Talk:Paleocene

AMK152's Geotimeboxes

AMK152 proposed in edits of 27 December 2006 a geotimebox for this article as follows:

Eon:	Proterozoic • Phanerozoic • [[]]
Era:	Mesozoic • Cenozoic • [[]]
Period:	Cretaceous • Paleogene • Neogene
Epoch:	Late Cretaceous • Paleocene • Eocene

I feel that the box information that is appropriate for the article is already in the footer, and that other extraneous information, such as previous eons, can be supplied where important, by links from the text. I removed the geotimebox and left the footer, pending discussion. --Bejnar 02:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

"brain to body mass ratios" clarification needed

I found an ambiguous statement that needs clarification for help with understanding the article.

Section 5.1 contains the statement about mammals:

"The brain to body mass ratios of these archaic mammals were quite low.[10]"

I would imagine that the statement has something to do with the size of the brain with respect to the rest of the body and how it relates to intelligence. I looked up "brain to body mass ratios" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_to_body_mass_ratio but I did not find the mathematical definition of a "low ratio". I found things like 1:40 for humans and 1:150 for squirrels, but it did not state which one is a "low ratio" and which one is a "high ratio". I am thoroughly familiar with mathematics, with 1:40 yielding the number 0.025 and 1:150 yielding 0.0066667, but whether or not "a ratio" is low or high depends on whether it is the number or its inverse that describes the situation in question. Both are used to describe ratios and are exact opposites of each other.

For the purpose of the article it would be better to change the sentence in question to something like either: "With small brains in comparison to large body sizes, Paleocene mammals would seem to have had minimal intelligence" OR "With large brains in comparison to small body sizes, Paleocene mammals would seem to have had great intelligence".

Which one is it? Linstrum (talk) 03:54, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Pre-review

I'm a bit busy in the next week, so I'm not going to start the review for real now (and possible never). At first glance the article looks like it can be a GA with a bit of extra work. The lede is somewhat technical and you could decide to not use the words niche, pectomorphs and maybe even flora per WP:EXPLAINLEAD. The exact timing of stages is probably not sufficiently important and bit 'scary' for lay people to feature twice in the lede (in table and in first paragraph).

As continental drift is an important factor in determining climate, I'd put the section geology before climate. The climate section might need some expansion as well (says the climatologist), or at least the second paragraph might need to lose its summation to improve readability. If RSs support it as being important for this specific epoch, you could add as one of the explanations for a warm Antarctica the fact that the Drake_Passage#Geology was still closed. Femke Nijsse (talk) 10:37, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Fixed the lead, added a mention of Antarctica in Paleogeography, any other additions you can think of for the Climate section?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  01:32, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Today's featured article

Paleocene

This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page.

The result was: scheduled for Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 8, 2020 by Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:55, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

The Paleocene is an epoch which started 66 million years ago with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and 75% of all species. The Paleocene was marked by the recovery of the biosphere, with dense forests worldwide, while small mammals and birds rapidly evolved to take advantage of the mass extinction. In the seas, ray-finned fish rose to dominance. The supercontinents Laurasia and Gondwana were still separating, the Rocky Mountains were being uplifted, the Americas were divided, the Indian Plate was colliding with Asia, and the North Atlantic Igneous Province was forming. Like the preceding Mesozoic, the Paleocene had a greenhouse climate, with an average global temperature of 24–25 °C (75–77 °F), compared to 14 °C (57 °F) today. It ended 56 million years ago with a sharp rise in temperature in the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. (Full article...)

• Most recent similar article(s):
• Main editors:   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk 
• Promoted: 30 November 2019
• Reasons for nomination: It's listed as a level-5 vital article, and is the only FA about a geological time period, and I'm not aware of any FAs or GAs about Paleocene creatures, plants, events, etc.
• Support as nominator.   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:49, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
• Support, with tweaks. Since the FAC was just promoted, this page will serve as the blurb review. Thoughts and edits are welcome. - Dank (push to talk) 05:12, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
• Support, but I find the blurb confusing. It appears to give the average temperature for the PETM, but is actually for the Paleocene. I also think it should be made clear that the Paleocene's greenhouse climate was the earth's normal state, not unusually high. Dudley Miles (talk) 10:38, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Oops, I think you're right, but I'm not sure what to do about it. The PETM represented "more than 5–8 °C global average temperature rise across the event" (from the article on the PETM) ... but I'm not sure how to work that in. We're at 963 characters now; we should keep it between 925 and 1025. Since we don't have a lot of extra room, maybe we should just replace "24–25 °C (75–77 °F)" by whatever the temperature range maxed out at ... Thoughts? - Dank (push to talk) 14:04, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
  • FWIW, I'm not on board with the current version. Recusing. - Dank (push to talk) 15:00, 1 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Dudley, answering your "how about this" question: after I get the blurb reviews done that I'm working on at the moment, I'll be taking a wikibreak for a week or two. So I'd rather let other people handle this one. I took out problems like "from 66–56" and "extinction event and the extinction" and they got put back in, so it would probably be better for someone else to be looking at this anyway. - Dank (push to talk) 16:40, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Earliest placentals and marsupials?

The article claims that the earliest Theria stem from the Paleocene but the source cited, Grossnickle, D. M.; Newham, E. (2016). "Therian mammals experience an ecomorphological radiation during the Late Cretaceous and selective extinction at the K–Pg boundary". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 283 (1832): 20160256, obviously states precisely the opposite. --MWAK (talk) 21:43, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

No, this article says that the first placentals and marsupials stem from the Paleocene (not therians as a group), and in fact clarifies "therian mammals had probably already begun to diversify around 10 to 20 mya before the extinction event"   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  01:42, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Ah, I assumed that "placentals" was here used as a vague term indicating Eutheria and likewise "marsupials" indicated Metatheria. If the crown groups are meant, this had better been made explicit.--MWAK (talk) 08:43, 24 March 2020 (UTC)