Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dinosaurs/Archive 23

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Dong Zhiming

Needs some sources, if anyone has any which discuss his role in paleontology. Gotta run. Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:31, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I once found this page, with detailed descriptions on Micropachycephalosaurus and a few other dinosaurs. As for the article Micropachycephalosaurus, are those details able to be included in the article? This is at DinoData. I assume the details were recorded by Dong Zhiming, and if you need sources/examples of what he did as a paleontologist I think this is a good one. (assuming it is his work). --JamesDouch (talk) 23:38, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Pakistan's dinosaurs?

About one month ago, I ask about whether Pakistan's dinosaurs were from Indian-Madagascar or Asia. Dinoguy2 answered that west Pakistan is on the Iranian plate, not Indian plate.

However, I remember that Vitakridrinda is also from Pakistan, fossils found in Vitakri Member of the Pab Formation. That's interesting because Abelisaurs were distributed on southern continents in Late Cretaceous, no one found in Asia. Besides, fossils of Balochisaurus, Brohisaurus, Khetranisaurus, Marisaurus, Pakisaurus, Sulaimanisaurus, Baurusuchus, Pabwehshi were also from Pab Formation, the last two were Notosuchia, Notosuchia were also distributed on southern continents. Does it show that Pab Formation's fauna were part of Gondwana fauna, and the above dinosaurs should move to Category:Dinosaurs of India and Madagascar?

hoseumou 12:58, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

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I've taken the liberty of checking "yes" for WP:DINO. WP:Pterosaurs looks inactive from the talk page, so I didn't change its status. J. Spencer (talk) 04:23, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Image verifiability

I remember this issue was discussed several years ago I think in regards to a dinosaur image but I cant find the relevent discussion now. A question of verifiability has been raised regarding images of fossils at Fossil, please take a moment and comment on the subject [[1]] as the outcome could easily strip images from many of the dinosaur and other extinct taxa articles . The case being made by the user is " it was a photo of an insect claimed to be fossilized in Baltic amber. Baltic amber was apparently only formed during the Eocene, which can in principle be verified, but we would still need to rely on a Wikipedian who says this is Baltic amber and not another type. So as far as I can see, it boils down to OR" --Kevmin (talk) 06:03, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the problem arises when it comes to self-found fossils. When the pictures are taken in museums, the subjects are verified by default. FunkMonk (talk) 08:11, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

It's not black-or-white, I know an academic paleontologist who uploads some of his pics. --Philcha (talk) 08:39, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Protoavis and the transference of articles

As some know, I kinda sort of retired from Wikipedia to maintain a separate project that is palaeontologically focused. Of course, Wikipedia is like an addiction that can't be broken easily ;). I've worked on various projects, and I am wondering if it would be possible to transfer them to Wikipedia. An example can be seen with a substantially expanded article on Protoavis that could make a GA (or FA, hopefully). The original article can be accessed here. This message has also been posted at the Palaeontology Wikiproject talkpage. All comments and/or criticisms are welcome! --Spotty ¹¹²²² 16:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

How's it going guys?

Hey it's Spawn Man. Long time now write - thought I'd pop by and see how everyone was going? Any more FAs? I haven't been on Wikipedia in AGES! Hope everyone is well. I can see a few of the old gang are still hard at it. Cheers guys, drop me an email some time. : ) 130.123.192.23 (talk) 05:27, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Spawn Man! Good to hear from you! Not much going here right now; I'm usually busy with work during the day (between projects right now), so that's my excuse. J. Spencer (talk) 16:11, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Hey, I remember you. I haven't been active 'cause school's been kicking my ass, but I hope that'll change soon. Abyssal (talk) 18:44, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi Spawn Man! Plateosaurus recently reached GA. Articles are still improving. Nice to "see" you. Firsfron of Ronchester 20:16, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah that's good news! Has anyone updated that on the Portal page? I'd do it, but I really have forgotten all of the html/wiki markup after my long absence lol. Nice to "see" you all too. ; ) 130.123.192.23 (talk) 00:45, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

It was added to the Portal on February 7th. So what are you up to these days? Firsfron of Ronchester 06:24, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Photography. Couldn't viably do paleontology from where I was without moving far away, so this was easier. 130.123.192.23 (talk) 03:27, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

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Possibly merger the artice?

It appears that these two articles should be merged. Living dinosaur (cryptozoology) & Living dinosaur. I do not know the procedures to merge it. Thanks, Marasama (talk) 17:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Done. I don't see why a term that is infrequently used to refer to birds should have it's own article. FunkMonk (talk) 17:30, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

My merge has been reverted. Anyone else has thoughts on this? FunkMonk (talk) 15:00, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi! I was the one reverting. Living dinosaur is a disambiguation page, a category of pages much needed in Wikipedia, and Living dinosaur (cryptozoology) is a particular issue within that general phrasing. The disambiguation article incorporates much more than simply the cryptozoological aspect of the phrase "living dinosaur" and gives a general frame. What do you think about it? --Againme (talk) 15:09, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

One meaning is simply birds, and the other does not really fit. A dinosaur that survived a bit longer than the others is hardly a "living dinosaur", and as such, a disambig page is redundant. FunkMonk (talk) 15:15, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Reminder

Tarbosaurus will be TFA on the 23rd. J. Spencer (talk) 01:40, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Cool. Firsfron of Ronchester 03:52, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Das monster von minden

Hey, everyone;

Just found Das monster von minden while checking new article results. Could use a lot of TLC (and a move to Das Monster von Minden or Das monster von Minden as well, probably). J. Spencer (talk) 15:30, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

What a terrible name for a (non-fictional) dinosaur. The least they could have done is given it a crap generic name like "Mindensaurus". (Actually, what is this? Firsfron of Ronchester 16:03, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Can't tell, but from the context of the links, it looks somewhat like someone's forum handle. J. Spencer (talk) 01:49, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't actually check out any of the links. Firsfron of Ronchester 05:24, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Non dinosaurs with the dinosaur project tag

I looked through the articles tagged with the dino project tag and noticed a few were non-dinosaurs. I removed those tags, but at a closer look, I saw that the tags had been added because these animals had been thought of as dinosaurs at one point or another in history. But is it really necessary to keep them tagged just because of this? I personally find it kind of confusing, and it could be misleading to non-experts/geeks. FunkMonk (talk) 16:30, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

You're right. I'd remove them, except maybe the immediate precursors to dinosaurs in the Triassic. Just don't forget to tag them for WP:PALEO when you do! Abyssal (talk) 17:58, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd do it, but I'll wait and see what Firsfron and others say, he seems to have tagged most of them. And I agree that dinosauromoprhs should stay, but not things like Dakosaurus and Machimosaurus. FunkMonk (talk) 18:06, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the tag should be limited to dinosauromorphs. This is Wikiproject Dinosaurs... Albertonykus (talk) 22:47, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

IIRC, the original intent was that WP:Dinosaurs should really have a hand in the history and study of dinosaurs as well. A lot of things were considered dinosaurs in the past and so should remain part of the project even though they've been reclassified. This is the way it's done for other things dinosaur-related but not actual dinosaurs, too. Edward Drinker Cope is not currently considered a dinosaur as far as I know, yet his talk page has the project tag ;) MMartyniuk (talk) 23:29, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, but he is directly linked to the history of dinosaurs as a whole, since he found, described and named a lot of them. Dakosaurus? Someone mistook it for a dinosaur once. He named it while believing it was a dinosaur. Then it was reclassified as something else. So all it has to do with dinosaurs now is the name itself, nothing else at all. Only relevance it has to this project is that someone should write "it was at some point believed to be a dinosaur by someone" in the Dakosaurus article. This hasn't even been done for many of the non-dinosaurs tagged with the dino project tag, making them even more confusing and misleading. FunkMonk (talk) 23:38, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Those articles were created under the purview of WP:DINO years back because they were redlinked on the List of dinosaurs. Since that list includes all genera described as dinosaurs (even if they subsequently turned out not to belong to Dinosauria), they always fell under the purview of the project, and were created by the project's members at that time.

Aachenosaurus, which turned out to be petrified wood and not a breathing organism at all, is probably the least related to Dinosauria. But there is no WP:PETRIFIEDWOOD and WP:PETRIFIEDWOOD didn't create the article as part of their effort to expand Wikipedia's coverage of that topic. The WP:DINO tag also helps project members see which articles need expanding; there's a bot which updates WP:DABS based on that tag's presence on the article's talk page. If you remove the tag, project members are less likely to maintain and/or expand the de-tagged article.

A few years ago, WP:CHICAGO members decided the consensus on WP:CHICAGO over Sue (dinosaur) overruled WP:DINO's consensus on the same article. They promised to get the article up to GA to avoid a WP:DINO merger proposal, but the article was never improved by them and was never submitted to GA. I'd hate to see these non-dinosauria WP:DINO articles get removed from the project and end up neglected in a similar way (not that they've seen much improvement from within the project recently, though). Firsfron of Ronchester 23:55, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

"Dakosaurus? Someone mistook it for a dinosaur once. He named it while believing it was a dinosaur. Then it was reclassified as something else. So all it has to do with dinosaurs now is the name itself, nothing else at all." I disagree, because it's still in the literature, however old, as a dinosaur. Adding or removing things based on changing taxonomy should be the scope of categories, not the project as a whole. If T. rex is found to be a rauisuchian, do we abandon it? ;) However I agree there should be standards, such as limiting this to taxa initially described as dinosaurs or included in the group by serious sources at some point. Speaking of rauisuchains, there's a case where it may be better to write a new "historical" rather than descriptive article on "Teratosaurs" and tag that, rather than tagging individual genera once considered carnivorous prosauropods by association. MMartyniuk (talk) 23:57, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I surely agree in theory, but in reality (I at least think so) it just causes confusion. Another knowledgable editor had previosuly removed such tags, probably believing they had been put there by mistake, and I almost did so too today. That's probably all those tags will cause, practically speaking, confusion. I found the articles by looking through the most popular and the biggest dinosaur project articles, by the way. FunkMonk (talk) 00:50, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

The bot which is supposed to update WP:DABS is AWOL again, but I digress. I lean to the idea that if the supposed dinosaurian identity is significant to the narrative (whether detailed in the article or not as of now), it should be tagged. This covers your aachenosaurs, your succinodonts, your unicerosaurs, and the great majority of the names, because most of them are scrap and the mistaken identity is one of the few interesting things about them. Then you have things like Ornithosuchus and other dinosaur-like crurotarsans, and it's worth it to have a tag there because of the historical issues. For Dakosaurus, though, the dinosaur association is minimal and obscure, and it is much better known for other things. The other major reason to have a tag is so a project can follow an article, which is very useful in the case of many of these scrappy taxon articles that receive minimal attention. Bathygnathus, for example, gets 10 or fewer hits a day. Dakosaurus, however, receives a steady 40-60 visits a day. So, my stand is if the taxon is much better known for something other than having been misidentified as a dinosaur, and/or it doesn't need the security of a project watching it, it doesn't need a tag. J. Spencer (talk) 03:16, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree with that. Also, the case of Teratosaurus is different from Dakosaurus and co., because some of the material assigned to it was indeed dinosaurian, and this later had to be reassigned. Such cases where actual dinosaur material was involved should remain tagged, in my opinion. FunkMonk (talk) 11:07, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Thirding! :) Abyssal (talk) 12:21, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

"Fourthing"? It sounds like a reasonable compromise... Albertonykus (talk) 22:55, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good to me! MMartyniuk (talk) 02:16, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Giant dromaeosaurids

Giant dromaeosaurids: more or less just what it sounds like. J. Spencer (talk) 02:43, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Definitely for deletion I'll wager. Albertonykus (talk) 03:11, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Subfamilies

Hey, all;

Subfamily-level articles have been popping up lately: Ankylosaurinae, Hadrosaurinae, Lambeosaurinae, Opisthocoelicaudiinae, Polacanthinae, Tyrannosaurinae. It might be worth reevaluating the stance on higher-level taxa. I agree with Hadrosaurinae and Lambeosaurinae, but the others seem more like splitting hairs. It's also helpful to watchlist as many redlinks and terms as you can think of; wherever there is a redlink or a bolded taxonomic level, someone is bound to eventually create an article. J. Spencer (talk) 02:51, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing the above out; these look mostly to be partial copies of their respective family articles. Do you have a list of redlinks handy? Firsfron of Ronchester 03:13, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, no, not a complete list. Some aren't redlinks, either, but redirects. Dinosaur classification has the obvious targets. J. Spencer (talk) 03:27, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Lambeosaurinae/Saurolophinae (Hadrosaurinae) and maybe Chasmosaurinae (Ceratopsinae)/Centrosaurinae could work, I guess, but the others probably won't cover any more details than can be fit into larger categories. Albertonykus (talk) 04:06, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree these are oversplit. I can think of superfamily vs. family articles that are also oversplit, for that matter. Therizinosaur vs. Therizinosauridae, for example. I think when the distinction is based entirely on arbitrary phylogeny (and therefore very subtle and very technical anatomical detail), there's very little reason to keep things separate. Right now, there are some pretty obvious visible differences between, say, centrosaurines and ceratopsines, or lambeosaurines vs. hadrosaurines. But even those distinctions could disappear with future finds (crested hadrosaurines, for example). I could go etiehr way on tyrannosaurines vs. albertosaurines. On one hand, they're pretty visibly different. On the other, their made up of about two taxa each. What can they cover not covered in genus articles? In that situation, if you really want a subfamily article, I'd say the genera should be merged into it, probably not an ideal situation. MMartyniuk (talk) 05:19, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Common-name article titles may in some cases provide an easy way out of this conundrum. It's also helpful to remember that no ranked taxon (except species) is an absolute concept, so being a non-species taxon that is assigned that-and-that rank is not a prima facie reason to have to have an own Wikipedia article. That approach will probably solve most of the problem, but it may be inconvenient to implement in the taxoboxes (I tend to reserve it to monotypic taxa, where it is easily implemented). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:45, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't think even the taxobox would pose a problem here--it's easy enough for one taxobox to cover multiple adjacent taxa, just use bold and list the authority for multiple taxa rather than linking the them. This is already done when a genus has been assigned to a monotypic family, for example. MMartyniuk (talk) 02:10, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Tom Holtz does this

I've been looking at some new additions to Tom Holtz online dinosaur appendix[2], and there is a lot of phylogenetic issues that he suggests he would change if he made a new edition of his dinosaur book, based on new studies. These things do not seem to be reflected in the Wikipedia articles.

One thing, about early sauropodomorphs: "Ongoing studies by Martín D. Ezcurra (Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia", Buenos Aires, Argentina) and his colleagues suggest that Panphagia forms a group of successful very primitive sauropodomorphs with other genera previously considered theropods (like Guaibasaurus) or sauropodomorphs (like Saturnalia) or even non-dinosaurs (like Agnosphitys)." Some of this can be found in the Panphagia description Shouldn't it be mentioned?

And: "Some changes in terminology for future editions of this chapter: I will probably call the whole chapter "Hadrosauria", and where I used "Hadrosaurinae" I will use "Saurolophinae" following work by Albert Prieto-Marquez of the American Museum of Natural History. (Hadrosaurus may actually be more distantly related to other "hadrosaurines" than the lambeosaurines are!) These changes, and some changes among the interrelationships of the duckbills, will be reflected in the revised 2010 genus list."

And: "With the discovery that primitive centrosaurines (like Albertaceratops) and advanced non-ceratopsid ceratopsians (like Zuniceratops) had long brow horns suggests that poorly-known Ceratops itself may not be closely related to the other dinosaurs that are called "Ceratopsinae" in the book. Therefore, in future versions I will stick to more common use and call Triceratops, Chasmosaurus, and their kin "Chasmosaurinae"." FunkMonk (talk) 00:03, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed those, too. I've assumed that it's just us following different schemes, but I concur some mention of these wouldn't go amiss. (Boy, I really want to see that revised genus list...) Albertonykus (talk) 04:35, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Some new (non notable) pages

I've found a few new, most likely non-notable dino pages while cruising around Wiki... Albertonykus (talk) 01:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Dinosaur intelligence could be doable. The saliva article should be folded into Tyrannosaurus. J. Spencer (talk) 04:04, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

The intelligence one would be useful but it needs proper cites. Not even the Enchanted Learning link mentions scansors, and using a hatchling with a giant head to measure EQ makes no sense anyway. MMartyniuk (talk) 04:33, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure where the specific genera came from, as I'd always just seen the chart with blocks assigned to specific groups; anyway, did some rewriting on it. J. Spencer (talk) 15:28, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree that saliva article should be merged into Tyrannosaurus. FunkMonk (talk) 03:18, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Quetzalcoatlus update needed

Since the pterosaur project is languishing,I'll post it here. Interesting new paper out, see here. (I didn't check, but JVP may still publish via BioOne, which is probably accessible to more people than Informa content) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:36, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Category:Dinosaur Fauna of Egypt

See the newly created Category:Dinosaur Fauna of Egypt. It was my understanding that there was consensus to limit our geographic categorisation of dinosaurs to the level of continent. Is that right? mgiganteus1 (talk) 17:58, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Another one of these things? Yes, it's supposed to be limited to continent. J. Spencer (talk) 00:12, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I've put it up for deletion. Given the number of articles involved, a dedicated article could be done, or perhaps one on North African dinosaurs, since the same names turn up over and over again. J. Spencer (talk) 00:24, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

QUESTION

Hey, I was wondering, where do you guys know to acquire the silhouettes for creating the dinosaur scale diagrams? Thanks, I would appreciate it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Theridon (talk • contribs) 14:22, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Hey, as I wrote back on your talk page, most people including myself will either take an image under a CC license and turn it into a silhouette using Photoshop, or simply draw the silhouette by hand or digitally. For most of my newer ones, I'll take a digital drawing I've already done of the animal, lock the layer in PS and simply paint over the whole thing in the desired color. MMartyniuk (talk) 23:38, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Dinosaurs, birds and fossil ranges

I recently noticed that the infobox in Dinosaur, Theropoda and Coelurosauria state that the fossil ranges of these groups are stated to extend only as far as the late Cretaceous. This is despite these articles referring to birds as being surviving representatives of these groups, a hypothesis that as far as I can tell is pretty widely accepted. I decided to be WP:BOLD and made edits to Theropoda and Coelurosauria to reflect this (altering the range to the present day and replacing the "ghost" bar with a full bar. This was subsequently reverted and I was informed that the taxoboxes refer to the Linnaean classification as opposed to the clade, which means birds are not represented. (I guess this kind of thing is also behind the lack of bird pictures in the Dinosaur article?)

Now my main expertise is in astrophysics not palaeontology, so this surprised me, and having had a discussion with the editor in question, they advised me to bring this up here to get a good discussion about this issue. As this is not my area of expertise, I find this use of the infobox somewhat bizarre: in effect the infobox is representing a concept that has a fairly substantial difference to the text of the article. By mentioning birds as extant members of these groups, it seems to me that the articles are implicitly dealing with the clade rather than just the Linnaean classification, therefore to me it seems most intuitive to treat the fossil range as extending to the present. Then again I might well be being hopelessly naïve. Icalanise (talk) 18:30, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I personally feel that we should treat the Linnaean ranks as just traditional labels for what are now regarded as true clades. As such, groups like suborder theropoda, order saurischia, and superorder dinosauria are all extant and should be treated as such in the taxoboxes. Abyssal (talk) 19:34, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

A good test for this now would be to implement the change on Dinosaur, a highly visible FA. If it can stand there, we're good to go :) MMartyniuk (talk) 22:12, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

When I tried before you were the one who undid my edits. :P Or are you being snarky? Abyssal (talk) 02:23, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Nah, I think these consensus things should be brought up with the group once in a while, is all. MMartyniuk (talk) 02:58, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Isn't the issue fairly clear? If the name is casual, like "Dinosaur" it can refer to the linnaean group, if the name is formally taxonomic, i.e. "Dinosauria" then it refers to the clade. Either of these would be fine: "Dinosaurs are extinct reptiles belonging to the superorder Dinosauria" and "Dinosauria is a clade including all extinct dinosaurs and their descendants, such as birds." Since, Dinosauria redirects to Dinosaur, the former seems most appropriate to me. de Bivort 23:07, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

The super-order is called Dinosauria as well so a dinosaur=Linnaean, Dinosauria=clade dichotomy doesn't work. One possibility, which probably won't be popular, would be to split the article into Dinosauria and Dinosaur. Dinosaur can talk about the animals and Dinosauria can wax pedantic about the history of the taxon itself and how dinosaurologists transitioned from a traditional Linnaean framework to a cladistic perspective on classification. Also, this issue isn't just a Dinosaur thing, Wikipedia at large should probably take some initiative in deciding how or if cladistics is going to integrate with the taxobox. I'm fine with just leaving the traditional Linnaean ranks and having clades not based on that system labeled Unranked clade or however it's currently done. I think, though, that Dinoguy2 has historically taken a "never the twain shall meet" approach with the Linnaean and cladistic systems. Abyssal (talk) 02:23, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

True, mainly because I feel this is getting into OR territory, not only OR in fact, but basically creating our own original classification system. In fact, and I know I was against this in the past but... no paleontologists use the Linnean system anymore. Are Linnaean based taxoboxes really appropriate for paleo articles at all? It seems like it's the taxobox which is forcing us to create a new classification system able to shoehorn modern sources into the taxobox! MMartyniuk (talk) 05:04, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense. If they recoded the taxobox, though, with the clades that have a history as Linnaean ranks labeled Traditional Order, Traditional Family, or something along those general lines do you think that would work? The taxobox could keep the intuitiveness of the Linnaean system while actually utilizing cladistics and acknowledging that the Linnaean taxa are "defunct but conceptually useful" labels. Abyssal (talk) 15:18, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the very first part of your comment contradicts what I wrote, but I would support a separate, technical article for Dinosauria. de Bivort 02:43, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

All that just because of one minor template detail? Seems like overkill to me. An explanation in the article is enough, and I guess there is plenty of references to birds as living dinosaurs in the articles. Instead of a dinosaur/Dinosauria split, why not just a big "history of dinosaur discovery/science" article? That subject is featured in countless books, and probably scientific papers too, so is notable in its own right. FunkMonk (talk) 02:48, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

I also believe a separate article is overkill. What's wrong with the taxobox showing a Tr-K range for the traditional Dinosauria, and a lighter shade showing the range of descendant taxa? The alternate solution is just to remove the fossil range altogether... Firsfron of Ronchester 19:00, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Or we could have the range be from Tr to present, 'cause that's the factually accurate version. Abyssal (talk) 02:26, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't particularly like the lighter shade to represent the continuation to present, as it suggests to me that this is an unconfirmed range (something along the lines of "maybe there are non-avian dinosaurs lurking somewhere in some unexplored jungle"). Surely this is not the case, either we take "birds are dinosaurs" (which in my understanding is by a substantial majority the current scientific viewpoint) in which case the fossil range definitively extends to the present, or we take "birds are not dinosaurs" and the dinosaurs got wiped out at the end of the Cretaceous. Either way, the article and infobox should represent the same subject. And the separate articles idea seems to me like erring severely on the side of pedantry. Icalanise (talk) 21:31, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

The issue is that "birds are dinosaurs" depends on your definition of "dinosaur." The article at present also explicitly states in the text that it will deal exclusively with non-avian dinosaurs (whatever "avian" means). That said, the issue seems to be clade Dinosauria vs. suborder Dinosauria... except nobody working in the field has actually used the term "suborder Dinosauria" in nearly 20 years. As far as vertebrate paleontology is concerned, the ranked system is out 100% (except certain stragglers like Benton and... nobody else that I know of). One of the jobs of a balanced Wiki article is to present the consensus view of a topic, and the consensus here is "we don't use ranks", but in order to be consistent with other fields of biology, WP:Dino has continued to use the ranks in the taxobox. Maybe that's what should change. MMartyniuk (talk) 22:07, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I still don't see why we can't point out which clades began their lives and/or have a long history as Linnaean ranks in the taxoboxes. Like list Kingdom Animalia with small text under it reading "(Traditional Linnaean Rank)" or something. It allows us to use clades while keeping the intuitive Linnaean labels. Or we could say Clade Animalia and have in small text under it "(Traditional Rank: Kingdom)". Abyssal (talk) 02:41, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, the second option (a phylobox which also notes traditional ranks in parentheses) sounds like a good compromise. Maybe this is something to bring up with the Taxobox template folks. They're already in the middle of an overhaul to automate the thing, might as well get changes done now. MMartyniuk (talk) 04:21, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

One point that I see regarding the use of the rank rather than the clade is where we take the dividing line between dinosaur and not-dinosaur: it's pretty obvious when you don't have enough data points (fossils) to fill in the gap between dinosaurs and birds, but quite a lot of fossils have turned up in this transition, and many of these have been discovered after the transition to the cladistics scheme. This implies to me that there is no real source we can refer to about where to make the cut. For example, do the Scansoriopterygidae count as dinosaurs under the Linnaean scheme? Is there any reference for making such a distinction? Icalanise (talk) 18:30, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I've never seen scansors referred o as anything but non-avian dinosaurs in the literature. Most paleos use a node-based definition o Aves as Archaeopteryx lithographica+Passer domesticus. As "Aves" literally translates to "bird", this is normally where the cut-off is. However, once the PhyloCode is made official, it is likely that Aves will be limited to the crown clade, rendering everything from Archaeopteryx to Ichthyornis as non-avian dinosaurs. MMartyniuk (talk) 21:17, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Playing devil's advocate here, does the clade Aves correspond exactly to the Linnaean rank? Icalanise (talk) 17:59, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

That would depend on how you define either one. Abyssal (talk) 18:56, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Linnaean ranks don't have set definitions, so it's impossible to say. Linnaean ranks above the rank of Family aren't even governed by any zoological code or any rules or guidelines to speak of. Clades aren't either at this time, but PhyloCode hopes to become accepted as the default set of official clade definitions. Right now, definitions for Clade Aves range between Archaeopteryx+Passer and Passer+Struthio, two widely different groups. As for Class Aves, going by the article here on wiki (Bird, birds (=class Aves) "are winged, bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), egg-laying, vertebrate animals." This describes all maniraptoran dinosaurs up to and including the dromaeosaurs and oviraptorosaurs, depending on your definition of "wing" and "endothermic" (it's questionable whether even enantiornithes were truly endothermic in the sense of modern birds, and even Confuciusornis probably could not achieve powered flight, so are those things on its arms "wings"?). MMartyniuk (talk) 23:37, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

So it seems to me that the inclusion of birds within dinosaurs is the modern usage among those who work in the field, and the whole birds are dinosaurs thing is far less controversial than, say, the classification of the well-known Kuiper Belt object (134340) Pluto. Icalanise (talk) 21:03, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Definitely! When a "controversial" topic has five or fewer active researchers arguing against it, I don't know if you could even continue to call it a controversy. MMartyniuk (talk) 23:10, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh well, I tried to go with either one or the other, but standard policy at Dinosaur appears to be "revert absolutely anything unless you are part of the in-crowd". I give up, the editing environment there is too toxic. Icalanise (talk) 07:09, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

As far as I can see, only Mgiganteus1 reverted you. Not sure what this has to do with an "in-crowd". You could add a comment to his talkpage about this discussion. FunkMonk (talk) 07:48, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

It just seems to me from my perspective that the default response on palaeontology articles is to reach for the revert button. Pretty much all my recent edits to palaeontology articles have ended up being reverted. That just makes it feel like the community is assuming bad faith and ignoring WP:BOLD. Or is the policy round here to raise RFCs before doing anything? Nevertheless I am giving up on editing Dinosaur, I have no desire to be drawn into a revert war and persisting in editing would just make me look like I'm either trolling or trying to prove a WP:POINT. Icalanise (talk) 18:17, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

From looking at your edit history, it looks like the only edits you've made to paleo articles recently has been this (unilaterally extending the fossil ranges to include birds) with no discussion. As you can see here, this is something that should be discussed first, because it's not as cut and dry as you may think ;) MMartyniuk (talk) 22:39, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I also got reverted for making a few minor edits to Dinosaur to fit more with its "dinosaurs excludes birds" focus, by the same editor who told me this was the consensus position. Icalanise (talk) 06:38, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Keep in mind Dinosaur is a special case, as the FA flagship article of an entire project, almost every sentence of which has been debated endlessly in the talk archives. In such an article, even am minor change that could be considered controversial or upsetting to the delicate balance we've tried to create on some points, like the bird relationship, will pretty much be reverted on sight if not brought up on the talk page first. Not to mention this is one of the biggest vandalism magnets we have, so the "in-group" editors tend to get twitchy as it is. MMartyniuk (talk) 07:07, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with what you've said, MM, but I'd also add that these edits were less than ideal anyway. The sentence about the 9,000 species of birds being living dinosaurs was taken out, but the citation was left in, leading the reader to believe that the sentence "Dinosaurs were a diverse and varied group of animals" was supported by this paper, which, as far as I can tell, does not support it. This is one of those things that editors need to treat with care... Firsfron of Ronchester 14:57, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually it might be worth considering migrating the article to WP:LDR, many of the paragraphs are pretty much unreadable in edit mode. Icalanise (talk) 19:35, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll tentatively second that motion. Abyssal (talk) 17:54, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Utahceratops

So what's the deal with Utahceratops? It's unreferenced and not even our big list o' dinos links to it. Does it deserve its own article? mgiganteus1 (talk) 18:26, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks like I accidentally reverted its addition to the Big List O' Dinos. It should certainly be included. Firsfron of Ronchester 21:04, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Currently undescribed, but it's been floating around for quite a while. J. Spencer (talk) 23:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

On a somewhat related note, could someone look over Tyrannosaurus "x"? Does this merit its own page? mgiganteus1 (talk) 01:02, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

It could be better sourced, but I'd personally support its inclusion. Abyssal (talk) 02:38, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Idea for taxoboxes

In light of recent discussion regarding the Linnaean/cladism dichotomy and its relevance to the dinosaur article, I thought I'd mention an idea I had. What if taxoboxes used a "tabbed browser" style set up for displaying classification? Like under the bar that says "Scientific classification" there could be some tabs; cladistic, linnaean, and maybe "folk" or something along those lines. The cladistics would be the default and list the clades, their "type" (node-based, stem-based, etc.), and maybe a quick definition using greater than/less than signs that are sometimes used for that kind of thing. Linnaean would use the style in place now. Folk can list stuff like how whales were regarded as fish pre-Linnaeus, or the taxon's place in the aristotelian system, or kosher, or baraminological or halal, or that sort of thing. If we used a folk tab, though, the Scientific classification line would have to be replaced with just "classification" or "systematics" or "systematic classification" or something. Abyssal (talk) 23:51, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like it would be a good compromise, you you might be over-thinking it a little. I think just an ability to twitch between Traditional and Phylogenetic classifications would be awesome. But I'd say keep it as relatively simple as it is now, and save definitions etc. for the text. Simply listing the authors would be enough, especially pre-Phylocode, when it helps to know whose definition you're using. For node/stem, maybe they could simply be used as the label in lieu of Class, Order? Like Node: Dinosauria or Branch: Saurischia, rather than using Clade: X for everything. (Branch is the preferred term in Phylocode, Stem refers to a paraphyletic lineage between a node and a crown). Either way, something to bring up at the taxobox talk page. MMartyniuk (talk) 02:12, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I prefer the term branch, too but I had seen stem used for it quite a bit and was afraid that was the standard usage. I noticed you didn't comment on the idea of including a folk taxonomy tab. Would you be opposed to that? Abyssal (talk) 17:53, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

For most things, I'm not sure "folk taxonomy" would even be verifiable... and, due to the nature of folk taxonomy, there would have to be dozens of such tabs to cover all various folk taxonomies for things (not only biological things, mind you, even Linnaeaus had a taxonomy for rocks) that have them. Too complicated, IMO. MMartyniuk (talk) 23:13, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

How about an "other" tab utilizing a few of the better known and documented classification systems like Aristotle's? Abyssal (talk) 02:40, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Dinosaurs articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Dinosaurs articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 22:22, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Followup

Bob the Wikipedian has recommended removing List of dinosaurs, which was in the earlier releases, on the grounds that it is "controversial". We normally like lists like this, but we accede to the superior knowledge of the WikiProject. At the risk of stirring up the controversy (sorry!), is it the consensus that we remove this list from the offline selection? Walkerma (talk) 05:14, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

For the sake of centralized discussion, I'll reshare my rationale here. We all know how controversial Torosaurus, Dracorex, and Stygimoloch were (and still are, even today). These became controversial only within the last year or so-- and hundreds of other genera over the course of the century have also become dubious, such as Giraffatitan and many others. Paleotaxonomy is largely theoretical holds less consensus in many cases than Wikipedia itself does, so for Wikipedia to say "Here's a list of all known dinosaurs" is to endorse hundreds of paleontologists' theories which may be false and reject hundreds which may be true. And, having said that, I'd like to hear what others have to say. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:01, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Bob has recommended Gideon Mantell to be included - I'm happy to do that, even if the list of dinosaurs remains - but I notice that the Mantell article isn't tagged for this project; if he is important for dinosaur studies, he should be tagged as such on the talk page. Many thanks! Walkerma (talk) 05:14, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Again, resharing my rationale for the sake of centralized discussion. I nominated this one since the father of dinosaur study seems slightly significant to me, though as I think about it again with a fresh mindset, perhaps not enough to be included. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:01, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

"List of dinosaurs" is a useful page in that it serves as the directory. As long as it's recognized to be a thing in constant motion, it should be all right. I agree with the Gideon Mantell suggestion. J. Spencer (talk) 14:35, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Mantell is now in. Since this is a test release anyway, I'd like to leave in the List article, because it is very useful for navigating around the dinosaur articles. Hopefully any controversies can be resolved before our 1.0 release (probably next year). Many thanks, Walkerma (talk) 12:16, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Heh, it's unlikely the controversies in the list will ever really get resolved (although the points of controversy will undoubtedly change dramatically), but I'm fine with it being included now that I see the reasoning behind its inclusion. I do think we ought to make a note or something on the page that explains that there is no real "official" list but that the list does reflect the views of the Wikipedians who contribute to it. I see this is already there; never mind. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:08, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, I'll leave it in. As you pointed out on the Fishes section, many copies of this will end up in schools, and I know that as a kid I would have pored over this list of dinosaurs! Thanks, Walkerma (talk) 04:27, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Featured Topic on Tyrannosauridae

I was hoping to get some feedback from this project about a possible topic. In specific the Aublysodon, Nanotyrannus, and Deinodon articles. They would have to become Good Articles first, but before I start doing work I would like to know how to prioritize. Since neither of them are recognized anymore, in your opinions' should all three of them be featured in a topic on the family? The articles themselves are not very well developed so I have some trouble understanding the exact relationship of each of them to the family. My understanding is that the former is no longer considered a valid genus; should it be merged into the family article? The second appears similar but is it actually not considered a genus anymore? As for the later how can it be expanded if it is a dubious assignment? Nergaal (talk) 02:19, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

If the article on Deinodon covers all of what little humanity knows about the subject then why shouldn't it be considered a good article? Abyssal (talk) 02:58, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

IMO it could include more on the history, explanation of the synonyms, etc. Historically, this is a pretty important taxon (that should really have some Gorgosaurus specimen designated the neotype, but I digress...). MMartyniuk (talk) 03:26, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

New article(s), categories

We have a new editor. Troodon58 (talk · contribs), who I think needs some help, eg List of Appalachian dinosaurs is a bit of a mess, and his new categories are questionable, eg Category:Dinosaur redirects Category:Dinosaurs of Appalachia. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 12:46, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Troodon58, please discuss your larger changes, such as moving pages or creating entire new categories, before implementing them, or it causes the rest of us a lot of frustration having to clean up after you. You're recent move of Richardoestesia and its talk page to Ricardoestesia shows that you did not even read the article, which explains why the former name is considered correct. MMartyniuk (talk) 02:46, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I did read the article, and I know about the confusion surrounding its naming. I just thought that Ricardoestesia should be the correct name because it was what was originally intended. I don't like it when my plans go wrong. I want everything that was originallly intended to remain. Troodon58 17:09 30 September 2010 (UTC)

If wishes were horses... Wikipedia is a place to reflect what actual scientists conclude, not what we wish were true. Even the scientists who named it have accepted that the mistake is now "legal" and moved on with their lives. MMartyniuk (talk) 23:36, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I've also noticed, Troodon, that you have been uploading copyrighted images. Please be careful to verify the images can be used freely. If you need help telling if an image is free, feel free to ask on my talk page. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:26, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

It appears Troodon58 is now editing as User:Dromaeosaur Dude. mgiganteus1 (talk) 23:16, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, this is getting tiresome. J. Spencer (talk) 02:34, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

He claims he simply shares an IP with Troodon. Which seems pretty unlikely, as their contributions are identical. FunkMonk (talk) 02:48, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

At this time, I'm not going to comment on this further or do more undoes or reverts, or I am liable to destroy 3RR or civility norms. I will say that the editor doesn't seem to understand the nature of collaboration here, which is a shame because s/he is also capable of useful writing, as shown on List of African dinosaurs. J. Spencer (talk) 03:26, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

This is getting ridiculous. Why should experienced editors and subject matter experts waste their time reverting misguided edits made by some know-it-all kid who refuses to engage in discussion? It needs to be made clear to this person that he cannot continue in this manner. I'd do it myself but I fear I'd very quickly lose my patience and run afoul of WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF (if I haven't already). mgiganteus1 (talk) 01:35, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Nomina nuda?

Amphicoelias brontodiplodocus is now mentioned in the taxobox over at Amphicoelias, on the basis that Allosaurus has a nomen nudum (jimmadseni) in the taxobox as well. Even some nomina nuda have their own articles on Wikipedia, such as Gadolosaurus and Daitingopterus, to name a few. Is this appropriate? FunkMonk (talk) 18:38, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think they should be listed in taxoboxes, as nomena nuda are not valid names. However, I support the articles as they help clear up confusion that would otherwise not be addressed. Abyssal (talk) 03:05, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree, but their only sources are usually the dinosaur mailing list or some such. By the way, Angloposeidon is apparently not a nomen nudum anymore, since the name was published in Darren Naish's new book: "A very long chapter on MIWG.7306 - the large brachiosaur vertebra known affectionately as 'Angloposeidon' - means that the name 'Angloposeidon' is now (shock horror) in print. More importantly, the full back-story to the paper that I and colleagues eventually published on the specimen (Naish et al. 2004) is revealed in full."[3] By the way, isn't it risky to feature nomina nuda articles on Wikipedia, when these do have the chance of being published as a result? See for example PediaPress: http://pediapress.com/ If someone compiled a book of all dinosaur articles here, all nomina nuda would apparently become valid? FunkMonk (talk) 14:12, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

While it is probably a bad idea to include articles for nomina nuda, simply appearing in print isn't enough to validate a name. In fact, many nuda are created by appearing in print, but with insufficient context to validate them. To be a valid name, the text must accompany some form of statement that the author is intending this to become a valid name (by writing "new genus", "gen. nov", or something to that effect). They certainly shouldn't be in the taxobox, other wide we'd need to include things like "Fenestrasaurus" in Oviraptor and even "sue," "Jane," "Stan," etc. under T. rex! MMartyniuk (talk) 00:04, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't a nomen nudum have to resemble a scientific name, though? This would rule out Jane, Sue, etc. mgiganteus1 (talk) 00:10, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Who says a scientific name can't be English? Sue dinosaur is just as ok as Mei long. Nomina nuda cover any and all names applied to a specimen other than valid names, including nicknames and common names, I believe. Angloposeidon is as much a nickname as Sue, despite the fact that one is more Latin-sounding than the other. If I published a paper with a brief description of Sue but wrote ti Sue gen. nov., Sue would become a proper and valid scientific name. MMartyniuk (talk) 01:00, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Couldn't someone publish a formal description and name a new dinosaur through Wikipedia in theory? As long as someone didn't delete the article, of course? The article would be printable on demand through PediaPress, like the Kayentavenator paper. FunkMonk (talk) 12:43, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Which Wikipedia articles contain explicit statements that a new name is being created, exactly? It would be OR and reverted immediately. MMartyniuk (talk) 00:14, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

No one, hence in theory. Is Kayentavenator a nomen nudum, by the way? FunkMonk (talk) 15:53, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it met the ICZN's standards, although I think some paleontologists want to ignore it in protest. Abyssal (talk) 22:31, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Right, even if the description is flawed, it's still a description, and the naming came with a note of intent to create a new taxon, so Kayentavenator is perfectly valid. The big nomina nuda problem comes from family names, which often are erected without regard to proving intent with fam. nov. or something, and many give only a cursory, if any, diagnosis, so are effectively nomina nuda under the ICZN. Mortimer gave a rundown of which theropod families are validly described and which aren't here: [4]. MMartyniuk (talk) 23:41, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

But does print on demand count? What about the 50 copies in libraries, is that only for stuff published online? FunkMonk (talk) 22:19, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

I think the consensus is that it counts. The library thing is only for online publications, but since numerous copies were made available simultaneously in print for purchase, there's no library requirement (only a recommendation applies in the case of print, for some reason). That's what's got Dan Chure in a panic on the DML. Anybody can publish anything using PoD services. If "A. brontodiplodocus" had been put on LuLu Press it would be valid. MMartyniuk (talk) 01:23, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Don't be getting any ideas now! :P Hypothetically, I guess, if they sent copies of the descriptions to a bunch of university libraries. Scientists would probably ignore the name in protest, though. Abyssal (talk) 16:21, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Images needed from The Children's Museum of Indianapolis?

I am currently interning at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis as their In-House Wikipedian and will soon be coordinating a Backstage Pass event for any interested Wikipedians. I have now specifically met with the paleontologists in the Dinosphere PaleoLab and they are excited to contribute research content and photos to Wikimedia. If there are any specific content or, more likely, image requests of dinosaurs, fossils, or any taxidermy animal you can think of, we'd be happy to help acquire such content. Please post any requests here and let me know if you have any questions! HstryQT (talk) 20:42, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Images of as many of the specimens as possible would be appreciated! From the Wikipedia page, I can see a few genera that would be nice to have since we don't have images of them, such as Prenoceratops and Didelphodon, the rest we do have some images of, but again, images of those would be nice too. And don't bother taking pictures of sculptured life restorations and other such models, they can not be uploaded to Commons due to American copyright law. But fossils and skeleton casts are fine. FunkMonk (talk) 21:19, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Wait, they're letting you photograph they're non-exhibit collections too? Do they have an online listing anywhere? MMartyniuk (talk) 23:30, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Yep they will pull objects for us from collections storage. I will have access to the collections database soon to be able to double check specific items for you myself, however there is not a full listing publicly available. They do have 1,000 artifacts of their 110,000 photographed and available here. A quick search of Dinosaur shows 24 results(they have many more of course). These photos are copyrighted, as noted, but personal photos of them can be taken and used. If there is a specific fossil/dinosaur/whatever of any type that you greatly need (I understand there are many), do list it. It will be easier for the staff to glance at a list and say "yep!" than pulling everything. In this way I can check if they have it and be sure to get a photo. Let me know, and excited to help! HstryQT (talk) 01:41, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Heh, they have a cast of that privately held oviraptorid with the insane pointy crest. Looks like killer quality too. A pic of that guy would be useful down the road. As long as you have access to it you should also write up a full description and find a journal that will publish new taxa based on casts. ;) MMartyniuk (talk) 03:47, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

From that list you linked to, I can see we would also need Archaeoceratops, and the baby Louie oviraptorid and Troodon teeth could be nice too. Maybe you could make a thread like this over at the paleontology project[5] too? There are many non-dinosaur fossils at the museum too I can see, and the editors who are interested in invertebrates probably have some requests. FunkMonk (talk) 11:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for updating the list on the project page! I'm sure they'd be happy to pull these objects and if for some reason we can't get to all of them on the backstage pass day, I can fill in any gaps myself at a later date. Continue to keep this in mind and if you come upon a request, let me know. I'll be there through May. A large content donation will be coming in early spring and I'll be sure to loop you in when that occurs. And I did just add this to WikiProject Paleontology. Thanks! HstryQT (talk) 13:13, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Categories

We now have categories for abelisaurids, giant theropods, and giant dromaeosaurids. I propose the population of the first, and question the need for the other two. J. Spencer (talk) 01:47, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I just came here to post this myself. The latter two categories are ill-conceived and should be deleted as they do not (and cannot) have objective inclusion criteria; see WP:OC#SUBJECTIVE. mgiganteus1 (talk) 02:20, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I've depopulated both problem categories and tagged them for deletion. mgiganteus1 (talk) 02:35, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

To be fair to Troodon58 or whoever made these, I actually like the idea of a dinosaurs-by-size category system. We could have a relatively stable system of categories based on actual length measurements and estimates. Abyssal (talk) 18:28, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Sphingopus

Is there enough in the literature to justify creating a stub article on Sphingopus?

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/10/the-earliest-dinosaur.ars

-- 187.67.203.186 (talk) 12:41, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Both Sphingopus and Prorotodactylus are mentioned in the Dinosauromorpha article, but it would be nice to have individual articles for each of them. Sphingopus has been in the literature since 1966, and Prorotodactylus since 2000, so there's probably enough information to warrant their own articles. Smokeybjb (talk) 01:39, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I'll go create those stubs now. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:13, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Anyone with more information on Sphingopus and/or Prorotodactylus is asked to review and contribute. In particular, I wasn't able to find the locale of Demathieu's P. lutevensis specimen. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:32, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Automatic taxobox

Do we have to? J. Spencer (talk) 00:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Not sure if they'll eventually disable the old one or what. But it is helpful to keep everything consistent by drawing from a standard taxonomy in the background. It will also make changing classifications across many articles much easier if necessary in the future. MMartyniuk (talk) 03:16, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Until we can get the glitch straightened out, please preview your automatic taxoboxes before applying them-- if the kingdom doesn't show, don't apply the changes. Lower-level taxa in the dinosaur realm tend to hit a glitch which causes upper-level taxa not to display properly. So to answer your question, we'd prefer you do, but we'd also prefer you be patient while we clean it up. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 06:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I thought this had been fixed, since most of the problem boxes seem to be back to normal. But I see it's still an issue with at least a few, e.g. Apatosaurus. MMartyniuk (talk) 07:15, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

The colors were a separate issue, and those are resolved. The bug we're stuck on at the moment truncates the upper end of the taxonomies. Originally, it could only handle 12 or so levels, and we thought we'd upped it to 40-- but this weekend we discovered we were wrong. It broke at 27. Martin managed to squeeze in the capability for it to handle 30 taxa to a single taxonomy yesterday, but we're going to have to do an algorithm overhaul in order to display the 31st or higher. So sit back and breathe-- it might be awhile before you can use this on family-level articles and lower.

BUT--- don't hesitate to keep working on designing and improving the taxonomy templates. Marty, I've seen you're doing quite a bit with that; I'm glad we've got someone knowledgeable about dinosaurs putting that end of the database together! If only every branch of taxonomy had experts working on them.... Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:36, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Thanks for pointing out Apatosaurus...looks like a new breed of colorlessness.... Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:38, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good, I'll just keep working on the back end and implementing for higher level taxa. MMartyniuk (talk) 09:16, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Martin just found a missing piping symbol, so the colors should be fixed now. However, the truncated taxonomies are still an issue. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:32, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Why are automatic taxoboxes being implemented (e.g. [6]) when there remains the problem of truncated taxonomies? mgiganteus1 (talk) 00:29, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Resolved

If you spot any more truncations, let us know at Template talk:Automatic taxobox and we'll get you squared away quickly now that we've discovered how to solve the truncation problem. Please feel free to continue automations at the species level now (of course, you may continue using the old one, as there is no consensus to get rid of the old one yet). Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:43, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

It looks like all the kinks have been worked out. Should we take a vote on consensus? MMartyniuk (talk) 14:49, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Couldn't hurt...in a new topic, though, where folks will notice it. This topic is rather...buried. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:29, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Request for clarification

There is currently discussion here regarding a couple of common misconceptions about dinosaurs; a bit of attention from an expert could probably help clarify things. Thanks in advance for any responses, Doc Tropics 20:04, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I have referenced it but people aren't reading the references...Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:35, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Collaboration active...(maybe...)

Okay, new year's resolution maybe? I thought I'd give it a whirl after recent discussion, so I figured maybe looking at, nominating and voting on some pages which are not far off GA might be a good start, to see if a bit of communal reviewing, sourcing and editing can push one or more over the line. Have a look at the collaboration subpage and discuss. If it we get some pages spruced up, all well and good, and if no interest, we can can it for a while again. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:12, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Update - by my (informal) count it's three apiece between Sinosauropteryx and Apatosaurus. Anyone want to break a tiebreak before the new year? Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:56, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Done. :-) mgiganteus1 (talk) 11:42, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Dinosaur mummy

It has been suggested a couple of times that the various articles about various dinosaur mummy specimens be merged into a single, all encompassing article. Is there agreement about this? I think it's a good idea. FunkMonk (talk) 03:18, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I found J. Spencer's nice dinosaur mummy article by chance through Google[7], doesn't look too far from being publishable! FunkMonk (talk) 09:20, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Ah, yes, another thing I've never finished. It's essentially the relevant parts from a few extant articles. J. Spencer (talk) 04:28, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Inaccurate mounted dinosaur skeletons category

We now have this category on Commons, use it for photos of inaccurately mounted/restored dinosaur skeletons. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Inaccurate_mounted_dinosaur_skeletons Yes, the name is horrible, but it was all I could think of at the time. FunkMonk (talk) 22:47, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

RfC

Please see Template talk:Geological range#RfC: Rewording of "fossil range" for a proposal to modify the fossil range template. Thanks! Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 03:05, 18 December 2010 (UTC)