Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palaeontology/Archive 16

Species-level articles

Prompted by Hemiauchenia's recent unilateral attempt to merge Peytoia nathorsti into Peytoia and an off-site discussion with FunkMonk, I think we need to reconsider our policy on species-level articles. I feel that some editors, such as FunkMonk, have come to view the guideline against species-level articles as an end in itself, but I think that it's mostly important as a guideline to cut down on unnecessary permastubs and redundancy. If an article of decent quality can be written on an individual species, I don't see why that should be prevented. Furthermore, genera are a notoriously subjective concept, and I don't believe it is a good idea to rely on them as our primary criterion by which to judge notability. Ornithopsis (talk) 03:50, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

A merge proposal for this specific case is being dicussed at Talk:Peytoia#Merge_species_here. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:25, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

We need some sort of standard criteria for when the cut-off point should be for creating species articles, and I think the current guidelines[1] do a good job of that. In short, split prehistoric species off when the genus article gets too long, to avoid short, repetitive articles that only give us more bookkeeping to do. I'm far from the only one with this opinion, I believe this[2] was the last discussion of the issue, and here is an older[3] one. FunkMonk (talk) 01:53, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

I am aware that you are not the only one to hold to that opinion, but you're one of its most vocal advocates, in my experience. You will also note that I am not alone in my opinion, either, given that this is a recurring discussion. I do not disagree that there has to be some standard to avoid a proliferation of permastub articles, but I think that setting it at the level of only being allowed if the genus would be too long otherwise is overly restrictive. I, personally, find that several short articles are easier to read, easier to write, and easier to organize than a single sprawling article that has to interweave information on several different species, even if it is not of truly excessive length. Not only are species articles easier to write than genus articles, but I believe that writing quality genus articles would be facilitated by the creation of more tractable species articles, from which the genus could be summarized. As such, my personal experience is that the rule actually makes the work harder, not easier—at least, often enough to be an issue. Furthermore, pertinent species-level information often gets omitted from genus-level articles—for crying out loud, the Triceratops article still barely mentions any of the differences between the two species! That rather important piece of information would almost certainly be on Wikipedia by now if there were species-level articles on the two. Finally, I think it's absurd that the onus is almost entirely on the person who wants to write an article on a valid species to justify themselves, while the position that such articles are not necessary is treated as virtually self-evident. In what other subject area can a topic of dozens of academic papers be so easily dismissed as non-notable? Ornithopsis (talk) 03:44, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Personally, I go off criteria 2–4 at WP:MERGEREASON (Overlap, Short text, and Context). Let's take Thylacoleo whose species articles I just recently merged. A lot about what can be inferred about either T. crassidentatus or T. hilli, anatomically or behaviorally, is going to come from the type species T. carnifex; i. e., criteria 3 Context. If we exclude all context inferred from T. carnifex, then we will be met by criteria 2 Short text. Also because of this, the Thylacoleo article discussed almost only the most completely known member, T. carnifex, which hits criteria 1 Overlap. An exception would be if one of the species is extant, and all text on paleo species will understandably be marginalized if we just merged everything. For example, if all the Orcinus species were merged into the genus article, we couldn't reasonably go into the level detail into the species Orcinus citoniensis as the current separate article does, as almost all of the genus article (if orca was not its own page) would have to deal with the much more notable extant orca. If each or at least a few of the species can be talked about without too much aside to the others, for example, Mammuthus, then none of the merge criteria are met, and each species should be its own article. Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 00:18, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

I also agree with the policy of keeping articles at the genus-level for fossil species, for much the same reasons as have been stated above (and which I feel no need to repeat). Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 00:28, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Coming off the heels of the Titus merge discussion, I find my opinion closest to Dunkleosteus77. I think the default should be to treat everything at the genus article, except in cases where the material would be better served by a distinct article. I think the phenomenon described above is the norm: typically what can be said of the type species can also be said of the genus. However, with lumped species I think it will depend on how distinct the history is from the genus and the type species. I think Edmontosaurus annectens should be a separate article, as should Peytoia infercambriensis, but I think Peytoia nathorsti should be merged. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 00:57, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

I would say that if we can make the case that 1 species out of a genus has enough unique information to split off, then the same case can be made for the other species. If other species are not as well known, then the genus article will predominantly deal with the one species we split off, and we run back to Overlap. Let's take Edmontosaurus; if we can say that a lot is known about specifically E. annectans to split off, but the same is not true for E. regalis, then wouldn't Edmontosaurus mainly talk about E. annectans anyways? Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 01:44, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

I feel like summary style can get around this reasonably well. In the Edmontosaurus case, the genus article might deal more with unifying traits, and then how E. regalis differs from E. annectens. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 02:25, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

But if E. annectens is distinct enough from E. regalis to be a separate article, then E. regalis is distinct enough from E. annectens to be a separate article, so why would only one of them get an article? Or why did you not have E. regalis be its own article too? Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 21:26, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Because regalis is the type species? regalis is the only constant part of Edmontosaurus. Everything that may or may not belong to Edmontosaurus (including annectens) is always studied in reference to regalis. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 21:34, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

I think the only case where I support separate species articles is where there is a historic precedence to have it in a separate genus, and a modern indication that the split *could* be revived. This is the case for E. annectens, Coelophysis rhodesiensis, Coelophysis kayentakatae etc, and I follow it because it allows for easier future-proofing in case of revised taxonomy, so a new article can easily be moved to and the content of the parent genus article does not need as much revisions to remove content that is no longer within it. In all other situations I believe that the overlap of content between the genus and species is sufficient to retain only one article. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 13:19, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

I don't entirely disagree with the logic for species articles often being unnecessary. However, I am on Ornithopsis' side in that I do not think there should be a ruling or guideline. It should be open for deciding on a case by case basis - if we decide most case's don't warrant it, cool, nothing actually changes anyways, no harm done. But now n a case where it is a good idea and allows better coverage of the topic, we don't have to have this same discussion every time. I think the examples cited by Lythronax are good examples of when it's justified, and the fact such cases exists means I think the ruling as some kind of absolute we follow so closely should be rethought. LittleLazyLass (Talk | Contributions) 01:38, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

The thing with the guideline is that it allows us to easily speedy-merge species articles that does not comply with the guidelines. It's saving the time of a merge discussion that might even get coopted by one or the other ARS member, or would not receive enough attention to be carried to completion. Basically, avoiding too much bureaucracy. Larrayal (talk) 16:56, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

The ARS largely only notices articles that are brought to AfD first. There are not many ARS editors that stalk our talk pages, and the ones that do seem content with making arguments based on GNG rather than the more relevant PAGEDECIDE. I would argue that the inflexibility is not worth it. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 17:13, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

And that is precisely one of the reasons why I object to this guideline. I think it's a bad thing that this policy essentially grants blanket permission for editors to merge a broad class of articles without seeking a consensus. Ornithopsis (talk) 17:33, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

I've recently merged Neochoerus aesopi into Neochoerus but then Themanguything reverted my merge because he says that "its size, temporal range is stated so there is enough". Magnatyrannus (talk | contribs) 19:22, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

You didn't merge it, you redirected it. Neochoerus is still a stub. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 20:29, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

For recent taxa, the species level approach is universally accepted. For palaeotaxa, the shift to the genus as a basis has served us very well so far, for reasons already elaborated above. We need some basis to play off from. Punting a given decision into the court of "everything on a case by case basis" is a recipe for lots and lots of avoidable busywork and back-and-forth (not least because those editors who produce lots of stubs are generally among the least reasonable when it comes to merging). I feel that a starting point of genus, with expansion into species level if necessary, both agrees with the status quo and makes sense content-wise. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:42, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

I'll admit that deciding everything on a case-by-case basis would cause too many repetitive discussions. However, I still believe that only allowing separate species articles if the genus article would be unmanageably long otherwise is too strict a criterion, and inhibits our ability to effectively cover individual species. As such, I would like to propose this as a compromise:

Fossil species articles are not warranted (and may be speedily merged) if they meet either of the following criteria:

• The article is stub-length, regardless of content.
• The article, regardless of length, is composed almost entirely of content in the following categories:
  • Basic, formulaic facts such as authorship, date, and etymology of the name, geographic and stratigraphic distribution, or known material.
  • Diagnostic characters that require the context of other species in the genus to be meaningful.
  • Information that is equally true of all species of the genus.
  • Unencyclopedic trivia.

Species articles that are more substantial than that should be decided on a case-by-case basis, with WP:MERGEREASON and WP:NOTMERGE in mind.

How does that sound? I think that this proposal would be sufficient to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy regarding the most clearly superfluous species articles, while still allowing the leeway that I and LittleLazyLass think is needed. Ornithopsis (talk) 00:38, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree with these guidelines, although as noted above I would also consider type species articles for speedy merging. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 02:47, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

I disagree with that. Whether something is the type species or not only really matters if the genus is likely to be split, and in many cases, it is not the type species that makes up the main basis of our knowledge of the genus (e.g. Apatosaurus, Psittacosaurus, and Ornithomimus). If an article of reasonable length and depth of content can be written on a type species, I think it should be given a fair chance. Remember, not everyone is a dinosaur paleontologist who thinks that monotypic genera are the end goal of taxonomy. I'm not saying that something being the type species should not be considered as a factor in merge discussions at all, but I am opposed to it being regarded as a sufficient condition for speedy merging. Ornithopsis (talk) 02:13, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

I think that does cover those (frequent) cases for which the merge-to-genus approach was meant - sounds good to me. No opinion on the type species cases, I have little experience with those. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 11:19, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Palaeocritti, Nobu Tamura's personal website

Palaeocritti[4] is a website operated by Nobu Tamura. However, he is a paleoartist and not a paleontologist, so I doubt the reliability of this website. For example, this has already been fixed by me, but article Chondrenchelys was referred this website and say that is as long as 1 m[5], even though it's only 18.5 cm. To make matters worse, this website has an old url, "http://www.palaeocritti.com/", which multiple articles used this url as a reference. This url is apparently broken links, and when I checked it using archive.org, it may be redirected to "Dinosaurs --Pictures and Facts[6]", which have full of copyvio reconstructions, many of them are outdated or inaccurate and even some are from games like ARK. Moreover, some articles, such as Lanthanosuchus, used this website as a reference without the name of "Palaeocritti", so it would be quite difficult to find all of them... Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 12:13, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

I resume this discussion again. That's because I am able to confirm that this website actually redirected to "Dinosaurs --Pictures and Facts" now. See this link[7] for example, it is originally link for Nobu's website of Lanthanosuchus but it redirects into "pictures and facts" Brontosaurus now. All this website should be removed from reference, or at least should be repleced to newer url[8]. At least as far as I can see these pages,[9][10][11] this doesn't make any sense or even be harmful. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 07:06, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Apparently, the bare references added by a user 37.15.199.24 modified by the bot doesn't seem to display the link name correctly. It seems like bot fixed website name after redirect is started. For example, a reference of Sycosaurus shows website "Argentinosaurus - Facts and Pictures" which is really strange. Now I think I am able to search their contributions and fix references, same for other ones from palaeocritti that is easily found by searching. I'd like to replace link to archive or new website, still I am not sure that website is reliable though. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 05:19, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Also this user (contribution) added bare reference and causing redirect issue, I should check as well. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 08:31, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Carboniferous-Earliest Permian Biodiversification Event up for deletion

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Carboniferous-Earliest Permian Biodiversification Event for a detailed rationale. This was previously discussed on the discord. Participate if interested. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:17, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Why don't we just open merge discussions for these instead of AfDs? An AfD guarantees the usual keep voters. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 21:30, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I had a merge discussion open for over a week and nobody responded, see Talk:Carboniferous#Carboniferous-Earliest_Permian_Biodiversification_Event. In hindsight I should've just made a post here advertising it, but whatever. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:38, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

@Anteosaurus magnificus: has asked me [12]. whether or not a paragraph on the CPBE should be included in the Permian article. @FunkMonk: @Lythronaxargestes: thoughts? I think it's kinda undue at the moment because the concept does not have wide recognition in the academic literature, and the supposed event only barely extends into the Permian. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:54, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Agree, too early to spread this everywhere. FunkMonk (talk) 02:24, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Not under a distinct heading, that's for sure. Just looking at that paper, I agree that it's not particularly relevant to the Permian, and shouldn't get much attention other than perhaps a perfunctory note about marine species diversity being high initially in the Permian. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 03:33, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Possible identity of the "Waukesha butterfly animal?"

Hello, last winter I created a page on the Waukesha butterfly animal, an enigmatic arthropod with a bivalved shell found in the Silurian aged Waukesha biota in Wisconsin. Now that article has been redirected to the biota page (kinda my fault, the page was not the longest because of how enigmatic it is). However when I was browsing google scholar I came across a page on the biota that intrigued me. Titled "The First Post-Cambrian Marrellomorph Arthropod from North America" it goes into detail about a new marrellomorph arthropod from the biota. This intrigued me because I did not know there was a marrellomorph from the biota. When I went and looked at it, I was surprised to see that the fossils looked almost identical to the butterfly animal. Both have elongated abdomens and wing-like projections on the sides of their body. Here are links for comparison. Fossiladder13 (talk) 15:03, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Wade-Jones/publication/281441319_The_First_Post-Cambrian_Marrellomorph_Arthropod_from_North_America/links/562e70a508ae518e34837c7a/The-First-Post-Cambrian-Marrellomorph-Arthropod-from-North-America.pdf

https://www.manospondylus.com/2020/04/solved-and-unsolved-fossil-enigmas-part_21.html

Unless the same specific specimens are mentioned, then including this would be WP:OR, best wait and see for when this is actually published in a journal. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:06, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

@Hemiauchenia Ok I will try to see if it references certain specimen names, but should we include a small section of the Waukesha Biota article like "Unnamed marrellomorph"? Fossiladder13 (talk) 17:41, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

• Fossiladder13 the marrellomorph paper should be added to Waukesha biota, but it shouldn't need to be a separate heading, as it is the article does tend to give undo weight to some arthropod taxa while glossing over others.--Kevmin § 18:39, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Scelidotheriidae#Requested move 28 September 2022

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Scelidotheriidae#Requested move 28 September 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. UtherSRG (talk) 01:02, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Notifying of a new Wikiproject: Protista

Greetings wikipalaeontologists, I have recently sent a proposal for a new WikiProject regarding Protista. Some of you may be interested to participate since there are many protists such as foraminiferans and some groups of algae that have thousands of fossil species, and thus belong to your project's scope. If you'd like to support it or participate in it please place your username in the Support list in this page: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals/Protista. Thanks for your participation! Snoteleks (talk) 08:37, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

List of informally named prehistoric archosaurs?

I just noticed the article Upper Shishugou crocodyliform, which seems like something we usually don't want. And now there's also a List of informally named pterosaurs containing only two entries. Could it be time to create an equivalent of the List of informally named dinosaurs just about other archosaurs, or maybe even more inclusive than that? FunkMonk (talk) 14:25, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

I think this just goes to show why we shouldn't handle informally named and unnamed taxa with lists. Do we have to create a list for every clade that includes taxa without formal names that somebody wants to include on Wikipedia? Or should we create one unmanageably sprawling list of prehistoric species without formal names? Or should we simply say that dinosaurs are a special case, and other taxa without formal scientific names automatically shouldn't be mentioned on Wikipedia at all, no matter how notable? As I have expressed on the informally named dinosaurs talk page, the list's standard of inclusion is too low, and as such, the list includes a lot of unencyclopedic content. I would rather have several well-sourced standalone articles on the most notable taxa without formal names than an indiscriminate list. Ornithopsis (talk) 17:28, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Hadongsuchus is example of unnamed pseudosuchian as well I remember. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 16:13, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Hagfish first appearance

Does someone have a good source for first appearance of Myxinidae? Box date is being changed from one unsourced period to another, and I couldn't find anything definite on the quick. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:51, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@Elmidae: The most recent relevant paper is https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1814794116 Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:08, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Cheers. SoO Fig. 3 seems to be what the phylogenetic diagram in our article is based on. From that it looks that the event in question is the split hagfish - lampreys, which would put it in the Ordovician. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:29, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I would personally use either Carboniferous or Cretaceous, as these are the first representatives of the stem and crown-group, respectively. Generally fossilranges are from first appearance, not when they have been projected to diverge from their closest relatives. Otherwise we would put "Carboniferous-Recent" on flowering plants, which would obviously be silly. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:40, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

List of genera from the Cambrian Period

This article looks like full of problems. Main editor probably not good at paleontology, and not referring paper but just copied information from other articles including outdated ones. That resulted wrong information such as Cheirurus from Cambrian. There is no uniformity in the writing style, and the flaws are too obvious, such as mere explanations or starting with "It is", bold or italic or not, and writing Chengjiang and Maotianshan shales separately. Not sure why but write radiodonts as "radiodonte", (P.S. I came to know, editor is French) and calling Opabiniids as radiodonts as well. Most of the references are Mindat, and the citation names are obviously strange, like "A-F, Sinocylindra yunnanensis J. Chen & Erdtmann, 1991, emend.; A,... | Download Scientific Diagram (researchgate.net)". First of all, it is almost impossible to cover the entire Cambrian genera, which can lead to huge page sizes. It goes without saying that this list is actually incomplete. I think this page should be reviewed in some way or removed altogether. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 01:10, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Also, despite of still having amounts of problems, main editor removed warning without discussion.[13] Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 01:16, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

In addition, this user (User:Bestaoui.Mohammed, contribs) adding category "(period name) genus extinctions" to so many articles. That alone may not be a problem, but for creatures that have lived through multiple periods, adding "(period name) genus extinctions" for every period that lived, for example Byronia have categories "Cambrian genus extinctions", "Ordovician genus extinctions" and "Silurian genus extinctions". This is a clear contradiction: if the genus went extinct in the Cambrian, it could not have survived to the Ordovician or Silurian. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 08:55, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I've been eyeing this article with unease for a while, but thought I'd let the editor try and sort it out as intended first. Doesn't look like it's heading anywhere particularly good though, and will need a complete spelling/phrasing overhaul in any case. Sigh :/ --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:49, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Now this going even worse... this user once moved page into named "List of genera and species extinct from Phanerozoic", and although that move is reverted, they started to add list of Ordovician-Quaternary in one page. It is even nearly impossible to list all the Cambrian genera, of course anyone never able to list up all genera from Paherozoic. Someone should stop them, to tell that is impossible to do. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 02:19, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

If that's the case, then should the article be moved to draftspace? Magnatyrannus (talk | contribs) 02:28, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

This is pretty ridiculous. The article should at least be draftified. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 06:23, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Done. I was bold. It's now at Draft:List of genera from the Cambrian Period, where the article's shortcomings can be addressed by the team here. Firsfron of Ronchester 06:37, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Once again, the title and namespace has been changed. Is there anyone that can fix that?

a Magnatyrannus (talk | contribs) 20:07, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I am truly sorry for all the problems I have caused. I just wanted to let people know about most of the animal and plant species discovered in paleontology. I'm an avid paleontologist, I was just tired of finding no list of genera that were discovered during the phanerozoic era. I wanted to do it right. I'm really sorry to have caused you so much trouble. I promise from now on I won't change the name of the pages I create anymore. I'm really sorry! Bestaoui.Mohammed (talk) 09:48, 16 October 2022 (UTC)

The page was briefly moved to Draft space but it's now back in mainspace at List of genera from the Cambrian. Should it be moved back to draft space? If so, some sort of dialog has to take place with the main contributor Bestaoui.Mohammed (talk · contribs). Pichpich (talk) 20:22, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it should be moved back to draftspace. Magnatyrannus (talk | contribs) 20:23, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

At AfD

...aaaand it's now been moved back into mainspace, as such I've nominated it for deletion, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of genera from the Cambrian. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:30, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Paraceratherium size

The source cited for the sentence about the maximum estimate of 15-20 tonnes is incorrectly cited, as far as I'm aware of. Page 106 states:

"Clauss et al. (2003) looked at the nutritional constraints of large body size, particularly in contrasting the relatively efficient foregut-fermenting ruminants (which tend not to grow to huge sizes) versus the inefficient hindgut fermenters like elephants, rhinos and hippos. Based on these constraints, they found that Fortelius and Kapppleman's (1993) estimate of 11-15 tonnes for indricotheres was more consistent with digestive constraints of the higher estimates of 20 tonnes or greater. Thus, we must be careful when quoting old numbers from early authors about the weights of extinct creatures. Indricotheres probably weighed only in the 10-15 tonne range and maxed out at 20 tonnes on the largest individuals. It is very unlikely that there were any in the 30-35 tonne range, as is so often cited."

Clearly it states the weight range at 10-15 tonnes and max at 20 tonnes, not max 15-20 tonnes. Now I think the confusion for max 15-20 tonnes came from the later page which is not cited at those sentences. In page 117 it is stated:

"As we saw in the Granger and Gregory (1935, 1936) reconstruction, this beast was 6 m (18 feet) tall at the shoulder and probably weighed 15-20 tonnes."

But as the pages before states, Donald Prothero is cautionary about using the old study. Also, this featured article states the height of Paraceratherium at 4.8 m which many authors concur, so the 15-20 tonne range may not be a correct wording. How should this be changed or should it be left unchanged? Junsik1223 (talk) 15:36, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

• Junsik1223, first of all, as I and others have told you many times, while your suggestions are usually helpful and well-intention, your implementation of them are most often disruptive in introducing bad writing and multiple edits that muddle up the edit history. For some reason you refuse to even use your sandbox to make finished edits before adding them. Therefore, you need to start to suggest your edits on the talk page of respective articles so others can evaluate the wording and content, because now you're just leaving a huge, messy trail of edits the rest of us have to clean up. Again, you have been told many times by many editors, and if you don't start to cooperate, we will have to involve admins to get this sorted out. As for this specific case, you for some reason removed the page ranges from the citations, something that was specifically asked for during FA review. Edits like that are very disruptive, regardless of your intention, and you should completely refrain from editing featured articles if you can't understand this soon. In this case, it also seems you're interpreting the source, and that has to be discussed before anything is implemented, as it's not necessarily fact. FunkMonk (talk) 10:18, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Felis attica/Pristifelis attica

Hi, I need some help with updating an article on an extinct cat, Felis attica. As stated in the article's current text, a new genus Pristifelis was proposed for the species ten years ago, and as far as I can tell this genus is now generally accepted [14] [15], including by FossilWorks and even other articles on Wikipedia (both those that pipe-link to Felis attica from either "Pristifelis" or "Pristifelis attica" etc, e.g. Felinae, or redlink to "Pristifelis" directly, e.g. List of prehistoric mammals). I would be WP:BOLD and rename+update the article myself, except that I'm not sure what to do with the whole paragraph starting "Around 12 million years ago", since unless I am mistaken it would no longer make sense as it is if the species is no longer considered to belong to Felis at all? Can anyone suggest how to fix or rewrite this particular paragraph? Or should the article itself stay at "Felis attica"? Any other advice here? Monster Iestyn (talk) 21:00, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Felines of the World [16] might be a good source for rewriting this paragraph (i.e. "formerly considered ancestral to Felis, now considered ancestral to Felinae more broadly"). Note, however, that Felines of the World is not an infalliable source given its involvement in our record-breaking Mustelodon hoax. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 21:11, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

I'd recommend moving the article to Pristifelis; that placement does seem to be the current consensus. SilverTiger12 (talk) 22:28, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

@Lythronaxargestes @SilverTiger12 Thank you both, I'll see what I can do then. Even despite the fact it included a long-running Wikipedia hoax, Felines of the World's summary at least does sound correct in this case comparing with the original 2012 article establishing the new genus (as far as I can make sense of its conclusions about it, anyway). I'm glad to know moving to Pristifelis is correct after all too, but then that makes me wonder why the article was not updated years ago... Oh well, here we go then. Monster Iestyn (talk) 00:51, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

The article and mostly everything linking to it has been updated now, though admittedly I'm really not happy with the text I rewrote. Monster Iestyn (talk) 01:38, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Protelytroptera

Hi, can anyone help me figure out what the parent taxon of Protelytroptera should actually be set to in the taxobox? I believe Fossilworks to be unreliable here as a source, as it incorrectly sets Coleopterida as the parent taxon based on data for its synonym Skleroptera. This synonymy is based on [17], which actually suggests that Sephanastus polinae, the only member of the order Skleroptera which was originally proposed in Coleopterida, should not be placed in Coleopterida but instead Protelytroptera. Unfortunately Fossilworks has misinterpreted this as meaning Protelytroptera is now in Coleopterida, for some reason. Meanwhile, some other sources such as Polyneoptera Species File place Protelytroptera under a superorder "Dermapterida" (which Wikipedia does not have a page for yet), while the text of the Protelytroptera article itself suggests a Dermaptera/stem-group taxonomy template should be created. What's the correct thing to do here? Monster Iestyn (talk) 02:51, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

The phylogeny given in this [18] places it nowhere near Coleopterida. I would just set the parent to Neoptera and leave it at that. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:21, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

That phylogeny in Schubnel et al (2019), which looks like the consensus phylogeny in Kjer et al (2016) plus extinct taxa, places Protelytroptera with Zoraptera and Dermaptera, which would be Haplocerata (according to Kjer Fig 5), but we'd need a source saying that. I think we could be a bit more specific than Neoptera and place it in Polyneoptera. The source could be Species File or Arillo & Engel (2006). —  Jts1882 | talk  16:40, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, placing it in just Neoptera is a start at least but didn't feel good enough to me, especially when Schubnel et al (2019) treats Protelytroptera as sister of Dermaptera (as do other articles so I'm aware), while Dermaptera itself is currently placed under Exopterygota in its taxobox (Polyneoptera is not in its hierarchy, notably). I can already see this becoming complicated though. What was not in doubt at all in the first place was that Protelytroptera is not a member of Coleopterida; again, that appears to have been a mistake created by the FossilWorks/Paleobiology Database websites. Monster Iestyn (talk) 16:55, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

I have settled for placing both Protelytroptera and Dermaptera under Polyneoptera in their taxoboxes, based on both Species File and Arillo & Engel (2006); what was odd to me is that Dermaptera is apparently the only insect order placed under Exopterygota on Wikipedia for some reason. Monster Iestyn (talk) 01:31, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Mosasaur taxoboxes are a nightmare

I noticed this while working on Carsosaurus. Numerous taxa within Mosasauridae are inexplicably listed as belonging to Aigialosauridae instead. Strangely enough, my article had the exact opposite problem until I corrected it. An anonymous username, not my real name (talk) 17:54, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

For some reason there was a weird link to Aigialosauridae in in the Mosasauridae taxonomy template. Does the problem still exist? I can take further look later if needed. —  Jts1882 | talk  18:14, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

It appears to be fixed now. Thanks! An anonymous username, not my real name (talk) 18:19, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

However, my change to the Carsosaurus taxobox seems to have been removed. Could me changing it in the first place have caused this? And if so, how do I change only the Carsosaurus taxobox without messing up the others? An anonymous username, not my real name (talk) 18:23, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

• By the way, just noticed the taxobox image in the Carsosaurus article only showed half the image (it was a two page spread[19]), and have combined the two.[20] FunkMonk (talk) 18:44, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! An anonymous username, not my real name (talk) 18:45, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

• @Jts1882:, pinging just in case you didn't see, it appears I do still need your help for the reason above. An anonymous username, not my real name (talk) 21:49, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

I've changed the parent in the Carsosaurus taxonomy template ({{Taxonomy/Carsosaurus}}) and the taxobox now shows family Aigialosauridae

I don't know if it's helpful for the editing you're doing on mososaurs, but I've below is a list of the taxonomy heirarchy currently held in the taxonomy templates.—  Jts1882 | talk  08:36, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Mosasauroidea

Mosasauroidea [7] [6] †Aigialosauridae [familia] [4] [4] †Aigialosaurus [genus] †Carsosaurus [genus] †Opetiosaurus [genus] †Proaigialosaurus [genus] †Eidolosaurus [genus] †Mesoleptos [genus] †Mosasauridae [familia] [8] [8] †Amphorosteus [genus] †Goronyosaurus [genus] †Haasiasaurus [genus] †Halisaurinae [subfamilia] [3] [3] †Eonatator [genus] †Halisaurus [genus] †Pluridens [genus] †Halisauromorpha [clade] [no child templates] †Komensaurus [genus] †Mosasaurinae [subfamilia] [12] [12] †Capelliniosuchus [genus] †Clidastes [genus] †Dallasaurus [genus] †Globidensini [tribus] †Gnathomortis [genus] †Kourisodon [genus] †Liodon [genus] †Mosasaurini [tribus] [6] [6] †Amphekepubis [genus] †Eremiasaurus [genus] †Harranasaurus [genus] †Moanasaurus [genus] †Mosasaurus [genus] †Plotosaurus [genus] †Plesiotylosaurus [genus] †Prognathodon [genus] †Prognathodontini [tribus] [1] [0] †Selmasaurus [genus] †Russellosaurina [unranked] [5] [5] †Angolasaurus [genus] †Plioplatecarpinae [subfamilia] [3] [3] †Ectenosaurus [genus] †Gavialimimus [genus] †Plioplatecarpini [tribus] [4] [4] †Latoplatecarpus [genus] †Platecarpus [genus] †Plesioplatecarpus [genus] †Plioplatecarpus [genus] †Tethysaurinae [subfamilia] [2] [2] †Pannoniasaurus [genus] †Tethysaurus [genus] †Tylosaurinae [subfamilia] [4] [4] †Hainosaurus [genus] †Kaikaifilu [genus] †Taniwhasaurus [genus] †Tylosaurus [genus] †Yaguarasaurinae [subfamilia] [3] [3] †Romeosaurus [genus] †Russellosaurus [genus] †Yaguarasaurus [genus] †Portunatasaurus [genus] †Vallecillosaurus [genus]

I think I now undrstand what happened. You wanted to put Carsosaurus in family Aigialosauridae and edited |link= in {{Taxonomy/Mosasauridae}} (with this edit). This gave the appearance of the corrrect heirarchy in the taxobox for Carsosaurus but messed up all the Mosasauridae taxoboxes. When I fixed the Mosasauridae taxonomy template, it reverted the taxobox for Carsosaurus.

What you needed to do was change |parent= in {{Taxonomy/Carsosaurus}} to Aigialosauridae. It's the parent parameters in the taxonomy templates that set the hierarchy used in the automated taxoboxes. You can find more infor on the taxonomy templates at Wikipedia:Automated_taxobox_system/taxonomy_templates. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:16, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the assistance. An anonymous username, not my real name (talk) 11:35, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

The age of "Testudines"

Members of this Wikiproject may be interested in this discussion Talk:Turtle#age_of_turtles disputimg the age of turtles in the taxobox. Essentially turtle paleontologists consider "Testudines" to refer to the crown group i.e. the last common ancestor of Cryptodira and Pleurodira, whose first undoubted representatives are from the Late Jurassic, while Scott Thomson asserts that modern turtle workers considered "Testudines" to be synonymous with the clade covered by our article Testudinata, which are first known from the Late Triassic. Outside input would be appreciated. Kind regards. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:41, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Weird text in Paleobiota of the La Brea Tar Pits

Me and @Armin Reindl have been planning to tackle Paleobiota of the La Brea Tar Pits together and update it to meet the standard of a good paleobiota page (moving the taxa into tables instead of bulleted lists, etc.). However, when I took a look at the article I noticed a lot of weird text that neither me nor Armin could make any sense of, like in the Epithemiaceae section. Does anyone know what's going on here? TimTheDragonRider (talk) 11:02, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

All I can say is that I created the list years ago only focusing on animals, based on a few official lists of taxa I could fine (some of which are now dead links), and it seems many of the plants have been added by IPs and other drive-by editors, with unclear sourcing. FunkMonk (talk) 14:58, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Are you looking at the entries such as this? Epithemia adnata var. minor (Perag. & Herb) Patr. comb. nov.? Ignoring the comb nov part as not relevant, the rest of the entry is standard ICBN authority nomenclature. ICBN names don't use years (like ICZN) but will have the authority structured as the original describing author(s), (Perag. & Herb) combined with the most recent accepted revising author(s), Patr., and most often with the authorities given official Botanical abbreviations.--Kevmin § 16:31, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

@TimTheDragonRider and Armin Reindl:--Kevmin § 16:07, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for letting us know! We were both a little confused, but that will be useful for tracking down relevant sources. TimTheDragonRider (talk) 20:07, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Also as a note, the diatom, Green algae, and plant lists are taken directly from The La Brea Tar Pits Museum Botany page from what I can tell, so the attribution of the information can be made.--Kevmin § 23:53, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Abelisauroidea

I just came across Abelisauroidea and noticed that some of the text in the "Distribution" section sounded like a copy of one or more sources. On investigation, the section turned out to be a verbatim copy of the abstracts of the two cited sources. The first one was copyrighted, so that had to go and the other is under a CC-BY 4.0 license, but I still felt it better to blank the whole section as we should aim to put everything in our own words, wherever it's from and it anyway lacked the "Free-attribution template". Mikenorton (talk) 16:37, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Temporal paradox (paleontology)

The following discussion 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.

---

Does anyone feel like tackling this now very outdated article. It was a fairly fringe concept from its initial proposal, and the article itself here hasn't been updated for close to a decade, resulting in Wiki-voice presenting it as more accepted than it actually is.--Kevmin § 21:20, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I honestly wouldn't object to just redirecting the article to Alan Feduccia. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:21, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Agree. With some discussion of it there, though. Or perhaps evolution of birds would be a better destination. FunkMonk (talk) 21:51, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I'd feel comfortable with Hemiauchenias option, given the suspect fringe nature of the concept, and think a merge discussion over at Temporal paradox would serve well.--Kevmin § 01:30, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I've made a formal proposal: Talk:Alan_Feduccia#Proposal to merge Temporal paradox (paleontology) into this article. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:34, 3 December 2022 (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.

Could someone take a look at Loxomma? It seems to rely mostly on extremely outdated sources from the late 1800s.

I was wondering if someone in this project could take a look at Loxomma? Its overall quality is rather lacking, and many of its statements are sourced from truly ancient works dating back to the 1870s. It really needs a careful going over. -- Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 05:49, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

What should be "Noteable Burgess Shale fossils"?

@Fossiladder13: edited page Fossils of the Burgess Shale to add some extra "Notable fossils". (This caused added an extra column to the table, hope someone know how to fix that...) Originally, Aysheaia, Hallucigenia, Burgessochaeta, Marrella, Canadaspis, Waptia, Burgessia, Leanchoilia, Sanctacaris, Sidneyia, Yohoia, Wiwaxia, Opabinia, Nectocaris, Pikaia, and Anomalocaris. Fossiladder added Ottoia, Selkirkia, Odaraia, Balhuticaris, Tuzoia, Odontogriphus, Metaspriggina, Titanokorys, Cambroraster, Hurdia, Stanleycaris, and Amplectobelua. (Note that Titanokorys and Balhuticaris are their own pages, they linked these taxa from many pages and nominated Titanokorys GA by themselves.) I don't think these additions are bad, but it's also true that they feel unbalanced in showing taxonomic diversity. For example since Titanokorys is incomplete and too similar to Cambroraster, it may better to just mention in description of Cambroraster. This edit adds mostly arthropods, but lacks the many known sponges from here, as well as unclassified taxa like Herpetogaster and Siphusauctum. The fact that 6 out of 29 are radiodonts can also mislead readers into thinking that radiodonts are particularly abundant. So I think we need to discuss what should be noted as a Burgess Shale fossil. This article[21] may helpful to choose what should be in. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 11:32, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

I won’t pretend I have any knowledge of the Burgess Shale, but I can carry out a quick fix for the tables if it’s still needed. TimTheDragonRider (talk) 11:39, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

@Ta-tea-two-te-to. I have gotten rid of Titanokorys, and added it as a quick mention under Cambroraster. I also added Herpetogaster and Siphusauctum, and added more information to the other fauna that was missing. Fossiladder13 (talk) 14:43, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

And just added some of the demosponges as well Fossiladder13 (talk) 15:10, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

That become better as I see, maybe able to see more balancing after discussing more? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 15:36, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Ok, I have just one question : why don't we just put all fossils of the Burgess Shales in this page ? Why don't we have a Burgess Shales faunal list ? I know it's enormous, but we could add every single taxa found here instead of arguing which is relevant and which isn't. We have those kinds of list for every formation that matters, but the Burgess Shales. Larrayal (talk) 16:00, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree, we should just list all of them like we do for all other paleobiota pages. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:04, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

I "third" this idea. If not on the main "Fossils of the Burgess Shale" page, then on a new "Paleobiota of the Burgess Shale" article. The current page is focused on the taphonomy, history, and significance of the fossils, which is fully warranted considering how important the formation is for paleontology as a whole. But it's lacking an overview of the actual fauna beyond some big names. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 16:10, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

I "foruth" this also. There are a lot of sources that show a lot of the fauna like this link https://burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/main-gallery/ which could definitely be used for a Paleobiota page. Fossiladder13 (talk) 16:21, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

It's worth noting that list isn't likely to be complete, it doesn't seem to be updated to include taxa that have been described in the last decade. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:23, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, but it will probably be still a useful link. I will look into starting a page on this topic, and I will link it here when I am done. Fossiladder13 (talk) 16:28, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

@Fanboyphilosopher, @Hemiauchenia, @Larrayal, @Ta-tea-two-te-to, and @TimTheDragonRider. I have started the page. Here is the link Paleobiota of the Burgess Shale. Currently it only has a section based on worms. If there is any species missing, I would be glad to add them in. Fossiladder13 (talk) 20:07, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

The "what links here" for the Burgess Shale includes many Burgess Shale taxa with Wikipedia articles (and obviously also some irrelevant stuff. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:17, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

@Hemiauchenia Oh, thanks this will definitely help Fossiladder13 (talk) 21:36, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

@Fossiladder13 Doesn't most descriptions in this page only copied from other articles? That kind of information can be known by going to page for themselves, I recommend to make descriptions much simpler and shorter. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 06:06, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

• Might I suggest shrinking the standard image size in that list by a little? This is going to be one whopper of a page, less need to scroll is better at those scales. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:25, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

The page is already essentially complete, so I see no need to shrink the images. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:28, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Is it? Thought we were still way short of arthropods, but if not, all good. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:49, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Oh anyway @Hemiauchenia and @Fossiladder13, why not take revision at List of Chengjiang Biota species by phylum as well? Looks like @PaleoEquii worked template for that (with some of unreleased classification like Tauricornicaris though) so you can contact for that? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 06:26, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

The Chengjiang Biota page will take a lot more work to be up to par, but I would maybe suggest borrowing the organization I used for that page on the Burgess page I see has been created above. PaleoEquii (talk) 19:48, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Possible Phoenicopteriform missidentification

Phoenicopterus croizeti

While going though some fossil flamingos on Phoenicopteridae, I previously noticed a skeleton labeled as P. croizeti on the page itself and Phoenicopterus croizeti on Wikimedia. I initially resorted to simply redirecting Phoenicopterus croizeti to the currently used genus name Harrisonavis before moving to work in detail on other species. However, now that I'm getting around to Harrisonavis I noticed that the name does not match the actual fossil in the image. Torres et al. clearly show that Harrisonavis, even in the now lost lectotype, had a downturned bill similar to modern species, clearly absent in the image. The same paper also figures Palaelodus ambiguus, which looks to be a closer match with whats in the image. Anyone able to confirm this suspicion? Armin Reindl (talk) 11:59, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

FWIW, the museum itself appears to label it as P. croizeti: [22] Actually, looking at the head - that looks more like Harrisonavis, but the rest looks pretty similar. I wonder if this was a head sculpt that was temporarily swapped out. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 17:25, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

References

Why is the Staurozoa and the Medusozoa classified as Petalonamae in their respective articles?

As far as I am aware, the Petalonamae is restricted to only the Ediacaran to the lower Cambrian, so I am somewhat stumped as too why these two cnidarian groups are classified as such in their taxoboxes. I was gonna change the Petalonamae temporal range to include these two groups, but I'm just gonna ask first to make sure it is ok.Fossiladder13 (talk) 15:46, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

List of transitional fossils nominated for deletion

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of transitional fossils, participate if interested, thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:00, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

A possible Parioscorpio look-alike?

So I was reading up on the Eramosa lagerstätte, and I found a picture of a fossil arthropod that looks pretty much identical to P. venator. Now this is probably classified as original research, but should I add a brief mention of it on the Waukesha lagerstätte article or the Parioscorpio article itself?. Here is a link to the study where I found the photo. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253269085_Eramosa_Lagerstatte---Exceptionally_preserved_soft-bodied_biotas_with_shallow-marine_shelly_and_bioturbating_organisms_Silurian_Ontario_Canada Fossiladder13 (talk) 22:16, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

NO, that would be fully OR. We must ALWAYS have a reliable source to back any statement that is made in an article. If no discussion has happened regarding the affinities of the specimen in question, we have no grounds at all to make lay person leaps of faith that the commentary will come.--Kevmin § 01:33, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Having had a look at the specimen in question, I agree it does look very similar. Obviously we can't include this observation anywhere per WP:OR but it might be worth emailing some of the researchers who had worked on Parioscorpio to let them know. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:38, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

@Hemiauchenia yeah, I could try emailing them, what would be a good way to do so though?. Fossiladder13 (talk) 02:44, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

I asked Dr. James Lamsdell via Twitter when I tried to confirm the identity of this specimen to be Parioscorpio.

Let's see if he has any comments about the Eramosa specimen as well. Junnn11 (talk) 08:58, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Oh btw @Fossiladder13, I found document that compares Eramosa arthropod and Parioscorpio (at that time unnamed), although this is Ph.D. Thesis so possibly not good for source.[23] Images on this document is shown just black and white so fossils are so hard to see... Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 06:54, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Multiple copyright issues about images related to Waterloo Farm lagerstätte

• 
  1988 photo of Waterloo Farm
• 
  One of the fossil image that user uploaded, Diplacanthus acus
• Reconstruction of Bothriolepis africana by Maggie Newman
  Reconstruction of Bothriolepis africana by Maggie Newman
• Reconstruction of Octochara crassa by Rob Gess
  Reconstruction of Octochara crassa by Rob Gess
• Reconstruction of Octochara from Gess and Hiller (1995)
  Reconstruction of Octochara from Gess and Hiller (1995)

@Funyu123: (contribs) edited multiple articles to add descriptions about Devonian Waterloo Farm lagerstätte, and uploaded[24] images related to that. The descriptions refer to multiple artists and researchers, even though these images are all uploaded as "Own Works". It is possible that this user is a researcher studying Waterloo Farm himself and has permission to use the images, but there is no concrete evidence of this, and since there is no user page, it is completely unclear who this user is. These images look pretty useful, but should they be removed due to copyright issues? Unfortunately this user has been completely inactive since Spring 2020.　Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 13:39, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

The correct approach here, I think, is delete first, ask questions later. If this user cared about procedure they would've gone through OTRS. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 13:51, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Chances are these are just plucked from articles without much regard for our copyright requirements , but there might indeed be at least some connection to the artists. E.g., the illustration for Octochara is a colourized version of a B/W illustration from this article. But, no declarations made. I agree that removing from WP use first, verifying later, is the correct course here. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 10:34, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Edit: eh no, it isn't - mix-up, disregard. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 10:36, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

Anyway I noticed that Rob Gess himself have Wikipedia account as well (@Robert Gess:, uploads). This user was active in 2013-2015 for uploading images, but looks like he is no longer active, maybe we can try to contact with him about these images. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 01:27, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

This reconstruction is one of image without credit and apparently their own work, and used in paper by Gess himself without credit

Now created deletion nominate.[25] However, I think this user may be Rob Gess himself, so possibly good to contact with him... This paper by Gess[26] uses reconstruction same as uploaded images shows that possibility as well. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 06:07, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Some of images are removed per nomination. I sent e-mail to his university but no reply came. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 01:48, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Also I found probable another account of Rob Gess, User:Bayandalo (Contributions). I appreciate about his contributions, but still it is sad for me that some of papers are inaccessible at all from the Internet. (large cyrtoctenid eurypterid for example) Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 10:25, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

• If Gess is the uploader, no OTRS permission is needed. And as users are not required to disclose their real names, I wonder if we even need to assume it's not him or demand deletion if we don't get identification, if all the images are related to Gess, it seems pretty probable. FunkMonk (talk) 10:32, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

  To be honest I am not sure... Even through that user is Gess himself, uploading Maggie Newman's work may needed to show permission? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 15:10, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, anything that's not his own work would need confirmed email permission. FunkMonk (talk) 15:20, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Listing invalidly published names as synonyms in taxoboxes

So far we have only listed validly published names as synonyms in taxoboxes, but an edit[27] at Duriavenator by Richardhesutton added the never validly published, older nomen nudum "Walkersaurus" as a synonym, despite this technically not being either a senior or junior synonym, as it was never published, and therefore doesn't "exist" in the taxonomic system. Names like these are sometimes mentioned in published articles as invalid names, but never as synonyms, so shouldn't be here either. It appears some blogs and personal websites list such names as synonyms, but that's not what we should follow in the taxobox. FunkMonk (talk) 13:54, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

I should add that the reason I start the discussion here instead of on the talk page of the article is that this has wider ramifications; we should be consistent, and not do it randomly in specific articles if we do choose to include invalid names like that. FunkMonk (talk) 14:14, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

I agree. If a name hasn't been officially published it doesn't count as a synonym, and should not be included in the taxobox under any circumstance. TimTheDragonRider (talk) 14:11, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

I'll unprotect the page when it's clear the consensus for not listing nomina nuda in taxoboxes hasn't changed. As FunkMonk says, not listing them has long been the consensus. Firsfron of Ronchester 14:36, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

"Validly published" is a term of art in the botanical (and bacterial) code; "published" is the equivalent concept in the zoological code. Taxonomic databases regularly list invalidly published names as synonyms when the synonymy can be determined (e.g., Larix larix is considered invalid under the botanical code because tautonyms aren't allowed, but that is a retroactive rule, and at the time Larix larix was published there was nothing wrong with it, and it is quite clear that it can be considered a synonym of Larix decidua). And it's not infrequent that a publication fails to meet one of the technical requirements to be considered valid, and the name is validated in a later publication. If there are some names that shouldn't be listed as synonyms, a more precise definition than "invalidly published" is needed. If nomina nuda aren't going to be listed, should we even have any of the articles that are in Category:Nomina nuda? Plantdrew (talk) 15:28, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Invalidly published in this case would be nomina nuda, yes (but also manuscript names and thesis names). And I don't think they should have articles either, which is why we have list of informally named dinosaurs for example, instead of very notable cases like Archaeoraptor, but that's a different discussion. A case where such a name is mentioned in a properly published source but specifically stated as invalid and not a synonym is Gay 2005 for Dilophosaurus "breedorum": [28] FunkMonk (talk) 17:05, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

I list in the infobox basically any other scientific name the taxon has been known by, on the theory that most people aren't going to know the difference between actual synonym and nomina nuda, and that they'll want to know what happened to such-and-such taxon mentioned somewhere, and having it there under synonym is a relatively straightforward location. The fine details can and should be explained in the article proper. SilverTiger12 (talk) 17:06, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Either way, we shouldn't do it at random, but be consistent in whether we include such names or not. FunkMonk (talk) 17:20, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

I definitely agree consistency is important, but in that case I think a few pages should be amended to reflect that, such as Altispinax, where "lydekkerhueneorum" has been listed for a while. I don't mean to be disruptive as well and I apologize, I only wish to contribute as I have on other pages and I will not edit war again. Richardhesutton (talk) 15:14, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

If more editors could participate here, we could define a guideline. But as it stands, it seems former consensus was to not include nomina nuda, so I will remove it again. FunkMonk (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

• Started a centralised TOL discussion of this here:[29] FunkMonk (talk) 22:03, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Tanis (fossil site)

Now that the majority of the new hoopla has dies down regarding the Tanis site (suggestions of data impropriety and discovery scooping aren't nearly as enticing as DINO DEATH!!!!!), I feel its time to take a good editing session to the article as it stands. The main body is a relic from the early 2019 pre-publication news fervor, and there are areas which feel very unbalanced and sensationalistic, while there is coverage of the second article at all so to speak.--Kevmin § 01:06, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

I mentioned this in an ignored section on the talk page, but is the parenthesis in the title even needed? Isn't it just known as "Tanis site" anyway? FunkMonk (talk) 09:10, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

The "See also" note suggests that the other Tanis is also a "site". Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 15:07, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Temnospondyli

Temnospondyli has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:36, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Cretaceous Mongolia

Came across this article while looking through the list of stub articles for Paleontological Sites. Doesn't seem to fit in the category, or any other for that fact. We might want to consider having it deleted, as any information can easily be found on the pages of respective formations, like that of the Nemegt Formation and the Barun Goyot Formation. TimTheDragonRider (talk) 13:24, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

If there was a Paleontology in Mongolia article, like there is a Paleontology in the United States, I'd recommend merging it there. FunkMonk (talk) 13:40, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Asoriculus/Nesiotites, again

I attempted to redirect the three sentence Balearic shrew stub into Asoriculus, however, @UtherSRG: reverted asserting without evidence or any attempt at improvement that the articles didn't warrant merging. Given that my previous split proposal went nowhere and received exactly zero responses (at least on talk) I expect this will go nowhere either, but I can't be faulted for not trying. Please respond if interested, the discussion is located at Talk:Asoriculus#Merger_proposal, thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:52, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Primitive feather

How to improve the wikipedia article about roasted dinosaurs? Primitive feather types[edit source]

This section may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve it to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details. (May 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Dinomarek (talk) 19:42, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

scansoriopteryx socket

the scansoriopteryx skeleton on the main plate had a full hole in the hip socket, and on the counterslab plate, the was distorted during decomposition. What do you think ? Dinomarek (talk) 04:22, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Could you be more specific? Links? FunkMonk (talk) 10:23, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Scansoriopteryx had a non-perforated hip socket, but s on counterslab. During on mainslab had a full hole in the pelvis.This counterslab plate may distorted during decomposition. Dinomarek (talk) 13:51, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

So what are you suggesting we should do? FunkMonk (talk) 13:52, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

The user seems to be intent on opposing BANDit reasoning. Without a specific suggestion in the literature, though, I don't think there's much we can do... Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 16:00, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I suggesting publish a scientific journal containing this argument. The scansoriopteryx skeleton on the main plate had a full hole in the pelvis and on the counter plate, the pelvis was distorted during decomposition.What do you think ? Dinomarek (talk) 17:49, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

With all due respect, if you want such a paper, write it yourself. Wikipedia reports on existing literature, it does not create new literature. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 18:13, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I just can't because I didn't graduate. Dinomarek (talk) 18:35, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

How to improve the wikipedia article about roasted dinosaurs? Primitive feather types[edit source]

This section may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve it to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details. (May 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Dinomarek (talk) 20:21, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

"Mosbach lion"

Can anyone with experience with either fossil cats or how common names are handled check in on Panthera leo fossilis where an editor is attempting to insert a supposed common name that does not appear to have much (if any) support in the scholarly literature and is removing other common names that seem to have been used? Eocursor (talk) 14:45, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

kulindadromeus and Psittacosaurus had Feathers ?

What are the references to The 2016 publication in the Journal of Geology in contrast finds that the integumentary structures found on Kulindadromeus and Psittacosaurus are highly deformed scales and not feather-like structures ? Dinomarek (talk) 19:14, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

James A. Jensen

The James A. Jensen article is currently in serious need of POV clean-up, with the majority of information added by an SPI account (his son). As a heads up, I'm currently without a home computer, so I'm only on infrequently and not able to tackle this in as much depth as needed.--Kevmin § 00:01, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I have tagged out as much of the SPI added material as possible, and it all should be vetted, with anything not verifiable to secondary neutral sources removed.--Kevmin § 19:39, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

"List of The Prehistoric Life of..." pages

Abyssal created mass numbers of pages called "List of The Prehistoric Life of somewhere" (e.g. List of the prehistoric life of Texas). Looks like there are uncountable numbers and hard to search, some are specifical for Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic. Since these pages are not updated for a long time, in addition there are multiple images that is misleading or inaccurate (this image of shark[30] for example, labelled as Cretalamna but different). Existing in these pages will cause showing inaccurate image in image search, so hopefully we can tackle to reduce outdated information. Since information is mostly not updated, possibly page themselves need revisit? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 10:27, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

The only one that "might" semi-okay is List of the Cenozoic life of Washington (state), since I've been maintaining and updating it as new data is published, plus I deep dived into the underlying Fossilworks data to find the actual references for the sections. I think that if the lists are kept, they need to have a lot of attention from User:Abyssal to bring them up to par, and in any instances where sub lists (Cenozoic, Mesozoic, etc..) are present the parent list needs to be culled and hatnoted to the sublist.--Kevmin § 18:50, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

The lists don't seem very useful without giving some context about what the listed organisms are; fish, brachiopod, mollusc? I've come across some incoming links to articles about extant (recent) plants from these lists where the intended link is a hemihomonym under the ICZN (with no Wikipedia article), but it takes some checking to figure what disambiguation term to use for the animal redlink. And there more of these lists in user space with a hefty number of links to disambiguation pages. Plantdrew (talk) 00:10, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't see why we need these either. Categories exist. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 02:11, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

They originally were categories. An admin said they would make better articles, so that's what I did. Abyssal (talk) 04:32, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to have to hard disagree with that admin. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 22:23, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Apparently the Waukesha butterfly has an upcoming paper with an official name

I was looking at possible new papers for the Waukesha biota and came across an abstract from the Geological Society of America from 2021 that shows three Waukesha arthropod taxa (Acheronauta and Parioscorpio). One of them is Papiliomaris kluessendorfae, an arthropod, that has features quite similar to the butterfly. Here is the brief description “The uncommon Papiliomaris kluessendorfae gen. et sp. nov. (proposed), previously considered to be a marellomorph now reinterpreted as a crustacean-like, bivalved, filter-feeding arthropod. This last taxon is intended to be named in honor of Joanne Kluessendorf, due to her instrumental role in both the discovery and original description of the Waukesha Lagerstätte.” I am not going to add the name as it is not in an official paper, but I thought that it was worth bringing up incase the name is eventually featured. Here is the page with the name: https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2021AM/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/367946. Fossiladder13 (talk) 15:35, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

It’s also worth noting this name also pops up in this abstract from 2019, https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2019AM/webprogram/Paper341247.html Fossiladder13 (talk) 18:23, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Timeline infobox structural error

When I go to the Pleistocene article and look to the right at the infobox timeline chronology, I can't really even click on the top Holocene epoch. It is cut off in my Chrome browser. I'm not sure if this is a recent error that has crept in but it should be fixed. Cheers. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:45, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments

Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:35, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Move request at African mammoth

• See Talk:African_mammoth, please pariticipate if interested, thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:59, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

List of Cambrian genera

Despite being deleted at AfD, this list has been effectively recreated at List of Cambrian genera, as such I have nominated it for deletion again, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Cambrian genera. Please participate if interested. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:27, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Pseudamphicyon#Requested move 9 May 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Pseudamphicyon#Requested move 9 May 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 15:05, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

List of Chengjiang Biota species by phylum

Hi, the article List of Chengjiang Biota species by phylum is a bit outdated, being that @Hemiauchenia and @Fossiladder13 seem to have more knowledge on the subject, could you help me to expand it? I have started on my sandbox based on an unfinished version by PaleoEquii. Iezer (talk) 10:25, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

@Iezer, Sure, I would be happy to help. I'll get right on it. Fossiladder13 (talk) 14:37, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

@Iezer side note, I find it kind of funny how "A small arthropod related to Leanchoilia, also known from the Burgess Shale" is pretty much repeated throughout the page. Just published my first edit on it. Fossiladder13 (talk) 14:47, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it was in the version I copied, presumably because the description of some genus was copied and pasted several times to save work and then replaced with other content, but not in all. Iezer (talk) 14:58, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! Iezer (talk) 14:56, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

"Styginetta"

After shown in Prehistoric Planet, this Nomen nudum genus looks like having some interest, and even through being invalid, page link can be found on article of that documentary. There are some notable undescribed animal pages (e.g. Keurbosia, UA 8699, Sao Khua sclerorhynchoid) so this probably needs page? Or should be just noted in page for invalid name and redirects? Unfortunately List of informally named dinosaurs do not include avians. Any opinions? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 05:03, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that its appearance in a documentary imparts significant notability given the apparent total lack of academic interest. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 16:13, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Even with the informal list, we need some sort of reliable source to cite if we add them, which doesn't seem available here? FunkMonk (talk) 16:20, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Even if it isn't described, I feel like this taxon would better profit from a dedicated part in the Presbyornithidae page, as well as a redirect link, than from a new page. Would create a difficult to deal with precedent for undescribed dinosaurs if a new article is created. Larrayal (talk) 20:30, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it's better if this taxon is covered at Presbyornithidae. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:56, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Fossilworks and Paleobiology Database (PBDB)

Anyone know if the Fossilworks website still being updated anymore? The impression I've gotten viewing some taxon pages on it lately is that nothing has been updated since 2020. An example of this is the beetle family Ommatidae (or subfamily Ommatinae, depending on whose classification you follow), where Fossilworks only includes described taxa and references up to 2020, while PBDB's page for the same taxon includes described taxa and references as recently as last year. (Other PBDB taxa pages such as Notocupes include taxa/references from 2023 too, mind you).

I ask because the taxonbar template still links to Fossilworks via Wikidata, but if it's not updated anymore maybe it's time to switch it with the newer PBDB website? Monster Iestyn (talk) 09:48, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Actually, maybe Ommatidae/inae wasn't a great example because of the disagreements in its rank (and the resulting mess of a taxonomy on Fossilworks), but still genera such as Kirejtomma are definitely absent on Fossilworks unlike on PBDB. Monster Iestyn (talk) 09:59, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

See Template_talk:Taxonbar#PaleoDB. I added PaleoDB to the taxonbar yesterday. The Wikidata identifier is relatively new and hasn't been populated yet. The example at Palaeobatrachus had an identifier but most don't. I added a statement at Wikidata for lion so that shows up too.

The Fossilworks website still has the FAQS saying its database is updated from the Wisconsin site daily. However the links are quite buggy (e.g. from the search bar) so it's possible the site is not being maintained. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:51, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

@Jts1882 Oh, thanks, I was not aware of the other discussion. Monster Iestyn (talk) 11:09, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Your question still remains: is it no longer updated. Your examples strongly suggest that the database is no longer synched daily. As they use the same IDs there is a cheat where the taxonbar could use the fossilworks id to create a PBDB link. However as there is a Wikidata ID it would be best to be patient or possibly inquire if a bot can populate the PBDB ids. —  Jts1882 | talk  11:21, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Having a bot populate the IDs sounds most sensible to be honest, given the sheer number of Wikidata items for taxa that would have to be updated. Monster Iestyn (talk) 11:50, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

d:User:Succu/d:User:SuccuBot adds lots of database IDs for taxa to Wikidata. Plantdrew (talk) 17:02, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I've found several more recently described taxa on PaleoDB but not on Fossilworks, e.g. Eoarctos, Oriensmilus. (Also, using a bot to populate the Wikidata IDs sounds like a wonderful idea, much superior to doing it manually). SilverTiger12 (talk) 16:31, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Is the Mindat.org PBDB mirror any more up to date? Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:35, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't know how mindat.org works, but my guess is that it uses APIs to retrieve data from various external sources: PBDB,GBIF for taxonomy, accepted status, etc; EoL and Wikipedia for other information. For instance, Dromocyon vorax gets taxonomy from PBDB and GBIF and the description from Wikipedia, while Anthrenus verbasci vorax is GBIF only. It doesn't retrieve any taxonomy/location information for Eoarctos, although it does pick up the primary reference. So it does seem to be using a slightly out-of-date PBDB version, which could be because it's using an older mirror or because the PBDB external API doesn't use the live version. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:13, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

On the general use of those websites : I have some experience working with them and I can confirm that Fossilworks (which has been dead for two years and whose platform is also slowly dying), Mindat et PbDb are very often painfully innacurate, outdated, or simply don't have any information on anything for whatever reasons. PbDb, for instance, often lack recently described taxa - this recently extending to the last 5 years. Also, they tend to recreate known Fossilworks issues, like considering a lot of mammals from extinct clades as "Scansorial insectivores", which is hilarious talking about a toxodont or an hyracoid. Both sites are good tool when talking about deposits and localities though, but as I said, even on those topics they are still incomplete and/or outdated. Larrayal (talk) 12:41, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, PBDB and mirrors are like Wikipedia in that way. It's a great tool for discovery, but you should always go to the recent academic literature to get corroboration. I've noticed the quality and up to date-ness of the taxonomy varies substantially between different groups. I agree that their ecology section is basically useless and should be avoided. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:34, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

The lion as a "scansorial insectivore" did come as a surprise (fossilworks). The PBDB showing the "scansorial carnivore" (id=49734) was the first example of I found that the two databases were not being completely synched. Strangely PBDB has two records for the lion (see also id=46521). —  Jts1882 | talk  17:08, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Myosauridae

Could someone do a check on the current classification of this taxon? The box has it as a family following Kitching (1968), but the work cited is Kammerer and Angielczyk (2009) which seems to have been a classification as an unranked clade (as per PBDB [31]). I can't get into that Zootaxa article to verify. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 08:34, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Palaeogadus

Found this article, looks like majority of this article is just copy-and pasted from Fossilworks. Is that can be just copyright violation? Anyway it is bad to only use Fossilworks as reference since it is many times outdated. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 06:46, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

The language is so basic and utilitarian that I really think it's a stretch to say that it has any sort of originality worthy of copyright. That said I agree that the article is in bad shape. Hemiauchenia (talk) 07:02, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

It's basically just a list, so yeah, not so much copyvio than it's barely even an article. FunkMonk (talk) 11:45, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Copyvio or not, it looks awful. I've converted it to a sentence, a convoluted one, so feel free to improve or cut. —  Jts1882 | talk  15:23, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Undue weight in the Caudipteryx article?

Alan Feduccia is known for his fringe views on avian evolution (a non-dinosaur origin for birds and an origin from said non-dinosaur group for certain "dinosaur" clades) that have gained little support from the rest of the scientific community (with exceptions like Stephen Czerkas and Larry Martin), yet they are presented here as though 1) there is a significant debate among paleontologists in these regards and 2) as though this specific taxon is integral to said debate (according to Feduccia, all members of Dromaeosauridae and Oviraptorosauria are non-dinosaur birds). All in all, this article seems extremely difficult for those less well versed in the subject matter to understand, and perhaps some of this information would be better off in another article. An anonymous username, not my real name 06:49, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

It's a pretty terrible article overall, I must say. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 14:26, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Confusion of Yanliao, Daohugou, Tiaojishan, Haifanggou

There looks like confused in many pages. Daohugou Beds means Haifanggou Formation, although once Tiaojishan Formation was considered as part of that, but it is denied now. But still there are many pages of biota from Tiaojishan that links to Daohugou Beds. And strangely, Daohugou Biota redirects into Tiaojishan Formation. And article Yanliao Biota looks not updated than formation pages. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 03:18, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, this is such a major issue that I've seriously considered just merging both formations into the Yanliao Biota article. It's a nightmare trying to figure out which taxa go in which formation. There does seem to be stable consensus now that the Daohugou Bed is part of the lower Haifanggou Formation rather than the upper Tiaojishan Formation. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:29, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Pseudosuchian taxonomy mess

A new paper [32] suggests that Suchia, Loricata, and Prestosuchus are all unavailable names under the ICZN and suggests alternative names of Holosuchia, Loricatosuchia, and Huenesuchus. Raising for discussion here as this will doubtlessly impact a large number of pages. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 16:26, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

If the names are preoccupied, I can see a point, but after so long usage, I don't see any chance Prestosuchus will be abandoned by other researchers just because of a technicality. Paleontologists like their traditional usage. Also, it seems a bit disingenuous to propose an entirely new name when the existing name can just be reapplied. FunkMonk (talk) 16:50, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

The ICZN doesn't even apply to unranked taxa like Suchia and Loricata, so I don't see why they would need to be replaced. —Trilletrollet [ Talk | Contribs ] 16:59, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I think we need to see what the scientific responses to this are before doing anything (at most mention it in the respective articles). At least the paper has some free images we can use (but note each image seems to contian photos from earlier, perhaps unfree papers). FunkMonk (talk) 17:04, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Probably good to see this Tweet[33] by curator Christian Kammerer. Describer of the paper is who once tried to synonymize it as Karamuru and Abaporu, but both are nomen nudum. Looks like it is third time that author tried to change its name. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 02:36, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it definitely seems like work of this author is to be regarded with heaps of scepticism. Given how much of a revision this is (and the fact that they try to establish FIVE new names in a single paper), I think it's definitely best to await the reaction of other researchers. However, given that previous attempts at renaming Prestosuchus failed, plus the abovementioned issues regarding ICZN authority as highlighted by Kammerer, I don't imagine that this one will have any lasting effects.Armin Reindl (talk) 07:30, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Gomphothere#Requested move 23 July 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Gomphothere#Requested move 23 July 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 14:37, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

List of prehistoric mammals up for deletion

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of prehistoric mammals. Please participate if interested, thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:00, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Issues around "Largest animals" articles

Probably due to recent found of Perucetus, or effect by certain videos, recently I feel like random edits for articles such as Largest prehistoric animals, Largest and heaviest animals, Largest organisms, Dinosaur size increased. User:42Grunt (contribution) for example, edited these pages massively by adding information about Perucetus and Bruhathkayosaurus, and added YouTube video by the Vividen[34] as references (although I removed) which looks not suitable. There are also still many of IP edits to change descriptions without source, such as IP user trying to make shoulder height of Epicyon 1.1 m in multiple articles. In all honesty, I think these pages need a more serious review, and then need to be protected. What do others think? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 12:50, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Also simply there is issue that due to page size it is laggy to edit these pages, especially Largest Prehistoric Animals. Cephalopod size have same problem, and it is worse that due to complex reference style in that page only a few wants to update information, so before I edited there were so many outdated descriptions. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 12:59, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I think a big problem is that there are too many small groups covered. Like, is the largest conodont really worthy of an entry? Coming up with a reasonable demarcation for this problem seems tricky though. Hemiauchenia (talk) 14:17, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Deletion requests of Malkani taxa

Deletion request by @Headbomb, for articles of taxa described by M. S. Malkani in the predatory journal, created by 80.194.237.230.

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sulaimanitherium
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pakiwheel
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Asifcroco
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Moolatrilo
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Karkhimachli
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bolanicyon
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kahamachli
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pakitherium
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kilgai
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zahrisaurus

Also Draft:Muzaffarabadmachli is just rejected. Good to see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dinosaurs/Archive 35#Taxa named by Malkani as well. I wonder if that IP user is sockpuppet of Malkani himself, but also possibly just user from Pakistan who is interested in taxa described from there. But anyway these things are invalidly described as I see. Please participate if interested, thanks. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 05:05, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Standardizing paleobiota lists

Following a discussion on the WikiProject Paleontology about several aspects of paleobiota lists, we're hoping to have a wider discussion here about how to standardize the format of the lists and potentially try developing a template to use, along the lines of Template:Species table.

We generally agreed that the purpose of the lists was to reflect the actual paleobiota represented, and so most of us seem to have concurred that invalid and misidentified taxa should not be included in fauna lists. We settled on the following provisional list of what should be included in paleobiota lists:

1. Any valid taxa represented in the stratigraphic unit (obviously)
2. Any indeterminate material that represents a clade not otherwise represented in the stratigraphic unit; one entry per least inclusive clade
3. Anything unnamed that has been explicitly argued to be distinct; this needs to be explicitly stated in the table.

I and a few other editors feel that these lists should have a single "taxon" column, rather than separate "genus" and "species" columns; separate genus and species columns use more horizontal space than necessary, are inappropriate when taxa that do not have a binomial name are included in the list, and offer few, if any, benefits compared to using a single column.

We only briefly touched on the issue of how to standardize our presentation of stratigraphic and geographic provenance information, with some differences of opinion:

• Some editors were of the opinion that only a single column combining stratigraphic and geographic provenance is necessary.
• I am of the opinion that how to represent provenance information will vary depending on the stratigraphic unit, and so we should have somewhat flexible guidelines for how to present this information. For example, in the case of a stratigraphic unit where most specimens come from a handful of named localities with distinct faunal composition (e.g. the Djadochta Formation), it would make the most sense to have a "locality" column; for a stratigraphic unit with a large geographic extent (e.g. the Morrison Formation), it would make sense to have a column such as "state" or "province"; for a stratigraphic unit with a large time span (e.g. the Cedar Mountain Formation), it would be a good idea to have a "stratigraphic position" or "member" column; and for a stratigraphic unit divided into biostratigraphic zones (e.g. the Beaufort Group), it would be a good idea to have an "assemblage zone" column. For some stratigraphic units, it may be appropriate to have two or more of these columns, but only the columns that actually provide useful information should be included—there's no need to include a "stratigraphic position" column if all the fossils come from a single horizon, or a "location" column if the formation only outcrops in a small area, for instance.

We did not discuss the "material" column in depth, and we were pretty much all in agreement that the "notes" column should be kept.

The main topic discussed was the images column, and whether to favor life reconstructions or images of fossils. SilverTiger12 suggested using space more efficiently by moving the images into the same column as the taxon name, as is done in several featured lists such as List of felids, rather than having a separate image column; a few editors, myself included, supported this suggestion. Not much consensus has been reached on whether to use life reconstructions, skeletals, or images of the fossils themselves; there was some discussion of potentially having both an image of a fossil and a life reconstruction for each taxon, although that seems to have been largely rejected. A few of the ideas that got some support included:

• Taxa known from only a single element (e.g. tooth taxa) may be best illustrated with an image of that element
• When exceptional full-body specimens are available (e.g. the Berlin Archaeopteryx), they might be the best choice
• Images of fossil specimens that were not found in the stratigraphic unit that the page is on should be avoided

The best approach may end up varying depending on the mode of preservation in the formation and the kind of taxon being illustrated. Ornithopsis (talk) 03:29, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm on the side of being flexible about provenance information. This is especially beneficial for specimens of uncertain/controversial stratigraphic provenance but clear geographic provenance, or vice versa.

For concision in the material column, I'd note individual bones, general body parts if remains are more substantial, and the number and completeness of specimens if multiple specimens are known.

No strong opinion on image format except definitely not multiple. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 05:50, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

I think combining the taxon name with an image in the same collumn runs the risk of the latter overshadowing the former, besides, imo, looking somewhat clumsy. The issue of live reconstruction versus skeletal material vs fossil I think is something that may be debated but ultimately we are incredibly restricted in our resources. All in all I think a mix is worth considering depending on the precise circumstances. Focusing purely on either does have its downsides for both versions. Just doing bones quickly runs into the issue of being not very informative for a layperson (and lets not pretend like they'll click through every linked name), but I can agree that some exceptionaly poorly preserved or enigmatic taxa are better shown with the material. At the same time I do concede that doing only live reconstructions may get too speculative, and that as just said exceptionally poorly understood forms may be better of just being shown with the fossil. Fossil mounts (if not actual garbage) and exceptionally well preserved fossils are also decent picks to use.

The genus and taxon one I am mixed on. Personally I have found that having an overarching genus collumn via the rowspan function can be quite elegant solution (somewhat like seen on the Jebel Qatrani Formation page), but I can definitely see the argument that in that case the first collumn should have a less specific name to avoid having indets. on a family level in a genus collumn for example. I can definitely agree on the first three points and that stratigraphy and geography, or a more flexible version of said collumn could work quite well and save some space horizontally. Notes should obviously be kept to clarify issues regarding confusing histories that impact how the biota may be viewed or that give additional context to the animal's role in the ecosystem (of course highly abridged). Material I think would be good to keep, but with flexibility regarding whether or not it states what specific material (for poorly preserved taxa) or how many specimens (for those much better understood, if available) as suggested by Lythronaxargestes. I think it deserves to stay purely because it gives additional context for how complete the animal is regardless of whether a live reconstruction, fossil or nothing at all is shown. Armin Reindl (talk) 11:55, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

What do you think is elegant about the format of the taxon columns on that page? Whatever it is, I am not seeing it. That page is actually a good illustration of both of the major problems I have with the two-column format. In cases where specimens are not identified to species, the species column is simply wasted space; the Accipitriformes table on the Jebel Qatrani Formation page is a good example where replacing the two-column format with a single column would clearly be an improvement. Conversely, when specimens are identified to species, there is redundant information because the species epithet cannot be listed on its own, and the total width of the two columns is generally considerably greater than would be necessary in a single-column format because the width needs to accommodate the combined length of the longest genus name and longest species epithet, plus some extra space. In many cases, there is no benefit whatsoever to having multiple columns (e.g. if only monotypic genera are listed in a particular table). That all is to say, the two-column format wastes space, includes redundant information, and in many cases has no advantages at all over the one-column format; I don't see what advantages the two-column format could possibly have that would outweigh those disadvantages. Ornithopsis (talk) 16:49, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Any kind of mass-standardisation is a waste of time. There's no requirement for standardisation for things like reference styles, so I don't see why this should apply to tables. Anybody should be able to format or modify the format of tables to whatever see fit, rather than there being some onerous style guide that must be followed. Hemiauchenia (talk) 12:01, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I am also opposed to mass-standardization efforts. There will not be one best solution for all situations - we should leave options open to allow for whatever works best in each individual and unique situation. Cougroyalty (talk) 16:54, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

IM also in the oppose category for a combination of reasons that Hemiauchenia and Cougroyalty have stated, and because the proposal is heavily biased towards vertebrate fossil descriptions only, ignoring all other taxa. it doesn't function well outside of bonebeds.--Kevmin § 20:52, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Could you elaborate on what you think is so biased towards vertebrates about these proposals? Ornithopsis (talk) 16:50, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Aside from all the examples being of Mesozoic or older Strata (which has inherently biased the tables to accommodate large timespans or regions, rather then how site specific locals like most Cenozoics), the chosen tabling is distinctly vert-biased, "Flora" is almost always a lump-sum of anything not animal, no matter how unrelated the taxa are, and the same goes for arthropods. Contrast that to the verts that get split into many fine level clade based tables were the affinities are immediately obvious like "Crocodylomorphs". The "material"-column is also vert-bias, as specific skeletal elements are going to be mentioned with verts, but anything NOT vert and you have a much lower frequency of accurate or any reporting on what "beetles are found" as. Also for the Cedar Mountain Formation di we even look for floral information at all? Theres a number of taxa but it was wholly ignored.--Kevmin § 15:30, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

What of that has anything to do with any of the ideas being suggested? The examples I listed are all Permian or Mesozoic terrestrial units, yes, but that’s what I’m most familiar with. The point that I was making by listing those formations was that, because they differ so much, the stratigraphic and geographic provenance data should be tailored to fit the stratigraphic unit rather than shoehorned into a standard format. My failure to list an even greater variety of formations does nothing to diminish that point. How finely split the tables should be on a taxonomic level has hardly been discussed; nobody is saying that treating all plants in a single table but splitting vertebrates into a number of highly specific tables is a standard that should be held to. And as I said in my initial comment, we did not discuss the material column in depth, so I’m not sure what about it you’re opposed to here. Ornithopsis (talk) 22:54, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5/Biological and health sciences/Animals : 2023 Edition

Ok, so it has been brought to my attention that some changes could be made quite soon to the Vital article page. I'd like to have everybody's educated opinion on which taxa (preferably families, but also genera and/or species, both extant and extinct) are missing (I don't really need another reminder that putting in Incisivosaurus and Brontoscorpio was a bad idea, so try sticking to the missing stuff, not the ones to remove.) Hopefully, we'll have finished dealing with that mess by the end of the month. Try bringing members from other Biology wikiprojects to see and comment on that discussion. Try not suggesting an article you've been largely involved with if it isn't specially notable too. Extinct hominids are on another page. Larrayal (talk) 23:12, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Link: Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5/Biological and health sciences/Animals SilverTiger12 (talk) 17:01, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Choosing only one representative of temnospondyl as Koolasuchus may weird? Even through it is important as the youngest member, it is still only known from partial remains. Probably Eryops, Paracyclotosaurus, Mastodonsaurus would be easy to understand what temnospondyl is but not sure. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 03:19, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Also why Orthoceras is within Octopus and Hallucigenia within onychophora? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 03:25, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Size of Aristonectes parvidens ?

Hello everyone, I am currently writing a draft to expand the article about the plesiosaur Aristonectes. I am first writing it in French before translating my work into English. However, in the original article, only the size of A. quiriquinensis as well as an indeterminate specimen having been discovered in Antarctica are evoked. However, in the article officially describing the second known species, it is clearly mentioned that A. parvidens would have been larger than A. quiriquinensis, without showing its true size. So if you ever have the answer from a valid source (ex: The Princeton Field Guide to Mesozoic Sea Reptiles by Gregory S. Paul, which I don't have access to), I would be grateful. Sincerely, Amirani1746 (talk) 05:32, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

It is generally agreed that recent work by GSP, such as the Princeton Field Guide to Mesozoic Sea Reptiles, is not really a reliable source and should therefore not be used. While I don't really have any proper length estimates, I'll check around with people more experienced in the matter of plesiosaurs to check on your request and see what they can dig up.Armin Reindl (talk) 15:12, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Changes to palaeoart review templates

At the Discord server (feel free to join) we've been discussing how to improve the inaccurate palaeoart and speculative palaeoart templates, the various points of what I'll list below in order of when they came up in the discussion. FunkMonk (talk) 18:46, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

• 1: Is "speculative palaeoart" a fitting name, or will it be confused for speculative evolution, and what would be a better term, if "hypothetical palaoart" also has problems? Palaeoart is inherently hypothetical, so how do we convey in the name that the categorised images are particularly so?

• 2: Should the inaccurate and speculative templates be rolled into one template where each category is just its own parameter? Different template images for each probably won't be possible then, and it may be harder to identify which template is used at a glance.

• 3: Should we have a parameter/template for palaeoart what has been approved at the WP:palaeoart review (and WP:dinoart)? That will make it much easier for us and editors outside the project to identify which images are reliable (but will be a huge task). In this scheme, images that have just been reviewed will get tagged, but we will also have to retroactively tag already reviewed images.

• 4: What criteria for inclusion of each parameter do we need for specific types of images?

• 5: What else do we want added/changed to the templates to make them extra useful and easy to work with?

FunkMonk (talk) 18:46, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Interesting. My two cents:

• 1: "Speculative palaeoart" sounds ok to me.
• 2: I didn't even notice that these are in fact two different templates. I am all for simplicity, joining them into a single template sounds sensible. Maybe the template image could show both possibilities.
• 3: I am worried about the amount of work this will cause long-term. Also, would this add more pressure to the image review by setting standards higher, so that we could get a backlog like we have at WP:GAN? At the moment, the lack of a tag implies that the image is ok to use, which seems to be sufficient to me (we cannot, and don't have to, be perfect). --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:09, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

I've discussed my perspective over on the discord and I can summarize it here:

• To me, the biggest issue is that our current set of templates fail to draw a distinction between "reasonably conservative paleoart of a fragmentary taxon inferred from better-known relatives" (for clarity I will refer to this as "FRAGMENTARY TAXON PALEOART") and "overly-imaginative paleoart with speculative behavior and anatomy that is not explicitly contradicted by the literature" (what I will call "ARTISTIC LICENSE PALEOART"). Our current "speculative paleoart" template corresponds to art in the first category, but we have no explicit disclaimer template for art in the second category.
• I agree with FunkMonk's concern over the "speculative paleoart" template name. Not only does it unintentionally imply a relation to paleontology-themed speculative evolution (such as dinosauroid imagery), but I would also argue that "speculative" is a term more appropriate for "ARTISTIC LICENSE PALEOART" rather than its current use in the template for "FRAGMENTARY TAXON PALEOART".
• I would personally rather see separate templates for all of these paleoart "types" (FRAGMENTARY vs ARTISTIC LICENSE vs DOWNRIGHT INACCURATE/HISTORICAL), but I wouldn't protest too much if they were used as separate parameters in one unified "Problematic paleoart" or "Paleoart disclaimer(s)" template.
• I agree with Jens' concern that applying a template to every single piece of paleoart in Commons is a massive amount of work. We'd also be forced to reckon with abundant edge cases for what constitutes a proper review or approval. I would argue strongly that templates are only warranted for images which people have voiced issues with on the review page. Fanboyphilosopher (talk) 01:43, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm erring on the side of perhaps not needing an "approved paleoart" tag/parameter, if people will just assume that non-tagged imagery is correct. But that of course leads to another problem, which is that these days, a large amount of paleoart is added to Commons and articles by "drive-by paleoartists" who never send it to review, and in many cases don't even know the review exists. So all these images will remain untagged, even if inaccurate, because we simply aren't aware of their existence often, but this will also mean that if people assume untagged paleoart is approved, they will assume that inaccurate paleoart we have never reviewed is accurate simply because it isn't tagged? Which leaves another issue, some editors simply remove inaccurate/speculative/unreviewed paleoart from articles without sending them review or adding tags to them, which then leaves them in this limbo floating around on Commons where others might find and use them, which we should really advise against (looking at you, Hemiauchenia!). FunkMonk (talk) 15:13, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Do we consider images to be "approved" if they were 1) listed in the image review and 2) did not recieve a tag before being archived? If so, then we should already have all required information right at the Commons image pages. An editor can assume that an image is approved if 1) a tag is absent and 2) the image is linked to one of the image review archives. Which means that, if we want these tags, we could have a bot that keeps adding them to the image pages. We would just need to screen the review archives for any images that are not paleoart to start with. Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:09, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Paleobiota page for the Cañadón Asfalto Fm.?

While looking through some of our pages on geological formations I stumbled upon the page for the Cañadón Asfalto Formation. This page was recently nominated for GA review, but quick-failed due to multiple issues with sourcing and the presence of the template "too many charts". Looking at the article, it seems to have a giant paleobiota list in comparison to the main body, which seems to be the main complaint. Maybe it would be a good idea to split this list out into a seperate Paleobiota page like we have for the Morrison Formation? The Morrison Man (talk) 06:28, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree that a separate page for the tables is a good idea here, especially since the biota is so extensive. The Yixian Formation also implements a similar separate biota page. -SlvrHwk (talk) 06:43, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Be WP:BOLD and do it- the list is big enough to warrant it. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 13:37, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

Done. The list can now be found at Paleobiota of the Cañadón Asfalto Formation The Morrison Man (talk) 11:46, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Early Toarcian extinction event

A discussion at Talk:Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event failed to reach a consensus about whether to retitle the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event page to "Early Toarcian extinction event" (or "Toarcian turnover", or some other term that applies to the Early Toarcian palaeoenvironmental crisis at large).

I created and wrote the entire article and titled it the way it's currently titled, but the article has always discussed the smaller (though still significant) PTo-E extinction pulse that occurred shortly before the TOAE and is considered a different event from the TOAE. Furthermore, many peer-reviewed papers have a broader scope and don't discuss which taxa went extinct in which individual pulses, or the stratigraphic sections they studied don't have sufficient resolution to distinguish which taxa went extinct in the TOAE and which ones in the PTo-E. This, plus the fact that these two events occurred in close temporal proximity and are generally believed to have the same root cause makes it difficult to neatly separate the two pulses. For all these reasons, I think a title reflecting the broader Toarcian crisis is much more appropriate than the current title that only applies specifically to the largest anoxic event within this extinction event.

Since the talk page discussion reached no consensus as previously mentioned, I decided to bring forward this discussion here. Anteosaurus magnificus (talk) 04:45, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm inclined to side with those who want to keep the current name per WP:COMMONNAME, although a retitle to "Toarcian oceanic anoxic events" might also work. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 06:25, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

“Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Events” is not a scientifically used term at all. It would be far more confusing and inaccurate than either of the other two options.

Technically, “Toarcian extinction” (or some variant thereof) is the common name for the whole crisis, as “Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event” refers strictly to the TOAE, to the exclusion of the PTo-E as well as the hyperthermal climatic events and negative CIEs that led up to the positive CIE which defines the TOE. No peer-reviewed article says it can be used to refer to the multi-pulsed crisis at large. It would be akin to titling the Late Ordovician Mass extinction the “Hirnantian Oceanic Anoxic Event” when the wider biocrisis was far more than just that one biogeochemical event. Anteosaurus magnificus (talk) 15:40, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I am currently working on such events, both on the Pl/To and on the Jenkins event. And I have to make a number of incisions: The actual name of the extinction interval that takes place in the upper biozone Polymorphum is defined as Jenkins event, as it includes also events that have taken place in non-marine (Posidonienschiefer f.e.) and/or lacustrine areas (Sichuan Megalake), as may be the ongoing project for the basin of the Cañadón Asfalto Formation, which has been discussed in the publication of the Eusauropod Bagualia alba. Technically, the TOAE refers to only the marine facies, yet is actively used as a synonym of JE. It is not the same as the Pi-Toa, as it occurs near ∼1 Myr later (How for example it is cited here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1464343X15301412)

They are 2 separate events, but both fed by the growing Ferrar-Karoo-Chon Aike volcanism in the south, and Skane 1 in the north. In the first one, changes happen due to a Hyperthermal transition and includes an initial extincion, the second one, motivated by a radical change in the terrestrial hydric cycle, with erosion and displacement of sediments to increased marine zones (I recommend to look for the Tagoudite Formation, it is the best example) and black shales facies. It has to be noted that a lot of taxa, tought to be extinct in the Pli-Toa, on reality disappears or is clearly left as a dead clade on the TOAE (Example the Lithiothis facies https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018217313172). Overall Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event is the most used term, tought beware of sinking the Pli-Toa on it. I recommend to rename the article to "Toarcian Extincions" to not create too many splits, and so add the Middle Toarcian Cold Snap on it Yewtharaptor (talk) 00:10, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

List of Lagerstätte?

Sorry for mass edit in Lagerstätte page recently. As suggested by User:Fanboyphilosopher, I think it is good to separate "Important Lagerstätten" section to own page? Also this page shows age as "millions years ago", but since many of sites are not decisive to decide how old it is, and there are some inconsistencies with the actual page (such as Hunsrück Slate, while own page shows 408–400 Ma, Lagerstätte page shows 390 Ma) it would be better to change it to Stratigraphic range like "late Pragian to early Emsian" and only shows age if it is clearly shown in paper? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 03:38, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Unnecessary split of the Cañadón Asfalto Formation Page

I, as the person who made the new biota tables and redid the Cañadón Asfalto Formation article, am against the split of a Paleobiota page. The article alone barely gathers visits (about 100 in 3 months, if not less), subdividing it will only make it even less noticeable. Even more, the proper Cañadón Asfalto page actually is basically useless. I ask that it be reverted and returned to its original state. (talk) 17:02, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Did you see the discussion above about this split? (I think the split was a very good idea.) Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:15, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

No, neither I was quoted for it (Not necesary but I would have liked to have an opinion back when 1st discussed) Yewtharaptor (talk) 15:40, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

First of all, is there a reason for this to be a seperate discussion from the one above about the split?

As for your request, I don't think that making the tables and redoing the article gives you any more sway in this, frankly. It might have been good to ask for your input, but as it stands there are still three users in favour (one of those being myself), while you seem to be the only one against the split. As for the reasoning for the split, I decided to do so because of a maintenance template (specifically the one for surplus data without context) that was present on the article, which the creation of a seperate paleobiota page has solved. Aside from this, a similar system with dual, inter-linked articles is currently in effect and working quite nicely on Morrison Formation, Hell Creek Formation and La Brea Tar Pits, all three of which have seperate pages for paleobiota.

Finally, I do not see how the splitting out of the biota list has somehow resulted in the fact that "the proper Cañadón Asfalto page actually is basically useless.", as it still provides plenty of information about geology, stratigraphy and related topics. I also do not believe that the article will become "less noticeable", readers will be most likely to find the main page first before moving on to the biota page. The Morrison Man (talk) 15:29, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Better known formations such as Morrison benefit from being split because they have a higher visitor base. The Cañadón formation does not, it is much more obscure to the eyes of the public, who, at best, will go directly to look for the name of X taxon. As a whole it is a long page? Yes. But all together it feeds better the possibility of giving visibility to topics such as the environment, an aspect that I have seen that is often ignored when there is a split (For example, in the Paleobiota of the Posidonia Shale page, and that is a relatively well-known unit). And yes, it was not necessary to make a new entry, but that was my human error, my apologies. Yewtharaptor (talk) 15:47, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

If people, as you say, look directly for the name of "X taxon", I don't see why we're discussing pageview statistics in the first place. Because if that is the case, people will find the pages of the individual taxa first, and will find those first regardless of whether or not there is a seperate paleobiota page. Aside from that, if the formation is as obscured as you're making it seem, shouldn't we expect low pageview counts anyways? The Morrison Man (talk) 16:13, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

The point here is, precisely, that this visit, which could be to see taxon X, can more easily turn into "Oh, I'm going to see its ecology, which happens to be available on the same page". The summary would be, make those few visits more useful/more prone to a greater context and/or information framework. Yewtharaptor (talk) 18:26, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I very much agree with The Morrison Man here. The paleobiota tables are arguably too extensive to be included on the page where the focus should be the geologic formation, rather than the formation's biota. For formations with a more limited biota and fewer sources, it is understandable to combine the two concepts. As a side note, I do think it would be appropriate to include at least some information (just a brief summary) of the biota on the formation page. -SlvrHwk (talk) 18:47, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I would also agree that a brief summary would be good to have (again, maybe something akin to that seen on the Morrison Formation?) I just did not write it out for lack of time. The Morrison Man (talk) 19:13, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I have to agree with the others here- the Paleobiota tables are far too big to leave on the formation's article and definitely needed their own. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 19:18, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Again, that would make sense, in a context where such geological unit is widely know or the article without the Paleobiota can stand by itself alone, which in this case none of both are accomplished Yewtharaptor (talk) 23:49, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I think the article stands on its own quite nicely, actually. It provides decently comprehensive information about the Formation itself. The Morrison Man (talk) 07:00, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Seeing that the consensus is then to split it, that it stays that way then. I will only ask that a summary of the biota be added to the main page. Yewtharaptor (talk) 12:26, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

"Coelacanthus whitea"

This image was uploaded by @Apokryltaros: in 2007, descripting fish named "Coelacanthus whitea", descripted as from Permian of Alberta, Canada. Older version of page shows "Lehman, 1952" as authority. Question is, is that species actually exist? I actually can't find name "Coelacanthus whitea" in any publications, one document in researchgate shows that name[35] but that looks like just copied after Wikipedia, considering status of this publication. ("Coelacanthus sharjah" described in that document is just invalid considering described in predatory, or at least journal not acceptable with ICZN, and origin of specimen is unknown) As I see coelacanth species described in "Lehman, 1952" is Piveteauia madagascariensis and not species of Coelacanthus. Considering there is genus that is historically confused with Coelacanthus called Whiteia, it is just confused with that? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 13:01, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

I think it's just confusion like you state in the end. FunkMonk (talk) 13:29, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

I think you solved your own mystery here ^_^. I've got nothing to add. --Licks-rocks (talk) 18:19, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it's an old picture, I've replaced it with another one.Mr Fink (talk) 18:41, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

File description should definitely be modified to avoid future confusion, yeah. FunkMonk (talk) 22:17, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

What species should actually be drawn here? As I see Deviantart[36] fish on background is Bobasatrania, but I can't find any Permian record of coelacanth in Alberta or Canada with Bobasatrania. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 01:27, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Mesonychid#Requested move 11 October 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Mesonychid#Requested move 11 October 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. UtherSRG (talk) 18:05, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Requested moves at Talk:Palaeopteryx#Merge with "List of informally named dinosaurs" and Talk:Sinopterus#Revision

The two merge proposal discussions have been hanging around for months now without clear majority consensuses. I'm a bit cautious on merging genus articles unless it's clear that they are dubious/invalid, so I require more consensuses on the articles before closing them. PrimalMustelid (talk) 22:27, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Synthy cladogram on the Mosasaur page

The Phylogeny section on the mosasaur page contains a cladogram that appears to be a mix of different sources cobbled together. Should it be removed as a violation of WP:Original synthesis or should it be replaced with a single yet comprehensive cladogram? Miracusaurs (talk) 00:12, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

The best option is to replace it with a non-synth diagram. I'm not familiar with the literature on mosasaur relationships, so I can't recommend an alternative. If necessary, more than one can be included to illustrate the relationships of lower-level groups. -SlvrHwk (talk) 00:23, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Probably Macrophyseter we need to ask. FunkMonk (talk) 04:28, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm open to splitting the higher groups into separate cladograms. Personally against replacing everything with a singular source because of focus biases (i.e. placement of taxa A being wonky because the study's focus is on optimizing taxa B and so taxa A's accuracy is less concerned). Regarding the speculative fix tags on where I placed polytomies, it could be argued that they represent the acceptable use of WP:Original synthesis on account that sources explicitly acknowledge differences with each other and conclude that the phylogenetic consensus is closer to unresolved. However, I need to check whether the particular sources I cited do that. Macrophyseter | talk 21:17, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

It was established a while ago that editors may not combine cladograms from two or more sources; you may only show a cladogram as arranged in one source. To do otherwise is a violation of WP:SYNTH and WP:OR. The solution to perceived biases is to show multiple cladograms from different sources. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 22:23, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Do you have the link to the page for this discussion? Macrophyseter | talk 22:51, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

You can read the discussion here. -SlvrHwk (talk) 23:26, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Requested merge at Talk:Barosaurus#Merge proposal

There is a requested merge discussion at Talk:Barosaurus#Merge proposal for merging the Gordo (dinosaur) page into the Barosaurus page that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. PrimalMustelid (talk) 15:26, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Fossil X described in 2023

A few days ago User:Tyroxin started unilaterally moving the mammal and bird pages from the "Fossil taxa described in 2023" and "Fossil taxa described in 2022" categories to the "Fossil mammals described in X" and "Fossil birds described in X" categories, contrary to the precedent set by earlier years, which include all fossil taxa under one category except for parataxa like ootaxa and ichnotaxa. Because I disagreed, I restored the "Fossil taxa described in 2023" categories on the affected pages alongside Tyroxin's ones in order to create a compromise, also similar to e.g. Musivavis which has both a "fossil taxa described in 2022" and a "birds described in 2022". However, User:SlvrHwk reverted me. What should we do in this situation? Should we revert Tyroxin's changes and add everything back to the "fossil taxa described in 2023 category", follow my compromise of adding both the "fossil taxa" and "fossil mammals/birds/etc.", or something else? 49.144.201.224 (talk) 01:40, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Such changes should never have been made without consensus. For this reason, they should be reverted to the original state in my opinion. If somebody wants to create new categories such as "Fossil mammals described in X", they should open a discussion here at the WikiProject, and only make such changes when the majority here agrees. Jens Lallensack (talk) 02:01, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

I suppose these additional categories should first reach a consensus before being widely implemented (unfortunately, I didn't think of that earlier), and it should be understood which categories are best for taxon pages under the scope of this WikiProject. For some taxa (i.e. dinosaurs), only the "Fossil taxa..." category is used. However, for bird (like the aforementioned Musivavis) and mammal pages, two categories are often used: "Fossil taxa described in X" and "Birds/Mammals described in X" (I presume the latter is acceptable to use despite the fact that the taxa are extinct?). This is doable because neither category is "nested" within the other. Anyway, the new categories for "Fossil birds/mammals" combine the previous two into a single category, being placed in turn within the "Fossil taxa" and "Birds/Mammals" categories. Thus, I am afraid the solution proposed by the IP user to include both "Fossil taxa" and "Fossil birds/mammals" categories on pages cannot be implemented, as that is unnecessarily repetitive. I don't have strong opinions either way regarding whether or not the new categories should be kept. -SlvrHwk (talk) 05:42, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

There is an argument to be made about keeping Fossil taxa, as many of these extinct species are described as monotypic genera and the page handles both the species and the genus. In the tree of extant species, the latter would still allow for Fossil taxa described in, if the fossil tree was to be diversified accordingly. But off to discussion on that, my motivation was to not mix up these extinct species into categories of extant species. --Tyroxin (talk) 17:55, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

The thing is -- as is evident from this discussion -- there is no consensus for you to unilaterally separate the fossil birds from the extinct ones, or to remove them from the main "fossil taxa described in xxxx" category. Pending a community consensus, I will revert the categories to their original state. 49.144.201.224 (talk) 01:17, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

I'd prefer not to split the Fossil taxa described in X categories into mammals/birds/etc, personally. SilverTiger12 (talk) 14:54, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

For the monotypic pages that cover both the genus and species, it is typical to have a redirect pointing to it, so that if the article's title is the genus, the redirect is from the species, and vice versa. The redirect is then a valid place to put the categories that don't exactly fit the main article, but do fit the redirect's title. (For instance, "taxa" categories typically go on levels of taxa above species, while "birds" or "mammals" would go on the species-level title. So if you have a species name redirecting to a genus name, "fossil birds" would fit on the redirect, and "fossil taxa" would fit on the genus article. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:06, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

I would not be aware of that being a discussed guideline either, to be honest, by my perception it was somewhen started and stuck. But there has not been a concerted effort of enforcing it, yet (see Lepidogalaxias and Lepidogalaxias salamandroides). I do support that setup, and would also do so in fossil taxa, though it has to be acknowledged, that this would require the creation of redirects in every case. Not sure whether that collides with other Wikipedia guidelines keeping the creation of redirects in check. --Tyroxin (talk) 21:44, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Diversification of the "Fossil Taxa described in X" categories

I propose the diversification of the "Fossil Taxa described in X" category on the species level. The level of detail is debatable, though in the chordata, it would be sensible to match the related categories (for example "Mammals described in X" <> "Fossil mammals described in"), with possibly an adaptation regarding clades containing dinosaurs.

Initial proposed categories

Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Dinosaurs, Amphibians, Fish, Insects, Molluscs, with parent category Animals and Plants

Reasons

Specified categories would help narrow down the search for articles from a specific clade, especially as the overall taxa category has regularly exceeded 100 articles for the last two decades. In some cases, a diversification has been accomplished by also using the Species description categories mainly used for extant species. New, more specific categories would prevent the mixing of extant and fossil species in the established categories. In some cases fossil species have been described in still extant genera (example: Homo), here specified/species categories would separate them from the genera in Fossil Taxa.

Open questions

• How to handle species of monotypic genera? Options include housing both "Taxa" and "Species" categories at the primary article, or housing the "Species" at the full species name which redirects to the genus.
• What is the cutoff to consider a species being a fossil species? Is it sufficient if a species was extinct at the time a holotype was selected?
• Where do cases of microorganisms land, that have been "resurrected" from permafrost soil? --Tyroxin (talk) 21:44, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Comments

There are the "Prehistoric X genera" categories which could provide some of that functionality, but they end at the genus level and do not cover species, which specifically affects extinct species in extant genera. --Tyroxin (talk) 21:48, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

I am not that much into categories, so the following points are questions rather than strong opinions. But:

• I understand your argument regarding more fine-scaled categories, but note that we already have the "year in paleontology" lists for precisely this usecase, e.g. 2023 in archosaur paleontology, that list the new taxa of dinosaurs, pseudosuchians, etc. Do we really need to duplicate this function in the categories?
• If I understand your proposal correctly, we would get two very similar categories in an article like Waltonavis: "Birds described in 2022" and "Fossil birds described in 2022". That seems mostly redundant (if not to say chaotic). I think we should try to simplify rather than making it even more complicated. Maybe we don't even need separate "fossil taxa" categories? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:29, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

The existing non-fossil categories are subcategories of "Species described in XXXX". As a genus, Waltonavis should not be in "Birds described in 2022" (however, higher taxa do get placed in the categories by editors who are unaware that they are subcategories of species categories). Plantdrew (talk) 22:51, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I see. But if this is the case, then the new system as proposed by Tyroxin does not seem to work: A category "Fossil birds described in 2022" cannot be nested within both "Birds described in 2022" and "Fossil taxa described in 2022", because the former is for species while the latter is for all taxa. Or do I miss something? Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:31, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I do believe you are correct. It would almost be more appropriate to remove "Species described in XXX" altogether, since it is a subcategory of "Taxa described in XXXX". Furthermore, none of the categories within "Species described..." directly infer that pages with that category are strictly for species rather than genera as well. -SlvrHwk (talk) 00:49, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

"Species described in" categories pre-date "Taxa described in" categories: Category:Species described in 1753 was created in 2009, Category:Taxa described in 1753 was created in 2018. I hadn't thought about the implications of the taxa categories for the species categories before, but now that the taxa categories exist, I wouldn't mind upmerging the species categories. In retrospect, having species categories instead of taxa categories is an unnecessary level of intersectional categorization. Plantdrew (talk) 04:04, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

In theory, any specialization of categories is "unnecessary", because combinations of any number of large overarching catch-all categories (Example for Waltonavis > Categories: "Described in 2022", "Genus", "Extinct taxa", "Eocene", "Birds", "Europe") can be returned by a SMW-query - with some barrier of entry, and corner cases be damned.--Tyroxin (talk) 15:51, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

In Waltonavis, "Birds described in 2022" would be replaced by "Fossil birds described in 2022" according to the proposal. Monotypic genera sometimes appear to be erroneously placed with these species, because placing the species category on the redirecting page is either not yet fully established or not correct. According to Taxon, species can be considered taxa just as well as genera, Fossil birds as a category dedicated to species thus can be considered a logical section of Fossil taxa, as a category for genus and higher. In the "species described in"-tree, a genus placed "Birds described in" would conflict with the precedent set by the "Species described in" parent category, which at least hint at a limitation to Species by its name (monotypic genera apply...). --Tyroxin (talk) 15:51, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

What is with the fixation on monotypic genera mixing in with species of multispecific genera? That just complicates the situation at hand. I thought we were talking about whether or not to split a category designed for all taxa (generic and specific) by classification, not Linnean rank. 49.144.201.224 (talk) 01:17, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

I acknowledge, 2023 in archosaur paleontology could fill a similar role of collecting (links to) articles that fit the respective delineation. I think this pushes towards a more general discussion of whether categories and "lists" are mutually exclusive, or whether both should be utilized to their respective strengths. --Tyroxin (talk) 15:51, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Jens Lallensack that splitting the main "Fossil taxa described in XXXX" taxa into separate categories for clades would be chaotic and redundant. I also agree with SlvrHwk that we should remove the "Species described in XXXX" and just create a category for all taxa, genera and species, fossil and extant, that are described in a certain year. 49.144.201.224 (talk) 01:16, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

At time of commenting, "Taxa described in 1912" would hold 2500 articles. Just for reference, half of that are moths. --Tyroxin (talk) 15:58, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose, per Jens; it will just be chaotic and annoying. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 04:15, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
• Support Per the explicit instructions governing categories. "Fossil taxa described in XXXX" articles do not perform the same function as the categories at all, The articles "ostensibly" are an overview of the everything that happened that year, REGARDLESS of if actual articles exist (Which for the majority of not Vert taxa, they dont). Categories are a system of sorting, collating, and connecting articles that share characteristics, so "Category:taxa described in XXXX" would link all the articles that actually exist in wikipedia. Additionally the category rules are clear that overly large categories should be subdivided.--Kevmin § 16:22, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

  I don't know … in the article 2023 in arthropod paleontology, the few existing articles are easily identified as such by the blue links. Categories, on the other hand, hide the fact that only a fraction of the taxa is covered. Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:36, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

  I am not sure categories must cover the outline of how many articles are missing, this is where List articles can complement a category - or a wiki project. Note that a wikipedia redlink is a fairly specific way of transmitting the information of a missing article, mainly catering to the visual impression of us editors. Other tools and means of data processing may be able to draw this information from a list article.

  Another pitfall, in Mucrospirifer, the species list consists of blue links, suggesting all described fossil species have created articles. However, all but M. mucronatus are redirects back to Mucrospirifer. (In the category view, redirects sorted in this category are shown in italics) --Tyroxin (talk) 21:18, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

  I was rather asking what the proposed categories would add in addition to the lists. Regarding redirects: For most fossil groups, including dinosaurs for example, we only have articles at genus level. That does not necessarily mean that the species are not sufficiently covered within those genus articles (and neither lists nor categories will tell if they are). Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:28, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

  @Tyroxin:, you can set redirects to display a different color. There's a more complex user script out there somewhere that also incorporates a different color for disambiguation links, but I'm using a simple one at User:Plantdrew/common.css. Just make a common.css subpage for yourself and copy the code over. Plantdrew (talk) 22:39, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

• Support, with caution. This should be tried first with experimental goals, to make sure this doesn't reveal itself impossible to manage in the long run. Categories are an useful navigation tool, our Year in XXXX articles are a good tool but they are different ; categories are also much easier to navigate. I'm much more concerned at our general capacity to manage large and regular masses of information into more precise categories. If that can be automated, it would be a definite "Support", though.

Larrayal (talk) 22:34, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

One thing I forgot to add to my previous comment is that some of the proposed categories aren't mutually exclusive. For example, Reptiles includes Dinosaurs which includes Birds. If there's a new fossil bird described, will it be added to Birds and/or Dinosaurs and/or Reptiles? (and not to mention the definition of "bird" is arbitrary; does it start at Avialae, Pygostylia, Euornithes, Aves, or what?) Having a single category for all taxa, generic and specific, will eliminate that problem. (And to eliminate Tyroxin's confusion over "taxa" and "species", just eliminate the "species" category altogether or at least clarify that the latter doesn't refer only to specific-ranked article titles.) 49.144.201.224 (talk) 01:25, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to remind you of Paraphyly, the groups in question are established concepts in public discourse (albeit delineations may vary) even though they can be traced back to a common ancestor. I acknowledge that considering the nature of fossil taxa, possibly being more basal branches and their ranking sometimes being reconstructed from relatively narrow findings, this might go either way for corner cases. (I wish to note, that I took offense at your second bracket.) --05:31, 23 November 2023 (UTC) Tyroxin (talk) 05:31, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, no offense is intended. I was just proposing a solution for the problem you have regarding the specifics of the "taxa" and "species" categories. 49.144.201.224 (talk) 06:37, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose, for the already highlighted reasons, I only think this will seek to create more chaos, more unessesary levels of intersectional categorisation, and is redundant given the already existing articles such as 2023 in archosaur paleontology which do the exact thing being proposed. I will say that there is merit to the concept of fusing 'Fossil Taxa Described in XXXX' articles into 'Taxa Described in XXXX' articles and I would be more cordial to that idea as oppose to uplifting a system that already works well. Sauriazoicillus (talk) 08:41, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
• Comment: As I said earlier, I do not have a strong opinion in support or opposition of the current category issue. I do think (however this discussion turns out), that the categories should be applicable to pages representing both genera and species (the suggested solution being to eliminate "Species described in XXX"). The current method of categorization (using both "Fossil taxa..." and "Birds/mammals/etc. described..." categories) seems to work fine, but it would also be nice to be able to separate fossil taxa from extant ones (by the new proposed "Fossil birds/mammals/etc." categories). If we go with the proposed new categories, we should try to limit them to avoid overcomplicating categorizing pages, but I don't have a solution as to how to best do this. Hope that makes sense. -SlvrHwk (talk) 00:39, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

It would be possible to to move genera and higher taxa to these new more specific categories as well, in the fossil tree, there is no "Fossil species described in" existing, nor proposed, that would semantically prohibit that. If "eliminating Species described in" means, to cut it as middle parent category, to free up moving genera, familia and ordo accordingly - I am actually not opposed to that either, but its not a thing of WP:PALEO to decide. Prevention of 'overcomplicating' could be exercised by introducting these branches step by step, starting with Fossil animals described in and Fossil plants described in. Further branches could then be established upon (popular) demand (a dinosaur category is likely in higher demand than a cnidarian category). This stepwise progression would however bring repeated maintenance edits, setting up a larger initial tree would reduce the edit load. (as opposed to "Dinosaurs described in" evolving over Animals>Vertebrates>Reptiles>Dinosaurs). --Tyroxin (talk) 04:55, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

That could work, but let’s return to the main topic of the discussion here: what are the advantages of having separate categories for say, animals and plants, instead of having an all-encompassing “Fossil taxa” category? 2001:4453:575:AB00:3057:2310:DC6:617F (talk) 05:39, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

The technical problem with your proposal is is: You want to have your categories, say "Fossil birds described in 2022", as a sub-category of "Birds described in 2022". That is not possible, because the latter is only for species. These are incompatible. But when it is not possible to nest them, then, logically, any fossil bird species needs to be in both "Birds described in 2022" AND "Fossil birds described in 2022", because the bird meets the criteria for both. This is the sort of chaos and inconsistency that I was talking about that think we really should seek to avoid. Getting rid of species categories altogether as proposed above (i.e., "Birds described in 2022" would be for all taxa, not just species) makes a lot of sense, and would solve this issue. But you are right that such a change is more far-reaching, and a separate proposal at WP:TOL would probably be required. Jens Lallensack (talk) 10:36, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

If "Fossil birds described in" is a subcategory of "Birds described in", That fossil species would only go into "Fossil birds", as usually parent categories can be expected to be inherited. If genera remain in Fossil Taxa, that is not a problem at all, if genera should be moved as well, as seems to be favored by the majority here (_if_ something is done at all) - then it might become a problem for people adhering to flawless consistency to the t for the category tree. In light of our article structure, the considerable amount of monotypic genera in fossil taxonomy is a challenge. But with adding the "species"-categories to the redirect coming from the binomial species name, there is a solution that as far as I have gathered from here is not controversial at all. --Tyroxin (talk) 20:15, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Forgive me if I misunderstood, but are you suggesting that the new proposed categories (such as "fossil birds described in year") should contain species only? So that the parent-category "Fossil taxa" would contain everything (from every group) except for the species? But you also proposed the sub-category "Dinosaurs described in year"; do you know that we don't have any dinosaur species articles in the first place? Anyways, I still think we need something much simpler and less confusing. Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:31, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

No, I did not take note of that yet.

Though in the case of Daspletosaurus, the three species referred to in the text exist as redirect pages, so this is a solvable "problem" in my book. --Tyroxin (talk) 22:26, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

So you argue that, for example, Oblitosaurus should be in the category "Fossil taxa described in 2023", while its only known species, Oblitosaurus bunnueli, should be in "Dinosaurs described in 2023"? And that "Dinosaurs described in 2023" category would contain nothing but redirects? Hmm. Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:42, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

I’m not sure redirects should even have categories... 49.144.199.79 (talk) 06:01, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

This is a long-established and accepted practice. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:18, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Evolution of fish

This article, along with other "Evolution of" articles, is simply highly outdated and still contain many contents that is highly inaccurate considering from recent views. Due to main editor have no particular background in fish evolution and suffering with terminal health issues, it is hard to extend article as accurate view, and best way of this article would be WP:BURNWITHFIRE. This article mainly focuses on the content up to the Devonian period, giving the impression that fish evolution did not occur during the Mesozoic or Cenozoic eras. So perhaps this list of fish should be redone, or perhaps the article itself should be rewritten to not include a monotonous list of fish. Since this list is created "by periods", groups and species are listed alternately, which may be difficult for beginners to understand. If anything, I feel that if listing up fish is needed, it's best to do it per groups. Honestly, I feel that selecting "important species" is quite difficult. If you collect only famous species, the results will be biased, and if you choose minor species, there are often no articles on them. What should we do? Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 09:07, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to structure this any differently from any number of reviews out there, such as this one: [37] I think the top-level headings can stay, except the timeline should be merged into the sections for high-level groups in prose form. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 19:55, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Ichthyosaur#Requested move 7 December 2023

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Ichthyosaur#Requested move 7 December 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. PrimalMustelid (talk) 10:51, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

New Category

I recently created Category:Multispecific non-avian dinosaur genera as a means of tracking genera with more than one species as part of a wider effort to integrate the Paleospecies Table template into WP:DINO articles. As it has been created, the category includes genera with uncertain or possibly dubious synonyms (i.e. Stegoceras and Torosaurus) but not any genera with widely-accepted junior synonyms as "additional species" (i.e. Tyrannosaurus or Megalosaurus). Does anybody have any additions, suggestions, or ways to improve this category? --A Cynical Idealist (talk) 21:42, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with it. Though as a reminder, the paleospecies table was originally developed based on another template widely used in lists (i.e. List of felids), with the idea that the paleospecies version could be used to construct "Lists of fossil X" (i.e. List of fossil felids or List of ornithopods) in that same style. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 21:55, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I have two concerns/questions here:

1) To me, the category seems a little arbitrary. When we have this category, why not having the categories "Dinosaurs named after countries", "Dinosaurs known from cranial material", "Dinosaurs known from single specimens", "Dinosaurs with designated neotypes", just to name a few possibilities? These all sound interesting, but they are all quite niche. I fear that, if we have all of them, it generates a lot of maintenance work and the truly important categories will be difficult to find, reducing the use value of the category system overall.

2) We also need to think about consistency. Should this "multispecific genera" category be established for other groups, too? If we approve this category, I do not see any reason why it should not be done for all other groups as well. Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:18, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

1) I disagree that the category is arbitrary because it serves to track these genera with the explicit function. Namely, the category is for standardizing a format of how multiple species (especially those without unique articles for each of their species) are presented in the article for that genus. Those other hypothetical categories serve no such function.

2) I don't think there's any reason not to, but there's also no reason we have to. The existence of such a category doesn't necessitate the expansion of that concept, especially since non-avian dinosaurs are relatively unique among extinct clades in the prevalence of monospecific genera. Not wholly unique, of course, and I would be willing to expand the categories to other diapsid clades at least if the consensus is that such action may be necessary. --A Cynical Idealist (talk) 23:38, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

If the purpose of the category is to facilitate any editorial effort(s), it should have {{Maintenance category|hidden=yes}} Plantdrew (talk) 01:28, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Edit war at Steppe mammoth

Mammoth mount at Armenian museum, which seems to have its tusks swapped the wrong way around

I've been in an editing dispute with @Armen888: over the Steppe mammoth article. Armen888 has been edit warring to emphasise Mammuthus armeniacus as equivalent to Mammuthus trogontherii as well as to include a mount of a mammoth at an Armenian museum in Yerevan. As far as I can tell, the name Mammuthus armeniacus is not widely used for this taxon in the last decade, with Mammuthus trogontherii overwhelmingly used for this taxon. The mount in the photo at Yerevan museum also appears to have its tusks accidentally swapped the wrong way around, so I don't see why this photo should be used when it has basic anatomical errors. In response to my concerns, Armen888 has stated The name of mammoth sometimes is mamontus armeniacus - ARMENIAN mamonth, and by that way we need for this image from Armenia! this is the same thing as removing photos of armenian muflon from Armenia. [38] I don't see why the connection with Armenia needs to be emphasised when this species ranged across the entirety of Northern Eurasia from Western Europe to Beringia. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:55, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Oh okey Armen888 (talk) 10:25, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry Armen888 (talk) 10:25, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

I just thought that, firstly, his bones were special because for the first time I saw that the biyns were turned in different directions, secondly, his age was very great, and thirdly, so that people would not ask themselves the question why one of the synonyms for the mammoth is Mamontus armeniacus Armen888 (talk) 10:38, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

There really is no question here, trogontherii is the common name on Google Scholar by a factor of 10. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 18:38, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Should ”Ramskoeldia” consimilis be mentioned within the Houcaris page?

In the same paper describing Mobulavermis, “Ramskoeldia” consimilis was placed inside the genus Houcaris on account of the shared features with Ramskoeldia being questionable at best and matching closely with other species of Houcaris. In addition, the genus was grouped inside Anomalocarididae basal to Amplectobeluidae instead of inside Tamisiocarididae as previously thought. Is this enough evidence to use or at least mention the suggested reclassification or would more papers supporting this be needed? IC1101-Capinatator (talk) 18:34, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

I would wait, it's not primarily a radiodont paper. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 03:46, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Proposal to merge Himalayan fossil hoax into Vishwa Jit Gupta

Please see Talk:Vishwa_Jit_Gupta, as I think this is essentially needless duplication. Participate if interested, thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:07, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Change content assessment rating of Librostoma?

From 'Stub class' to 'start class' or maybe even 'C class' someday. Abdullah raji (talk) 05:26, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

For context: I changed the readable prose from 6 words to 157 words Abdullah raji (talk) 05:29, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:BOLD applies. Stub -> Start is cut-and-dry. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 07:02, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

I've already changed it from stub to start Abdullah raji (talk) 07:04, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Layout of List of extinct cetaceans

I'm currently working on updating the list of extinct cetaceans with taxa from 2020 though 2023, and have found that the current layout of the page really doesn't give that much information, with it being a bullet-pointed list that only includes extinct genera. Not only does this exclude a number of extinct species that belong to extant genera, like those of the genus Eschrichtius (to which the modern day Gray Whale belongs), but it also doesn't provide adequate sourcing or any further information. I'd like to change up the page to table format, matching one made by user Armin Reindl on the Meiolaniidae page. However, I wanted to run the proposal by the others here to see if you have any input. The Morrison Man (talk) 21:43, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, at least. FunkMonk (talk) 21:56, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Saadanius

Saadanius has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. PrimalMustelid (talk) 01:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Carinachitidae article - help needed

Greetings, for Carinachitidae, it needs a least one incoming wikilink, in order to remove the Orphan article tag. The lead states that it's within a "family of small shelly fossils". I am asking for help here as I'm clueless how to solve. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 01:11, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Fixed, i added a link in the 'see also' section for Small shelly fauna Abdullah raji (talk) 05:22, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

 Done - Thank you @Abdullah raji. Article is now de-orphaned. Cheers! JoeNMLC (talk) 13:04, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Second article I have de-orphaned (the first was Sam Ohu Gon III). What other articles do you know that should be de-orphaned? Abdullah raji (talk) 16:30, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Greetings @Abdullah raji - Glad you asked as the backlog of Orphaned articles is still over 60,000 articles. The backlog is broken down by months as shown at Category:Orphaned articles. There is a second group of Category:Attempted de-orphan, more difficult ones. Have you visited at Wikipedia:Orphan? Many helpful suggestions there. Cheers, JoeNMLC (talk)

From Petscan tool, here is a list of orphan biology taxa articles (mixed).

• Acregoliath
• Carex aureolensis
• Carex basiantha
• Chemosensory speciation
• Chickpea bushy dwarf virus
• Chrysops abatus
• Chrysops ater
• Helianthus annuus 'Russian Giant'
• Hylopanchax
• LinBi
• Marasmius pacificus
• Palimbolus elegans
• Palimbolus femoralis
• Paratobias
• Patella variabilis
• Poecilia elegans
• Poecilurus
• Prolimacodes lilalia
• Protobiella
• Pseudotmesisternus
• Psococerastis gibbosa
• Retispora lepidophyta
• Scolecenchelys japonica
• Suillus nueschii
• Teratobaikalia macrostoma
• Xeniamia

Not sure how many of these are paleontology specific, but each is an orphan article that needs at least one incoming wikilink to de-orphan. Even though I had some biology courses (many years ago) I am not that familiar with the topic. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 21:16, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Good, I have notepad ready and i'll see how many I can de-orphan. Abdullah raji (talk) 04:34, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I've finished through with the list and here are the results:

1 Acregolith /

2 carex aureolensis A

3 carex basiantha A

4 chemosensory speciation C

5 chickpea bushy dwarf virus /

6 chrysops abatus /

7 chryops ater /

8 helianthus annus ('russian great') C

9 Hylopanchax A

10 LinBi C

11 marasimus pacificus A

12 palimbolus elegans W

13 Palimbolus femoralis W

14 Paratobias C

15 patella variabillis /

16 poecillia elegans A

17 poecilurus C

18 Prolimacodes lilalia A

19 Protobiella A

20 Pseudotmesisternus C

21 Psococerastis gibbosa A

22 Retispora lepidophyta A

23 Scolecenchelys japonica C

24 Suillius neuschii C

25 Teratobaikalia macrostoma C

26 Xeniamia /

/=completed

A = Already de-orphaned

C = can't/too lazy

W = walled garden Abdullah raji (talk) 05:42, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Thankyou @Abdullah raji for this information. Looking at the first article, I did see:

• Acregoliath - Stupendemys Abdullah raji, added wiklink to de-orphan
  • JoeNMLC -Removed orphan tag -  Done

So for articles with incoming wikilink (What links here), the orphan tag can be removed. Cheers! JoeNMLC (talk) 17:44, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

P.S. @Abdullah raji - for the list above, I did go through all and removed Orphan tag if possible. Just FYI - if you're interesting learning about PetScan tool, I added a section Filter by biology taxa category to my PetScan sub-page here. Cheers, JoeNMLC (talk) 18:07, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

@JoeNMLC:, use Category:Articles with 'species' microformats in your PetScan search instead of Category:Taxa. A depth of 2 in Taxa isn't deep enough to pick up all the orphaned taxon articles (but if you go deeper you end up getting a bunch of non-taxon articles). Plantdrew (talk) 19:49, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @Plantdrew for the tip; will look into next time I'm using Petscan, 2-3 times a week. Cheers! JoeNMLC (talk) 20:31, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:T. Rex and the Crater of Doom#Requested move 10 January 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:T. Rex and the Crater of Doom#Requested move 10 January 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 23:01, 10 January 2024 (UTC)