Talk:Kirtlandian

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Kirtlandian/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs) 08:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

• I propose to take on this review. I know little of paleontology or the Cretaceous period so besides assessing whether it meets the GA criteria, I will be considering whether the article is accessible to non-experts. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 08:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

First reading

• I wonder why this article was nominated in GAN under "Biology and Medicine" rather than "Geology"?

Changed

• I will come back to the lead later when I have studied the rest of the article.

OK

• "These formation originate in Alberta and Montana, Utah, ..." - Is "originate" the right word here?

Fixed

• Explain or link at first use: stratigraphy, formation, fauna, taxon, lithology,

Linked

• "... until their place of discovery was found to be from the Kirtland Formation." - needs some explanation.

Explaned

• In the thickness section, it states that the two formations have certain thicknesses, then it restates this information using a different source.

Modified sentences

• "... the Kirtland includes one of the five rocks being coal." - I don't think this is very clear.

Fixed

• "Another commons rock is sandstone, found through the Kirtland Formation. The other three rock found in the Kirtland Formation are siltstone, mudstone and shale." - You presumably mean "common". These two sentences could be combined.

Combined, reworded

• "The Kirtlandian faunal age was named by Lucas and Sullivan and was found to date from 74.9 to 72 million years ago." - In what year did they make this estimation?

Added

• "The other two ashes were found to date the same as found by Sullivan in 2006." - This could be better expressed.

Changed

• This paragraph overuses the phrases "found that the age/date was different", can you express some of these in a different way?

Changed

• How is the presently accepted date established?

Added

• "Many fauna are from the Kirtlandian, ..." - Perhaps "The Kirtlandian has a distinctive fauna, ..."

Changed

• "As the Kirtlandian consists of the Fruitland and Kirtland formations, all fauna from the formations come from the Kirtlandian." - This seems a self-evident statement.

Removed, reworded

• "... and a turtle assigned to Kinosternoid indet." - What does "indet" mean?

reworded

More later. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:45, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for taking up the review! IJReid (talk) 16:17, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Those alterations look good. Continuing through the article, - Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:56, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

• "Fauna from the Kirtlandian have come from the Williams Fork Formation." - What about starting this paragraph "Kirtlandian fauna are also present in the Williams Fork Formation." or somesuch.

Changed

• Looking at your use of "cf.", it does not seem to agree with the article cf. which suggests it should be "placed between the genus and species name to describe a species whose designation is uncertain".

But if the genus designation is uncertain, it goes before the genus instead.

• "The only taxon are known from the formation is ..." - "Taxon" is singular.

Done.

• "Barely any fauna are known from the Ringbone Formation. The only taxon are known from the formation is ..." - How about "Few fossils have been found in the Ringbone Formation, the only significant one being ..."?

Changed.

• "... is because it is from the same age as the correlating Fort Crittenden Formation" - Perhaps " is because the rocks are the same age as the Fort Crittenden Formation".

Changed.

• "... Tyrannosauridae indet., and Ornithomimidae indet." - rephrase to get rid of the "indet"s.

Done.

• "... is now largely incorrect." - How about using "superceded"?

Done.

• "Three unnamed faunal ages were also identified, between the Paluxian and Aquilan, the Aquilan and Judithian, and the Judithian and Edmontonian. The Kirtlandian was characterized as the later gap." - How about "Three previously unnamed faunal ages were given names and term "Kirtlandian" was chosen for the gap between the Judithian and Edmontonian."

Done.

• The last sentence in the Associations section is awkward. How about starting it "Another association, the "Pachyrhinosaurus - Edmontosaurus association", ..."?

Done, Sorry for being slow, but I forgot to put this on my watchlist. IJReid (talk) 14:24, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I have to stop now. Will come back and look at the lead when you have dealt with those points. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:56, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Second set of eyes

• Just glancing over the article, I notice the opening sentence uses the past tense. This gives the impression that Kirtlandian is no longer a used/accepted Faunal stage.

Fixed

• 1975 has been linked to 1975 in Paleontology, however there is no distinct information relevant to Kirtlandian, and no other dates are linked. Seems odd.

Removed link. Some day, a note might be added that a new faunal age was named in that year, but right now most "in Paleontology" pages are lists.

• Are the Hunter Wash local fauna and Willow Wash local faunas distinct enough from there respective formations to have articles separate from them? If not linking to the appropriate formation pages?

Currently, I don't think enough studies have been published to warrant them their own page, and it would take lots of research to distinguish which local fauna taxa are from. IJReid (talk) 14:30, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

--Kevmin § 17:37, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

GA criteria

• The article is well written and complies with MOS guidelines on prose and grammar, structure and layout.
• The article uses many reliable third-party sources, and makes frequent citations to them. I do not believe it contains original research.
• The article covers the main aspects of the subject and remains focussed.
• The article is neutral.
• The article is stable. It was created in February 2014 by the nominator and has hardly been edited by anyone else since.
• The images are relevant, have suitable captions and are properly licensed.

• Final assessment - I believe this article meets the GA criteria. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:53, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Notability

I think it was a mistake to pass this article for GA. All the citations are of primary sources, and most of those include Sullivan as an author. The policy on original research states that "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources. Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources." The big notability issue here is whether this is really a recognized biochronological unit. I have found a couple of citations that cast doubt on it:

... and on the basis of mammals there is no reason for establishing a Kirtlandian land vertebrate age.

— Eaton and CIfelli, At the Top of the Grand Staircase: The Late Cretaceous of Southern Utah page 324

... the recently named Kirtlandian Land Vertebrate Age (LVA) ... However, the age of the Aguja is not well enough constrained to test Sullivan and Lucas's idea ...

— Sankey, New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs: The Royal Tyrrell Museum Ceratopsian Symposium, page 521

Hence my notability tag. Secondary sources need to be found that establish the Kirtlandian as a recognized land vertebrate age, and not just an idea of Sullivan's. RockMagnetist(talk) 00:26, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

For comparison, see the references I have added to the well-established Cretaceous land-mammal "ages" (Lancian, Edmontonian, and Judithian). These are extensively discussed in secondary sources from as recently as 2012. I have not been able to find anything like that for the Kirtlandian. RockMagnetist(talk) 01:46, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Well yes, I agree that this article has a lack of notability apart from Sullivan's papers. When I expanded this and nominated it for GA, I think that I believed I could to somewhere on it, simply because I found out about it through the expansion of Titanoceratops. However, now I doubt its notability and Ga standard. IJReid ^discuss 02:10, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Now that I remember, it is also Williamson, Longrich and Sankey who have made recent publications. And Russell, a fairly well-known palaeontologist in North America, first named it. I would cite Russell, but I have not found a copy of his publication to go off of. IJReid ^discuss 02:12, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

@IJReid: I admire your objectivity. There is no rush deciding on notability if you want to search for some sources. If no good ones are found, I think the best approach is to redirect this to Biochronology (which I am thinking of expanding) with a line or two about a proposed LMA. And maybe some of the material could go in the other articles on land-vertebrate ages. RockMagnetist(talk) 02:27, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Scientific criticism of the validity of the Kirtlandian doesn't undermine its notability as subject of an article any more than it would for geocentrism or Lamarckism. I'm not convinced that there's any cause for de-listing it. Abyssal (talk) 02:29, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

But the issue for notability is whether it is discussed by any secondary sources. RockMagnetist(talk) 02:40, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

For science subjects "primary source" has a different meaning to biographies, where a primary source is written by the subject about themselves. So the OR policy can be a bit confusing here. But if the inventor of the concept writes on it I suppose the writing can be considered a primary source, particularly if no one else writes on it. But if several other people do so, even if it is not a review or academic secondary source, then I think that notability is proven. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:26, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Abyssal. Whether the term "Kirtlandian" is eventually adopted is not material to this discussion. You mention two secondary sources in your opening statement above so I am not sure where you are coming from. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:34, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

But I have also quoted those sources in full on the subject. They don't even bother to define it. That's not significant coverage. RockMagnetist(talk) 15:51, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Continuing up here. I have searched up the term now in Google Scholar [1], and I believe that the article is notable on the basis of it being used in a large number of publications by a variety of authors. The reason this discussion was first brought up is not so much based on it being non-notable, but it not citing multiple recent publications by different authors (eg. "Saurornitholestes" robust is a troodontid). I will add a list of non-inline references at the end, and maybe also cite them in the text. IJReid ^discuss 17:12, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the references. However, they still don't meet the notability criteria. All are primary and one is an abstract. The first has Sullivan as a co-author, so is not independent; the second says "We document Late Cretaceous (Kirtlandian, Edmontonian) ..." and the third says (on p. 12) "... and all of the named ankylosaurid taxa are characteristic of the Kirtlandian land-vertebrate age (Sullivan and Lucas, 2003, 2006)." That's the coverage, in toto. Even if we accept that an accumulation of primary sources can stand in for a secondary source (and that is questionable), they still need to have more than a bare mention. Has anyone besides Sullivan even defined the Kirtlandian? RockMagnetist(talk) 17:52, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Again, you are missing the point that Sullivan is not even the definer of the Kirtlandian. Also, Burns 2008 actually has a diagram illustrating the biostratigraphy in San Juan Basin, including the age and formations of the Kirtlandian. IJReid ^discuss 00:13, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I did miss that point; the lead credits Sullivan and Lucas. I may have to take your word about the content of Burns 2008 because I can't access its content, but it sounds very promising. RockMagnetist(talk) 03:25, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Since this is apparently still under question here is the doi of Burns 2008 (if you so desire it can be accessed through Sci-Hub, but thats blacklisted by the wiki for linking). 10.1671/0272-4634-28.4.1102 IJReid ^discuss 02:11, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Definer of Kirtlandian

@IJReid: In the notability discussion, you said that Sullivan is not the definer of the Kirtlandian, and for some reason I accepted that at the time. However, I have just noticed that Sullivan and Lucas (2006) say "Sullivan and Lucas (2003a) recently named the youngest of these three gaps the Kirtlandian land-vertebrate 'age' (LVA)." RockMagnetist(talk) 16:32, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Notability revisited

Here is a summary of what I see in this article: All of the sources that support the idea of a Kirtlandian age have Sullivan, Lucas or Burns as authors, and these three have co-authored papers in various combinations. The sources by Burns barely mention it; the diagram in Burns 2008 is "modified from Sullivan and Lucas (2003, 2006)" and Burns has no discussion of the Kirtlandian in the text. The only independent discussions of the Kirtlandian are the two I quoted in full at the top of this section, and they say almost nothing about it. Even Longrich, who also studied dinosaur fossils in the Kirtland formation, does not mention the Kirtlandian. So it basically amounts to an idea by Sullivan and Lucas that has gained no traction in a decade. It's just not notable.

The preponderance of content in this article discusses relevant formations. My suggestion is that this article be merged into the various articles on formations. It would be fine to mention the proposed land-vertebrate age in Kirtland Formation, preferably with the skeptical comments included. RockMagnetist(talk) 17:20, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the Kirtlandian has not been used much by anyone, but that doesn't mean it has gained no traction. Older and supposedly more notable land vertebrate ages have even fewer publications mentioning them, mostly because land vertebrate ages are not extremely important with regards to the more popular things like animal descriptions or phylogenetic analyses. IJReid ^discuss 17:31, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

The status of other ages isn't relevant here. The bottom line is neither of us have managed to find a single independent source with significant coverage of this subject. Maybe it will be notable in the future, but right now it isn't. RockMagnetist(talk) 17:40, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

But there is, Russell 1975. It doesn't mention the Kirtlandian by name, but it describes what is the gap at that time, which Sullivan & Lucas name in 2003. IJReid ^discuss 23:02, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

So the independent coverage for an age based on a dinosaur fossil is a paper from 30 years earlier that describes a gap in the mammalian record? That's pretty thin. RockMagnetist(talk) 23:26, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

• @RockMagnetist and IJReid: Just a comment from someone dealing with GA requests. Notability is not a GA criteria, so I have removed the request. If you doubt the notability then it needs to go to AFD (unless a merge or redirect is decided here). This is a year old so unless an editor here wants to take it to afd I will remove the tag. AIRcorn (talk) 09:33, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

RockMagnetist ping didn't work for me, maybe this will. I don't feel like AFDing this so its up to someone else to decide. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 14:48, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

@Aircorn and IJReid: (Let's see if my ping works!) I suspect that the only reason notability is not a GA criterion is that it did not occur to anyone that a non-notable article could get a GA nomination. But the lack of response in a year seems reason enough to remove the request. RockMagnetist(talk) 15:37, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

As for an AfD, I think that a merge into the articles on the Kirtland Formation and Fruitland Formation would be the best solution. At the very least, this article should make it clear that the Kirtlandian is only a proposed land-vertebrate "age", and that there is plenty of skepticism not only about the Kirtlandian itself but ages based on dinosaur fossils in general. But I don't have the time right now to work on that. RockMagnetist(talk) 21:31, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Kirtlandian/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

1. Notability, maybe not the best word, but scope width certainly is in doubt, which means not the information from the article should be deleted, but it needs to be reworked, as suggested at the talk page
2. This status is on-going for almost 4 years; needs to be resolved; a notability tag on a GA is contradictory.
3. 9 references are very poor, especially if there are more available (listed under Further reading)
4. In general, this needs another set of eyes and in-depth review
5. @IJReid:, @RockMagnetist:, @Aircorn:, @Hemiauchenia:, @Mikenorton:, @FunkMonk:, @Jens Lallensack:

Tisquesusa (talk) 17:11, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment The broadness criteria is probably your best bet if you are looking to delist it without deleting. I don't know how that solves the notability issue though. I don't know enough about the topic to make a call on broadness and don't have the time to look into it. Just a FYI. You have opened an individual reassessment so it is up to you to close it at the end. I can help with that. AIRcorn (talk) 00:27, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment: when someone opens a reassessment, it is their responsibility to notify the relevant WikiProjects as well as the significant contributors, and the reassessment should not be closed until they have had a chance to respond, typically at least seven days. See the WP:GAR page, step 5 under Individual Reassessment, for further information including a useful template with a standardized notification message (the same is done for community reassessments). Also, as you have opened this as an individual reassessment rather than a community reassessment, you've taken the role of in-depth reviewer. If you're not prepared to do that, then this should be a community reassessment. BlueMoonset (talk) 14:41, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

The GA Reassessment appears automatically at WP Geology, I have seen that before, I pinged other geology and paleontology writers too for their comments. Individual or community, whatever method is irrelevant to the fact there is a notability tag on a GA, I haven't checked all GAs, but I think that is pretty unique, especially for such a long time. There was already an ongoing "reassessment" on the talk page of the article, maybe not formally listed as such, but again that is irrelevant for the problems with the GA article. Tisquesusa (talk) 14:54, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment The only thing that I have to add to my comments in 2015 is that I looked for sources postdating 2015 and wasn't able to find any. All the search results are just citations of older articles. RockMagnetist(talk) 17:57, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
• Comment At this point I no longer care what happens to the article. It's old and decrepit, not really relevant to anything I'd work on in the future, and causes so much trouble just by the question of being notable enough. Maybe eventually when there's a "cretaceous land fauna stages" article this can be merged there, but until then I don't see where the information is better suited to going. Being cited by few authors doesn't make something automatically unnotable, there are a great many articles about organisms that have only ever been more than mentioned in their original descriptive paper. The point has and will always remain, there is some useful information in the article: the list of taxa that are known or predicted to have coexisted at the same time and place. The question of notability shouldn't create a verdict on whether the article remains a GA or not, the question of notability should result in a verdict of whether the article and all its information should be deleted. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 17:00, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• @IJReid: I don't think the information in the article should be removed - just moved. Much of it is organized around the formations, and the articles on some (Williams Fork Formation, Ringbone Formation) are pathetic stubs that would be much improved with the information from this article. The hypothetical stage could even be mentioned in the articles on the Kirtlandian and Fruitvale formations. Much of the stratigraphy section has no obvious home, though. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:18, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

• I can't say I know much about the subject, but I am also a bit unsure what this discussion is suggesting; that it should not be a separate article, or that it is not fit for GA? Because anything that is notable enough to have an article is theoretically notable enough for GA (that is, any articles on Wikipedia). FunkMonk (talk) 13:56, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

I pinged you as one of the most prolific paleontology writers. What needs to happen is resolving the stalemate situation of a notability? tag on a GA. The tag/question of notability is not really the correct one, as even if a small group of researchers uses this age, it is notable. What I see as option is add more refs (and they are available, see further reading) to improve the article to better GA status and increase its "notability". I have destubbed the two formations linked above, but generally the US paleontological geology (formations to a decent C/B level status) is surprisingly poorly covered for such a large editor base. I can do some more work later on this topic but also have my own projects, so other editors ought to step in too. In essence, the issue was raised by @RockMagnetist:, I just formalized it more with a reassessment request. Tisquesusa (talk) 18:25, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

But we can't do anything to "improve" the notability of a subject, that is something determined by the sources. All we can do is reflect the sources. So we need to establish first whether the article reflects the sources well or not. FunkMonk (talk) 18:28, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

No sure, I agree. The "notability" (wrong term, more like "scope width") will improve if more sources are included by authors not related to Sullivan, who coined the term. That is what I meant. There are already quite some available now, but more may be found, added and included later. At first glance this specific age is much less used than the biochronology of the SALMAs/NALMAs, the South African Assemblage Zones or the local subdivisions used in New Zealand, the Paleozoic or others. Off for other stuff now, cheers. Tisquesusa (talk) 18:40, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@Tisquesusa and FunkMonk: Some of the sources in Further reading were discussed in Talk:Kirtlandian#Notability, in particular Burns (2008) and Russell (1975). Two of the papers have Sullivan and Lucas in the author list; and Suazo (2012) is an abstract with just a bare mention of the Kirtlandian. Nothing there. I have invested a lot of time looking for a suitable source and found nothing.

This discussion has been going in circles. Someone besides IJReid and I needs to read these sources carefully and decide whether there is any basis for notability. RockMagnetist(talk) 19:48, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@Tisquesusa: Could you conclude this GAR? --MrClog (talk) 18:07, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

@Tisquesusa: This really needs to be closed. If I don't get a response in the next few days I will close it as kept and open an AFD to determine the notability issue. This has dragged on too long and needs to be solved one way or another. AIRcorn (talk) 05:22, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

@Aircorn: Discussions of notability haven't been very productive. Maybe a proposal to merge the content into some articles including Williams Fork Formation and the Ringbone Formation would be more effective. RockMagnetist(talk) 04:21, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Looking back through the talk page I see you mentioned this over a year ago and got no complaints. Maybe we should just boldly do it and see what happens. AIRcorn (talk) 08:37, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Maybe so. I won't be able to do it for the next couple of weeks because of real-life pressures. You're welcome to have a go. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:36, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

• Comment: If we are looking to delete this article, its contents would likely go to Dinosaur paleobiogeography if anywhere. As for notability, any article that actually references the Kirtlandian has Sullivan as one of the authors   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  16:27, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Okay merged into Dinosaur paleobiogeography. The Judithian and Edmontonian ones seem to suffer from similar issues too and maybe should also be merged. I will leave any more to better subject matter editors. Will close this now. AIRcorn (talk) 21:25, 8 January 2020 (UTC)