Talk:Pachylemur

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Pachylemur has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
February 15, 2012	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on February 14, 2012.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the name Pachylemur, now used for a type of extinct giant lemur, was first used as group name of primitive primates once considered intermediate between pachyderms and lemurs?

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GA Review

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

Reviewer: Sasata (talk · contribs) 19:39, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'll review this. Will have comments up in a few days. Shall I review with FAC-level scrutiny? Sasata (talk) 19:39, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Yes, please review with FAC-level scrutiny, but keep in mind that there is more anatomical information out there for us to include, particularly from Lamberton 1948. Unfortunately, Ucucha is very busy and my copy of the document is a 15-page, non-OCR PDF in French... which I can only read a little bit of and would have great difficulty translating fully. ... Actually, I just managed to run it through OCR, but it will still take a long time to incorporate the information since I have to first fix all the OCR errors and then run everything through Google Translate. Anyway, just helping catch the problems with the existing material would be a big help. I know, for instance, that the extinction material might not make the best sense because the sources are terribly inconsistent. (In fact, I had discovered that one of my secondary sources made an error: for the last three editions it has given Pachylemur an extinction date intended for Megaladapis. In other sources, I'm not sure where the dates come from. Anyway, take your time, and I'm eager to see the review. Again, thanks! – VisionHolder « talk » 23:14, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - Hmmm, I'm not finding much to complain about. Some slim (nit)pickings follow; I'll try harder tomorrow when I'm less tired :) Sasata (talk) 06:10, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~the weaselly phrase "is thought" is overused in "Behavior"~~

I have tried to address this. Let me know if this is sufficient. I could also include the name of the researchers who did the research that allowed us to hypothesize these things, but then the section will get bogged down with "Godfrey et al." – VisionHolder « talk » 17:04, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~shouldn't Lemur insignis be listed as a synonym of P. insignis?~~

I decided for some reason not to list original combinations separately (notice that Palaeochirogalus jullyi isn't in there either). But I'll change it. Ucucha (talk) 20:48, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~"Based on dental wear the presence of dental caries," not sure which word is missing~~

Added "and". – VisionHolder « talk » 17:04, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~there's five occurrences of "found" in the "Distribution and habitat" section …I "found" it to be conspicuous~~

I think I have fixed this. – VisionHolder « talk » 17:04, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"African species within the same genus (congeners)" is it necessary to introduce the jargon word if the jargon word is not used later? (there's other instances as well) Alternatively, you could pipe like species within the same genus

I think this is fixed. I prefer to introduce basic biological terms so that if people don't know them, then they can start learning them. But you're right... this is probably cleaner. – VisionHolder « talk » 17:04, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

any more details on the specifics of the "recent analysis" that suggests that Pachylemur was arboreal, i.e., what made them change their minds?

I will have to go back and hit the literature later tonight. I think I avoided that because I didn't want to bump elbows with Ucucha and his Anatomy section. It probably just had to do with limb proportions. – VisionHolder « talk » 17:04, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~there's no clear indication of how many fossil remains have been found. Judging from the number of sites I'm guessing 1-2 dozen? Are any of the skeletons complete? Male/female?~~

I don't think that information has been published anywhere. I have seen photos of complete skeletons, but they may have been pieced together using fossils from multiple locations. Unfortunately, the early days of subfossil hunting in Madagascar make this a very difficult question to answer for any researcher. – VisionHolder « talk » 17:04, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~If Lamberton didn't select a type, what is being used as the type?~~

At present, nothing. The type is awaiting the formal decision of the ICZN, but one has been proposed in the 2011 paper by Zijlstra, Groves & Dunkel. – VisionHolder « talk » 06:01, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Pachylemur at the moment has no type species; we proposed that the Commission select insignis. Ucucha (talk) 20:51, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be useful to state explicitly in the lead that the name is currently in taxonomic limbo? Sasata (talk) 16:40, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's mostly what paragraph 2 of the lead is about, unless I'm missing what you're referring to. I think we should avoid overemphasizing this obscure point of nomenclature, though—describing the actual animal is more important. Ucucha (talk) 16:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~Unless you're planning to make Charles Lamberton a bluelink, it would be good to mention who he is in a few words~~ Sasata (talk) 20:23, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done, and a short article has been created for him. Since there were only three sources, two of which were largely redundant, it was easy enough to write a short article for him. – VisionHolder « talk » 06:01, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I like that solution! Sasata (talk) 16:40, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

More comments after another readthrough. Sasata (talk) 16:40, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"DNA studies have confirmed a sister group" I think DNA studies would be a more informative link; DNA is a pretty common term, but many will not understand what is meant by "DNA study"

Done, thanks. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:00, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Pachylemur specialized on eating fruit" the combination "specialized on" sounds a bit odd to me (I would use "specialized in")

Done. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:00, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

link Madagascar & lemur earlier (lead)

Done. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:00, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO, the second and third paragraphs of the lead should be switched

Done. I can see how it flows better, but I usually try to write the lead to follow the structure of the article. But either way was fine with me. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:00, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

is Herbert F. Standing redlink worthy?

To be honest, I'm not sure. He is mentioned on this article and Subfossil lemur for his aquatic lemur hypothesis. Otherwise he did describe some of the subfossil lemurs (see Mesopropithecus)... though with the mess surrounding their discovery, it may just be luck that his work had priority over other names. I'm just not sure if we'll find much about him as a person. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:00, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Meanwhile, in 1904, Herbert Standing had named a different species using the same name, Lemur jullyi" I'm confused as to why he would have used the same name. I might presume he wasn't aware of the 1899 Grandidier publication that already used the name, but why pick "jullyi" as the epithet?
- Jully was the President of the Academy of Madagascar or something like that if I recall correctly, though neither Grandidier nor Standing makes the etymology explicit. Standing was either unaware of Grandidier's name, thought it didn't matter because Palaeochirogalus jullyi was in a different genus, or he figured that that way he'd confuse even more people. Ucucha (talk) 16:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any information available on the etymology of the names jullyi or insignis (or the synonyms)?
- There is, but it's not explicit in the sources. We'll have a paper out soon that discusses the etymology of those names. Ucucha (talk) 16:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"In a 1982 review, Ian Tattersall recognized two species, Lemur insignis and Lemur jullyi. (He did not regard Pachylemur as a valid genus or even subgenus.)" I think the parenthetical sentence is relevant enough to the discussion that it doesn't have to be made parenthetical
- Agreed. Ucucha (talk) 16:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
might want to link Valid name (zoology) somewhere in here
- I actually switched out two uses of "valid", because Pachylemur is not technically "valid"—if we were following the ICZN's rules strictly, this article would have to be called Palaeochirogalus. I added the link in the discussion of jullyi though. Ucucha (talk) 16:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"The subfossil remains of Pachylemur have been found in all regions of Madagascar" are we sure that Godfrey et al.'s idea of a Malagasy ecoregion is the same as indicated in our article on the subject; i.e., we can confirm with this source that remains have been found in six of the seven terrestrial ecoregions?

Heh... I've been struggling with the ecoregions for some time now. I've been tempted to write an article about them to formalize what we know, but although most sources agree on the spiny thickets, dry deciduous forests, and rainforests, all the other ecoregions of Madagascar vary from source to source. Godfrey, in fact, seems to just stick to North, South, East, West, and Central... probably to avoid dealing with the mess. In terms of those general "ecoregions" then the statement is true. Outside of that, we'd need to know what the "official" ecoregions are. But generally speaking, it has been found in every region in which we find subfossils... but the sources don't say it that way. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:00, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

lit cited list is not quite in alphabetical order (e.g., Goodman is before Godfrey; "Godfrey, L.R.; Rasoazanabary, E." before "Godfrey, L.R.; Jungers, W.L.")

Good catch. I think I fixed it. – VisionHolder « talk » 20:00, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Two final nits: the spacing of author initials is inconsistent, and the short sentence in "Distribution and habitat" could probably be combined with the one previous. That's all I got; the article meets GA criteria, so will pass it now. Nice article, with good illustrations (the taxobox picture is—like usual— fantastic!). Sasata (talk) 21:17, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I can never tell which to use... a space between the initials or not. Either way, because I use the {{cite doi}} and related templates, it will throw off an article somewhere. Anyway, I haven't forgotten about the locomotion issue above and hope to fix it tonight. The source was just a secondary source with no details, and it pointed me to a book chapter on subfossil lemurs I had not read before. – VisionHolder « talk » 03:58, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]