Talk:Arctotherium

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Leo1pard (talk) 06:40, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Appearance date

When did Arctotherium evolve, 2.588 million years ago or 2.0 million years. Provide with sources. Sarsath3 (talk) 18:04, 6 February 2019 (UTC) • contribs) 23:25, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

The reference already present matches my just revised specification of the date range. Lavateraguy (talk) 14:42, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

However the 2008 report of an Arctotherium tooth from the Blancan of El Salvador might well be older than even 2.588 mya. Oddly, the same author who published that paper in 2014 refers to A. angustidens as the earliest of the 5 described species. This can be reconciled if the Blancan tooth was assigned to Arctotherium sp. indet. Lavateraguy (talk) 15:02, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Arctotherium size

I keep hearing that Arctotherium angustidens actually weighed between 600-1000 kg and that the femur was overestimated, thus making it not the biggest land carnivores ever. Is this true? Sarsath3 (talk) 13:01, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Could someone cite this for the Lifestyle section?

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03115510902844418, please? Sarsath3 (talk) 19:51, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

Done! SuperTah (talk) 17:40, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Synonyms

In general, synonyms are alternate names for the same taxon, which is not the same as alternate identifications of the same specimen. What if the "Panthera" fossil in question had originally been identified as P. onca? Would that make P. onca and Arctotherium synonyms? Under Synonym (taxonomy) it is explained that "Synonyms may arise whenever the same taxon is described and named more than once, independently. They may also arise when existing taxa are changed, as when two taxa are joined to become one, a species is moved to a different genus, a variety is moved to a different species, etc. Synonyms also come about when the codes of nomenclature change, so that older names are no longer acceptable..." A specimen reassigned to a new family would not be viewed as representing the same species to which it was originally assigned, so none of these situations appears applicable here. WolfmanSF (talk) 04:37, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Panthera balamoides was described as a new species (possibly) based on a bone of Arctotherium, and therefore either a synonym of whatever species within that genus it can be correlated to, or just a dubious name. If it was an Arctotherium bone incorrectly assigned to P. onca, it would simply be reassigned back to Arctotherium, with no bearing on the taxon P. onca, because it's not the type specimen of P. onca, just an assigned specimen. FunkMonk (talk) 15:10, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

How to request a new article assessment?

Hi! Seeing as this article has substantially grown in the past months, but has remained at a "start class" assessment, I was wondering how I could request an article assessment? This is more so that I can understand where the article is now, and how we can improve its quality. This also applies to Arctodus. SuperTah (talk) 00:21, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Sources

Hi! Getting to the bottom of exactly which synonyms were introduced when is mind-numbing. Returning to these later

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4523593

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232689853_The_southernmost_bear_Pararctotherium_Carnivora_Ursidae_Tremarctinae_in_the_latest_Pleistocene_of_southern_Patagonia_Chile

https://www.mindat.org/taxon-P182926.html

Sources

The Great American Biotic Interchange: A South American Perspective

SuperTah (talk) 14:21, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

• One thing I'm wondering when I look at how old the earliest sources are is there must be some public domain images of the fossils around? Come across any old sources with images I could check? And nice work with these articles, SuperTah, perhaps it would be fun to try to get one to WP:good article status,though this one would perhaps be easier to start with than Arctodus, seems the literature is more limited in scope. FunkMonk (talk) 12:58, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

  Yeah great question, frustratingly almost every single source I could get my hands for Arctotherium postdates 1995. What could work in our favour are free-to-read articles and their media perhaps- do you know about the legality of uploading pictures from those articles? I tried looking at articles from ResearchGate for example, but I couldn't find many clues as to what license/CC those articles were covered under. In terms of images, there certainly are a couple of good ones, both of fossils and paleoart which would greatly benefit the article.

  Also, thanks! GA status is my certainly my eventual goal for both of them. I must admit, I don't think I was as scrupulous with my magnifying glass with the papers for Arctotherium as I was for Arctodus, so there may still be room for expansion here. I'm scanning through the articles to see if there's any extra stuff to add.

  Regarding Arctodus, I had such article fatigue that I took a wiki break. I will get back to that article soon enough, there was some great feedback in the peer review I still need to follow up. Regardless, I agree that this one will probably be ready first, once it's polished up. SuperTah (talk) 12:55, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, being available online does not mean the licence is free, we'd have to look at the specific licences of the articles, if you can point me in the right direction. But since some of the sources seem to be from the 19th century and early 20th, those could very likely be public domain due to age, if we can track them down. FunkMonk (talk) 17:09, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Ah understandable, I think we can fork our attention two ways here. First and foremost, I've been meaning to reach out to academics for assistance in retrieving articles with little/no online presence, or which are hard paywalled, which I think covers most of the older articles referenced in the sources I've used (in the Arctotherium article's bibliography). Secondly, I'll scour through the articles again and do a renewed search to see if there are any media which we can extract for the article. I'll reply with what I've found soon. SuperTah (talk) 03:42, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

If we can find the old citations as text in some newer sources, we can probably track them down on Archive.org or biodiversitylibrary.org FunkMonk (talk) 13:24, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

The size of A. Angustidens may have been greatly overestimated

In a 2011 study, the weight of an A. Angustidens specimen, calculated from the humerus, ranged from 983 to 2042 kg, but later the upper limit was reduced to 1588-1749 kg, and this became a kind of meme. If you look closely at that humerus, a painful growth catches your eye. It could well be the result of a bone callus formed after a fracture. In addition, according to the results of a later study using radio as a similar object, its weight was about 1108 kg. I admit my guilt for prematurely making an edit about this without consulting the other editors. Cryzziermaximum (talk) 19:12, 4 March 2024 (UTC)