Siberaspis, but isn't that actually called as Siberiaspidoidei, Siberiaspididae and Siberiaspis? I don't know which is true, as paper describing that are inaccessible. At least this paper[64] describes that as Siberiaspididae. What do you think @Apokryltaros:? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 15:38, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, "Siberaspidoidei" et al, are misspellings.--Mr Fink (talk) 15:47, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for telling! I will fix them. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 16:23, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

salute--Mr Fink (talk) 17:42, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Help with Geologist's Hammer

Geologist's hammer

Hello all. I came across this article in a pretty sad state. It had but a single source, from Google Sites (eugh).

Considering how it's probably the quintessential singular "thing" in geology - you can't study rocks much if you're not breaking them - I think it's important to bring this article up to modern standards.

Most of it was written before 2015 and just needs a general cleanup.

I've found two decent sources, but am struggling to find more to finish off the article and clean it up. Help would be appreciated! DiamondIIIXX (talk) 20:42, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

In my undergraduate degree we were just given normal brick hammers, as there's not much distinguishing them. There's not really a lot to say about them, because they are not fundamentaly different in any way from normal hammers. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:55, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

In Germany we were required to buy Estwings for ourselves during undergrad degree ;) I have no idea where to find good sources, but the article currently misses safety aspects. Also, the heading title "Shape" seems suboptimal; maybe "Types" is better, where it could focus on describing the different types that exist (chisel, pick, archeologist etc). --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:08, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Hammers certainly seem like a significant part of geologist "culture", so my vague perception is that an article on the topic could probably be justified, but we're going to need some more sources reifying geologist's hammers as a distinct entity so that we aren't just saying "geologists use tools." Estwing hammers seem to hold particular renown in the community, so perhaps that's a good place to start? Ornithopsis (talk) 21:33, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

I found this source, but I haven't added it to the article yet.

http://thefieldstudent.com/best-rock-hammers/ DiamondIIIXX (talk) 22:49, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

FAR for Chicxulub crater

User:Hemiauchenia has nominated Chicxulub crater for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:22, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Just a note that additional feedback would be great (the FAR currently has limited participation.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 21:46, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Preferred order of sections

Following something I brought up briefly in the recent discussion at Talk:Camarasaurus, what is the preferred organization of sections for fossil taxa? To me, it seems like the description section makes the most sense to put first, as it's the section that explains, essentially, what the actual creature being discussed is. That's the first thing I imagine most readers of the article would want to know. History of study seems like it should come later on, after the reader has some sense of what the animal is and, perhaps, what it's related to. It seems to me that the article shouldn't be a narrative building up to explaining how the animal is understood today, but rather, an explanation of how the animal is understood today first and foremost, with the history of the taxon explained subsequently for sufficiently interested readers. Ornithopsis (talk) 21:53, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

This was discussed some time ago, and there is a guideline that came from it somewhere. It was agreed that the history section makes sense first, to give context, and then description. Likewise, our neontology articles have the taxonomy sections first, which serve the same purpose. This order was also suggested by Christophe Hendrickx when he did a peer review of a while ago. FunkMonk (talk) 22:13, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

That's what I wanted to know, thanks. Where is that guideline or discussion, anyway? Is there a consensus about preferred order and titles of other sections? It seems like articles are kind of haphazard in that regard to me. Personally, I still think that having the description come first makes more sense. It's kind of like how news headlines are told not to repeat a false claim while debunking it, you know? You want to lead with the thing that's currently thought to be correct; making the reader look through a list of historical misconceptions before they're told what the animal is actually like seems kind of backward to me. Ornithopsis (talk) 22:42, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

I think this was the last discussion:[65] FunkMonk (talk) 23:15, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Alright. I'll go along with history > description > taxonomy for now, but personally I think taxonomy > description > history would be better, so if anyone reading this agrees with me and wants to renew discussion of the topic, here's your chance. Ornithopsis (talk) 23:40, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Additional comment: I feel that these guidelines should be put somewhere where they can be found from the Wikiproject main page, if we want to have consistent organization when possible. Ornithopsis (talk) 23:46, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

There is of course the complication that this discussion was specifically about the dinosaur project, which does not necessarily have the same secions as articles about other animals. But in any case, I think neontology articles set a pretty good precedence when it comes to order. FunkMonk (talk) 23:55, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

The precedent set by neontology articles is taxonomy > description, which doesn't really apply to articles with a lengthy "history of study" section. Ornithopsis (talk) 23:56, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

The taxonomy section usually does pretty much the same as the history section does, talks about discovery and naming, as well as history of synonyms etc. But I think there should be flexibility in any case, and that the writer of an article should decide what they want to do. There were guidelines made for the dinosaur project we could copy here and modify for a start. FunkMonk (talk) 00:00, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

I think that there's a lot of stuff that should go into the history section besides taxonomic history, such as significantly outdated anatomical and paleobiological hypotheses. Those should be clearly separated from current hypotheses, and it makes the most sense to me to put them in the history section. If we're going to have the history section only discuss taxonomy, we might as well roll it and the classification section together entirely. But perhaps you're right and we don't need rigid guidelines. Ornithopsis (talk) 00:09, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

For most or all of the recent articles I've edited, like Echinodon and Paranthodon, I go with history first because theres not a whole lot of description than can be used without the context of relationships or known material. I even group Paleoecology into a subsection of Palaeobiology if theres limited but some biological information, so there are no tiny sections of little information. But its all really a case-by-case basis, for Camarasaurus I suggested it because History would give the context of species needed for Description which included species differences, though an expanded lead could be enough context. In general palaeobiology/palaeoecology are always last, and classification is at some point after history, but other than that there's variability. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 05:54, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

I think history makes sense first for historical taxa known from crappy remains at least. Something like Duriavenator, the last FA I worked on, is known from so little that its description can't be anything but technical. And then the history section is a much better introduction to set the stage first. FunkMonk (talk) 03:59, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I would agree that at least in those cases, where the taxon is more interesting for historical reasons than what's actually known of its anatomy, the history section going first is the logical choice. For taxa with better-known anatomy, I'm not so sure, though I do agree that some context is important. Ornithopsis (talk) 04:12, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

timelines of xxxx graphs

I have been watching/thinking about these for a while. These graphs, added to random articles in the early 2010s by @Abyssal: are massive, not being maintained (for most instances) and fall into the realm of wp:OR. I want to see if there is a general consensus towards keeping or removing them.

This one is from Centrosaurinae and shows how dominating it can be, while not actually imparting important details. --Kevmin § 19:12, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

@Kevmin: I agree with removing them, they just take up space, and they look pretty ugly too. Any useful information they may contain should instead be covered in the article text. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 19:31, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Wow, that is a hideous way to present that information. I thought this was going to be about the timelines in e.g. Pomacentridae that show the fossil range of genera in a family; and I guess those timelines are also what Kevmin wanted to discuss?

But this particular timeline (and others?) is showing the dates that genera were DESCRIBED. That information could easily be presented by adding the taxonomic authority+date to a list of subtaxa; any article on a higher taxon should already have a list of subtaxa. The timeline format is hard to parse. When was Monoclonius described? Sometime in the 19th/70s; it takes me a bit to translate that to 1870's, and the exact year requires some guessing.

I don't think any further discussion is needed for removing any timelines of DESCRIPTION dates. A timeline is a totally inappropriate way to present that information. I'm also in favor of removing the timelines of FOSSIL RANGEs, but perhaps further discussion on that is warranted. Plantdrew (talk) 22:56, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

I've recently changed my stance on them from absolutely delete them all to they are acceptable in some places. The use of age ranges on the Dinosaur article both looks nice and is informative, and I would consider replicating something like that on other major pages, like ages of maniraptoran clades or similar. The individual date of description timelines are not worth having anywhere accept the "History of _ research" pages, for example I removed the ones from Nodosauridae and Ankylosauridae and instead put it on the Timeline of ankylosaur research article, which I don't know if I support as a distinct page, but I didn't want to simply remove all the timelines without saving the work put into them. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 01:46, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Plantdrew I had forgotten that this timeline structure had also been inserted into articles around the same time as the other, and I agree they should also be removed where they have been inserted. it looks like the major addtion period was in the DEC 2013 range here.--Kevmin § 01:57, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback on it (the timeline in Dinosaur) Hiroizmeh (Talk | Contributions) 17:21, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

And if any more input on this discussion matters, my opinion is that geological timelines of fossil ranges are useful to help visualize information of that type, and I agree that timelines of genus descriptions are rather trivial and not that important to even include. Hiroizmeh (Talk | Contributions) 17:24, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with everyone here that these are unwieldy and not particularly useful on most pages, and should be removed in most cases. In the cases where the description dates of taxa is relevant information, there's surely a better way to do it, such as a table. Like IJReid, I support keeping at least some of the geological range ones. I don't see how these timelines fall under WP:OR, though. Ornithopsis (talk) 19:06, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

The dinosaur timeline is a good one. Most of the geological range ones I've noticed before are on fish families, which typically only include extant genera, and don't have any sources (Pomacentridae has at least 4 genera known only from fossils, and one extant genus also known from fossils, which is the only one shown in the timeline). I think with Pomacentridae, geological ranges could just be mentioned in text rather than a timeline. But dinosaur shows that timelines can be done well. Plantdrew (talk) 21:12, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

• Also, I was working on one for theropod clades on my sandbox page if anyone wants to give any input on it. Hiroizmeh (Talk | Contributions) 17:26, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  This should incorporate ghost lineages and other uncertainty with different shades of colours. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 19:07, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  Really, what would be ideal in my opinion, if we could figure out how to create it with the tools Wikipedia provides us with, would be a time-calibrated cladogram that combines both the geological range information and phylogenetic relationships. Ornithopsis (talk) 19:58, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  Jts1882 is this possible at all? Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 20:22, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  I've looked at some of the discussion in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Cladogram requests and I think what could work is, like how the trees incorporate one branch composed of two separate branches to enable different branch lengths for two sisters, what could be done is to have a branch have one daughter branch that is coded to be thicker with the |style or |thickness parameter (whichever one it is, can't remember exactly at this moment) to represent knwon geological range. Hiroizmeh (Talk | Contributions) 23:50, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  Something like this:

paren	ghost geological 1 ((50px)) ((50px)) ((100px)) ghost geological 2 ((100px)) ((100px))

	1 parent 1 2

Hiroizmeh (Talk | Contributions) 00:17, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh, that's excellent. As a proof of concept based on this, I have created a test cladogram of Therapsida, with a scale of 4 px to 1 Myr, based on the age ranges given in their respective taxoboxes. I haven't tried figuring out if it'd be possible to add a geological time scale to something like this, though. Ornithopsis (talk) 21:38, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

There's something I found in User talk:William Harris/Archive 7#Time calibrated cladogram by Jts1882 that might answer your question. Personally haven't fully read and understood it yet, but I think the general idea of it is that the timeline is formed out of a clade template itself and not some other template (presumably to deal with alignment to its corresponding tree).

Before I found this, my alternative idea would have been to use some <timeline> element along with the tree for something more complex than a simple timescale. Hiroizmeh (Talk | Contributions) 03:32, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

	Biarmosuchia Dinocephalia Anomodontia Gorgonopsia Therocephalia Cynodontia (survives to present as mammals)

Ok, so on desktop, that aligns properly, with zero-length ghost lineages for Biarmosuchia and Therocephalia. On mobile, it does not. Ornithopsis (talk) 21:56, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

That's odd. I see no vertical line for the vertical bracket to the left on mobile (looking at this page), but I see it on the version I've copied to my sandbox. —  Jts1882 | talk  11:26, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

However if I add the timeline above using timeline tags the line disappears, but only in edit mode. The two interact in some way. Is the timeline with tags appearing correctly in edit mode? —  Jts1882 | talk  11:35, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

@Jts1882, Lythronaxargestes, and Ornithopsis: Any opinions on implementation of experimental trees like these into articles? A little off topic, but perhaps even the documentation for Template:Clade can be edited to include a formal procedure for these as ghost/geological range cladograms. (On that note, Template:Clade/doc needs an update; a lot of the parameters from Module:Clade are missing from it.) Hiroizmeh (Talk | Contributions) 03:43, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

The |length= is still rather experimental so I haven't added it to the documentation yet. The only example I know of where it is used for a calibrated cladogram is at Evolution_of_the_wolf#Wolf-like_canids.

One potential problem is the rendering on different browsers. Safari on Apple displays HTML tables differently from others (see Template:Clade/doc#Label_length), which can make the cladograms difficult to read and I don't know how the calibrated ones are handled. —  Jts1882 | talk 

I created an example cladogram of this style on Ceratosauria back before the length tag was created. These certainly have potential, but unless the published reference displays ages I would be more comfortable having a separate cladogram and timeline than incorporating the ages of one or more studies onto a cladogram from somewhere else. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 18:16, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

There is a phylogenetic tree in the Kelenkura paper using both timeline and relationships, so it would not be WP:SYNTH or WP:OR for me to use them both here. So, I would be quite interested to learn more about that system, particularly how the pixel number are calculated. I wonder if the optimal solution would be with the William Harris timeline, or with a somehow horizontal Infobox geologic timespan (and if the later is even possible). Evidently, I would also like to know if anyone has some strong feelings against the use of such a method. Larrayal (talk) 02:23, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

The discussion about adding |length= to {{clade}} is at WP:TOL/Cladogram_requests#Using_branch_lengths_to_approximate_time. The discussion explains the method and how to calculate the branch lengths. There is no easy way without some understanding of the HTML table structure that displays the cladogram. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:13, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Pliocene#Beginning of human environment

Would appreciate some opinions on Pliocene#Beginning of human environment and whether there is anything salvageable here. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 00:32, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Age of the Chengjiang biota

How old is the Chengjiang biota? According to the scientific literature on the oldest chordates[66][67], it dates from the age of 535 Ma, that is, it refers to the earliest Cambrian (Fortunian). This was disputed by Yang et al. (2018), who dated the deposits to about 518 Ma (Cambrian Stage 3). Thus, according to recent data, the oldest chordates and the oldest vertebrates appear in the fossil record around 518 Ma, not 535 Ma. In addition, in some articles about Chengjiang Biota members, the time interval should probably be changed. I just wanted to clarify it before making subsequent edits on this topic. HFoxii (talk) 05:21, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, recent scholarship overwhelmingly considers the Chengjiang as Stage 3. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 15:04, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Stegocephali(a) and Labyrinthodontia

Alternative montage of stegocephalians with Tiktaalik replaced to Acanthostega

Stegocephali sensu Laurin, 2020 ≈ First vertebrates with tetrapod limb

In 1998 @Michel Laurin defined Stegocephalia as all vertebrates more closely related to Temnospondyli than to Panderichthys. As Laurin points out in Phylonyms (2020), the name Stegocephali Cope, 1868 has priority over Stegocephalia Woodward, 1898. Based on the PhyloCode recommendations, Laurin (2020) defined Stegocephali as "the largest clade that includes Eryops megacephalus Cope 1877 (Temnospondyli) but not Tiktaalik roseae Daeschler et al. 2006, Panderichthys rhombolepis Gross 1930 (Panderichthyidae), and Eusthenopteron foordi Whiteaves 1881 (Osteolepiformes)". Thus, Stegocephalia sensu Laurin, 1998 includes Tiktaalik, while Stegocephali sensu Laurin, 2020 excludes this genus by definition.

In addition, Laurin (2020) resurrected the historical taxon Labyrinthodontia, defining it as "the smallest clade containing Acanthostega gunnari Jarvik 1952, Ichthyostega stensiöi Säve-Söderbergh 1932, Crassigyrinus scoticus (Lydekker 1890), Mastodonsaurus giganteus (Jaeger 1828), Baphetes kirkbyi Owen 1854 (Baphetidae), and Anthracosaurus russelli Huxley 1863". This means that Labyrinthodontia sensu Laurin, 2020 contains most of the stegocephalians including crown tetrapods. In my opinion, it is a very controversial decision to try to revive groups such as Stegocephali and Labyrinthodontia, which historically were wastebasket taxa. Surely Cope and Owen would be shocked to learn that they are labyrinthodonts and stegocephalians. However, since the definitions have already been given, we must decide what to do with it.

First defined in 1998, Stegocephali(a) has a relatively long history in phylogenetic nomenclature. To my knowledge, no researcher other than Laurin did not give a phylogenetic definition to the clade Stegocephali(a), so perhaps we probably should move the article Stegocephalia to Stegocephali and exclude Tiktaalik from this group. However, Labyrinthodontia were first identified in 2020 and we do not yet know if this taxon in the revised monophyletic sense will be widely accepted. I propose to simply mention in the article Labyrinthodontia the existence of a phylogenetic definition, but not change the main text. HFoxii (talk) 08:00, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

This case doesn't seem any different than any other beta-taxonomic proposal. Await further usage of new definitions in literature and determine a consensus, mention in text until then. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 15:00, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I think, in both cases, we should wait to see usage before making major changes. I don't think it's clear yet whether the PhyloCode will see the universal adoption the ICZN has, so we shouldn't assume that a definition proposed in Phylonyms will see acceptance. There are certainly a fair few proposals in Phylonyms that I think might struggle to attain widespread acceptance. However, as far as the montage goes, it's probably best to only include uncontroversial stegocephalians, so I would support replacing Tiktaalik with Acanthostega. Ornithopsis (talk) 15:09, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I fully agree that we should be wary of PhyloCode's proposals and new taxonomic ideas in general. It is for this reason that I propose to keep the labyrinthodonts as an informal group (although listing Batrachomorpha as the parent taxon is erroneous anyway). However, in my opinion, with stegocephalians we have a somewhat different case. Cope described the taxon as Stegocephali [68], although some later authors referred to it as Stegocephalia. Thus, it is certain that the name Stegocephali actually takes priority over Stegocephalia. Laurin first defined this clade in 1988, but in 2020 proposed a new, revised definition. I don't see any reason to use an older definition if the author himself has abandoned it. Moreover, the new definition has already received some acceptance in the scientific literature (for example, see Google Scholar). HFoxii (talk) 17:00, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Priority is a fuzzy thing when it comes to taxonomic ranks not regulated by the ICZN. For instance, Opisthocoelia and Cetiosauria both have priority over Sauropoda, Theropsida has priority over Synapsida, and Cete has priority over Cetacea, but obviously we don't use them. In articles published between 2020 and present, Google Scholar finds slightly more results for Stegocephalia (22) than Stegocephali (16), and several of the results for Stegocephali are actually the result of incorrect indexing. Laurin doesn't own the phylogenetic definition of Stegocephali(a), nor does Gauthier own the definition of Archosauromorpha. Ornithopsis (talk) 17:55, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

What the authors think is irrelevant to scholarly consensus. As Ornithopsis notes, Stegocephalia is still the common usage. That is what should dictate the content. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 19:49, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

In any case, Cope (1868) is not the author of Stegocephalia because Woodward (1898) actually introduced this taxon. Woodward points out that "these early lung-breathers are commonly grouped together under the name Stegocephalia (roofed-head)". I respect Woodward's contribution to paleontology, but the phrase seems to be misleading, since the name Stegocephalia (instead of Stegocephali) first appeared in his student textbook.

According to Google Scholarship, the name Stegocephalia does appear to be somewhat more common than Stegocephali, but there is no drastic prevalence here (at least not in recent years). I don't see a strong consensus in stem tetrapod taxonomy in general. Moreover, the names Stegocephali(a) and Labyrinthodontia are still associated with the historical use of these taxa by many paleontologists, and Tetrapoda is still often used as an apomorphy-based clade. This is different from dinosaur taxonomy, where, although there are still gaps, numerous phylogenetic and taxonomic studies have been carried out, resulting in a general consensus on key points. The taxonomy of the tetrapodomorphs is in chaos, and while the PhyloCode is not the last word, it is a relatively successful attempt to bring it into order.

PhyloCode's proposals should be treated with due skepticism, especially when they refer to the renaming of commonly used taxa such as Reptiliomorpha (=Pan-Amniota) and Lepidosauromorpha (=Pan-Lepidosauria). However, as stated earlier, there is no consensus on the use of Stegocephali(a). Historically, both the names Stegocephali and Stegocephalia have been widely used. Although the ICZN does not prohibit the correction of names of taxa above the superfamily (and does not regulate these names at all), Laurin has a clear authority in the taxonomy of stem tetrapods, so his proposals are credible. Laurin's 2020 paper published in Phylonyms contains the first and only detailed overview of the taxonomic history of stegocephalians. I just don't see any reason not to trust it. HFoxii (talk) 06:04, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm also iffy about using phylocode definitions without context, they go against consensus definitions in many cases. As for "Stegocephalia", I believe Laurin introduced that term as a cladistic alternative to the apomorphy-based definition of Tetrapoda, so it would refer to limbed vertebrates ("tetrapods" in the traditional sense) in particular. Here are a few relevant papers relating to the discussion over apomorphy vs crown group definitions of Tetrapoda:[69][70][71][72].In 1998 (before Tiktaalik was discovered), Stegocephalia would include everything crownward of Panderichthys, but discoveries since then require a redefinition to account for the intended use. So I'm not opposed to the new definition on principle, and I would support using Acanthostega over Tiktaalik in the taxobox image. Maybe we should account for conflicting definitions with a "sensu lato" or "sensu stricto" disclaimer or elaboration on relevant pages. I should note that Laurin also often reuses old or traditional terms in new contexts instead of naming new terms for the same group. For example, he uses "Anthracosauria" (originally used roughly equivalent to Reptiliomorpha) for a clade of total group Embolomeri (including embolomeres sensu lato like Eoherpeton and Proterogyrinus). He also uses Amphibia strictly as a synonym for Lepospondyli, since he is a major proponent of the lepospondyl hypothesis of lissamphibian origins (which is not exactly the consensus, but far from a fringe view regardless). Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 16:18, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, Laurin explicitly states that he views Stegocephali as an alternative to the apomorphy-based Tetrapoda. I agree that whenever possible we should consider conflicting definitions equally, but in any case, one of the points of view should be chosen as the main one (at least in terms of the page title). In addition, I believe that we should be wary of accepting reimagined old taxa. Anthracosauria sensu Laurin & Smithson, 2020 [73] is most likely a synonym for Reptiliomorpha (or Pan-Amniota). Laurin et al. uses Amphibia as a total group in relation to Lissamphibia [74]. Depending on which topology is adopted, either Temnospondyli or Lepospondyli are found to be synonymous with Amphibia (this paper was published before Phylonyms, but reflects different use cases for Amphibia). HFoxii (talk) 06:04, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Seriously flawed Mesozoic article

The article on the Mesozoic is egregiously flawed and needs review and a rewrite. It mentions many genera in the wrong epoch (e.g. claiming Diplodocus and Allosaurus were Middle Jurassic genera and Eusteptospondylus was an Early Cretaceous genus), it makes subjective claims such as "[The Middle Jurassic] was the peak of the reptiles", and much more. There are shades of you-know-who in the claim that " volaticotherians took to the skies." I'm already working on too many articles to want to add it to my plate at the moment, though. Ornithopsis (talk) 03:19, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

As I found out when I rewrote Jurassic from the ground up a year ago, it's incredibly difficult to write about such a broad topic effectively. The Mesozoic covers such a vast span of time that it's difficult to conceive how it could be coherently structured. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:25, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be best to keep the mesozoic article small, and only write a short section about the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous, linking to the respective articles. It might also be of benefit to describe the movement of the continents during the period in a seperate section, and maybe a major overview of animals that evolved and went extinct? However, I do think that it would benefit from not being too extensive. Cheers, - TimTheDragonRider (talk) 13:08, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

I think that the article could be written to be fairly extensive, as many of the trends of the Mesozoic extend across more than one period and could benefit from being put into the broader context. The important thing right now, though, is that the factual accuracy of the article is suspect. I don't want to simply delete whole paragraphs, but I don't really have the time to rewrite them to fix their flaws either. Ornithopsis (talk) 17:09, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Maybe it would be a fun idea to make Mesozoic a collaboration article for the entire Wikiproject? TimTheDragonRider (talk) 13:16, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately I think many of our regulars are busy (myself included). We've had trouble getting collaborations off the ground for a while. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 18:34, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

• Until someone has time to fix it, we could fill it with article maintenance templates, such as Template:citation needed and, for the whole article, Template:Disputed. This will not improve the article, but at least will warn our readers, and ideally may attract an editor that can improve the article. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:29, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

  Yeah that should be a good temporary solution. I'll see what I can do for it in the future, but I don't know when I'll be done with the Morrison Paleobiota Overhaul and have the time to do so. TimTheDragonRider (talk) 19:19, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

  I took a stab at trying to improve the article some time back, but finally threw up my arms in frustration as so much was uncited or poorly cited and I was kind of out of my lane. I've flagged a few statements objected to on the talk page -- they were uncited or the citations didn't say what the statements they were tied to said or were self-published sources (or both). Still feel out of my lane on most of the detailed paleontology. --Kent G. Budge (talk) 00:39, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

  What even could be added ? Mesozoic is such a broad subject covered in more precise articles. What should be added in fauna ? We can't cover all of the Mesozoic life, but what should be covered in it ?

  On a related note, there should be mentions of the stages at least somewhere on the page. Larrayal (talk) 01:49, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

  This may be a good example of where less is more. Cutting out a lot of the detail in favor of a briefer overview will make it much easier to make what remains solid. Greater detail can be left to the period articles.--Kent G. Budge (talk) 01:53, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

  Yep, that would probably be the best approach to keep it manageable TimTheDragonRider (talk) 10:43, 20 March 2022 (UTC)