Talk:Mastodon

Requested move 25 April 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. – robertsky (talk) 13:36, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

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Mastodon → Mammut – The informal name "Mastodon" can refer to a lot of proboscidean genera because of the historic usage of the junior synonym as a wastebasket taxon, but it is most often used for M. americanum and not commonly other mammutids of the same genus. Therefore, the genus Mammut would be more appropriate for this article, and it already pulls up nearly 20,000 results on Google Scholar. PrimalMustelid (talk) 11:16, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

oppose per WP:NCFAUNA we should stick to the common name—blindlynx 16:42, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

WP:NCFAUNA doesn't apply here, though. This article here isn't about M. americanum alone, it is about the entire genus Mammut of which "mastodon" most often refers to the type species M. americanum. PrimalMustelid (talk) 17:58, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

It does not seem that 'mastodon' refers to just m. americanum—blindlynx 23:05, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Support per WP:PRECISION and nom. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 18:38, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

• Regretful oppose "Mastodon" is the widely used WP:COMMONAME for members of this group, and the fact that "mastodon" used in some technical literature to refer to other primitive proboscidean groups is minor enough that I don't there's much ambiguity. I also think "Mammut" is inadequate as a replacement title for a number of reasons 1. "Mammut" is the name used for mammoths in German and many other languages. 2. Searching "Mammut" on google, (at least in the UK) brings up exclusively results about Mammut Sports Group, suggesting that members of the genus "Mammut" are not the primary topic for the word "Mammut" in English. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:26, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Oppose I agree with Hemiauchenia that the occasional use of "mastodon" for other genera historically is not significant enough to warrant the move. I also don't think "mastodon" is necessarily restricted to M. americanum; for example, the paper describing M. pacificus referred to it as a mastodon. Finally, Hemiauchenia has a point about "Mammut" being used for mammoths in other languages; "mastodon" seems less confusing/ambiguous. Zach Varmitech (talk) 22:01, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose we should keep the common name, since many people know it more. Catfurball (talk) 22:47, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. Rlendog (talk) 17:09, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. Very clear WP:COMMONNAME and Mammut is ambiguous as stated above. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:25, 30 April 2024 (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.

Article Improvements

IMHO this article is disorganized, confusing, and full of too much technical jargon. It needs to start with basic facts and those that are interested in detailed historical stuff can find it by reading on later in the article. Enri999 (talk) 00:43, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Can you make more detailed suggestions? Like, make a plan to reorganize the article, or bring up what jargon is too confusing? Mr Fink (talk) 01:00, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

These sorts of articles should follow a basic template so there's no need to re-invent the wheel.

Here's the first paragraph:

A mastodon (mastós 'breast' + odoús 'tooth') is a member of the genus Mammut (German for 'mammoth'), which, strictly defined, was endemic to North America and lived from the late Miocene to the early Holocene. Mastodons belong to the order Proboscidea, the same order as elephants and mammoths (which belong to the family Elephantidae). Mammut is the type genus of the extinct family Mammutidae, which diverged from the ancestors of modern elephants at least 27–25 million years ago, during the Oligocene.

Somebody unfamiliar with "mastodon" is suddenly overwhelmed with overly-technical information of secondary importance to the main question "what the hell is a mastodon?". Beginning paragraphs should not be the place to show off. It should rather say something like "Mastodon is/was an extinct relative of elephant whose fossils were uncovered by intrigued Americas throughout the 19th century" ... or whatever, just something easy to understand. Enri999 (talk) 04:05, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I am confused. Is the claim that IMHO this article is disorganized, confusing, and full of too much technical jargon referring to the body or to the lead? Hemiauchenia (talk) 07:58, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Can you call that a "lead"? it goes on and on. Whoever is active here has just put way too much information and research on top of even more information and it too difficult to wade through unless you already have a specialized expertise in this area. It really needs to be broken into nice logical sections that are simple and new articles made if a sub-topic has the technical details to justify it. Enri999 (talk) 04:11, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I think there is a case that the lede for this article is more lengthy than it needs to be, and that some of the detail can be kept in the article text, although I don't see the need to break the article as a whole into new articles. The lede of woolly mammoth seems to me to be better and more focussed, and that's a Featured Article, so it should be a reasonable model to follow. Would you agree with that? Anaxial (talk) 04:59, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I'd be willing to simplify the research history portion of the lede a bit later on. Splitting the article into separate ones (apart from the research history) is absolutely unnecessary, though. The description section, understandably, can be challenging to read, but it does define in detail what makes Mammut and its species valid based on anatomical traits especially compared to other proboscideans. PrimalMustelid (talk) 05:19, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I really don't know the best template to use. I'd perhaps compare (but not copy) how some old reference articles introduced the topic. The 1911 Britannica article mastodon begins by describing recognizable features that uniquely define what a mastodon actually is, its distinctive bones, and how it got its name, then some differences with the more familiar elephant. That seems one good way to get a lead started. "MASTODON, An animal resembling the elephant, now extinct." succinctly says the People's Dictionary(1883). Other breezy summaries, likewise in the public domain, are found at Conversation Ency (1877), Edinburgh Ency (1832), Nat'l_Standard Ency (1884), Perpetual Ency (1909), Popular Ency (1875), Chamber's Ency (1891), "Extinct Monsters" (1893), Science Guide (1920), Popular Science(1882). Enri999 (talk) 02:33, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

This is already addressed in the 2nd paragraph of the lede. The 1st paragraph defines what a mastodon is, strictly speaking, interns of its phylogenetic affinities (a member of the order Probscidea and a relative of the Elephantidae). I get the other lede concerns that have been mostly addressed, but oversimplification of the 1st paragraph doesn’t help it. PrimalMustelid (talk) 03:11, 22 August 2024 (UTC)