Talk:Hypsibema missouriensis

Images

Sorry, I have nominated the images for deletion on Commons. See the deletion discussion there for details. J Milburn (talk) 23:10, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Suggestions

This is quite a good article overall. There are a couple of things I would address. First, understandably most of the characteristics are based on comparisons with better-known hadrosaurids, but there's one bit that sticks out: the information about maternal instincts and staying by the nest should probably be removed, or at least toned down. It's something that gets attached to all hadrosaurids (because of Maiasaura), but there aren't yet any of the relevant fossils (nests, eggs, hatchlings) known for this dinosaur, unless they're holding out on us.

Second, it would be great to get some information on why Baird and Horner elected to assign Parrosaurus missouriensis to Hypsibema, a genus otherwise known only from two caudal verts, part of a humerus and tibia, and one partial metacarpal, all found in North Carolina. Unfortunately, Brimleyana is not the most widely distributed journal, so that may be beyond the scope of things at this time. J. Spencer (talk) 05:12, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

For the first thing you brought up, the source only says "... the dinosaur is thought to have displayed good mothering, as one of the only dinosaur species that stayed near its nest. That is why the new exhibit is displayed with a nest full of eggs ..." so I added a little more saying that it is a characteristic of hadrosaurs in general. For the second point, I've been under the impression that Parrosaurus is the same as Hypsibema, but I'm not close to a dinosaur expert. Gilmore's brief announcement in the Journal of Paleontology doesn't provide a reason for why he picked Parrosaurus, at any rate, so I don't know. I've been trying to view a copy of the Brimleyana article because it kept popping up in my research, but short of visiting North Carolina or buying a copy of it online, I'm out of luck. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 21:33, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Taxonomically, it's been generally accepted since Baird and Horner that Parrosaurus is a synonym of Hypsibema. Holtz let them stand apart in the latest update to the appendix to his encyclopedia, as did the authors of the hadrosaurid chapter of The Dinosauria II, although in that case as "Neosaurus" missouriensis (The Dinosauria series always lists dubious species under the first name used, so the authors are probably not trying to make a statement). Hypsibema is a much older name, from 1869, so if it is the same as Parrosaurus, it would definitely have priority. Gilmore probably didn't think to compare them because he thought Parrosaurus was a sauropod. The more interesting question is on what grounds Baird and Horner decided they were the same, but as you note, getting ahold of that paper is a chore. J. Spencer (talk) 01:23, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Hypsibema missouriensis/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: J. Spencer (talk) 02:43, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

GA review (see here for criteria)

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I think that this is worthy to be a GA. The only concern I have is the referencing (see below)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   I note one redirect to a disambiguation page (Serration), but given the choices on that page, I think it can stay.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   I have some concerns about linkrot, given how many of the sources are online newspaper articles. There's already a redirection of 7 ("Jetton throws party") to http://midwestdemocracyproject.org/blogs/entries/jetton-throws-party-for-fossil-but-could-it-offend-his-base/. Perhaps some of them could be consolidated. For example, citations 12 ("Bush strikes out") and 20 ("Dinochecker") are not used on their own, but with one or two other references; they could potentially be eliminated. Having said that, I don't foresee much trouble with controversy here (unless someone tries to bring back Parrosaurus), and this is mostly a point I'd like to bring up rather than a deep structural issue. b changed to aye, 01:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   I'd like some dialogue on 2b. Otherwise, everything else looks good, and I'd be happy to mark it for GA. The only other thing I can think of is that blasted Brimleyana article I mentioned on the talk page, which would mostly have the effect of perhaps adding a sentence or two in "Identification". changed to aye, 01:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• I'll take a look soon, I'm also hoping to find a user with access to Brimleyana via this or this. Thanks, /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 17:03, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

• "Serrated" link changed to a wiktionary link instead; seems more appropriate. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 17:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
• I'm adding archive URLs for all the potentially changing web links. Hopefully this will eliminate any linkrot issues in the future. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 18:09, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I made a few edits just now, mostly to consolidate references in a couple of places where it seemed like more were being deployed than necessary. Have a look and let me know what you think. Also, would you like me to wait until you can get ahold of the article? J. Spencer (talk) 03:57, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Your edits are fine; I usually go a little overboard with referencing sometimes, so it's good to have a second look. As for the journal article, I haven't gotten any responses yet so I'm leaning toward don't bother waiting because it could take a while. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 19:26, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

In that case, and speaking from some experience that I'd expect the Baird/Horner article to provide at most additional confirmation of a couple of points, I am happy to promote. Congratulations! J. Spencer (talk) 01:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

article title

Why is the article titled Hypsibema missouriensis instead of just Hypsibema? The genus-only article already exists, but per WP:DINO, technically content should be moved to Hypsibema. The crassicauda content is small enough not to disrupt anything. Even better, what was the reason to include the species? Crimsonraptor | (Contact me) Dumpster dive if you must 02:28, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Given how much of a "life outside of the genus" this species has, I think it's a reasonable exception to standard procedure. We came up with that guideline because most genera were monospecific and of those that weren't, usually there wasn't enough to make a decent article (the two Ornithomimoides species, anyone?). In this case there is clearly enough out there to come up with a good article (in both senses) just on this species. In my view, it would be awkward to include it with the genus. There also is a chance someone makes a case to return it to Parrosaurus, in which case we also have the core of that article. For an alternate example, think if it was accepted that Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus were synonyms. We'd be completely justified in having separate articles for T. rex and T. bataar. J. Spencer (talk) 03:01, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm, I definitely think it should be merged, we don't have a separate article for Velociraptor mongoliensis either (which is about a billion times more notable than this species) just because Velociraptor isn't monotypic anymore. V. osmolskae is represented by about a sentence, whereas all the rest of the article is about V mongoliensis, but this isn't a problem. Hypsibema itself is a stub, so size and length isn't an issue here (as it would be in a potential Tarbosaurus/Tyrannosaurus merge, which is a bad analogy to this, since Hypsibema crassicauda doesn't even have an article, and most likely never will). Not to be a drama queen or anything, but keeping this article separate would set a precedent which would justify separating the Triceratops, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, and Apatosaurus species from their genus, just to mention a few, all which are also much more well known than this. It'll be total chaos with all these redundant articles. FunkMonk (talk) 18:52, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

This article would be simply Parrosaurus if Baird and Horner hadn't decided it was synonymous with Hypsibema on the generic level, and nobody would have any problems with this article. Simple twist of fate. WP:DINO went to generic over specific in recognition of the fact that traditional usage in reptile paleontology preferred the genus to the species. This has left the majority of dinosaur "species" redundant with their genera, or as a DML poster points out, uninomials that happen to include a space. In this case, there was plenty to write about Hypsibema missouriensis that was not redundant with the genus; after all, the legislation was specifically about the species. H. missouriensis lucked out by being historically distinct from Hypsibema and by being the only dinosaur from Missouri, which made it ripe for the local pride/legislative efforts. Why not make H. missouriensis the standard? "Articles should not be written on individual species unless the article is comparable to H. missouriensis". If you could write an article on Apatosaurus louisae or Diplodocus carnegiei that is not largely a duplication of the genera, I'd be all for it (you could potentially with D. carnegiei, because of the distribution of casts). J. Spencer (talk) 01:36, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Seems like it's just a matter of taste then. I personally think any article on fossil "species" should be merged to the genus level, since there really isn't any unique information about each, other than location data and description of slight morphological variation (the rest would be popular culture dreck), if this article and the one about the other species were to be expanded to for example GA, all other information would just be duplicated. So better keep it one place so that there can be gathered enough info in one place to make one interesting article, instead of two almost identical ones with slight variation. Otherwise, why not make an article for every single notable specimen of dinosaur? In theory, H. missouriensis could be synonymous with H. crassicauda, what would be done in such a case? By the way, is a single paper even enough to base an article move on? Has the synonymy been supported elsewhere? FunkMonk (talk) 03:05, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not advocating articles for specimens, although technically speaking, because most dinosaurs are only known from one specimen, most of our articles are already for notable specimens (notable in the sense that they are holotypes and happen to have binomials attached to them). Furthermore, we *do* have articles for several specimens, almost exclusively tyrannosaurs, although that might be other peoples' tyranno-love talking ;). I do think that if you can get a GA-type article out of a species, it probably warrants its own article. How many would that cover? Maybe Diplodocus carnegiei, maybe Iguanodon bernissartensis (although I'm not touching Iguanodon after its disintegration), maybe cases where it's "universally" agreed that the species has no business being in the genus but no one's gotten around to renaming it (such as "Dilophosaurus" sinensis). Hypsibema missouriensis is in a unique situation: its own genus for decades, put into a genus that makes "obscure" look like Tyrannosaurus, and then the focus of events centered specifically on the species. If you merge this article into Hypsibema, you'll get an article about H. missouriensis with a wart called H. crassicauda because there's only about a paragraph's worth of material that can be written about the other guy without getting into minutia (maybe they should make H. crassicauda the state dinosaur of North Carolina; it won't have much competition). I don't think we're hurting the brand any with this article.

I can't think of any other publication that discusses the taxonomy at any length. Both editions of The Dinosauria split out the two species as Hypsibema crassicauda and Neosaurus missouriensis, but that may just be a function of the books' convention of denoting dubious species under their oldest generic name (i.e., I wouldn't consider that as taking a stand). Neither get a page of their own on the Paleobiology Database, but are included with other shifty characters under Hadrosauridae; the conventions of the classification tab indicate they prefer Parrosaurus for this species. The question hasn't been a matter of much priority for researchers, so scientifically speaking the names are in a bit of limbo. Legislatively, Hypsibema missouriensis was used, so I suppose it should remain as such here for the time being because "state dinosaur" is its big claim to fame (note that the Texas state dinosaur has changed from Pleurocoelus to Paluxysaurus, so these things are not permanent). Based on known distribution of dinosaur species in time and space, it's unlikely that the Missouri material is the same species as the North Carolina material (geographic separation, and the Ripley Formation is Maastrichtian while the Black Creek Formation of North Carolina is Campanian). This doesn't rule out generic synonymy, though. J. Spencer (talk) 04:24, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, on the argument of available written material, you said: "If you merge this article into Hypsibema, you'll get an article about H. missouriensis with a wart called H. crassicauda because there's only about a paragraph's worth of material that can be written about the other guy without getting into minutia" As I mentioned before, isn't this exactly the case with the Velociraptor article? Should V. mongoliensis be split form the genus article for this reason? And what would happen to V. osmolskae? I think consistency across articles is important, that's why I keep asking about stuff, not because I particluarly dislike Hypsibema missouriensis or something, heheh. I think the centralised info works well in the Velociraptor article even though the issue is the same as here, the alternative would just be confusing. Other examples that are identical to this could be the Allosaurus article being almost solely about A. fragilis, Edmontosaurus about E. annectens, Plateosaurus about P. engelhardti, and the list could go on. FunkMonk (talk) 19:20, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

There's a similar discussion going on over at Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life#Species_level_categorization_of_extinct_taxa FunkMonk (talk) 21:57, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Do whatever it is that you want. J. Spencer (talk) 01:37, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, if no one agrees with me, I have no problem with the split articles. Just explaining my own view, it's not as if I'd ever go ahead and merge the articles without consensus. Hope you haven't perceived this the wrong way? Sorry if I've come off as aggressive or something, but I have just gotten into a habit of arguing somewhat stubbornly on talk pages, since the other main topic I edit within besides paleontology is the Middle East, heheh... FunkMonk (talk) 01:42, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

No, in all honesty I just realized I was burning a lot of time on this, and I was frustrated about it. J. Spencer (talk) 01:19, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't see why we can't make an exception for this article, as the species is distinct for being the state dinosaur of Missouri, etc. It seems fine as a standalone to me; much of the "Local impact" stuff probably wouldn't be relevant for a Hypsibema article but is useful here. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:14, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

In his updated overview of Late Cretaceous dinosaur faunas from the ancient landmass of Appalachia, Brownstein (2018) has recommended treating Parrosaurus as a distinct genus from Hypsibema due to not just geographic distance from the Hypsibema locality but also recovery of more bones at the Parrosaurus locality, including skull remains. Therefore, it may be prudent to change to article title back to Parrosaurus. Reference: Brownstein, CD. 2018. The biogeography and ecology of the Cretaceous non-avian dinosaurs of Appalachia. Palaeontologia Electronica 21.1.5A: 1-56.2600:8802:2700:7A7:C4D2:7372:1B0F:517A (talk) 19:30, 10 February 2018 (UTC)Vahe Demirjian

I certainly agree with him that Parrosaurus is the better name to use, but I'm not sure if we should jump the gun and immediately swap it when there's only been one paper expressing this opinion in part of a paragraph. Anyone know the precedent on this from past cases? Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 23:25, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Genus articles are routinely spun off based on a single paper, but in this case, due to the historical controversy, it is probably best to wait for at least one consenting view. But in any case, the new paper should be mentioned in the article. Pinging the main writer, J. Spencer. FunkMonk (talk) 20:59, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

I think it probably will revert to Parrosaurus in the next few years, and frankly I still have no idea why it was lumped with Hypsibema in the first place aside from the fact that they were both large hadrosaurs from the eastern US and sometimes lumpers gotta lump. There's no harm in waiting for a more formal proposal, though. J. Spencer (talk) 01:10, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

• Pinging Pvmoutside to notify about the above discussion; the genus and assigned species articles were previously kept separate because it's unlikely they belong in the same genus, and there was more to say about the assigned species. But the recent move has not obliterated most info about the type species, Hypsibema crassicauda, which was covered at the genus article, whose title has now been usurped by the assigned species, "Hypsibema" missouriensis. Not sure what the best outcome is, but either way, the type species needs to be fully covered at the genus article. FunkMonk (talk) 20:18, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

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Requested move 25 November 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. No point in keeping this open, the proper naming scheme is undecided in the real world. No such user (talk) 15:27, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

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Hypsibema missouriensis → Parrosaurus – Several paleontological sources in recent years support moving this species back to Parrosaurus (https://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/dinoappendix/HoltzappendixWinter2010.pdf), (https://palaeo-electronica.org/content/2018/2123-appalachia-biogeography), and recent coverage of a new bone bed of this species also refers to it as "Parrosaurus" based on the paleontologist who excavated it, so even the mainstream news media has also adopted the name. Geekgecko (talk) 17:57, 25 November 2021 (UTC)— Relisting. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 17:05, 3 December 2021 (UTC)— Relisting. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 04:15, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Only one of those is a peer reviewed scientific source, I think we need a wider survey of the literature before we can conclude anything. FunkMonk (talk) 18:10, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

From the past decade, this paper (Relevant quote: "With the exception of Parrosaurus missouriensis from the oxbow-lake environment represented by the Chronister site"), this paper, and this paper (the last two just mention it in a list of hadrosauroids) also make explicit reference to Parrosaurus as a distinct genus, although none of them aside from the the Palaeo-Electronica paper above actually discuss its taxonomic history. In contrast, no explicitly paleontological paper from the past decade seems to treat Hypisbema missouriensis as a valid species (two are about "state geosymbols" and one of them also calls it a meat-eater(?), one's a paper about general karst geology, one's a paper from 1982 that's not been filtered out, and the only paleontological paper on here refutes the classification into Hypsibema). So the few proper scientific references we have to this species from the past decade all classify it in Parrosaurus. Fossilworks (currently down) has also taken it out of Hypsibema and reclassified it into Neosaurus, but that name is known to already be occupied by a defunct species. Also, from what I've seen, Wikipedia generally seems to be more lenient with paleontological taxonomic changes based on single papers (in contrast to taxonomic changes for recent species, which have to be backed up by multiple papers and/or authorities), although it could be a case-by-case basis. Geekgecko (talk) 22:17, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

I would say that the establishment of new extinct taxa at the genus or species levels usually has more sway. In this case, this taxonomic issue involves existing names and Brownstein is the only recent source that treats Parrosaurus with any measure of validity. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 23:45, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

There was an SVP abstract last year with several authors (none of which were Brownstein) using the name Parrosaurus referencing new material indicating it is more distinct than previously thought. Looking at Geekgecko's summary of recent papers mentioning it the way the wind is blowing here seems very clear, this is not just a one off palaeontologist pushing his own personal idea. I think it should be moved. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 01:09, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

But most of this is just mentions in passing or in news media, not studies focused on the validity of the genus. But I agree, when that bone-bed paper is published, which we can expect focuses specifically on this issue, there will be solid ground for moving. FunkMonk (talk) 15:13, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

It's worth noting that while obviously not a scientific source, the Missouri state government website has already reclassified the species as Parrosaurus and specifically cites Brownstein's 2018 paper for this, meaning that technically, the taxonomic review of H. missouriense has already been done by Brownstein. I guess we can wait for the future bone bed paper, but I don't exactly see why we can't just change it now based on the single peer-reviewed study we already have, given that Wikipedia's rules for taxonomic changes seem to be much looser for fossil taxa than for modern taxa (for an example, 'Platypterygius' sachicarum was reclassified into Kyhytysuka a few days ago based on a single recent paper).Geekgecko (talk) 01:35, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

That's a little different. "P." sachicarum was a clearly valid species which happened to be part of Platypterygius (widely known to be a wastebasket taxon), and there was already a line of literature which considered "P." sachicarum as possibly distinct (cf. [1] [2]). Here, the literature supporting the inherent validity of "Parrosaurus" is limited to one published author and one unpublished abstract. This strikes me as a case of too soon; I agree with FunkMonk that a move (or a change in article content, as has been recently done) would be premature until the publication of the abstract. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 05:23, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Also, abstracts don't really count in Academia, and we can't use them as basis for decisions like this here. We have to forget about the abstract here I think. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 09:26, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose Too soon, when the paper is out, we can then consider to make taxonomic changes, there's simply not enough to go on at the moment. Hemiauchenia (talk) 07:29, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

• Quite frankly the original synonymization by Baird and Horner is pretty flimsy, not dissimilar from "let's put every Wealden sauropod in Pelorosaurus" (it doesn't help that the only overlapping material is a single partial caudal in Cope's grab-bag type of H. crassicauda). It's a classic case of simple taxonomic inertia. People have not been jumping over themselves to review the question of whether one historically marginal taxon belongs in another historically marginal taxon. It's only come up again recently. Whether or not you choose to rename this article now, probably in the next few years there will be an actual paper that does it. J. Spencer (talk) 16:37, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there's a definite "no" vote here regardless, "not now" seems to be the consensus. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 20:35, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

It could of course also be argued that it is inevitable it will be moved to Parrosaurus eventually. But on the other hand, we also assumed for a long time that Anatosaurus would be revived for Edmontosaurus annectens, but that doesn't seem to be a thing anymore... Very different situation, of course. And how certain is the identification of that new bonebed? Spiclypeus was long informally regarded as a more complete Ceratops, but that of course also changed. FunkMonk (talk) 14:22, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.