Talk:Herto Man/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: RoySmith (talk · contribs) 01:30, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

@Dunkleosteus77: I'm starting this review. My plan is to do two major passes through the article, first for prose, the second to verify the references. In general, all my comments will be suggestions which you can accept or reject as you see fit. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:30, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Checklist

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Prose

To give a little background, which might help explain some of my comments, I'm scientifically literate, but not an expert in anthropology or evolutionary history of humans. As I read through this, I'm trying to calibrate my comments to WP:TECHNICAL.

Lead section

• "Herto Man refers to the 160,000 to 154,000 year old human remains". This may be excessively nit-picky, but "human remains" is ambiguous as to whether it's singular or plural. Was this a single person, or multiple people? You explain a few sentences later that it was 12 or more, but it would be nice if there was a way to avoid the initial ambiguity.

how should I do that?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Dunkleosteus77, Yeah, that's a good question. Possibly, "...refers to the collection of 160,000...", but now that I come back to it, I think it's fine the way it is. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:56, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• "The discovery of Herto Man was significant at the time" Is it no longer significant?

"especially significant"   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• "H. sapiens" I'm not familiar with standard practice for species names, but my first thought was to wonder if all (non-expert) readers would connect that "H. sapiens" (and later, "H. s. idaltu") is the same as "Homo sapiens" mentioned earlier without that being explained. If that's how it's always done, then no problem.

I don't understand   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Dunkleosteus77, I was just wondering if a non-technical reader would understand the abbreviations. But, it's not a big deal. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:57, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• "In the original description paper ... (that is, a stage in a chronospecies)". That's a big sentence to swallow, and by the time you get to "...have rejected this", it's no longer clear what "this" refers to. Maybe break into two, something along the lines of "...new subspecies as "H. s. idaltu" (Afar: Idaltu; "elder"). This subspecies was described as a transitional morph...", and then in the next sentence, "Subsequent researchers have rejected this", replace "this" with something more specific: "...have rejected the classification" (or whatever).

done   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• "end-morphology and beginning-morphology", again, this may just be my unfamiliarity with standard usage, but this is jarring because "end" and "beginning" are not the same part of speech. Does "end-morphology and start-morphology" work? Same comment applies to similar usage later in the article.

done   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Research history

• "The first fossils", this sounds like the first fossils of any kind. How about "The first herto man fossils", or "The first H. s. idaltu fossils", etc?

done   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• "The materials are: BOU-VP-16/1 ... These materials represent at least 12 individuals." This is confusing to me. You enumerate 10 specimens, then say this is from at least 12 individuals. Some of the specimen descriptions ("a nearly complete skull", "a parietal fragment") are clearly from one individual. Others ("parietal fragments") could be a mix of fragments from more than one individual?

"further excavation..."   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• "This region of the world..." I think start a new paragraph with this sentence.

• "In a simultaneously published paper...". Simultaneous with what? I think you're referring all the way back to "the original description paper" mentioned in the lead section, but that's not clear.

No, referring to the paper which dated the remains   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• "... just barely outside the umbrella of what is considered ...", unless that's a direct quote from the paper, delete "the umbrella of". It doesn't add anything other than word count.

done   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• "..., beyond the range of variation for any present-day". I think you're missing a word, "..., AND beyond the range..."? Actually, another word, "... any present-day HUMAN"?

done   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• "... they decided to classify". My hunch is they didn't just decide to classify, they actually went ahead and classified. So leave out "decided to".

done   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• "The name comes from the local Afar language idàltu "elder". " The first time (in the lead), you punctuate this as "idaltu; "elder"" (i.e. with a semi-colon). Be consistent.

dine   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• "In another simultaneously published paper," So, we've got a total of three papers that came out at the same time?

yes   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Anatomy

No issues.

Culture

• You use "artefact" in several places. Is that an alternate spelling for "artifact"?

yes   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

See also

• Don't use "colwidth=20em". Let the software lay things out in the default style. What looks good on your device may be totally weird on another device (web, mobile, etc).

done   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

This seems like a good place to stop. My next pass will be looking in depth at the references, but I may not get to that for a day or two.

References

Unfortunately, I don't have access to many of the sources in full text (i.e. Nature), so I'm just spot-checking what I can find. There's certainly no question about the general reliability of any of the sources.

• Lubsen & Corruccini refer to "Skhul V", which is referred to as "Skhul 5" in this article. Is there a reason to not use the nomenclature from the original source?

some people use Roman numerals, some don't, it doesn't really matter so long as we retain the number five   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:21, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• "Herto Man can be considered an "AMH" rather than a transitional morph, therefore making the subspecies distinction idaltu unjustified." Looking at the long paragraph at the bottom of page 12 to the top of page 13 in Lubsen & Corruccini, I'm not sure this is correct. They say, "our analyses do not support or refute the statement by White et al. (2003) that this specimen is different enough to be classified as a new subspecies" and go on to explore some scenarios by which it might be considered a subspecies and some by which it might not. So I think you're making a stronger statement that is supported by the source.

"That is, their analysis found no support for Herto Man's position as a transitional morph, nor the nomen idaltu"   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:21, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

• I don't think this is technically a GA criteria, but could you update the "Human emergence: Perspectives from Herto, Afar Rift, Ethiopia" to include all the authors, with full first names? "et al" can be used by a particular template for display, but the full data should be in the template.

Not really seeing any other issues here.

Other criteria

I'm not seeing any issues with breadth of coverage, NPOV, stability, or images.