Talk:Prognathodon

Split species

Hi, Ichthyovenator, I see you made separate articles for some Prognathodon species, Prognathodon lutugini and Prognathodon saturator, but the general sentiment (and guideline) at the palaeontology project is that prehistoric species should be covered in the genus articles. In the case of Prognathodon saturator, it seems it could be argued that it may be moved to another genus, and will have to be split eventually anyway, but is there any particular reason why Prognathodon lutugini shouldn't be merged back here? FunkMonk (talk) 09:21, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

I figured that since Prognathodon is noted for being paraphyletic (though the extent of the paraphyly seems to be uncertain) some single-species articles could be justified, particularly P. saturator and the other species that may be split eventually (e.g. P. kianda which is probably phylogenetically the most "not-Prognathodon" species in the genus). I figured that the somewhat extensive text on P. lutugini would not be appropriate in this article if there is not similar coverage of the other species and a special focus on its taxonomic history would be a bit off. Maybe it would indeed be better merge the P. lutugini article and move the relevant bits to this article. Ichthyovenator (talk) 09:39, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

It's of course a judgement call if the articles continues to grow at this rate (good job, by the way), but I'm thinking that much of what is written in the P. lutugini description applies to Prognathodon as a whole? So if a merge is done, it would maybe be good to write a general description of what applies to the entire genus, and then go into how each species diverges from this. As for the species that may not belong in the genus, personally I'd just wait until they are actually moved to a new or existing genus (like for example Istiodactylus sinensis I ran into trouble with a while ago). FunkMonk (talk) 10:23, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

I do not think there is a huge amount of information that could be added to the P. lutugini or P. saturator articles without causing more overlap than there already is, so I will take a look at them and see if I can rewrite some of the things in them and incorporate it here instead. I am not sure exactly how much of the P. lutugini description applies to the genus as a whole, since I mainly looked through resources pertaining P. lutugini specifically, but I will see what I can find. Ichthyovenator (talk) 14:43, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Sounds good, the article is also far from the recommended maximum size (around 100.000 kb), so having all info here should be fine. By the way, as you may have seen I modified some of the older life restorations of the animal to have tail flukes, if you have any suggestions how to further improve them, feel free to ask. The flukes are bigger than the impressions shown in that one fossil (more like that inferred for Platecarpus), but as the text here says, it would probably have become proportionally bigger as the animal grew... FunkMonk (talk) 19:08, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I have added in everything from the P. saturator article to this one and merged it, and the info in the P. lutugini article, bar the more in-depth things about its skull and axial skeleton until I have looked into it more properly. I did see the modified restorations (well done), the lack of a tail fluke was really the big issue with them previously. I do not think there are proper estimate for the size of the adult tail fluke (the paper on the specimen with a preserved fluke did not provide any at least), adults would likely have larger flukes than the one preserved, yeah, and these look okay to me. I can not really think of any further improvements to the restorations at the moment, but if I come up with anything, I will let you know. Ichthyovenator (talk) 21:02, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

While you're at it, the Classification section could really use a discussion about the 2017 phylogeny (and relevant prior work). The cladogram request page is always open. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 21:44, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Sure thing, I have left a cladogram request and will be taking a stab at the Classification section. Ichthyovenator (talk) 15:57, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Looks good after the merge! One thing I was thinking is that it's probably misleading to refer to the species that possibly do not belong in the genus as "formerly referred". As long as they are not assigned to another genus, they are still referred to Prognathodon... Looking at the new cladogram, it seems just as likely that more genera (or just Eremiasaurus) will just be swallowed up by Prognathodon than that most species will be removed (excluding those species that cluster far from the type species)... FunkMonk (talk) 15:47, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I've changed "formerly referred" to "controversial". Ichthyovenator (talk) 17:01, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Seems a bit strong, maybe "disputed"? FunkMonk (talk) 17:06, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, sure. Ichthyovenator (talk) 17:55, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

• While we're talking about how to improve the article, I just noticed Diannaa deleted a large amount of text as copyright violations. If this is the case, it should of course be rewritten, but WP:Copyvio clearly states such text should not be deleted on sight, but warning tags should be added so editors can at least be given the chance to fix the issue. FunkMonk (talk) 12:09, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Copyright violations are a serious problem with legal considerations, and must be dealt with promptly. It's not an occasional problem: there's anywhere from 75 to 100 potential violations to be assessed each day. Since there's only a very small group of people working on copyright cleanup, discussion of each individual violation is not practical. Clear-cut violations are normally removed immediately. Sorry, — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 12:31, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

It may be de-facto standard practice, but it is still against the guidelines, impractical or not. Perfectly good text is commonly deleted as copyvio, even if the supposedly offended website is actually just a Wikipedia mirror, not the case here of course, but shows why one should be cautious. Anyhow, let's see if Ichthyovenator is able to rewrite the text from scratch without having the deleted text as guideline. Otherwise it may be a good idea to temporarily restore the text so it can just be rewritten. FunkMonk (talk) 12:39, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

I have temporarily undone the revision-deletion so the prose can be re-written. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 13:08, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I hope Ichthyovenator will get to it as soon as possible, otherwise I will take a temporary stab at it. FunkMonk (talk) 13:12, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

First of all, I apologize for the copyright violation. I copied in sections of the paper in question during the writing process to rewrite so that I had everything in the same place and must have overlooked the parts in question (I realize now that this is a rather dumb strategy, and it will not be repeated). I have rewritten the violating parts from scratch, they should be good to go now. I will also look through the article and the other sources I have used to ensure that I have not done the same thing in other parts of the article. Ichthyovenator (talk) 15:30, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

The current version is okay from a copyright point of view. Thank you for taking the time to look after this. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 19:42, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

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