Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dinosaurs/Archive 29

Next Collaboration

Since FunkMonk nominated Brachiosaurus for GA, I suspect that we'll move onto our next collaboration, which looks like it will be Confuciusornis. I have decided to try my hand a writing a paleoecology section, which can be found here: [1]. Any input/reccomendations? --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 22:04, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Looks good, I think it might be good to add something about the taphonomy too, to explain why all specimens are flat slabs... And don't forget flora! FunkMonk (talk) 22:26, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Well, it helps when Sinosauropteryx is already a GA and from the same formation (saves digging through journals for relevant papers of asking around)! I've added a ton of stuff. It is hard to stop once you've started. I added lists of large groups of flora & fauna, put in specific detail about Xenoxylon and lack of crocodiles, and added a sentence on preservation. Do you know of a paper that adresses the flattening? I've used Ctrl+F for "flat" and "compress," but it's yielded nothing. I'll have a look around some of the other Yixian articles and see if I can find something. Good luck on the GA! --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 00:15, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

This article seems to briefly cover the issue:[2] Maybe it cites something that could be used. FunkMonk (talk) 00:24, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I've added a sentence on the subject, that paper was very useful, as it's specifically on taphonomy. Also added salamanders to this list. I think that I'll just add it to the article and continue working on it from there. --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 12:32, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, with articles that so few people edit, such as dinosaur articles, it's fine to do most of the editing in article space. FunkMonk (talk) 15:17, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

• A heads up, since a lot of dino project members were part of nominating the Brachiosaurus article for FAC, it is short on reviewers, since nominators of course can't review. So any more reviews by non-nominators are very welcome! FunkMonk (talk) 15:42, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps IJReid might want to review Brachiosaurus? As one of the few regular dinosaur FAC contributors who is "free" to review. As is, it risks archival if it don't get more reviews soon. It seems one take home message from this collaboration is that we cant really count on many reviewers to appear from outside the project any more, so it can be risky if many regular dino project reviewers nominate the same article. FunkMonk (talk) 14:17, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

I wish I could help but I don't feel all that qualified, as I've mostly just made simple diagrams. I am planning on working on Agujaceratops over the Oct.-Dec. period (but I doubt that FAC'll take that long ;)). Best of luck! --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 23:15, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Sounds like a good place to start practising. Taxa that have been published relatively recently don't have as scary histories... FunkMonk (talk) 00:08, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm working on it in my sandbox. How much literature should be cited for a dinosaur article like this? I know that WP:REX will be key to the success of this. Probably WP:PR too. --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 00:29, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Don't forget scihub, hehe... As for what should be cited, pretty much everything you can find that deals with the particular taxon. Google Scholar should give an overview of the literature. FunkMonk (talk) 01:00, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Question concerning extinction dagger placement

Please see Template talk:Speciesbox#Extinct dagger in binomial box for a discussion concerning the placement of † when {{Speciesbox}} is used for an extinct species. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:31, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Puertasaurus Nominated for Peer Review

I've been working on this article for the past three days and I've finally nominated it. It can be found here. Thanks in advance for any feedback you can give. --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 23:08, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Isn’t what formation it’s found in usually put in the Discovery section?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  13:53, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

I've seen that information be placed in both the discovery and palaeoecology sections. See Ceratosaurus & Gallimimus (palaeoecology section), Oxalaia (discovery section), Dromaeosauroides (A mix of both). ▼PσlєοGєєкƧɊƲΔƦΣƉ▼ 16:12, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

I'd say it is fine to repeat. FunkMonk (talk) 17:40, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

• If this one goes well, Slate Weasel, you might be the right person to give one of the most viewed dinosaur articles, Argentinosaurus, the treatment! It will probably be fairly short as well, as it is also know from few remains, and does not have a very long history. FunkMonk (talk) 23:38, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm also considering working on Futalognkosaurus, too. If we can get some good articles on these guys, it may be easier to fight trolls. Of course, that could backfire and make more trolls to fight... Anyways, I'm nearing completion. The life restoration's just waiting for approval, the size comparison is due to be updated soon, I uploaded a map from PLoS One with a terrible name that needs to be changed, I'm preparing to expand the vertebrae section, expand the lead, and try to find a good source for the discovery date of the specimen. --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 23:44, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Sounds good, perhaps ping some of the more sauropod-savvy guys for the image review. As for trolls, to prevent such a war when I wrote Giganotosaurus, I just discussed pretty much every size estimate ever given under history, and just gave ranges under description (you could also discuss it under description, of course). That way, no one can come and claim some particular view isn't represented. That didn't keep a certain sockpuppet troll from returning again and again, but there haven't been many other problems. As long as all views are discussed, there will be nothing to complain about. FunkMonk (talk) 23:50, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Looking at the map, it seems it shows the specific location where some shark teeth were found, rather than the formation, or even puertasaurus itself? The dinosaur could possibly have been found at another location within the formation? FunkMonk (talk) 13:37, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Should I remove it or change the caption somehow? --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 20:37, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Is there a map in the description article? Maybe you can make a new modified version of the image that shows the actual locality? FunkMonk (talk) 20:54, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

No. I'll remove the map now, not sure what I'll add in its place. --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 21:19, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Changes are needed for Evolution of dinosaurs

For such a high-importance article, Evolution of dinosaurs is replete with issues. A lot of it is unsourced, outdated, contradictory to other parts of the article, or outright incorrect. The first image, showing Prosauropoda as monophyletic, immediately caught my eye. At another point it claimed that therizinosaurids were the only herbivorous theropods. Mikenorton has pointed out that the dates for the earliest dinosaurs is quite ambiguous, ranging from 243 to 200 in just the intro alone. While I don't think that Ornithoscelida is more likely than the typical Saurischia/Ornithischia split, I do find it odd that the article has no mention of it apart from a quick, ambiguous reference to "a new way of classifying the dinosaur family tree" in the intro. I'll be busy over the next few days, so I won't have many opportunities to take part in such a large-scale revision. I was hoping that the rest of you could help. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 17:28, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree. The lemma "Evolution of dinosaurs" would be definitely worth some effort, but the current article does not contain a lot on evolution as far as I can see. If we would remove all incorrect, outdated, out of topic, and unsourced info, there would be nothing left. It needs to be rewritten from scratch, and until somebody is willing to take this task, I would propose we reduce it to a redirect to the dinosaur article. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:21, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

I support this course of action. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 22:37, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

I support it being redirected as well. WP:Content forking runs the risk of having a lot of rarely visited, never updated articles of no use. FunkMonk (talk) 00:56, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, the current main dinosaur article is better in every way. I'd support a redirect if that seems like the most worthwhile option. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 01:37, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Maintaining older dinosaur FAs/GAs

For a while there has been scattered discussion about what to do with older FAs/GAs which have either deteriorated because of lack of updates since promotion, or were simply promoted at a time when the FA/GA criteria were much laxer than they are today (before 2009, chronological list here:[3]). The situation has been lingering, but in recent years, it has been suggested that some articles should be demoted (for example through WP:featured article review), which of course creates some urgency. Older articles that have been affected include Psittacosaurus (which was saved by merging species of Psittacosaurus into it) and species of Allosaurus (which is undergoing merging into Allosaurus as result), and a few days ago, it was suggested that Tyrannosaurus should be demoted as well[4]. If dinosaur articles start getting nominated for FAR left and right, we simply won't have the manpower to improve them in time, and some of them risk being demoted. So it would probably be good to nip the issue in the bud by beginning to fix older articles by updating them with new information, expanding various sections, and of course continue to maintain them afterwards.

Lusotitan is currently attempting this with the old FA Thescelosaurus, and the progress can be followed on the talk page, which could serve as an example of what to do with other articles. I have also listed maintenance as a task here[5], and it has been suggested that improving older articles could be done through a project collaboration. However we choose to do it, I think it could be a good idea to go through the older FAs/GAs and make a list of potential issues with each articles (to do lists on their talk pages or here?), so we will be prepared in case, and so the issues can start being chipped away (I think this could work as a continuous, parallel task to other FA/GA work). It is best to fix these issues internally in the project at our own pace, before "outsiders" start sniffing around and latch onto something so we'd have to do it in limited time. FunkMonk (talk) 13:22, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

If we really shifted our focus to it, we could have this done pretty easily. We regularly get articles with much less of a base to work with all the way to FA in pretty good time, and Brachiosaurus is an example of what can be done when we work together. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 14:48, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

I think priority should be given to the most visited dino articles, like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. LittleJerry (talk) 15:03, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

This makes sense, yes. In general, these "popular" taxa are the older FAs anyway, so it works out. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 15:22, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Plus the Tyrannosaurus article just had a lot of maintenance tags added that will attract attention soon if they aren't dealt with... FunkMonk (talk) 15:31, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

• Seems Ceratopsia was just demoted from GA, which again highlights why it is probably a good idea to keep the formal processes out of it; we simply can't fix the articles within that kind of time frame. FunkMonk (talk) 01:13, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

I did that quite a while ago, since it was just so far from even approaching GA standard and it's a very important article. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 01:17, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

On a related note, I just merged species of Allosaurus into Allosaurus; it may need an additional look over, as some of the sources have been duplicated. As far as I can see, I've distributed the text in a way that does not make invalid/reassigned species seem valid, as the old article did. FunkMonk (talk) 20:10, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Note for the future: similar articles often use the same repeating refs with the same names causing ref errors when the articles are merged   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  00:34, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Right, looking at Wikipedia:Featured article review, the first step is always for a person concerned to initiate discussion on the talk page. FAR requests have been archived promptly when this hasn't been done. Recommend prioritising Tyrannosaurus for the moment, and hopefully Triceratops next. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:24, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

I think the main problem with Triceratops is its fairly small description section. LittleJerry (talk) 18:55, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Does anyone know of a recent Triceratops redescription? One problem with many of these older featured genera seems to be that there are no modern descriptions of them? FunkMonk (talk) 18:59, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Not an FA, but poor Corythosaurus hasn't gotten a description since its original one. In 1916. Despite having one of the single best hadrosaur specimens in existence as a holotype... Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 19:25, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

That might hold it from becoming an FA in the future, though. Ankylosaurus sure was lucky, having been re described twice in the new century. In any case, there must be newer sources that list more up to date diagnoses of those old genera at least (The Dinosauria?). Reading many of the older FAs, few of them mention any diagnostic traits, therefore readers would be hard pressed to figure out what the differences between these animals are to related genera. In the case of genera with multiple species, the reader gets little to no idea of how they are distinguished from each other. For example, there is a lot of waffling in the Tyrannosaurus article about whether Tarbosaurus is a synonym or not. But what are the arguments for and against? What traits set them apart? If it was a FAC today, it wouldn't fly to leave this unexplained. There is a tiny bit of superficial into on this under classification, but this is probably best mentioned in the description with more detail. FunkMonk (talk) 19:36, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

The same goes for the FA Tarbosaurus   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  21:12, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

IIRC there was a paper that showed they were not actually each others' closest relatives anyway, so I think consensus now is to keep them separate. I which case it might be worth taking speculation out of the lead of T rex as out of date. See here for instance. Probably worth checking all tyrant phylogeny papers and making sure all the tyrannosaurid taxa are up to date. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:06, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Some papers find them separate (though this isn't the consensus), but others continue to use Tyrannosaurus bataar as recently as this year. The most recent paper, that of Dynamoterror, also found them to be sister taxa, even when the rest of the subfamily couldn't be resolved. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 00:34, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

• Now that Braciosaurus has been promoted (congratulations, guys! The entire dinosaur cast of the first Jurassic Park movie is now FA), we can maybe focus on the issue of older FAs. And most urgently, the current Tyrannosaurus FAR, of course. I wonder if that nomination was premature, though, and should be delisted form there. FunkMonk (talk) 10:32, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Brown pelican is only GA, so not all of the JP dinosaur cast is FA. On a more serious note, I'd recommend Herrerasaurus for revision considering that a lot of newer info about dinosaurian origins has been published since its original FA designation in 2007(!) Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 16:18, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Irritator has been listed at Peer Review

After a successful GA review by Jens Lallensack, I've started the PR for Irritator, our second "tribute article" for the Museu Nacional fire after Thalassodromeus (who's FA is already underway). The review can be found here,[6] any advice is much appreciated! If I have enough time, Siamosaurus might also be up for Peer Review and then GA soon, just doing some cleanup on its draft at the moment. ▼PσlєοGєєкƧɊƲΔƦΣƉ▼ 21:42, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

I'll have a look soon. By the way, I'll also put Baryonyx up for peer review here before adding the changes to the WikiJournal version (since there is a lot of new text). FunkMonk (talk) 17:16, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Baryonyx is now also up for peer review here:[7] FunkMonk (talk) 12:51, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Probable copyright violation at Macrocollum

I'm pretty sure that the cover picture from the paper is not CC-BY 4.0 licensed, since the paper isn't. I'm not entirely sure how to participate in the process for taking down copyrighted pictures, could someone help? That being said, Biology Letters supplementary info is always CC 4.0 licensed (unless otherwise stated), so we can probably use some of the images in the supplementary info. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 20:48, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree, I refrained form uploading it myself after I checked the licence, it says authors on the copyright. FunkMonk (talk) 20:54, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Our article Warm-blooded doesn't mention dinosaurs. Endotherm says that early mammals were endothermic and dinosaurs weren't.

I was surprised to see no mention of dinosaurs (other than birds) in our article Warm-blooded.

Considering the great interest in this topic in both academia and the general public, surely we should have a line or twenty about this.

Additionally, Endotherm says:

It is thought that the evolution of endothermia was crucial in the development of mammalian species diversity in the Mesozoic period. Their endothermic capabilities provided them with a benefit over the mostly ectothermic dinosaurs that dominated the Mesozoic era.

Say what?

- 189.122.238.134 (talk) 14:53, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out, will try to fix as soon as time allows. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:58, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Now reworked the section in the article endotherm (it was not erroneous but completely outdated). The article warm-blooded is currently dealing with extant species only (it mentions birds, which are dinosaurs). It needs a section on evolution, which will be a bit more time-consuming to write. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 11:24, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Glossary of dinosaur anatomy now available

Our Dino Glossary is now in article space. It is still incomplete, but should contain most of the basic vocabulary already. Its purpose is twofold: First, it shall serve editors as a reference for interpreting scientific papers. Second, articles can directly link to the definitions to help solve the comprehensibility issues of anatomical sections (I just tried that out in Baryonyx ([8]), it improved the situation quite a bit I would say!). Thanks to everybody who already contributed by adding additional entries or images. Next, lets try to cover more terms to make it more useful, and add useful images so that ideally all anatomical features are illustrated. Please feel free to add missing definitions, or suggest them at the "Missing definitions" list on the glossary talk page. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:38, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Amazing, good to see it finally go live! Perhaps it should even be mentioned and linked somewhere on the project main page, to make it clear it should be an integral part of writing dinosaur articles from now on. FunkMonk (talk) 20:49, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Exceptional work on this article! It will be of much value both for fellow editors at the WikiProject and for those looking to learn more about dinosaur anatomy, neither of which are mutually exclusive. I'll begin linking terms in our spinosaurid articles to the glossary. ▼PσlєοGєєкƧɊƲΔƦΣƉ▼

Many thanks, good to hear that it is useful already, although so much is still missing! It will keep me occupied for some while in any case. If you know of any good additional pictures illustrating the definitions, please feel free to add them (I'm searching actively for them right now). --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:54, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Illustrated examples will certainly make the terminology more tangible (especially the more complicated entries). I just compiled this one[9] for the entry on sails, using multiple skeletal mount photos. ▼PσlєοGєєкƧɊƲΔƦΣƉ▼ 20:12, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

We have to be precise with the definitions though. Do elongated neural spines always imply a sail? If the animal had a hump, is it still a sail? At least Bailey (1997) differentiates between hump and sail, and so do other authors I have read (e.g., Brusatte 2012). Who calls Limaysaurus back structure a sail? The sail hypothesis for Amargasaurus is also outdated, the double row of spines was more likely free-standing, covered in a horny sheath. Can you try to be more precise what a sail is, and maybe also define "hump" in the entry? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:25, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

A tedious thing to remember when making image compilations; you need to list all the licences every individual image was released under. FunkMonk (talk) 21:30, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

• It seems like terms are linked automatically even though redirects have not been made? I linked disarticulated, thinking I would have to make some new redirect, but seems it finds the place itself, so that's very neat! Oh, seems all the alternate names are hidden until you edit, pretty cool, so we just add alternate spellings there? FunkMonk (talk) 22:26, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Essentially yes. The template is rather nice I must admit. Makes things far easier :) IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 05:24, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes. I also tried to give both singular and plural forms whenever feasible, so that it does not matter if one links, e.g., frontal or frontals in an article. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:47, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Amphicoelias for GA Reassessment

We don't do very many GA or FA reassessments around here, but Amphicoelias has the unique case of getting to GA and then later having much of its content split into another article (Maraapunisaurus), as opposed to merely falling behind the modern standard with age. As such, it seems appropriate to use the process in this case and I went and filed an individual reassessment. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 21:04, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

I've already started a rewrite on my sandbox, so I'll try and save it from imminent death :) IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 22:13, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

I went ahead and made some copyedits to Maraapunisaurus, Lusotitan, feel free to revert any ones if necessary. Right now the article is definitely looking in better shape than Amphicoelias though. ▼PσlєοGєєкƧɊƲΔƦΣƉ▼ 23:27, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Concerns about linking to the Dinogloss

I recently noticed that FunkMonk changed some wikilinks in Xixiasaurus to redirect to the terms as they are in the Glossary of dinosaur anatomy. For example, changing radius to its entry in the dinosaur glossay (radius). While I partially understand the intentions here, I do have some concerns that this may be counterproductive. The dinosaur glossary can't go into detail about some of these anatomical features, at least not as well as the dedicated pages that already exist for them. I considered discussing this on the talk page for Xixiasaurus, but my concerns do not apply solely to that page. I see no reason to link to a sentence when instead we could link to a whole article. What is the rationale behind these edits? Also, pretty much all of the terms in the dinosaur glossary deserve their own articles if they haven't already gotten them. Epipophyses is a good example, it's (mostly) dinosaur-focused but much more can be (and has been) said in its own article compared to its dinogloss entry. Linking to the dinogloss entry rather than the dedicated article adversely affects the potential information a person can gain from a wikilink. I don't want to offend Jens Lallensack and the other editors who have made a fantastic effort in putting the glossary together. It just seems like the glossary is at best a stopgap for anatomical features without their own pages, and at worst the equivalent of linking to a Simple english wikipedia page rather than a proper article. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 02:26, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, one reason why the "normal" links are iffy, and one of the reasons for creating the glossary, is that the Wikipedia articles are, of course, very "anthropocentric", and discuss these bones in the context of humans. Linking to premaxilla, for example, would lead to something that is pretty useless in the context of dinosaurs (though I see a spinosaur skull diagram has been placed there, which does seem a bit out of context), and I'm pretty sure everyone else here but paleobuffs would be annoyed if we hijacked that article to go into dinosaur anatomy in detail. I don't think anything would keep us from making the glossary entries more detailed than they are, if we want to expand on something there. That said, linking to the glossary is in its experimental stage, so maybe it would make more sense to link strategically, for example by mainly linking to the glossary when we have no other article that would seem relevant, rather than to every anatomical term. Another workaround could also be that the entries can have a "see also" link to the main article about a respective term. Could be something to discuss here. FunkMonk (talk) 02:34, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I was thinking that that "anthropocentrism" of anatomy articles was the main reason behind the glossary's inception. However, this is a problem affecting every form of non-human life, so I'm not saying that we go into detail about how the features are exclusively utilized in dinosaurs. Which brings up another issue. At what point should we link to the dinogloss when in the context of paleontological articles? Would it be fine for Mesozoic reptiles in general? What about birds, or mammals, or even modern animals? At some point we'd have no choice but to discuss prehistoric life in the anthropocentric articles. Anatomy is important to all life, there is no good reason to restrict anatomy articles to human anatomy. I don't want to make a slippery slope fallacy, but the dinosaur glossary just seems to be an overcomplicated and ineffective solution to a broader problem with wikipedia's anatomy articles. We'd have to basically rewrite every wikilink on every dinosaur article on the site when we could just add a paragraph or two onto an anatomy article and solve the problem that way. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 03:00, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Note that this is the dinosaur equivalent of the bird glossary, which exists side by side with individual articles about bird anatomy (ornithology of course has a lot more restricted, specialist terms). The problem is just when the anatomical term is not specific to the group in question (here, dinosaurs). I think that in practice, it would be much more complicated to add info on dinosaur anatomy to every anatomy article, and it would also be harder for readers to find the relevant info when getting to such an article from a dinosaur article; you'd have to wade through a lot of irrelevant stuff to get there, whereas the glossary redirects very effectively to the exact part you'd need. Also, someone would actually have to add this info to every anatomy article, which first off I don't think anyone is going to do, and second, that would itself create a slippery slope. Why have detailed info about dinosaur premaxillae in the premaxilla article, and not detailed info on fish premaxillae, frog premaxillae, elephant premaxillae, etc. And again, I think we would get complaints for changing the focus of the articles away from the human aspects if we go in any such detail. FunkMonk (talk) 03:23, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• I agree many terms should be linked to their respective articles directly, if these articles are not anthropocentric, as is the case for epipophyses. I agree that the individual articles should remain our main tools to gather this information, and for the long run we could work on including an "evolution" section into every anthropocentric anatomy article. If the amount of glossary links can be reduced in the future thanks to better articles, that can only be good. The glossary is only an addition, and I wrote it mainly from a practical perspective, and I think here it has its merits: Any reader of our "description" sections in dinosaur articles will be at a loss given all those technical terms that appear; the glossary just provides a very quick definition from a dinosaur perspective, and should therefore improve the situation for the reader. Furthermore, it uses the terminology used in the field, which is very much different to that used in human anatomy. Maybe we can include a "main article" tag for each entry where we feel the main article should be linked directly, as a guidance for editors and readers (just did that for the "epipophyses" entry, as an example), and link to anthropocentric articles only in the definition's body (its easy for the reader to follow these links to access more complete information if needed).

• For your next point (how to deal with non-dinosaurian taxa) I have no clear idea, and this is something we need to discuss. As this is the dinosaur glossary, only dinosaur articles should link to it. We could have chosen some higher rank (but which exactly?), but none seem to be as important as dinosaurs, and you quickly arrive at amniotes or even vertebrates. Such a glossary would simply get too long, as it wants too much. For the same reason, the glossary only deals with anatomy (I think that other terms tend to be not as dinosaur-specific). In the future, we could have more glossaries, on bone histology, trace fossils, paleobiology, and so on. And more glossaries for the anatomy other groups, although this would create the problem that we have to define general stuff again and again. Maybe this general stuff could be dealt with in glossaries of higher level taxa. Not sure how practical such a system of glossaries would be that aims to cover everything, and if we should try that at all. We probably should prioritize practicability over consistency in any case and, e.g., do not restrict a pterosaur glossary to anatomy, as that makes less sense here. I'm looking forward to hear more thoughts here. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:18, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Just to note that similar problems exist for other groups (i.e. links to articles that don't use morphological terms in the way used in the group in question, and often have a too human-centric orientation). Hence a page like Glossary of spider terms, which has internal wikilinks and a "See also" at the end of each definition if, and only if, the article is relevant to spiders. I'm strongly in favour of a separate glossary for dinosaurs. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:03, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the issue of linking to the glossary rather than the main article on an anatomical term, why not simply have the dinogloss entry link to that? So you link to the dinogloss entry and they can easily find the main article from there. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 19:53, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

That is also how the birdgloss does it when terms overlap. FunkMonk (talk) 20:11, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree. Thank you all for responding to my concerns. I personally would prefer for every anatomy article to discuss the relevant bones in detail within a non-human setting (like how I just did with Quadratojugal bone), but I now see that many other people simply need a concise definition. My argument that the dinogloss acted like Simple English Wikipedia was intended to point out its weakness, but many people see that kind of short, straightforward answer as a strength. I don't, but that's just personal preference on my part. I think that as long as the main articles are linked within the dinogloss entries, no harm is done. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 21:25, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I will work on placing "main article" templates everywhere in the glossary where appropriate, to advertise those articles whenever they contain useful additional information. Nice work btw with the quadratojugal! These basic articles need to get the attention they deserve. Do you have any idea how we can get a similar profound covering for bones that occur in humans (and thus have only anthropocentric articles)? Maybe a "evolution" or "in animals" section within that human-centered article that may become its own article when long enough? Once we have such spin-offs, we are not bound to the medical terminology anymore at least. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:53, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Many human-centered anatomy articles do have an "in animals" section or something equivalent, I started this whole discussion in the hope that these sections would get expanded. There is an "animal anatomy" wikiproject, maybe we can get in touch with them if they're still active. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 22:12, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

One problem often faced on Wikipedia these days is plenty of good ideas, but no manpower to implement them (though the dinosaur project does seem to be attracting more people lately, while the bird project has started to stagnate again). I doubt that animal anatomy project is very active today (no significant discussions there since 2016), so as usual, if someone wants to have something done, they usually have to do it themselves. Which is also a reason why I don't think such info will be added to all anatomy article unless one dedicated user starts grinding... FunkMonk (talk) 22:19, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't think adding such info to all anatomy articles is the answer, because unless the link is carefully placed to a section of the article, the reader has to skip past material which is of either doubtful relevance or actually wrong for that taxon in order to find the correct information. An initial link to a relevant glossary is much more reader-friendly. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:48, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

On the topic of the dinogloss, is this image from yesterday's PeerJ Weewarrasaurus paper of any use? It's on ornithopod tooth anatomy. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 22:57, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Good to know, thanks for the hint! Will consider it. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 11:36, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Paleoart article for GA assessment

I've just nominated the Paleoart article for good article status, after working on it over the past few months. If anyone around these parts would like to help me get it up to standard, would be most appreciated! -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 21:49, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

The Complete Guide to Prehistoric Life

The Argentinosaurus article currently cites this book multiple times, including two entire sections. I'm not convinced about its reliability. Should this information be removed ("growth" doesn't actually seem to even be about Argentinosaurus)? --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 14:59, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, we should probably stick to specialist literature. Sources like this are probably used by editors who don't have access to journal sources, and it can be good as placeholder text, but should probably be replaced if more reliable sources can be added. FunkMonk (talk) 15:04, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

I was bold and removed it. Sources that speak of Argentinosaurus' neck are obvious targets for suspicion. ;) Also, why go into detail on random titanosaur eggs there? --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 15:08, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Hehehe I think I added those in like 5 years ago when I got the book, because I had just got a book and didn't even realize it was based entirely on WWD and WWM. Feel free to get rid of them. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 17:19, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Hey, at least it wasn't as bad as this:[10] FunkMonk (talk) 17:22, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Since sauropods virtually received no parental care they obviously just sat around blind for two years! Why didn't we ever think of that? Also, didn't someone make it so the article more or less said "in the early 20th century scientists thought Argentinosaurus was aquatic. Argentinosaurus was discovered in 1989.." ? --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs)

Additionally, is this the article I just got to GA: [11]? --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 18:59, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

We need a deep revert! If I could find it, I would link to the weird Land Before Time erotic fan fiction that was added to my talk page by some troll years ago... FunkMonk (talk) 19:07, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

It seems like the user who created Puertasaurus had a long history of extrapolating random (generally wrong) things from names, like their creation of Streptospondylus: [12]. --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 19:14, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

That's the early days of Wikipedia for you, just create a bunch of articles and hope someone else will fix them later. I found some of that Land Before Time stuff by the way, for posterity:[13] FunkMonk (talk) 19:19, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Ahh I remember Regisaurus. Boy do I feel old here. I've been on here what, about 6 years? Thats about 1/3 my life. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 04:04, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

I've been around since I was about your current age, so guess how I feel, haha... Poor Regisaurus, didn't "live" long enough to see that I actually took a (poor) photo of a Regisaurus skull cast and added it to the article (weird taxon to be obsessed with)... Though he continued to harass me through email long after he was banned. FunkMonk (talk) 08:36, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanos simonattoi

This is the eight most popular dinosaur article, which drives me mad. Why get obsessed with a barely diagnostic atlas/axis complex from a dog-sized abelisaurid that created the largest polytomy I've ever seen and is locked behind a paywall, even if it does happen to be named after a guy who destroyed half the universe? I considered listing it as a potential future collab nomination, but declined because 1 - There is only one (paywalled) paper on it and 2 - That thing's just waiting for the status of nomen dubium. The article's also a vandalism magnet. Zigongosaurus1138 already suggested this at Talk:Thanos simonattoi, but I think that it should be listed here again for added visibility. This article really should be protected. Any thoughts on increasing protection? --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 12:38, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

It's just temporary, newly described genera often gets a lot of hits (especially if they get referenced in more general outlets, like this one with the comic book name), but quickly fade out to give way for the usual popular articles. Same goes for articles that have just been on the main page for one reason or another (don't expect something like Nemegtomaia to stay high on the list for long). FunkMonk (talk) 12:50, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

By the way, I think Utahraptor is premature for collaboration despite its popularity, our understanding of it will change radically once this is published:[14] FunkMonk (talk) 13:55, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Dinosaur collaboration

As our last nomination was a full success and just appeared on the main page last Sunday, it is time to think about the next one, which will be Confuciusornis – the first Mesozoic bird to get the treatment. I just updated the templates; all discussion will take place on the talk page of the article. As always, we hope to attract as many participants as possible (but, if you feel short on time, reviewing the finished product at GAN and FAC is also an important contribution!). We may start to roughly distribute the different sections (see talk page). I will start collecting relevant literature now, and will offer to send a folder full of relevant PDFs to all participants via wiki mail.

Furthermore, don't forget to nominate your article of choice for the next collaboration! It can be anything dinosaur-related you are interested in, although experience shows that more important articles have better chances to get elected. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:05, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Alternatively, you could paste all the PDF links onto the talk page for anyone just passing by, or the titles so they can find it on sci-hub if you bought the PDF   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  18:09, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

No, I don't do anything legally dubious. Not just to keep harm from myself, but also from the project. There is a lot of stuff you won't get from the internet. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:00, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

In any case, many papers can often be found just by searching their titles on Google (on Researchgate, which is quite legal, or other places). FunkMonk (talk) 19:22, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, there should be enough accessible material to get started anyways. I am easy. Then let us just leave a short request on the talk page in the case we need help to locate the full-text of a source. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:36, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

• I already wrote the paleoecology section (a long, long time ago, that is, before the delay almost caused Brachiosaurus to fail). Any input on its current state? I'll probably go ahead and revise it sometime soon, although I've also got to get around to nominating Puertasaurus for GA status (once it gets copyedited, probably). --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 01:07, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, it is a very good start! In addition what is already there, I would emphasize the huge importance of the Jehol group for feathered dinosaurs and Mesozoic birds, and that it is the by far most important fossil locality for this kind of stuff. I would also briefly mention the Jiufotang Formation, for background info. Then, we might want to list the dinosaur species of the formation, ordered by group, or at least give a selection of important ones (Sinocallipteryx may not be that important). And, most importantly, we should briefly discuss the other Mesozoic birds found in the formation. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 07:35, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Sinocalliopteryx is pretty important in that one specimen ate a Confuciusornis? If anything, I'd say we should have even more info on that association? FunkMonk (talk) 12:39, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I forgot about that, yes. But I would recommend calling the section "paleoenvironment" and discuss that association under "paleobiology", maybe in a section "paleoecology" or "predation". --Jens Lallensack (talk) 12:48, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

I dunno. Shouldn't the next collaboration be an old FA? LittleJerry (talk) 23:18, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Confuciuornis is a very important taxon I'd have honestly have expected to already have an FA, so I think this makes sense. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 23:30, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

We always choose the article that has been elected by voting, and that is the bird for the current collab. Maybe we can involve old FA maintainance in a collab somehow. Maybe even in combination with an important group article, e.g., Stegosauria (group article) + Stegosaurus (old FA); Ornithopoda + Iguanodon; or Dromaeosauridae + Deinonychus (the latter really needs a re-treatment)? Because part of the content between group articles and the most important taxon will overlap anyway, it would be effective. And at some point we need to deal with group articles, which are highly important. I don't know. Please make proposals at Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs/Dinosaur collaboration so that we can vote for something! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:28, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps we can have every other collaboration be an old FA? I personally think Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops need only description and maybe history expansions but Styracosaurus definitely needs reworking. LittleJerry (talk) 21:26, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

So it’d be kind of a Dino Restoration project? Should it be systematic (like you’re currently restoring T. rex, so then Tarbosaurus should be next?) or just call it how you see it based on need?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  01:02, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure if we should change the Dino collab voting system to force an old FA for every other collaboration, but lets see what others say. But yes, having an old FA for the next collab would be a good idea in general. I think, however, that Tyrannosaurus still requires much more work than Styracosaurus, simply because of the huge amount of literature that needs to be evaluated for the former (including whole books). I personally would thus go with either Tyrannosaurus or Deinonychus. But please feel free to nominate any you feel suitable. The goal for an old FA would be to have it though Peer Review, and on the main page once again? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 07:04, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Palaeo reviewer shortage

• Not to derail the discussion, but this has implications for the collaborations. I've noted that palaeo-related articles seem to attract much fewer reviewers from outside the dino and palaeo projects recently, which leads to FACs stalling and risking archival, which was the case for two current palaeo FACs (and even with Brachiosaurus). I discussed this a bit with Jens, without being able to pinpoint why this is happening, but judging from this new[15] section on the FAC talk page, it seems to be something of a widespread problem, which is only growing. This indicates that we should prepare to not rely on reviewers from outside the project, and see if we can somehow become "self-sufficient" with reviews. This problem becomes even worse with collaborations, because the reviewer pool of project members becomes much smaller (as nominators can't review their own articles). As "only" three reviews are necessary for a nomination not to be archived, we should maybe each of us be prepared to always jump in if a palaeo-related article has stalled at one or two reviews for some time. As always, the article alerts sections[16][17] on the front pages of these projects is a good place to keep track of nominations. And maybe nominators should feel less hesitant to ping project members and request reviews on the project talk pages, at least if there is a general agreement that it is a project-wide "responsibility" to get dino/palaeo project nominations promoted. Maybe there are some ideas on how to do this more efficiently and collaboratively? FunkMonk (talk) 03:28, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Feel free to pop me a ping anytime. I don't think I'll be participating much in writing, so I should be uninvolved enough. As long as I can remember these tasks. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 03:44, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

While we're at it, Xixiasaurus is now at FAC, and could need some reviews! Irritator is very close to passing. FunkMonk (talk) 15:13, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Changes to taxonomy templates

Discussions elsewhere led to ErikHaugen changing Template:Taxonomy/Avialae so that it no longer skips the "dinosaur" clades and ranks.

This caused some taxonomy templates and taxoboxes to have inconsistent ranks. I've fixed these: quite a few of the taxonomy templates were unused, so I removed them; for those that were used, I replaced the offending rank by "clade".

The change to Template:Taxonomy/Avialae does mean that articles about extinct birds, such as Gansus, will now show the "dinosaur taxonomy" rather than the classical "bird taxonomy". Peter coxhead (talk) 09:01, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Does this mean we can make Avialae always display, so extinct birds show it now by default? IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 18:06, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Technically, yes. Is there a consensus for this? Peter coxhead (talk) 19:40, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

I would strongly support to display Avialae per default for at least all Mesozoic birds outside of Aves (i.e., Mesozoic birds): This would be the most important clade to display for these taxa. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:15, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

I think all dino people here would support, not sure about the bird people, if they even care about Mesozoic birds. FunkMonk (talk) 00:25, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

'Diplodocid' or 'Diplodocidae'

So the title of the diplodocid and hadrosaurid articles are 'Diplodocid' and 'Hadrosaurid', respectively, whereas the the titles of virtually all other dinosaur family articles use the formal taxon name ('Tyrannosauridae' for instance). These two are the only dino articles that possess this distinction as far as I can tell. The inconsistency here annoys me slightly, so I was wondering if there was a good reason why they shouldn't be changed to 'Diplodocidae' and 'Hadrosauridae'? Zigongosaurus1138 (talk) 19:17, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

I support moves in these two cases. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:39, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Those are indeed the only dinosaur families using that construction, although there are a few other animal families that use it (e.g. Icterid, Labrisomid). I assume having the articles at those titles is due to a hyper-strict interpretation of WP:COMMONNAME as mandating that scientific names be avoided at all costs (an interpretation which is not actually supported by the text of COMMONNAME). I would dispute that "diplocid" is even a vernacular name at all; it's jargony shorthand used almost exclusively by people who know what the longer form is, and isn't really appropriate for writing in an an encyclopedic register (I do accept that cichlid is a vernacular name used by aquarium hobbyists). If it is desirable to talk about something as a clade without implying a particular taxonomic rank, a title something along these lines might be appropriate (although I think hadrosaur would be a more appropriate way to talk about an unranked clade). Plantdrew (talk) 19:55, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Hadrosaur seems to be common enough (even among non-experts), but I don't have a personal preference for where the article should be. FunkMonk (talk) 19:58, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

I would prefer all families at the "-idae" pages. Unranked taxa I guess depends on the term and specifics of popularity. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:15, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Hadrosaur has a bit of a tenous relationship with clade names - it doesn't really correlate right with Hadrosauroidea since people don't like calling Mantellisaurus or Ouranosaurus "hadrosaurs", but it definitely doesn't land at Hadrosauridae itself, since nobody is arguing Claosaurus, Tethyshadros, or Bactrosaurus don't fall under the term. Therefore, I would definitely vote against using it. On the topic, titanosaur is alone among the higher-level group pages other than dinosaur in not using the proper scientific name, to my knowledge. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 21:10, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

@Lusotitan:, there's also Abelisaur, Therizinosaur and Archosaur. I don't know if there are other endings beside -id and -saur that would be associated with not using a proper scientific name. If you can think of any run this search (replacing "saur$" in the page title field with whatever string is appropriate, followed by a $). Plantdrew (talk) 21:35, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Just to stay consistent, which should really just stick with "idae" because none of these are really in the average person's vernacular so there's absolutely no reason why the title should be shorthanded like that   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  21:55, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree, move to "-idae", the common names are too ambiguous. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:21, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

So I've attempted to move both 'Diplodocid' and 'Hadrosaurid' to the '-idae' pages according to the consensus here but I am met with the following message: "The page could not be moved, for the following reason: The page could not be moved: a page of that name already exists, or the name you have chosen is not valid. Please choose another name, or use Requested moves to ask an administrator to help you with the move. Do not manually move the article by copying and pasting it; the page history must be moved along with the article text." Does anyone have the ability to help out here? Zigongosaurus1138 (talk) 21:09, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Seems you have to make a formal WP:move request. FunkMonk (talk) 21:35, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes, this is why I haven't already moved them, I tried this some time ago. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 00:24, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I made the request and now both changes have been made (Diplodocidae, Hadrosauridae). Many thanks to all. Zigongosaurus1138 (talk) 18:51, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Okay, how about titanosaur and therizinosaur? Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 20:14, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Requested moves for those two now too. I've noticed that we also have Ornithopod rather than Ornithopoda (but we do have Theropoda and Sauropoda), so should I request this as well? Zigongosaurus1138 (talk) 23:17, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes, everything further down taxonomically than dinosaur should be the scientific name. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 23:52, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

How to make description sections readable? Thoughts

A point of criticism we are frequently confronted with especially at FAC is our "Description" sections, which are often difficult to comprehend for lay people. We used to solve this problem by keeping those sections very short and general, leaving out all anatomical detail, as still seen in many older FAs. In recent years, however, there was a tendency to include much more anatomical detail. Both approaches have their merits: The short versions are quicker to write and highly readable. They do, however, not only provide an incomplete, but also skewed picture. Dinosaur paleontology is about anatomical details, not so much about size estimates and the like. We discussed the topic extensively already, and I here do not ask if we should include anatomical detail (I think we should), but how to make highly technical information as comprehensible and interesting as possible. While working on Bajadasaurus, I spend quite some time thinking about the issue and tried some new ideas, which I would like to discuss. I tried to implement all of those ideas in Bajadasaurus as an example.

• Place the "Classification" section before the "Description". First, this would be more consistent with articles on recent taxa, which typically have a "Taxonomy" section first. Second, it would allow us to place the genus in its broader systematic context before detailing its anatomy. The description would frequently need to compare with related taxa (see point below), so introducing these taxa beforehand makes it easier (reader is no longer bombarded by both new taxon names and anatomical terminology in the description section simultaneously). Sure, this option also comes with problems such as white space next to the cladogram right at the beginning. To be clear, I'm not suggesting to make this standard, but it may be worth checking if it makes sense for a given article.
• Avoid of technical terms whenever possible, and link to the Glossary of dinosaur anatomy throughout, which discusses terms in a dinosaurian context. Add explanation in brackets whenever feasible. Add background information that is either interesting or helps with understanding. Such information can be found in the glossary. Introduce bones or features by pointing out where in the skeleton they can be found to help the reader visualize.
• State the significance of the features described. Just listing the features is only half of the information. Equally important is what they say us. The reader needs to know why a detail is mentioned while others (you can think of a lot when standing in front of a skeleton) are not. Features may be interesting because they inform about variability or ontogeny or have functional relevance. In most cases, however, they are valuable for comparisons with related genera. I always tried to add these comparisons to the Bajadasaurus article.
• Have comprehensible images. Good descriptions in scientific papers are accompanied by meaningful images. They form a unit together with the text. Many things are difficult to understand without images even for experts. But unlike papers, we are required to make text comprehensible even without images, and we cannot refer directly to images. To make the best of it in Bajadasaurus, I tried to have most of the described details covered by the images. I also relabeled and recompiled figures to get rid of abbreviations and excessive detail/views of bones that we do not really need.

Looking forward to thoughts and additional ideas. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:51, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Anatomical diagrams are always helpful because a picture is worth a thousand words and it takes a thousandth of the time to read and a thousandth of the effort to comprehend, and try to stick to only functional anatomy and avoid super big words whenever possible (like instead of "the integument was rugose" you say "the skin was bumpy", and instead of "the prosoma was short and broad, with a lateral margin rounded anteriorly" you say "the head was round")   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  21:03, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I personally try to avoid using scientific terms for directions entirely (lateral, anterior, lingual, etc.), as most readers by far will not know what any of it means. Sometimes there is no real precise way to "translate" a technical term, and I would certainly not gloss "rugose" as "bumpy". In such ambiguous cases, I'd think it's best to use the technical term and give an alternate "common" explanation in parenthesis (you can rarely substitute one technical word with one common word, it often needs a short sentence of explanation to not be misleading and imprecise). Personally, I don't think I've had cases where it made sense to place classification before description, simply because we would have to list a lot of anatomical distinguishing/shared features in isolation without any context (see Xixiasaurus, for example, though with more recent animals this is not as much of a problem, since DNA is mainly used for classification). If the classification comes after description, many of these anatomical terms will already have been explained in context, and the reader will be ready to see them used in another context. I see the Bajdasaurus article avoids the problem by not mentioning distinguishing and shared features, but I'm not sure this will be possible to leave out in articles about taxa that have long histories of classification disputes, where different studies emphasise different features (again, even Xixiasaurus is an example). FunkMonk (talk) 21:41, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Regarding the placement of the classification section, I see the point, and you are probably right. Let me think it through again, and I might try to rearrange Bajadasaurus to see what works best. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:25, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I just realised that I have placed classification (as taxonomy) first in a bunch of prehistoric taxon articles after all, mainly mammals (to reflect how articles about extant animals are structured), such as Catopsbaatar and Paraceratherium. FunkMonk (talk) 15:41, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

The published papers describing dinosaurs generally follow the structure I use when making articles, History -> Description -> Classification -> Paleobiology (if exists). IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 17:10, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Now changed the order in Bajadasaurus, having classification after description. I think both variants work equally well in this case at least; the family/group is now introduced in the first paragraph of the description. I agree with FunkMonk that we should not oversimplify. We need to be as comprehensible as possible, but we should not loose too much precision. It should be a good read for both lay people and experts. Sometimes I cannot avoid using the anatomical terms of direction (especially "medially" can be hard to translate in an unambiguous way). Will implement them in the glossary soon. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:11, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Regarding the mammal cases, Paraceratherium is a good example of an exception IMO, since it's got some rather famous synonym history behind it placed in the classification section that's good to clear up first. On the other hand, we would usually place that in history, if the article had such a section... Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 22:56, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

In the case of mammals and extant birds, "history" is pretty much covered under "taxonomy", so it is really the dinosaur articles that are outliers (which other prehistoric reptile article shave followed). These different "systems" were laid down long before any of us were active, by users who are no longer here... I think Casliber is the only dino editor left from that time. FunkMonk (talk) 00:47, 23 February 2019 (UTC)