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See Talk:List of dinosaurs. This would be excellent advertising for this project, too! Soo 15:35, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. Spawn Man 00:29, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Good articles

In addition to featured articles and lists, there's also a process for nominating worthwhile articles that aren't quite up to the FA criteria Wikipedia:Good articles. It's still a fairly high standard, but it may be useful. -Pat | 68.84.34.154 15:58, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Good idea...!! By the way why dont you sign up... it'll be easier for all of us to communicate with you... :-D Jayant,17 Years, India • contribs 18:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, get an ip adress, Pat is it?! Only wierdos & serial killers who don't want to be traced fully use an anonymous adress..... :). Spawn Man 08:57, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Registered users are actually more anonymous. -Pat | 68.84.34.154 20:49, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

What the hell is everyone's problem?

I created the "Big 20" from much prompting, & nobody apart from me & an new editor have signed up for it?! Yet everyone's so easy to sign up for the harder task of creating a stub for every dinosaur!? If one article gets to the main page, then people will click on the link. Then they'll click on the talk page of the article. Hopefully they'll see the project banner & click that too. Then they might join, thus making your job EASIER!!!! So what the heck is everyone's problem for signing up for the task? I know limited information, even on T rex. So why aren't people like Sheepy & Dinoguy signing on, who supposedly have 1,000 references?! Why cruel world, why?! Spawn Man 21:16, 14 March 2006 (UTC). P.S. I'd appreciate if you saw this message as a signal to sign on. You don't have to do them all at once, just work on one. Infact, put which dinosaur you'll be working on the most next to your name...

Actually I wa looking through the big 20 and was going to sign on, but I kept getting distracted by the changs that needed to be made to the higher taxa pages they led me to :) I'll put my name down now that I'm thinking of it again.Dinoguy2 21:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Also-Hadrosaurus is a nomen dubium, and very poorly known. A much more popular and well known hadrosaur would be Edmontosaurus or Antotitan (aka Anatosaurus aka Trachodon). Just a suggestion.Dinoguy2 21:33, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Edmontosaurus & Meegalosaurus were on my original list, but were cut out when I put 20 in only. Plus, someone up there said that Hadrosaurus was well known, so I put that in first. Don't warry though, if an article gets featured, then I'll put Edmontosaurus in. Should be som inscentive. The hardest hing is citing them, which is where I hoped Sheepy would pop in... Spawn Man 00:48, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
If I have time I will add some citations... but I have not exactly been a fountain of activity lately. It is a lot easier for me to spend an hour cranking out an article about a lesser-known dino with only a handful of papers to read (I spend a lot more time reading than actually writing). P.S. - Hadrosaurus is a P.O.S. Sheep81 09:40, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Hadrosaurus is important for historical reasons (first almost-complete skeleton). The Maiasaura is probably the most important hadrosaurid from a scientific standpoint. -Pat | 68.84.34.154 13:24, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Or maybe not everyone wants to work on the same project as you? Soo 03:07, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Take Soo away@! Trial him for treason!! :)... Spawn Man 03:56, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

And here I had assumed Soo was a woman. It's hard to imagine a boy named Soo. ;) --Firsfron 04:47, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Ah...the drama, the excitement...
Seriously, Wikiprojects need not be so structured. Take for example Wikipedia:WikiProject Polymers - I set this up, and it has slowly grown over a period of a year - it takes a bit of time and effort to build a mini-community around a wikiproject, so be patient. This one will take off too, no doubt about it. --HappyCamper 04:12, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Agreed on the "not so structured" and "not everyone will want to work on the same projects" comments. Sensible, sensible. --Firsfron 04:47, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Damn you all then........ :) Spawn Man 23:51, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Collaboration?

After being a bit "ticked", (more like a worse cussing word!), off about the lack of participants for the "Big 20", I've come up with a better idea. What about a collaboration? It could be a fourtnightly or monthly picked one, as with the lack of members, I doubt a weekly one would get far. It would give us a bigger exposure & get the articles you want fixed(obviously not the "Big 20" you @#$^%..:).....). I would of course have to set this all up with the designer, who has set up things like that before. Please place yay or nay comments below, unless you don't feel "inclined" (much like the "Big 20")..... Spawn Man 23:49, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Diplodocoid category

If there is no disagreement here, I would like to create a "Diplodocoids" category within "Sauropods". There are quite a lot of them now, and it is sort of the counterbalance to the equally large "Titanosaurs". This category would include all rebbachisaurids, dicraeosaurids, and diplodocids, as well as things that seem somewhere in between such as Amazonsaurus and Suuwassea which I am far too lazy to check the spelling of at this point in time. :) Sheep81 04:30, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I see no real problem with it: the Theropods in particular are going to have quite a few categories, so there's no reason we can't divide up larger Sauropod groups. As long as we're not categorizing tiny (often disputed) groups, it's sound. Diplodocoids are clearly a real division. The only problem may be the wording. Didn't Dinoguy just change the name of some cats from -ids and -oids to -saurs?--Firsfron 07:33, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
We just wanted larger categories, so we changed some categories that were the names of families to the names of superfamilies and I think maybe an infraorder... I don't know, those terms are pretty arbitrary. Basically the point is to use larger taxonomic groups. Diplodocoidea is the largest group that only includes the above-mentioned dinosaurs, I think. I'll check on that, but I'm pretty sure. Sheep81 10:44, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
It is. You can always check at List_of_dinosaur_classifications. But what I mean is: If we're using categories such as "Stegosaurs" and "Ankylosaurs" instead of "Stegosaurids" and "Ankylosaurids", shouldn't we use "Diplodocids" instead of "Diplodocoidea", as a way of using less formalized naming in categories? Just a thought.--Firsfron 17:14, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
As I understand it, we aren't using "ankylosaurs" instead of "ankylosaurids" because it is less formal, but because it is more inclusive. "Ankylosaurs" refers to all of Ankylosauria (Nodosauridae + Ankylosauridae), while "ankylosaurids" refers only to the family Ankylosauridae. Similarly, "diplodocoids" refers to all of Diplodocoidea (Rebacchisauridae + Dicraeosauridae + Diplodocidae), while "diplodocids" (to use your example) would only refer to the family Diplodocidae. I think the idea is to use the largest group that is still informative so that we can fit the most dinosaurs into the minimum number of informative categories. Also, I agree that "diplodocoids" is kind of a weird name, but I don't know a better way to informalize the name Diplodocoidea. Please correct me if I am wrong about any of the above. Sheep81 10:27, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
"Diplodocoids". The correct vernacular of Ankylosauria is "ankylosaurian", and "ankylosaur" technically only refers to species within the genera Ankylosaurus. A decent list of the proper naming is here (though it doesn't include super-families). Obviously, we shouldn't go out and rename "dinosaur" to "Dinosauria", and "titanosaur" is never actually used to refer to the genera, but we might want to move some of them to the more formal vernacular. The articles are sometimes inconsistent; both abelisaurs and Abelisauridae claim to be articles on the abelisaurid family (though the taxobox at "abelisaur" indicates super-family.) -Pat | 68.84.34.154 11:45, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Efraasia

Dinosaur Efraasia has been added to the Main Page as a DYK. My thanks to 68.84 for the assistance. I'm hoping this raises some awareness for the project: we're on the main page, guys! :)--Firsfron 07:37, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Way to go everyone!!!!!!!!! :-D......Jayant,17 Years, India • contribs 10:34, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Nice. I like the way this project is coming together recently, especially since we're doing it with a minimum of infighting as seen in other projects. Way to go everyone! Sheep81 10:47, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
As we come to more obscure dinosaurs, though, I do fear it may lead to greater differences of opinion, because of the differing views of the paleontological community. Sure, it's easy to describe Archaeopteryx as a dinosaur, because the majority of scientists support it; but when we get to lesser-known dinosaurs, which have only been studied by a handful of researchers with varying opinions... and not all match the George O. list, and that list may differ from the online cladogram we were originally using. That's one of my main concerns...--Firsfron 17:07, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

And now we are officially off. --Firsfron 17:23, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts on the use of ankylosaurid subfamilies

I've been doing a lot of work on ankylosaurid/nodosaurid entries the last couple of weeks and wanted to mention that I've not been including ankylosaurid subfamilies in either the taxoboxes or the text because only one of these clades, the Ankylosaurinae, is recognised by the book I'm using as my primary taxonomic text, The Dinosauria (2nd ed.; Weishampel, Dodson, and Osmólska, 2004). My impression, though it's not stated explicitly, is that these authors consider the other two subfamilies to be either paraphyletic or polyphyletic. I didn't want anyone to think I was ignoring Polacanthinae and Shamosaurinae just to be contrary. Should we come to a consensus on this? --Nar'eth 17:31, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

We should probably agree on one. I've been using Carpenter 2001 and Sereno 2005 (for the exclusion of the family Polocanthidae). The problem is that, under the current clad-linnean hybrid system, there isn't a good way to show paraphyletic grades in the taxonomy sections unless most nodes has a clade name seperate from the genus (see Pachycephalosauria for a good example of this). I don't have a copy of Dinosauria 2, so I'm not sure if these exist for Ankylosauridae. Both Carpenter and Sereno recognized at least Shamosaurinae, so I had used the subfamilies as a convinient way to (approximately) reflect ankylosaurid relationships, that might not come across if we used jst a single-indent list of all ankylosaurids. I tend to shy away from using subfamilies in he taxoboxes anyway, and I'd probably only use them in the text if the discussion mentioned alternate classification schemes.Dinoguy2 17:55, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I saw several of your articles as I was working on nearby articles, Greygirlbeast, and they look great. A decision was made, on the archive of this page, to use Benton's cladogram, which is located at http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/benton/vertclass.html#reptiles . As you can see, Benton retains two ankylosaurid groups: Ankylosauridae and Nodosauridae within the infraorder Ankylosauria. It makes no mention of Polacanthinae and Shamosaurinae. But it may contain some differences from the George Olshevsky List, which some of us have also been using. That list is located at http://members.aol.com/Dinogeorge/dinolist.html . There are just suggestions, of course, since the sources vary from paleontologist to paleontologist. --Firsfron 18:06, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
It should be noted that Benton's list doesn't address sub-family taxa, in most cases. So, this falls under the exception posted on Dinosaur classification that family-level taxa and below are flexible and can conform to any agreed-upon published cladistic analyses.Dinoguy2 20:03, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm fine with using Benton's scheme from here on. Personally, I suspect that problems of plesiomorphy may be involved with the ankylosaurid subfamilies. Also, I'll keep subfamilies out of the taxoboxes. I'm glad you liked the articles.--Nar'eth 18:20, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
In case anybody didn't already know, all (or most) of Ken Carpenter's papers are available for free online as PDF files at this URL: https://scientists.dmns.org/sites/kencarpenter/default.aspx. This includes his 2001 ankylosaur phylogeny and a whole lot of other cool papers. Sheep81 03:01
There is now at least a stub for every taxonomically valid genus within the Nodosauridae. I'll be working to expand these over the next week or so, as well as get something up for all the remaining ankylosaurids. With luck, the Ankylosauria will be stub-free within the month.--Nar'eth 03:12, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Bones

Is the a good picture of dinosaur bones, like a skeleton somewhere? --HappyCamper 21:15, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I dunno about whole skeletons, maybe someone else has a link for that. However, a lot of terminology and SOME pictures are available at The Dinosauria Online, in the anatomy section. Sheep81 03:03, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
It's an undignified position, but you can see a brachiosaur/giraffititan skeleton at the Humboldt Museum here. It's relatively complete (though technically a chimera). Unlike a lot of skeletons on display, it's not made of plaster casts. -Pat | 68.84.34.154 11:51, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Tree

What would be really neat is if we made a little clickable family tree of major dinosaur groups, and put that as a template which appears on the bottom of every dinosuar page. Good idea? Bad idea? --HappyCamper 03:17, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

A tree would take up a lot of room, but maybe something like the mammal box at the bottom of Xenarthra would be cool. We could list Order: Major infraorders/subgroups (but only on super-generic taxon pages, imo).A link could be included to Dinosaur classification, which is basically a clickable family tree.Dinoguy2 14:15, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Free papers online

The best way for someone to learn about dinosaurs is to consult the primary literature. Unfortunately that usually requires you to know some terminology. Another problem is access. Finding a copy of a journal can be difficult, and making copies can really add up. Subscriptions are usually obscenely expensive because most of these journals have pretty low circulation. So how do you get a hold of technical papers?

Most scientific journals now offer PDFs of their articles online. Unfortunately, you are usually required to subscribe to the journal, pay a bunch of money, or go to a library that subscribes to the journal in order to access them. If you do live near a major university, it is not a bad idea to find out what journals they subscribe to and then spend a few hours in their library downloading PDF files and emailing them to yourself... it's a lot cheaper than making copies. However, if you don't have that kind of time or don't live near a major library, there are still a lot of places to find papers online for free, which some of you may already know about. But I'll list some of the ones I know about here:

Journals

  • The American Museum of Natural History Digital Library provides free PDF copies of all four of their major publications. They are working to have every single issue from beginning to end. Truly amazing. Many new dinosaurs have been reported in American Museum Novitates in particular.
  • The Polish journal Acta Paleontologica Polonica also provides free PDF access to all issues dating back to 1997 on their website. Although the journal is Polish, all articles are in English.
  • The Revista Geologica de Chile has some articles online as well, although they are in HTML format as far as I can tell. Not too many dinosaur papers in this one, although here is the description of Rinconsaurus.

Individual Researchers

  • Ken Carpenter of the DMNS has most of his papers online at his webpage. Some are just PDFs of photocopies so quality is not that great sometimes, and they are not searchable by text, but it's definitely better than nothing.
  • Sunny Hwang of the AMNH has several theropod papers linked on her online CV. Just a few though.

Other Sites

  • This site has the Journal of Paleontology and Paleobiology archived online, but from what I can tell it is text-only, no images, and the articles are not in PDF format, which means you can't see page numbers, for one thing.
  • This site has free PDFs of some recent issues of a lot of journals. Right now they only have the most recent issue of Ameghiniana, a very important journal from Argentina, but hopefully in the future they will add more.
  • Not all articles are in English so that's why The Polyglot Paleontologist is so useful. Free online English translations of many papers in Spanish, Chinese, Russian and French are available, many in PDF format. However, sometimes there are no images, unfortunately, and you can't see the original page numbers.

I'm sure other people know of other places to get articles. Searching for "pdf" on the Archives of the Dinosaur Mailing List might nab you some more. I (Sheep) also have a lot of 1996-and-later PDFs on my hard drive, most of which are not freely available online, so if you have any requests, ask on my talk page and I will see if I have what you want. Maybe I can put up a list. Sheep81 04:06, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Good list! Why don't you move it to a == Resources == section on the main project page? We can additional resources there as we find them. It's also worth checking with your local college library; they may have subscriptions to some of the online resources. Doing a Google search is also useful, if you know the author date and title. While they started cracking down, a lot of college professors at least used to put up a lot of the more important articles so they were publically accessable, and a number of obscure papers show up in odd places. I absolutely loved it when I found scans of Cope's original article on Amphicoelias fragillimus from 1878 here. :). -Pat | 68.84.34.154 12:03, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

The article now exists. Please help develop it! References and more info all gratefully received. Soo 19:59, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I've added a sentence, and will add more as I think about it, Soo.--Firsfron 04:55, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Additional dinosaurs

I keep coming up with names that are not on the list of dinosaurs. Since Sheep81 has just filtered out a lot of the names, I wonder if it's wise to add these new ones at all. The work he's done has greatly improved the list, IMO, and I'd hate for us to have to refilter everything.

However, there are many more. Possibly hundreds. At least, I've found enough that it makes me think there may be hundreds more. What do you all think?--Firsfron 04:45, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Maybe put them on the talk page and we can decide there? Sheep81 05:12, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
Alright, done. --Firsfron 09:09, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Categories

It seems like one major category we're missing is Coelurosaurs. I understand the desire to keep seperate family-level cats for notable groups like dromaeosaurs and tyrannosaurs, but we also have a cat for troodontids, and no cat for things like ornithomimosaurs, oviraptorosaurs, therizinosaurs, etc. Maybe we should have an infraorder level cat for coelurosaurs, and then separate cats for major sub-groups like these?Dinoguy2 19:21, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm surprised there's no cat yet for Therizinosaurs. Segnosaur (article) redirects to Therizinosaur (article), so the category should probably also be Category:Therizinosaurs, for the sake of simplicity. I do want to note the other possible name for the category, because many sources do use that name. Maybe we can at least note that in the category itself. As far as Coelurosaurs: of course there should be a cat for them, at least for basal members that don't easily fit into any cat, or for later members of questionable higher clades.--Firsfron 20:39, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Alright, I've added the Therizinosaur category, and placed known species in it. On a completely unrelated note, I also fixed up the Pachycephalosaur category, while I was at it. There were some genera in cat:Pachycephalosaurs and some in cat:Pachycephalosaurids (and, obviously, some in no category at all). They've all been moved into one home at cat:Pachycephalosaurs (which was the most populated category: less work that way).--Firsfron 22:31, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Should we nest the coelurosaur clades inside a coelurosaur category, or leave them all within Theropods?Dinoguy2 00:11, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I vote for nesting coelurosaur clades inside a coelurosaur category, but I don't know how Sheep (and others) feel. To me, it just makes sense: the conceptual categories would eventually resemble a rough cladogram.--Firsfron 00:26, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
For the record, my vote is also for nesting coelurosaurs. I'll start filling categories for the major subclades, though I think I'll refrain from creating a Coelurosauria cat until a few more people weigh in.Dinoguy2 00:33, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Well the troodont cat was already there when I started nesting them, and I didn't really feel comfortable DELETING a category and putting animals in a less informative category. But at the same time I was a bit skeptical about adding a cat for every coelurosaur subclade just because we don't do the same with ornithischian or sauropod clades. I've always felt there was a pretty heavy bias towards theropods in coverage. But at the same time, they ARE very diverse in form, as opposed to say, ornithopods which are pretty superficially similar. I'll go with whatever you decide and be happy with it. Only thing is that I would prefer to use superfamily-type taxa instead of families. So... therizinosaurs, tyrannosaurs, dromaeosaurs, which it looks like you have already done. One category I do kind of object to is "herrerasaurs," which really at this point only includes Herrerasaurus and Staurikosaurus... mayyyybe Chindesaurus. The rest of the taxa in the category at this time are either definitely not herrerasaurs (Alwalkeria), probably chimeric ("Aliwalia"), or possibly not even dinosaurian (Spondylosoma). I think Herrerasauridae has too small of a membership to deserve its own category. Also a lot of paleontologists don't even think herrerasaurs are dinosaurs, let alone saurischians or theropods. So it doesn't really fit within our nesting scheme, as opposed to all of our other cats, which seem perfectly stable where they are. These animals would probably be best just placed under "Saurischians" or maybe "Dinosaurs". Sheep81 20:03, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I only added a herrerasaur cat because it's an "infraorder", which sems to be the defining aspect of the other major cats (carnosaurs, coelurosaurs, ceratosaurs). I don't have any objection to removing them to Saurischia, however. I wouldn't reccomend putting any genera under Dinosaur because, well first it mainly contains non-taxon articles, and also because if something is not sauriscian or ornithiscian it must be non-dinosaurian by definition.Dinoguy2 20:25, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
True, if it is a dinosaur, then by definition it MUST belong to either order, since Dinosauria is a node-based taxon (Saurischia + Ornithischia). But that doesn't mean we actually which one it is, since something with limited material could show dinosaur synapomorphies but not preserve elements that identify it to either order. In that case the best you could do would be to put it in "Dinosaurs". I personally think "herrerasaurs" are basal saurischians after Langer (2004), but that is not exactly NPOV. I don't mind Category:Herrerasaurs too much as long as it has actual herrerasaurs under it, but as for the rest, put them under Saurischia, and then when/if I or anyone else actually gets around to writing good articles for some of these genera, we can just note the uncertainty in the article. Sheep81 21:12, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good. I was cleaning up the Dinosaur cat and there are a few genera in there which can't be placed safely in either order. As for the herrerasaurs, I'd just get rid of that category all together if removing the dubious taxa, since as you said, two or three species don't warrent a category. Any place we put herrerasaurs will be somewhat NPOV, and since some place them as non-dinosaurs and some place them as theropods, I think Saurischia is a nice "average" spot for them.Dinoguy2 21:36, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Cool. Who knows, maybe there will be an explosion of herrerasaurs announced this year and we will have to add the category back. :) Sheep81 21:42, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Alright, just how many decently-described dinosaurs does it take to qualify for a category? --Firsfron 21:58, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I want to say 15 or 20, but looking through the categories, this would disqualify things like Stegosaurs and Pachycephalosaurs. It would disqualify Oviraptorosaurs as that section stands now, but there are enough redlinked oviraptors to bump that up past 20. This is probably the case for most groups that fall short, except for family level groups like Troodontids and spinosaurids (IMHO, Troodontids should probably be dumped back into coelurosaurs, and Spinosaurids should either be dumped into Theropods, or create a Megalosaurs category).Dinoguy2 22:57, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I just moved a few Stegosaurs from the generic Thyreophoran category into the Stegosaur category, and there are still plenty of red Stegosaur genera on the list, so there will certainly be enough (more than 15) for a category. Pachycephalosaurs already have 16 genera in the category. --Firsfron 23:57, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
And now I've moved out all but 5 of the Thyreophorans into their respective Ankylo- or Stegosaur categories. The 5 remaining are all basal Thyreophorans (Scelidosaur-types) or indeterminate. I'm sure more will be added later.--Firsfron 00:42, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Hadrosaurids/oids

Looking for some opinions regarding the categorization of hadrosauroids. It looks like all basal members of this superfamily are categorized as iguanodontids, which is inconsistant with parallel categories (cat Tyrannosaurs includes all tyrannosauroids, not just tyrannosaurids). Move basal hadrosauroids into the Hadrosaurs category, or no?Dinoguy2 22:14, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I was using http://personal2.stthomas.edu/jstweet/iguanodontia.htm as a basis for the Iguanodonts. Ouranosaurus, Altirhinus, Eolambia, Fukuisaurus, Protohadros, Probactrosaurus, Nanyangosaurus, and Shuangmiaosaurus are listed on that page as advanced Iguanodonts leading toward the Hadrosauridae. But I guess they could easily be moved to the Hadrosaur category, though they're awfully close to Iguanodon. "Hadrosauroidea: Many of these basal hadrosauroids were once classified as iguanodontids, but while they are similar to Iguanodon, they are not in the same family; rather, they are in the line leading to hadrosaurids."--Firsfron 00:20, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
I like them where they are right now... it just doesn't "seem" right to list something like Altirhinus as a hadrosaur. Not very scientific, I know. Sheep81 01:28, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
But, [1] does list all those species under the Hadrosauroidea. If we keep them in cat:Iguanodonts, the hadrosaur cat should really be changed from Hadrosaurs to Hadrosaurids.Dinoguy2 19:49, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
I am fine with whatever you decide. Change it to Hadrosaurids (which kind of isolates the "duckbills" that most people think of when they think of hadrosaurs) or put basal hadrosauroids in the cat (which is more consistent with other cats). Either way has good and bad points. What is the definition of Hadrosauroidea these days anyway? Sheep81 15:51, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Taxon Search lists it as (Parasaurolophus > Iguanodon), which is pretty consistant with what I've seen used elsewhere, though I'm no expert on ornthischian phylogony. Don't ask me why it was defined this way, as that definition basically encompasses all of the traditional Iguanodontidae except for Iguanodon itself.Dinoguy2 16:55, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
EEP. That is a lot of animals now (Ouranosaurus, Altirhinus, Eolambia, Protohadros, Prosaurolophus, Equijubus, et cetera). Hm. Sheep81 09:58, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
I meant Probactrosaurus, not Prosaurolophus. Sheep81 09:59, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Handling of dubious dinosaur genera

We currently have a list of missing dinosaur articles. The problem with this list is that a large number of these are nomina dubia. In many cases, there really won't be much more to say than "This is a junior synonym of some other genus" or "This is a dubious tooth taxon". I'm considering making a List of dubious dinosaur genera and redirecting all of the dubious taxa to that page. This page could briefly explain why each such name was considered dubious, as well as who proposed it and when. Does anyone else have any comments on this? Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 01:44, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

One problem I forsee with that plan is that nomen dubium is very often subjective. Personally, I think Protoavis is absolute chimeric junk that certainly qualifies as nomen dubium, but the list we're using makes no such annotation. IMO, the word "dubious" is completely subjective, and what one researcher sees as perfectly valid may seem like a borderline hoax to another. Also, most of the junior synonyms have already been directed to their respective main articles. It would be inconsistant (and confusing to readers)to redirect some to a genera article, while others would direct to the nomen dubium page.--Firsfron 03:47, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
ETA: at the current rate we're going, all the links will be blue in a few weeks anyway. Less than a month ago, there were still 500 missing dinosaurs. Now it's 200something. It's true that a lot of these articles could use expanding, but there's quite a bit to say, even about most nomina dubia.--Firsfron 03:55, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Image Guidelines

It seems to me that we should put together some kind of general guidelines to post on the main project page for image usage. In my opinion, we should be able to use any image that is anatomically accurate within known constraints. For example, a mostly featherless Deinonychus would be ok since there is no direct or trace evidence of feathers in that genus, but the image should still accurately reflect the non-integument anatomy of the animal. Likewise, a "puffin"-style image would also be ok, again as long as it refelcts accurate skeletal structure. A picture of Microraptor gui that lacks primary feathers would be unacceptable since direct evidence exists showing the size and shape of these. Now, the problem with this guideline is the "little things", sort of minor anatomical errors. For example, I still see a ton of theropod drawings with pronate hands, even though that was disproved over ten year ago. It has been known since at least twenty years ago that theropods had fairly inflexible tails, yet there are many images in which the tails are so curved and twisted around that they might as well belong to a lizard. Should we allow images that have these lesser-known innacuracies as long as they are ok overall? Does anyone else agree that we need image guidelines in the first place?Dinoguy2 19:10, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

We do need guidelines. Thanks for bringing this up, Dinoguy. I haven't really taken a close look at most of the pictures, (since I was focused on the text, mostly), but you're absolutely right. I'm not so worried about the sauropod neck being portrayed as vertical, because it seems the jury's still out on the vertical/horizontal debate to some extent. I also haven't noticed the positions of Theropod hands in pictures here, but will obviously be watching for that now. Thanks for bringing up these issues.
I've also seen a few photos that appear to be taken from very old sources (1911 Britannica or older). Unless these are used in a historical manner (ie, "old depiction of Sampleosaurus, now known to be inaccurate"), in most cases they have no place here.--Firsfron 21:32, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I do like those old pictures for nostalgia's sake, but they should probably be confined to the text, not the taxoboxes (preferably in the section of history or discovery or what have you, if applicable). Though, the only dinosaurs I can think of off the top of my head that use historical images in the taxobox are CeratosaurusDinoguy2 22:49, 23 March 2006 (UTC) and Dryptosaurus.

I've added image inclusion guidelines to the main page. I tried to break it down so it would be easy to pinpoint specific reasons for removing an image in the edit summary. Feel free to discuss any changes here.Dinoguy2 23:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Excellent!--Firsfron 23:43, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Woah! You deleted the picture at Utahraptor but left the second image at Giganotosaurus?! That really, really surprises me. I thought Giganotosaurus would be the first to go: it's got bunny hands, a serpentine tail that looks like it could have been tied in knots, neon green skin, not to mention the dorky facial expression... Utahraptor's depiction didn't seem that inaccurate, at least in comparison. And based on your list of edits, you edited both pages nearly at the same time. I don't get it.--Firsfron 06:48, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Whoops, missed removing the Giga image. Just an oversite on my part, it's certainly more inaccurate than the "Utahraptor" (obviously plagiarized from an early image of Deinonychus).Dinoguy2 18:32, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team cooperation

Hello. I'm a member of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing articles using these criteria, and we are are asking for your help. As you are most aware of the issues surrounding your focus area, we are wondering if you could provide us with a list of the articles that fall within the scope of your WikiProject, and that are either featured, A-class, B-class, or Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Do you have any recommendations? If you do, please post your suggestions at the listing of all active Science WikiProjects, and if you have any questions, ask me in the Work Via WikiProjects talk page or directly in my talk page. Thanks a lot! Titoxd(?!? - help us) 06:59, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Hypsilophodont category?

I'd like to create one, but would like some input before I just go and make one. The group is paraphyletic, according to the Benton scheme we're using. Most (but not all) of the family categories we've created thus far have been monophyletic. Obviously, some of the Theropod categories aren't monophyletic, since they don't include avians. The Iguanodont category I recently created isn't, either, since it led to the Hadrosaurs. But then, any group ancestral to another family can't really ever be "valid" by that definition. The Hypsilophodonts are a paraphyletic clade between Iguanodonts and basal Ornithischians, as you probably know. They would be in the Ornithopod category next to Iguanodonts and Hadrosaurs. So: create, or don't create? There are 23 hypsils on my list, so there are enough to form a seperate category. I just want to know what you all think before I go and "ruin" the project. --Firsfron 11:12, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I know I always tend to vote against new cats being formed, and in retrospect I actually like the new theropod categories, but in this case I think that "hyspies" aren't basically any different than Scelidosaurus or Coelophysis in that they are just basal members of their suborder. If you look at other subgroups (Theropods, Coelurosaurs, Sauropods, Thyreophorans) you see that the basal members don't usually get their own category, they just sit in the category of the subgroup. Also, there is about to be some research published that might change the position of a lot of the current so-called "hyspies". One paper last year removed Agilisaurus and Hexinlusaurus from Ornithopoda and placed them as basal cerapods (--> Ornithopoda + Marginocephalia), and pulled Xiaosaurus out and made it a basal ornithischian. Another paper took Lesothosaurus, usually thought to be a basal ornithischian, and made it a basal cerapod (along with Stormbergia, Jeholosaurus, Agilisaurus, and heterodontosaurs)! And there is more to come. Of course, the magic of Wikipedia is that we can change their classification whenever new research is published, so this might not be an issue. Would a hyspie category "ruin" the project in any case? Of course not.
I also just want to caution people that when they are categorizing these animals (which is a great and noble and worthy task), just skim through the article and try not to contradict the article unless it's blatantly wrong (in which case you might want to alter the article contents too). Sheep81 17:27, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Your points are well-taken, Sheep. I'm glad for the input. I won't create the category. As you point out, and as I already knew, we've mostly just had the basal members sit in the bottom of the category. Unlike basal (or poorly-known) Thyreophorans, though, there were be quite a few of these. I just wanted some input before I started moving articles. I know you moved a few articles from Hadrosaur to Iguanodont, or vice versa, and as one of those was my mistake, I don't want to create work for you!
I'd have to say my vote is against a new cat, since if we remove the hypsies there aren't going to be many taxa left in Ornithopods. Iguanodonts are also paraphyletic, btw, and I'd actually prefer if they were either left uncategorized, or if Hadrosaurids were placed as a sub-cat of Iguanodonts.Dinoguy2 18:37, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I did mention above that Iguanodonts are paraphyletic. But in some cases, I feel a paraphyletic category isn't bad: any group ancestral to another family can't really ever be a "valid" family because there will be later members excluded. In which case, the most successful groups will be left as "invalid" paraphyletic groups, and only the species that went entirely extinct will be recognized as a monophyletic family. I will not create the hypsilophodont category, but I do like the Iguanodont category. It's no more paraphyletic than Theropods or Prosauropods. Thanks for the input, Dinoguy. --Firsfron 21:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea of making hadrosaurs into a subcategory of iguanodonts. This both makes our iguanodont cat monophyletic and makes it more consistent with other categories that we have created, so that basal members (iguanodonts) will be in the larger cat while a derived subgroup (hadrosaurs) will have its own cat within. Thoughts? Sheep81 16:59, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
This would also agree with the correspondance between rank and category level in the theropod setion. Hadrosaurs, a superfamily, within iguanodonts, an infraorder, just like tyrannosaurs within coelurosaurs.Dinoguy2 17:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Otherwise the six Coelurosaur categories in Saurischians look way too derived. It adds a little balance to the Ornithschians. :)--Firsfron 20:05, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
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