Talk:Miragaia longicollum

A fact from Miragaia longicollum appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 6 March 2009, and was viewed approximately 1,221 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the stegosaurid Miragaia had more neck vertebrae than almost all of the sauropod dinosaurs, known for their long necks?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/March.

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Confused

The following paragraph seems to contradict itself with respect to new vertrebrae in the neck (or am I reading it wrong)

In sauropods, great neck length was achieved by a combination of three processes: incorporation of back vertebrae into the neck; addition of new vertebrae; and lengthening of the individual neck vertebrae. The long neck of Miragaia appears to have resulted mostly from back vertebrae becoming incorporated into the neck, based on vertebral counts of other stegosaurians. There is currently no evidence that new vertebrae contributed to the neck. 203.3.197.249 (talk) 02:03, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Several vertebrae in the neck of Miragaia were part of the back in earlier stegosaurs, but became "cervicalized" - they became part of the neck. No new vertebrae were added to the spine, the distribution just shifted. J. Spencer (talk) 02:39, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're reading it wrong. It's comparing the various ways of neck lengthening in sauropods (which did add new vertebrae) to those in stegosaurians like Miragaia, which did not. 94.22.92.147 (talk) 17:20, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Shoulder spikes mystery

In various illustrations (such as the documentary Dinosaur Revolution), it is often portrayed with shoulder-spikes sticking diagonally straight, but a real skeleton like the one in this article doesn't, so do they have the shoulder-spikes or not? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.186.6.124 (talk) 00:30, 23 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As the article explains, the spike was first situated on the shoulder and later recognised for a tail osteoderm. By the way, the picture shows a model. The new 2019 publication has some free images...--MWAK (talk) 19:08, 17 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Page name?

This article is currently titled Miragaia longicollum, but in the literature Alcovasaurus has been treated as a second species in the genus. So shouldn't this be "Miragaia (Genus)"? Even if folks don't agree with the lump it is not strictly treated as monotypic. Alternatively, swap things around and give this page priority as article title "Miragaia" and rename the article Miragaia as "Miragaia (Parish)" since it's a far less notable, less viewed page. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 06:16, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if we here have the ability to decide which page should get name authority, but I do agree than having the article at the genus level is preferrable in case Alcovasaurus gets skewered, although we have ignored Maidment lumps previously (see Wuerho and Hespero) which have ended up working in our favour eventually. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 20:50, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

More on page name

Requested move 28 December 2020

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: No consensus to move (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 05:39, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Miragaia longicollum → Miragaia (dinosaur) – Please place your rationale for the proposed move here. 82.41.151.124 (talk) 22:35, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per WP:MONOTYPICFAUNA. While articles on monotypic genera are usually at the genus title rather than the binomial, the binomial title is used as a form of natural disambiguation when the genus name is ambiguous. Plantdrew (talk) 19:50, 4 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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.