Talk:Schöningen forest elephant

Notability

This article is comprehensive, well-sourced and well-illustrated, but I'm not entirely sure about its notability. It seems to be about a single specimen of a "forest elephant" (the species is unclear, is it Elephas antiquus?) found in a productive archaeological and paleontological site. Admittedly German archaeology and elephant taxonomy are not my specialities, but it's still unclear why this specimen is more notable than other "forest elephant" specimens or the site itself. It may be a good idea to split the information up, with data on the elephant skeleton going to the article of its equivalent species (whatever that may be) and general important data on the Schöningen site being given its own page. If someone more experienced with the topic has comments on this suggest, I'd appreciate hearing them. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 21:01, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Fanboyphilosopher, I am not an expert but I am sharing an observation. I see that Schöningen spears is also presented in a similar manner. According to official record titled "300.000 Jahre alter Elefant aus Schöningen fast vollständig erhalten" (in German). Forschungsmuseum Schöningen under (NLD) states as Eurasian forest elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus). 03:49, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the info on its species. A brief overview of the Schöningen spears article leads me to the opinion that it has well-established notability. The spears are clearly anthropological artifacts (rather than fossils), among the oldest hunting artifacts in Europe, some of the few wooden artifacts from the time, and helped to revolutionize paleoanthropologists' view of Homo heidelbergenis. The elephant skeleton is certainly impressive, but from my (paleontological) perspective, it does not seem as revolutionary or unique as the spears. It's not typical for recently-described fossil specimens to receive their own paleontology articles separate from the taxa they're assigned to, though there are rare exceptions (namely a couple of Tyrannosaurus specimens). I'm curious if this type of article would be considered more notable from the perspective of the archaeology wikiproject, which I am not closely involved with. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 04:09, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

• Much of the article is not even about this specimen in particular, but "forest elephants" in general, which I assume means Palaeoloxodon antiquus. Any good reason why this short article shouldn't be merged into that short article? FunkMonk (talk) 12:53, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
• I agree with FunkMonk and Fanboyphilosopher, there isnt any clear indication that this particular Elephas antiquus skeleton is notable, based on the same reasoning that none of the other known skeletons are notable. I would suggest merging the information here into the articles on the species and the archaeological site.--Kevmin § 18:12, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Merge discussion

As noted in the above discussion, this is not a distinctly notable individual specimen. Most of article is about the site or about elephants in Europe as a whole.--Kevmin § 16:13, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

• Yes, merge. Nothing of substance to add to the points made above; there is lots of good material in the article, but much of it is not specifically connected to this specimen and would be better off in the taxon article (in essence this is an unusually benign WP:COATRACK :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:57, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
• Agree with merge, per above section. FunkMonk (talk) 22:45, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
• I agree with merging as well, though we should try to maintain much of the useful info from this article during the merge. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 02:52, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
• @Kevmin: Given that there appears to be concensus for this, do you want to go ahead and begin merging? Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:13, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

• General merge done--Kevmin § 22:51, 10 January 2021 (UTC)