Talk:Pelagornithidae

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Taxobox[edit]

This article has one of the stranges, and IMO cluttered aesthetically, taxoboxes I've seen in the TOL project and seems to violate many of the taxobox guidelines. For example, the taxobox is meant to be a quick overview to be expounded upon in the text, much like the intro, and there fore should not contain in-line citations. Anything present in the taxobox should be discussed in depth and sourced in the body of the article.

It is (the body), and it is sourced to... well, most key sources are there now. As regards the taxobox - my approach is "if the space is there..." (i.e. if the article is long enough). I'd rather question the "has to be ultra-concise" guideline. When you regularly edit crown well-documented taxon articles, you'll find that keeping taxoboxes small beyond a rather high point is hopeless anyway. True, not every cruft should be in it, but I find little harm from taxoboxes growing a bit as the article grows.

Most taxoboxes do not break down time periods beyond epoch, as this can be confusing for non-technically proficient people.

True; the code is problematic anyway though. Bar should be over full-length (if this is possible). In this case, trying to figure out the dates took me a week of checking sources...

Years alone should not be linked, per wiki guidelines, only complete dates.

We have an image review now governing all paleo images, so including an inaccurate image with a long description of the inaccuracies should not be kosher. The image should be removed until fixed.

The problem is minor; the Beipiaosaurus reconstruction is more inaccurate if anything. So if that is kosher enough (I think it is) then the "O. orri" drawing should be good too. The present media content is not sufficiently illustrative for this article; anything that is not grossly wrong will help. Besides, owing to the phylogenetic uncertainties reconstructions cannot be overly precise. It could be considered a very nice reconstruction of the smaller-billed Odontopteryx for example; there is nothing to compare its size to and the proportions would be correct. As "reconstruction of a pseudotooth bird", being how it is with ultramarine waves and all, it is entirely satisfactory. (It has a certain wicked charm, with the stork-like plumage, because this is actually highly plausible – if they were neoavian...)

"Diversity"--I've never seen this field used before. Why not "Genera"?

WP:DINO does not use it, elsewhere on WP:TOL (particularly invertebrates and fish) it is quite widespread. I have taken up using it recently, you can use it (because it needs a "diversity_link") as soon as you have a separate section where subtaxa are discussed. Helps to compact things if you have many (named and unnamed) subtaxa. Particularly when the subtaxa have articles of their own (with taxoboxes); providing taxon authorities can be tricky if you discuss subtaxa in-text.
WP:DINO is the only of WP:TOL that regularly puts synonymies in the text and subordinate taxa in the taxobox. Elsewhere the subordinates are moved to the text as soon as there is any number of them and the synonyms are listed in the taxobox. (This is mainly for practical reasons methinks - you guys have more junior synonyms per senior synonyms than anyone else, except perhaps the plants people).
Sources for synonyms are provided via footnote. Twice. This is expedient - I would favor a taxobox param "synonyms_ref" that generates a footnote like status_ref (you probabvly do not know this; it is used to footnote IUCN Red List status in the taxobox.

Odontopterygiformes - If it's monotypic, why isn't the article on the highest level taxon, with the others as redirects, as in Therizinosaur or Titanosaur?

Because I'm not done with it yet ;-) mving is ultimately an option I'd prefer too. (Also, the first review stands damn good chances to find it non-monotypic, but that should not speak against mving).

Just wanted to raise these pedantic taxobox issues here for discussion, as I'd made the changes then had them reverted. Overall, many prehistoric bird articles stick out like a sore thumb among other paleo articles on wiki as they seem to be using a very non-standard format, even in things like structure, heading, tone, and reference/coding style. No love for at least some standardization so visitors know what to look for and how to find it? Dinoguy2 (talk) 17:35, 21 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is probably because WP:BIRDS does not stick to WP:DINO MoS... We have different requirements and different sorts of data, so naturally bird articles tend to look different than those of their non-/semivolant ancestors. A rigid MoS has not been high on the list of WP:BIRD's priority tasks. As regards the code, I have tried to make something that does the job, is flexible, and accessible so that "anyone can edit". I don't touch Enantiornithes any more, for example, because the source code has become such a mess. "Subclass Enantiornithes[21][22][23][24][25][26]", for Jimbo's sake! I do not use editing helps or customized settings, so I'm able to see the code as any n00b would, and it does not look pretty. Novice editors are effectively barred from editing this, which is not really in the spirit of WP.
If you can't get Mayr (2009), deep-read Olson (1985). This is one of the most problematic groups of prehistoric birds. Dire need of a revision, but it would be as tough as revising Megalosaurus from start to finish. The information comes in bits and pieces, and I found many sources are not 100% trustworthy (because they copied from secondary sources without looking up the primary information); those that are trustworthy do not.
For example, Mayr (2008) discusses at length how Argillornis is synonymous to Dasornis. And this is all nice and well and I totally go with it, but what he does not discuss is that there seems to be a batch of A. longipennis material that does not seem to be Dasornis. Not that he contradicts it; he simply does not mention it. Other authors mention it. Are they correct? Nobody knows. Writing this basically from scratch has been a very tough exercise of fill-the-gap. Hence citations are collated to reference a whole paragraph; otherwise we'd have a ref every other half-sentence or so. Which would look very much like crap. (Also avoids the before-vs-after-punctuation issue entirely.) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 03:25, 22 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reference style[edit]

One other concern: the reference style. Footnotes seem to be deprecated in most wiki article,s as they don't make much sense. Any commentary worthy of a footnote should simply be included in the text. Footnoting an abbreviated cite also makes little sense. As a user, when I click a citation, I don't want to read just the author and year, then dig through another section's index of Works Cited to find the full reference. In-line citations should include the whole citation, and non-cite footnotes should be left to the body text. This seems to be stone-cold requirements by most FAC reviewers, so if this article is ever to be featured, not doing this kind of formatting early on would be shooting ourselves in the foot. Dinoguy2 (talk) 17:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You don't read many FAs on humanities, do you? I basically got the style from them (though they still sometimes combine w/Harvard style), figuring that those that annotate and cite most and longest have come up with the best accessible system system re: separate footnotes/annotations and actual sources.
As for collating refs, well, read the fricking sources. I have never done anything so full of RS that contradict each other in the most awkward ways. It is rare that one source suffices for any one claim. I shall convert a para, so one can compare the code output. But there's more to be done on the SCal material, and the NZ fossils are yet another story entirely. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:13, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Woah, woah. I'm not trying to be confrontational here, just offering what I have personally viewed as a better approach to sourcing, based on things reviewers have made me and other editors change during FAC at other articles. I'm not sure why having sources that agree is important. We don't have to pick one source over another, simply report which sources say what. If they disagree, it's self-explanatory. Dinoguy2 (talk) 22:31, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's not that the sources don't agree in these cases – they contradict outright, without even bothering to discuss this.
Example: Mayr (2009) deals with Paleogene birds exclusively, and very thoroughly so; but on p.59 he says:

"Paleogene representatives of the Pelagornithidae cover a size range from medium-sized (O. toliapica) to very large (D. emuinus) species, which probably had a wingspan above 4 m. By contrast, all Neogene Pelagornithidae had a giant size, reaching wingspans of 5–6 m (Olson 1985). Most likely, giant size evolved only once within bony-toothed birds..."

Whereas Scarlett (1972) discuss "Pseudodontornis" stirtoni – undisputably of Neogene age, and perhaps as young as Late Pliocene – as follows:

"Howard and Walter considered, from their study of the cranium, that P. stirtoni is smaller than the other Odontopterygia[sic]..."

and the measurements they cite – particularly if you also consider McKee (1985) specimen A111 182 and González-Barba et al. (2002) specimen MHN-UABCS Te5/6–517 (both distal humeri) – show that without doubt "P". stirtoni was one of the pelican/albatross-sized spp., in the same size class as Odontopteryx toliapica.
So, we are left with a passage from Mayr which a) provides measurements (always good), b) makes a claim (and thus sources it), namely monophyly of the giant lineages, and c) makes a claim that is demonstrably not correct ("...all Neogene..."). But to show that is is 25% wrong and (with no counterclaim to b) published as of yet) 75% correct for the time being, at least one other source, possibly up to four other sources, are needed. Otherwise it would be OR, since no source explicitly says so – they do give explicit measurements, but no source provides all the measurement needed, so for the single passage from Mayr to be useful, you have to combine them.
The claim b) is moreover not affected by "P." stirtoni, as we still have Scarlett (1972)'s CMNZ AV 24,960, which is a giant Miocene sp. from NZ... whose presumed differences to Osteodontornis are meaningless considering what Hopson (1964) said about the O. orri holotype:

"... its damaged state makes many areas of its anatomy extremely difficult to interpret."

and thus we can only conclude that CMNZ AV 24,960 was very likely a close relative of O. orri or to P. miocaenus or both.
(To Mayr's explanation of Bourdon's phylogeny may be added: I have seen this often in clades that are distant from their weakly-supported "closest relative": the clade's internal structure – if you'd unroot it – is good, but the root attaches at a questionable node within it. Happens all the time with paleognaths; they clade, their internal structure is largely consistent, but the root varies between datasets. Happens with molecular and morphological data alike; it seems to be some kind of LBA.)
Ultimately, even after a quarter-century little can be added to the statement of Olson (1985):

"The group is in dire need of a comprehensive and sensible revision..."

We cannot do revisions on Wikipedia.
The ultimate reasons why the WP:DINO approach does not work so well with avian dinos: as soon as the bones are extensively pneumatized, they fragment so much! So, for many fossil bird taxa, there is no other way than to circumscribe what we can safely rule out. OTOH, for prehistoric Neornithes we have a good phylogenetic framework, and we can thus use a lot of information from modern taxa. So, we can at least exclude a lot of things (like green or red plumage in pseudotooth birds) simply by citing what is relevant in the Handbook of Birds of the World.
And one can get quite far by simply pointing out what is unknown, and/or simply listing anything pertinent to the case.
For example, even though these guys must have been K-selected to some degree by their size alone, a reproductive cycle as in albatrosses is by no means a given! Why? Well, because Galloanseres are (among birds) decidedly r-strategists. OTOH, the transoceanic distribution of Osteodontornis and Pelagornis shows that they almost certainly cannot have bred yearly, because to achieve such a distribution a pelagic bird would have to take the great circle route – which simply takes too long.
Only 2 major sources left to do, and 2-3 minor ones... Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:34, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The last bit also affects sectioning. I use the usual WP:BIRDS section headings and mix them as fits the amount of info in available in each field (compare e.g. White-rumped Munia and Snowfinch and Peregrine Falcon). For many prehistoric birds, this is possible too, as even though little of them themselves remains, usually a lot more remains of the ecosystem around them. For anything Neogene, we can usually draw very strong parallels to extant taxa; a Miocene phasianid would not have differed much from today's phasianids of similar size, shape, habitat and climate zone.
(There we have, strictly speaking, the technical problem that authors simply do not discuss this much, as it is dead obvious to the intended readership. You know what I mean - try and find a source explicitly stating that one particular rebbachisaurid species was not ovoviviparous... Similar to WP:DINO using Weishampel and, say, Gauthier, WP:BIRDS can use HBW and a good modern phylogeny to source that some trait is ubiquitious in a clade since before a particular lineage diverged. But it is still tentative - until we'd find a Nopcsaspondylus female that died while laying, we can never be sure). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 23:50, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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