Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palaeontology

Certain Japanese user claiming Tyrannosaurus is not capable of binocular vision

It seems that certain user edited Japanese Wikipedia article of Tyrannosaurus only to propose their own theory that Tyrannosaurus is not capable of binocular vision.[1] Here are deletion request of files,[2] if possible please join the discussion. Ta-tea-two-te-to (talk) 06:25, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

List of Fossil Sites

The List of fossil sites includes many entries with neither wikiarticles nor references. In order to improve wikipedia:verifiability, as well as begin to make a case for systematic inclusion criteria, we need to start by removing the entries without supporting citations or associated articles. But such entries could make a good starting list for those looking to create articles about fossil sites and/or fossil bearing formations. Would it be appropriate to make a table on this page of the entries removed from the List in the hopes that they might be added back once verified? If not, does anyone have suggestions on where such a table should go to be most useful? Elriana (talk) 10:45, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Would it be better to leave them, but then just add some "citations needed" tags? Cougroyalty (talk) 15:43, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if we should better just delete that page. The page lists many regions, islands, and so on, but these are not really "fossil sites". Instead, a "site" is a very local outcrop, and there are so many of them that such a list will not work. We should stick with the Lists of fossiliferous stratigraphic units, and maybe have lists of notable sites for particular units. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 16:16, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I've looked into it to save it a little more than a month ago, and I have some opinions on it : the page don't really knows its scope ; if we were to update it to an acceptable level, it would take years, would never be really finished and would be insanely long ; while informations provided are unsourced they do reflect real formations and as such should be kept with a citations needed if the page has to be kept ; the Lagerstätte article does it kinda better ; we could make the task more doable by dividing it by periods or even by stages, and even as that it would technically require us to eventually list every single conodont and foraminiferan-bearing formations. Also, I may add, while the task is daunting, it is not outside of my capabilities, although a little help is appreciated. Larrayal (talk) 01:22, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

We can have inclusion criteria that include some sort of notability, not just that fossils exist in a particular place. Elriana (talk) 05:50, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

First of all, the list would have to be reduced to just fossil sites, not regions, national parks, islands, formations and so on, which are larger units and not fossil sites per definition. Second, what unambiguous and objective selection criteria would you choose that are supported by reliable sources? See WP:LSC. Third, WP:NLIST requires that the topic has been treated as a group by independent sources. Do we have such sources? It is much easier to find sources that discuss dinosaur fossil sites, or vertebrate tracksites, or fossil human sites. But fossil sites in general is an incredibly broad scope covering multiple disciplines. If such a source is difficult to find, it might question how useful such a broad list really is; what's the point of mixing foraminifers with a ancient human fossil site? Jens Lallensack (talk) 11:44, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

We’re getting well off the topic here. What constitutes a ‘site’ is a discussion for the talk on that page. Different communities have very different thoughts on the matter.

What I am asking here is whether there is an appropriate place where the entries removed from that list should be kept? Of particular interest to this project would be those entries that are definitely sites but lack current articles and the major formations for which no site (not even a well-known type locality) has an article.Elriana (talk) 11:58, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

The obvious place for such entries would be the respective formation articles (e.g., Morrison_Formation#Sites and quarries). Jens Lallensack (talk) 13:52, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

And where do we put the removed entries in the meantime? If someone has to go through each destination one by one before we remove the entries from the original list, the cleanup will never get done. I’m trying to clean up the list in an efficient manner while preserving the information in a form that can be used to flesh out other lists/categories/articles.

Since no one here (so far) seems to have a suggestion for where the information should go in the short term or how to systematically sort and/or use it, I will place the removed entries in Talk:List of fossil sites for now. Elriana (talk) 09:33, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, we should not move information without source into other articles anyways … Jens Lallensack (talk) 10:57, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

The List of fossil sites has distinct navigational use cases that the Lists of fossiliferous stratigraphic units simply do not serve. For starters, the stratigraphic units can’t be sorted by time period.Elriana (talk) 11:01, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Dispute over Homo floresiensis

There is a dispute over how the classification section at Homo floresiensis should be structured and how much weight should be given to different origin hypotheses. Please participate at Talk:Homo_floresiensis#Classification_debate if interested. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:31, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (species)

I think most of you are aware, but there hasn't been a formal notification yet, so: An RfC to adopt a subject-specific notability guideline regarding the notability of species has been opened at Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline..--Licks-rocks (talk) 20:59, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Gembone#Requested_move_16_August_2024

Hello! I have requested a move of Gembone. Because the article and its talk page are very rarely edited and have "fewer than 30 watchers", I am notifying relevant Wikiprojects. -sche (talk) 17:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Nomination of List of important publications in geology for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of important publications in geology is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of important publications in geology (3rd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

Kevmin § 22:37, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

List of Ice Age species preserved as permafrost mummies

So the List of Ice Age species preserved as permafrost mummies was finally created (first time I see a student project do something good here) after it had long been listed as a wanted article, following discussion here:[3] Question is whether that is a wholly appropriate title, which could be made more concise? And could it be nice to expand it so there are lists of notable specimens under each taxon? FunkMonk (talk) 10:51, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

The title could probably be improved upon, even though I don't really have a suggestion for it. Perhaps it could be nice to turn the list into a table so that some more information can be provided? Images, some basic information on the taxon, where the mummy was found, etc. The Morrison Man (talk) 11:56, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that could be cool, it's pretty bare bones now. I don't know how to do any of that, so here's hoping this will spread awareness to some who do like doing this kind of stuff... FunkMonk (talk) 12:14, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zahrisaurus (2nd nomination)

Malkani dinosaurs, again. (See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palaeontology/Archive 14#Muzaffarabadmachli, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palaeontology/Archive 16#Deletion requests of Malkani taxa, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dinosaurs/Archive 35#Taxa named by Malkani.) Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:02, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Revamping the Palaeo PeerReview

I am thinking about a new approach to our Palaeo Peer Review, one that is focused on collaborative editing.

The problem with the existing Palaeo Peer Review is that it is not really distinct from the normal WP:Peer Review; the process is kind of the same, i.e. participants leave comments and wait for the nominator to fix them. In contrast, we also have the Palaeontology Collaboration and the Dinosaur Collaboration; these were great because of the community effort, but just don't work and have been inactive for years now. Maybe it is time to try something new that combines the advantages of the Peer Review (flexibility; fast feedback; a main author behind the article) with those of a WikiProject collaboration (community effort).

The goal of this is to get more folks into article writing, by making such writing easier and more fun. Also, we encourage collaborative working on articles while improving communication within the WikiProject and also making the WikiProject more attractive to new editors.

It could work the same way as the existing PeerReview, except for that we focus on editing the article directly instead of listing minor issues on the review page. On the review page, we could document what we did, and discuss problems that cannot be solved by quick edits. The goal would be to bring the article at least to B-class. This requires that the original nominator of the article acts as main author to push it forwards and, most importantly, addresses any comments. This hopefully sparkles spontaneous collaborations, sometimes with editors becoming more heavily involved so that they may become co-nominators if the article is finally nominated at WP:GAN or even WP:FAC.

Maybe we would need a new name for it, like "Palaeo collabs" or "Palaeo article workshop". This whole idea is quite preliminary; I would like to know what you think about it, and if you would be interested in participating in such a thing. Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:35, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

• Sounds like a nice reorientation that can probably be of wider use. Like I wrote on Discord: "One thing I've noticed is that many editors feel best writing about specific subtopics within a topic, so they'll often work on specific sections and leave the rest. In some case I've reached out to such editors when I was expanding articles so other editors could work on those sections while I worked on some of the perhaps more complicated sections, and there have come some nice articles from it. So perhaps this could also be a way to facilitate that kind of collaborations, where someone dives into some specific part of the article without having to do the burden of working on everything else". FunkMonk (talk) 16:24, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

  I think this is an overall improvement over the current review style for even things like Good Articles. Featured articles makes sense for people to critique and have discussions over improvements and layperson details, but all lower levels of "status" review I feel like it is more beneficial to allow people to implement the changes they see to make an article better. Things like rewriting sentences for clearer phrasing shouldn't need the original nominator to handle on their own. It should speed up processes and allow for more consistency, I'm in favour. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 18:33, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

  I'm also in favour of this. It might also help in making bigger projects less daunting to tackle, like taxa with many species, complicated histories, etc. Maybe also a good way to handle those old Featured Articles we still need to reassess and improve? The Morrison Man (talk) 19:14, 21 October 2024 (UTC)