Talk:Waukesha Biota

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by Theleekycauldron (talk) 02:22, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

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An annelid worm from the biota that is possibly the oldest known leech in the fossil record

• ... that the Waukesha Biota was one of the first fossil sites discovered that preserved soft bodied remains, which normally decay too quickly to be fossilized? Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2396972
  • ALT1: ... that the arthropod Parioscorpio, found within the Waukesha Biota, was once thought to have been the earliest known scorpion? Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pala.12534
  • Reviewed:

Created by Fossiladder13 (talk). Self-nominated at 19:00, 6 September 2022 (UTC).

• starting Review--Kevmin § 13:56, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
• Unfortunately the article does not meet the DYK criteria for being created/moved to live/5x expanded within the 10 day window prior to nomination. If it can be expanded or promoted to GA status it can be renominated.--Kevmin § 18:22, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Merge

The majority of the Waukesha butterfly animal is about the biota and not the specimens, which has not been described formally, but only briefly mentioned and only called a "butterfly animal" once in passing. Additionally the use of "butterfly animal is highly inaccurate and ambiguous, likely to lead reader to thinking its an undescribed butterfly.--Kevmin § 18:43, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

@Kevmin I have done that, and I also moved some of the info to the main biota article. Fossiladder13 (talk) 13:31, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion 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.

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

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 16:42, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Comments

• The first sentence of the lead says "refers to a Konservat-Lagerstätte". The term is too technical for a first sentence, which should be simple and inviting for the novice reader, however techie things get lower down. Further, the Waukesha Biota does not "refer to" anything; it is a thing, and must be described as such, i.e. "The Waukesha Biota ... is the assemblage of finely-preserved animals ... " or something equally cuddly and approachable. The rest of the lead, too, should try not to be too complicated (come on now, who's heard of "(Telychian to Sheinwoodian)"?); the densely technical stuff belongs in the body, not the lead.

• The second half of the lead ("This biota is one... life on Earth.") suddenly switches from look-how-technical-I-can-be to now-listen-in-everybody-this-is-important classroom teacher-style: it seems to be selling the site rather than just describing it. The style "our understanding..." must not be used on Wikipedia. The whole text needs to be rewritten plainly, simply, and non-repetitively.

• It's unclear where much of the "History and significance" paragraph comes from. One sentence and ref [5] name Gould, but no page numbers are provided, and it's unclear if the ref is meant to cover the first three sentences anyway. Those sentences are oddly chatty in tone, contrasting with the rest of the article. I suggest that all the material from "Prior to ... others were Silurian." be rewritten and re-cited.

• Ref [8] just points to the University of Wisconsin Geological Museum home page. The link needs to point to a Waukesha-specific page, and to give the page's title and date (as well as naming the museum).

• "Taphonomy" (section header) must not be linked; please state briefly what taphonomy is, with bluelink, in the section text, and then explain why the Waukesha taphonomy is distinctive.

• "Thylacares brandonensis is the name given to one of" - no, the article is not about names, but about fossils. You could just cut "the name given to".

• Similarly, "Acheronauta derives from" confuses the fossil (a species) with its name (a word). Here you actually need to say something like "Acheronauta is so named for the harsh environment that helped preserve the Waukesha fossils: its name derives from ..." to make sense of things.

• "Interestingly" is editorial and not allowed. "could be another possible" is tautologous, if it could then of course it's possible, so use one or the other but ... not both.

• On the three 'See also' items, suggest you remove the "found" and "located" words as adding nothing. And "British isles" should be "British Isles".

• The refs sometimes represent their authors as "Doe, Adam B. C.", sometimes "Doe, A.B.C.", sometimes "Doe, A. B. C." and sometimes "Adam B. C. Doe". I suggest you standardize on the first of these as the most readable and informative for the reader.

• "soft bodied" (soft, and having a body) should be "soft-bodied" (having a soft body).

Images

• The lead image is too large, suggest you reduce the "|imagesize = 250px" parameter somewhat.

• The Thylacocephalans and Parioscorpio venator images come out as (really) rather large because of the "packed" mode, which is basically uncontrollable. I suggest you use instead "class=center mode=nolines widths=220" (say) which gives a predictable result.

• The probable leech image is too large, suggest you add |upright=0.55 to bring it into line with the area of other images. This should also reduce the sandwiching with the Chordate image that follows it.

• Captions that are not complete sentences must not end with a ".", so please remove punctuation from all of those (e.g. "A fossil of Venustulus from the Waukesha Biota.").

Discussion

@Chiswick Chap Ok, I've edited the page based on your requests. The only one I have not fixed yet is the refs and authors. If you could say which refs have this problem, that would help me fix them. Fossiladder13 (talk) 19:43, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Fossiladder13: Many thanks. The answer depends on your choice. If you look through the list of refs at the bottom of the article, you will immediately see where the authors are inconsistently formatted. Please choose a ref style, e.g. "Doe, Adam B." (i.e. Surname, Forename I.[nitial]) and change the refs which are not in that chosen style to be in that style. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:50, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

It's much improved: more readable, clearer, and better focused on the biology. I've taken the liberty to copy-edit a little, and to trim some materials that properly belong in species articles rather than here. I hope you are pleased with the result, and congratulations on the GA. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:22, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

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.

Did you know renomination

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A possible leech fossil from the Waukesha Biota

• ... that the Waukesha Biota, found in southeast Wisconsin, has possibly the oldest fossils of leeches in the fossil record? Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2396972
  • ALT1: ... that the Waukesha Biota was instrumental in the study of soft-bodied creatures, like this possible leech fossil from the site, from the early Paleozoic? Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018220300754
  • Reviewed:

Created by Fossiladder13 (talk). Self-nominated at 16:53, 18 January 2023 (UTC).