Talk:List of Psittacosaurus species

Good Article candidate

I don't personally like the excessive use of bone descriptions, but I can't see how you'd do it otherwise.

Please add and wikilinke American vertebrate paleontologist to Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1923. Rename this paragraph type specimen, and, in general with scientific articles, the first time you mention the type specimen, particularly if it is a paragraph about it, and the lead paragraph of the section, spell out the genus in full.

"Skulls of P. mongoliensis are flat on top, especially over the back of the skull, with a triangular depression, or fossa, on the outside surface of the maxilla (an upper jaw bone)."

Does this fossa have a particular name, and can you link to that article?

Don't use "junior synonym" without first defining it, and try to avoid it thereafter, or at least make reference to it having been used before (like blah blah, this species is considered a junior synonym).

Correct these issues, then put a note on my talk page. The article meets GA criteria for what it is, a list of the species, and brief descriptions.

KP Botany 05:24, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Good Article Reassessment

As an article on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force/Sweeps worklist list, I am reviewing it to see if the article maintains Good Article status. Looking at the article, it looks more like a list than an article. Because of this, I am removing the article's GA-status. GamerPro64 (talk) 22:14, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

No suggestions as to restoring the previous status? It never seemed like more or less of a list than the next guy, although the topic certainly lends it to organization in discrete chunks. (humorously enough, trying that random link got me List of Norwegian monarchs on the first try) J. Spencer (talk) 00:40, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

One way to improve the article is by looking here. Also, some of the sections need to be expanded and why are there individual pictures of all of the dinosaurs when File:Psittacosaurus all BW.png has all eight pictures? They should probably be removed. 01:58, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

It's much nicer and informative to see several large images than a composite of several small ones, especially when there are few or no images to replace them. de Bivort 06:45, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I've replaced duplicate images where alternates couod be found. If one wants to see the larger heads, just click on the compilation image for full size. FunkMonk (talk) 16:56, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Psittacosaurus sibiricus, new genus?

Has it occurred to anyone that P. sibiricus looks so different from anything that is a Psittacosaurus and should be in its own genus. According to Thomas Holtz that's what it should be, also me, I know I'm a lumper but seriously I wont even go that low. I bet one day its going to get realized that it was completely different animal like how Dilophosaurus was once considered Megalosaurus. Just look to the right to see how different it is compared to other members of Psittacosaurus. DeinonychusDinosaur999 (talk) 18:46, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

The word "genus" has no meaning. It is whatever you want it to be. As for Wikipedia, we only report what's in the scientific literature, so it will stay Psittacosaurus until someone classifies it otherwise. But unless it turns out to be more closely related to, say, Hongshanosaurus than to other Psittacosaurus species, I doubt that will happen. People rarely create new genera based only on different morphology these days. MMartyniuk (talk) 23:45, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Holtz's book was several years ago; since then there have been studies that incorporate P. sibiricus and find it nested within Psittacosaurus', most recently Paul Sereno in the 2010 ceratopsian volume (which also sinks Hongshanosaurus, but the two issues are not connected). J. Spencer (talk) 01:36, 19 July 2010 (UTC)