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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Dermotherium/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Karanacs 22:23, 27 September 2011 [1].

Dermotherium edit

Dermotherium (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Ucucha (talk) 16:47, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the closest living relatives of primates are the colugos, two species of gliders from the forests of Southeast Asia. Unfortunately, they also have one of the poorest fossil records of all mammalian orders—the subject of this article, Dermotherium, is the only unambiguous fossil colugo that has ever been described. It is known from a handful of teeth and pieces of jaw from 25–35 million year old fossil sites in southern Asia. This article received a GA review by J Milburn and I hope your reviews will find that it's up to standards. Ucucha (talk) 16:47, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source reviews - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:23, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Be consistent in whether initials are spaced or unspaced
  • Be consistent in whether ISBNs are hyphenated or unhyphenated
  • Why "Baltimore" for Silcox and Ungar but "Baltimore, Maryland" for Stafford?
  • Johns Hopkins University Press or The Johns Hopkins University Press? Nikkimaria (talk) 17:23, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • All these are fixed. Thanks for the check. Ucucha (talk) 20:11, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Comments predictably few problems, but equally predictable nitpicks Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:54, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Known" occurs thrice in second sentence
  • All fossil sites where Dermotherium has been found probably developed in forested environments and Dermotherium was... — Dermotherium treated as if a single species, reads oddly to me
  • I think it's not too unusual in paleontology to have something like that. Do you think it's a big problem? I could write around it with something like "both species of Dermotherium", but that would become awkward.
  • (order Dermoptera; family Cynocephalidae) — not sure what this adds, it's in the taxobox, and both taxons redirect to colugo anyway
  • placental — link?
  • Added.
  • A highly technical review of dentition makes up two-thirds of the description, I wonder if that's disproportionate?
  • Virtually all we know of this animal is from the dentition, so I don't think describing it in detail is disproportionate. Other FAs like Seorsumuscardinus are similar in this respect. Ucucha (talk) 13:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the review, I appreciate it—and I'm sorry for the delay in responding. Ucucha (talk) 13:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No problem, happy with changes, supporting above now Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:55, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have much to say in addition to my comments at GAC, I've got to second Jim's concerns about "All fossil sites where Dermotherium has been found". I think I mentioned it in my GA review- how about "All fossil sites where Dermotherium specimens have been found" or something? I'm happy to defer to you if this is common in paleontology, but it reads oddly to me. There are other examples, including "Dermotherium was probably a forest dweller". J Milburn (talk) 18:03, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I've reworded the offending sentences. Ucucha (talk) 00:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I'm happy that this is FA status. Please don't take this in the wrong way- I find the details of the dentures very dull, but I appreciate that they are absolutely essential to the article. The writing, sourcing and images are all solid, and the article covers all the bases. I'm confident that this is an accurate summary of all that is known about these animals. J Milburn (talk) 23:55, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support - a few minor comments, but nothing that detracts from my overall support:

  • Lead, "but also shares similarities with both in a mosaic pattern." I have no idea what this means, and the words "mosaic pattern" appear nowhere else in the article.
    • Reworded this sentence. Ucucha (talk) 22:14, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with J Milburn that the discussion of the teeth is quite dull, but I also think that the length and detail are necessary given that the species are only known from their teeth and jaw fragments. I would be very suspicious if the sources started hypothesizing many other physical features based on a few molars :)
  • Range and ecology, "the carnivoran Chaprongictis phetchaburiensis, the lipotyphlan Siamosorex debonisi," Could we link "lipotyphlan", and I (and I'm guessing most other non-biologists) don't know what it means. Also, by "carnivoran" do you just mean that it eats meat? It seems rather odd to identify this species based on its diet when the rest of the species in the list are identified based on their general place among other species (rodent, rhinoceros, etc).
    • I linked both lipotyphlan and carnivoran. The latter refers not to the diet, but to the order Carnivora; it's a different term than "carnivore". Lipotyphla is the order of moles, shrews, hedgehogs, and friends, but Siamosorex belongs to an extinct family that no reader is likely to have ever heard of. Ucucha (talk) 22:14, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Ah, right. Completely missed the distinction between carnivoran and carnivorous. Well, you learn (or remember something that you probably learned a decade ago in school) every day!
  • There are a lot of red links in the Range and ecology section. Are all of these going to have their own article at some point, or are there articles that they could be redirected to in the mean-time?
    • The taxonomic ones certainly deserve their own articles (at least at the genus level). I'm not as sure about the geographical and geological ones, but remember that they are all in areas of the world where Wikipedia's coverage is very spotty. Ucucha (talk) 22:14, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A nice little article. It's amazing to me how much scientists can tell from just a few teeth and bone fragments! Dana boomer (talk) 17:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review and support! Ucucha (talk) 22:14, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the changes. Everything looks good, so just reaffirming my support given above. Dana boomer (talk) 13:59, 20 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment just a small technical question, a number of refs are re-used, but re-defined each time here, e.g. refs 16, 18 and 19 point at fig 4, refs 25, 28 and 29 point at fig 6. Is there a reason not to "re-use" these references since they appear identical to the reader? Another tiny thing, fourth of the "literature cited" has a page number of 5851, shouldn't that really be 5,851? And the penultimate of those "cites" has pp. for a single page, is that implying your using the whole source which has that many pages? Seems at odds with the other refs in that section. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:20, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the check. As for the first one, that is a shortcoming in Template:Sfn that I hadn't noticed; I'll see what I can do to fix it. WP:MOSNUM says that we can choose whether or not to put commas in four-digit numbers; it would look strange to me to put commas in an issue number. Yes, the 304 in Ungar's book is meant to be the number of pages in the whole book (the page cited is listed in the specific ref). It's the only full book, as opposed to a journal article or chapter, that is cited in the article, so there's not much to be at odds with. Ucucha (talk) 16:26, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, no problem. I'm doing my best to learn some of the technical aspects of FAC to see what you experts expect so that I can read some if it across to FLC. Your patience and helpful response is much appreciated. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:09, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The issue with Sfn has now been fixed; thanks for bringing it up. Ucucha (talk) 20:25, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent. Thanks for your diligence. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:10, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Spotcheck: "Peigné et al. 2009" contains the material sourced to it in both footnotes, reliably, with no plagiarism or close paraphrasing. – Quadell (talk) 15:19, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Spotcheck: "Stafford & Szalay 2000" contains the material sourced to it. But is the DOI correct? It isn't found in the Handle System. – Quadell (talk) 15:19, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for the checks. < and > signs confuse the DOI tools; I think I've fixed the issue. Ucucha (talk) 15:28, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]


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