Talk:Macroraptorial sperm whale/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Jens Lallensack (talk · contribs) 09:41, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Before I start, I would like to clarify a fundamental question: Why is a separate article warranted here for a non-monophyletic group, wouldn't it be better to simply incorporate the info in Physeteroidea, where you would search for it? This seems to be excessive content splitting. The standard way to organize content would be to not to start splitting before the respective section in the parent article has grown too long, which is not the case here.

Furthermore, the "macroraptorial sperm whale" appears to be descriptive rather than a fixed term. Your source [1] even calls them differently (megaraptorial sperm whale). These do not appear to be established terms either, as Google Scholar gives merely two papers mentioning the term, which has not been properly defined anywhere. Establishing a separate article for the term appears to be close to WP:OR. If you do not have strong arguments for keeping this as a separate article, I would strongly suggest to make it a redirect to Physeteroidea and to include the info there. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 09:41, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

You could argue this counts as an "ecomorph" or something like that, but since it is so short, I'd also agree with a merge. FunkMonk (talk) 11:38, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

I have to partly correct myself, there are in fact more sources than I initially found, and my critique probably too harsh. A merge is something to think about, but not a clear case. Will start review soon. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 13:42, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

• Connecting to my statement above, I really would like to see a sentence about the term "macroraptorial sperm whale" itself, with sources. The source should make clear that this is not simply an ad hoc term. To explain my point, lets choose another, more unambiguous ad hoc term, such as "long-necked sauropod" (a descriptive term for sauropods with an especially long neck). A Google Scholar search [1] gives plenty of papers using it. Yet, it is only a meaningless ad hoc term, as there are plenty (we could take, for example, "long-tailed sauropod", to have an even more ludicrous example). I think you would agree that such terms can not have their own Wikipedia article (that would be, in fact, OR). Hope you can follow me until this point. Maybe the term "Megaraptorial sperm whale" is different and in fact a well-defined, established term (is it?), but the article has to demonstrate this. If this cannot be demonstrated, it has to be merged, in my opinion. If it can, I would leave the choice to you.

Well the title of ref no. 3 is "Macroraptorial Sperm Whales (Cetacea, Odontoceti, Physeteroidea) from the Miocene of Peru" and the article keeps using the phrase "macroraptorial sperm whale" or, every now and then, "macroraptorial physeteroid." It's like the term "river dolphin" from what I gather. It's not exactly a taxon and none of the sources use "ecomorph"   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:10, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

There are several papers having "long-necked sauropod" in the title; what is the difference? I do not think "macroraptorial sperm whale" is an established term. In the overview volume "Cetacean Paleobiology" from 2016 it is not even mentioned. What are the arguments for keeping it as an separate article? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 16:56, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

From what the sources say, Physeteroidea is broken up into 3 main groups: Physeteridae, Kogiidae, and stem physeteroids. Within the stem physeteroids there's a distinct (albeit paraphyletic) clade with the 4 mentioned genera dubbed the macroraptorial sperm whales or macroraptorial stem physeteroids or macroraptorial physeteroids. That is to say they, "are a fossil stem group of hyper-predatory sperm whales comprising four whale genera"   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  18:46, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Do you have a source that calls them a "group"? If yes, that would be something to cite when you give the definition. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:06, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

would clade work?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  23:52, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

No, since clades are always monophyletic. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 06:31, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Looks like we can't reach agreement here. Would you like me to ask for second opinion? Otherwise I would fail it now; I do not like to pass it as long as I think the topic might be more of WP:Synth than is allowed. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:45, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Sorry I wrote this a while back so it wasn’t fresh in my mind. When I said they’re paraphyletic, I was just being dumb. The only thing paraphyletic here in this article is Hoplocetinae, and the article and cladogram reflect this already. The source I mentioned above specifically uses the word clade when describing macroraptorials. Should I change group to clade?  User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  20:18, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

In the Lambert 2017 source? I don't find it. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:38, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

”At the next branching among stem physeteroids, a clade including Acrophyseter, Brygmophyseter, and Zygophyseter is recovered” and then it later goes off about how Livyatan fits   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  20:56, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

• The macroraptorial sperm whales are a fossil stem group of hyper-predatory sperm whales comprising four whale genera – there is only one stem group leading to the recent sperm whale. Should therefore read like "belong to the fossil stem group of today's sperm whales" or similar.

I'm not sure what the issue is here. Both statements say they're sperm whales, and it's not like there needs to be a clarification that they're related to the modern sperm whales. The second statement seems to say that modern sperm whales are also a fossil stem group   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:10, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Stem groups are not extant, per definition. Do you understand what a stem group is? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 16:56, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Does the average reader know what a stem group is or be invested enough to figure it out? Stem is just the fancy way of saying primitive. Also, I'm not entirely sure what changed in the second version   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  18:46, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

It does not matter what the average reader knows and what not, what matters is that your usage of the term is incorrect. Read the corresponding Wikipedia article, please. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:06, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

I still don’t understand the problem here, why do we have to emphasize stem group of today’s sperm whales (as opposed to Pleistocene sperm whales)?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:26, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

The stem group of sperm whales are all taxa outside of the clade formed by the least common ancestor of the living sperm whales and all descendants of that ancestor. That's why sperm whales only have one stem group. And macroraptorials are not this stem group, but only part of it. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:45, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I changed it to, “...are a fossil group of hyper-predatory stem sperm whales”   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:16, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

You need to add that the group is "paraphyletic", otherwise it is misleading. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:46, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Done   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  00:50, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

• link spermaceti organ

Already linked in Taxonomy   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:10, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

• The organ may also serve several other functions, such as vocalizing, acoustic stunning of prey, head-butting between males, ramming into prey, or buoyancy control by increasing or decreasing the temperature of the wax to change the density and weight. – This would mean it had all of these functions. I rather think that these all are separate hypotheses and we don't really know. The spermaceti organ article states that the buoyancy hypothesis has come out of favor.

Well the ref spermaceti organ cites comes from 2003 whereas the one here from 2010, and all of them could conceivably be contested because they are all just theories, so I added "Speculatively" and "secondary function" to clarify each is separate   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:10, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

• remove the stub banner. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:30, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

I keep forgetting about those   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:10, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

• Is there anything else left?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:56, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

• I will ask for a second opinion at WP:PALAEO tomorrow, shall I? Since I'm still unsure about the lemma. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:01, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan, but I'm not sure what else the title'd be ("Raptorial sperm whale"? "Macroraptorial stem physteroid"?)   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  01:01, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Alright, I left a request there: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palaeontology#Requesting second opinion on Macroraptorial sperm whale. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:09, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Closing comment: The article appears to present a concept that is not established as such in the scientific literature. The article furthermore does not apply with WP:content fork. See also Discussion here. I strongly advice for merging the article with the main article Physeteroidea. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:30, 2 December 2018 (UTC)