Talk:Bahariasauridae

Megalosaurinidae?

@NGPezz and Apokryltaros: GBIF, FossilWorks, and MinDat all say this should be Megalosaurinidae. I don't find any 3rd party source saying this should remain at this name. What say you two? You are the most recently active editors of this article. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:16, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. All the sites you listed get their data and taxonomic conclusions from the Paleobiology database, which does indeed use Baharaiasauridae as a junior synonym of Megalosauridae (and I assume Megalosaurinidae is an obsolete spelling of the latter family). But there is reason to believe the PBDB classification is severely outdated, and probably based of an old passing mention in a mid-century discussion. In the past few decades at least, megalosaurids have not been placed anywhere close to Bahariasaurus (the type genus, and for a long time only known member of Bahariasauridae). Even PBDB simply lists Bahariasaurus as an indeterminate avetheropod, a group which excludes megalosaurids in most analyses. The issue partially stems from the fact that the fossils of Bahariasaurus were actually destroyed in WWII, so modern paleontologists have been unable to restudy it directly. The reason we have a "Baharaiasauridae" article is because quite a few modern papers (2016 onward) have suggested that Bahariasaurus may have affinities with other enigmatic dinosaurs such as Deltadromeus and elaphrosaurines. Those papers informally refer to this cluster as "Bahariasauridae", and so have we. PBDB either has not been updated or prefers to ignore the admittedly convoluted and unstable nature of this arrangement. NGPezz (talk) 14:53, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah nice. Nothing is simple. XD So, I came upon this as I'm trying to cleanup various taxobox and taxonbar error categories. for this I had to update the Wikidata item Bahariasauridae (Q96372983) By adding the taxonomy and the link to en-wiki. When I do such things, I also try to add at least a taxon ID or two, but all the DBs I know to check... well, you know the rest. I'll add the IDs that I did find, even though they say synonym vice full name. - UtherSRG (talk) 15:03, 9 February 2024 (UTC)