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Archives:

Archive 1 (up to July, 2004): bird descent, adaptability/extinction, old talk, reptile vs dinosaur, etc.

Archive 2 (up to October, 2005):bird descent, creationism, extinction, etc.

Folks - Please sign your messages with ~~~~. Please also try to add appropriate section headings if you are beginning a new topic of discussion. Please add new discussion to the bottom of the page. - UtherSRG 12:19, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Overall structure as visible from the (Table of Contents)

what it looks like right now, after a nonconsensus modification

   * 1 What is a dinosaur?
         o 1.1 Definition
         o 1.2 Size
         o 1.3 Behaviour
   * 2 Study of dinosaurs
         o 2.1 Fields of study
         o 2.2 Classification
               + 2.2.1 Saurischians
               + 2.2.2 Ornithischians
         o 2.3 Evolution
   * 3 Areas of debate
         o 3.1 Warm-blooded?
         o 3.2 Feathered dinosaurs and the bird connection
               + 3.2.1 Feathers
               + 3.2.2 Skeleton
               + 3.2.3 Reproduction biology
               + 3.2.4 Lungs
               + 3.2.5 Heart
               + 3.2.6 Care of young
               + 3.2.7 Gizzard
               + 3.2.8 Other
         o 3.3 Evidence for Cenozoic non-avian dinosaurs
         o 3.4 Bringing dinosaurs back to life
         o 3.5 Discovery of probable soft tissue from dinosaur fossils
   * 4 Extinction theories
         o 4.1 Asteroid collision
         o 4.2 The Oort cloud
         o 4.3 Poisonous plants
         o 4.4 Environment changes
   * 5 History of discovery
   * 6 In popular culture
   * 7 See also
   * 8 References
   * 9 External links and sources

Comments on what the overall structure should be

I think a lot of thought should go into this. The structure is in need of a major overhaul. WAS 4.250 01:43, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

• I don't know if I'm the "nonconsensus modification" or not, but I just want to say that I didn't change the actually hierarchical arrangement when I reformatted the headings, I just nested them appropriately. Basically they were all one setting too "high", so I nested them all down one peg. But it didn't change the arrangement. I agree that the headings are a bit conjested, though. Personally I'd try to summarize the dino-bird thing in one section, and leave the details and different body parts for the page specifically designed for that information, but that's just me. --Fastfission 02:35, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

• Also, personally I'd put "Extinction" before debated areas (I think it is more relevant and necessary a subject than all of the little debates about them), and I would move the "discovery" section up to being underneath the "definition" section, so that it would go: Definition; Discovery; Study; Extinction; Debates. But that's just one of many possible proposals. --Fastfission 02:36, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Exactly. I have a few things I would change.

1. Get rid of the category Areas of Debate (everything is debateable in all sections of all articles)and let each of its subsections become sections.
2. Change some short section titles (desinated with equal signs) to bolded (designated with three ').
3. Either use or delete the talk header that says how to structure this article.
4. Either source or delete the poisonous plants as an extinction theory.
5. The main extiction theory is that one(Asteroid collision) or more(The Oort cloud) space objects hit the Earth causing changes(Environment changes), especially in the area of the India-Asia collision, that over less than a million years or so caused the nonavian dinosaurs to die out. The current structure makes the theories look like competing theories rather than the mutually consistant theories that they are. WAS 4.250 04:30, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

This reshuffling work was mine. I only did this because it was absolutely needed. The previous format was atrocious. I simply made it easy for people to then upgrade the article from a solid base, rather than have it riddled with errors. I tried to keep everything the same, only shuffled around, so as to not get critisisim for it. I agree totally, it still needs alotta work. I only kept the "AREAS OF DEBATE" section title as it is because I didn't feel confident just deleting it without full permission. I would request also that this title get deleted. I think that the bolded titles under the dino-bird connection should be deleted also, their information merged into one title. The only reason they are actually there anyway is because at the end of all of them is an external link.

On the asteroid collision title, they are actually competing theories. One states that only one asteroid hit earth, while the other states several did at the same time.It can't be both ways. My only suggestion would be putting new titles over them:

+Extinction Theories;

+Asteroid Collision;

+Alvarez's theory.

+Oort's theory.

I would like to try & get more depth to the "IN POPULAR CULTURE" section as well, since it's so small. Well there's my 2 cents worth. Spawn Man 07:55, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

"Extinction by Poisonous plants"

"A less likely theory is that the evolution of flowering plants led to the dinosaur's extinction. The theory claims that towards the late Cretaceous period, after co-evolving with flowering plants and grasses, new flowering trees and plants carrying deadly toxins evolved. This would have killed the herbivores who ate them, & in turn would have killed the carnivores also from the shortage of substantial prey." —A brief report on this "theory", if it has been published anywhere, would be worth noting in the article. As it is, it's just a dream, though an original one, to be sure. --Wetman 07:09, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Huh? What you talking about Willis? This is an extinction theory thought by many paleontologists, & could very well have been the downfall of the dinosaurs.... Spawn Man 01:41, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Erm... As far as I know this hypotheses wasn't given much credit even when it was proposed (though I'm not particularly sure on that) mainly because of constraints in evolutionary change that usually give rise to co-evolution of herbivores and plants. What this means is that if there were poisonous plants, which there probably were, the individuals of some species would avoid them, by way of either learned behaviour ("culture") or of hardwired neuronal paths, and populations of other species, by way of mutation and natural selection, would develop resistances to the deadly substances found in leaves. That dinosaurs would die because plants suddenly became poisonous simply doesn't make sense in my view. Unless of course there was lateral gene trasmission, though that's untestable. Dracontes 15:18, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Tyrannosaurus rex

This article is a FAC! Drop by and let us know how to improve it. Banana04131 19:41, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Dino-bird link theory & Improvement

The whole Dinosaur avian connection section is a shamble! This section was obviously created by a single person wanting to showcase the site which every sentence ends in a link to. Either it should all be compacted, or deleted. I'm for compacting it into a paragraph or two with the links showcased at the end under the external links section.

Also, the quote from "Dino buzz" at the top is un needed, & does not further any information in the paragraph. Based from the comments on the failed FA submission, people disliked this too, along with the dozens of un needed links dotting the article. Although deleting the external links only available in German was easily done by myself, I fear I'll need approval for doing what I've stated above. Post your comments below. If no one has any objection in a couple of days, I'll carry on with the changes. Thanks, Spawn Man 01:50, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Further more, someone keeps adding completely un needed links at the end of every damn paragraph!! Stop it!! This article is about Dinosaurs, not just the link between them & birds!! Every paragraph either has a link for the bird connection or the words feathers, birds, avian or bird connection! Create a page on the Avian Dino connection if you will, just stop adding nonsense here!!! Migosh..... some people... Spawn Man 02:57, 5 December 2005 (UTC) P.S. Further more, I will be deleting the stupid stuff now as I'm sick & tired of seeing it there all the time...

Birds ARE dinosaurs. WAS 4.250 04:18, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

We know birds ARE dinosaurs, as I said, I never disputed that! I said however, that there are too many links, too many quotes & to many references to it, considering that Dinosaurs have many interesting things other than that one topic... Spawn Man 01:26, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

No dispute against getting rid of the links? Very well, I'll proceed.... Muahahaaaa Spawn Man 01:28, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I have come up with a solution!!! On close inspection of other articles, I noticed something, FOOT NOTES!! This solves our problem! No need to delete links, just foot note them! This will keep everyone happy, don't you agree? Spawn Man 02:14, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Foot notes created after only 4 hours work, (the page history will confirm this!). I deserve a medal........ Everyone happy? Good.... I've probably got deep vein thrombosis now cause of all your links WAS 4.250!! Goodnight... Spawn Man 04:29, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

That's why I like perl :) Would have been much faster! Maybe there should be some standard footnoting tool for wikipedia? - JustinWick 06:00, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Dinosaurs, Bible and Creationism

There should be a paragraph about these topics. Currently, there's only one mention of creationism regarding birds, but no mention of where dinosaurs fit in the Bible. There should also be some mention about the hoax findings in Glen Rose, Texas and Nebraska (I think). Again, I think one paragraph should suffice with a Main article link to creationism or evolutionary creationism or the most relevant link. What do you guys think? 129.62.113.183 20:42, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

These topics are more appropriate for an entry on creationism, I think. This page is about dinosaur science. Dinoguy2 21:03, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Then why is there a Popular Culture section in the article? I don't think this just about dinosaur science and I think some information about its history in religion is relevant. I'll be willing to back down from my stance if there are other people who disagree. I'd like to hear comments from other people. 129.62.113.183 21:11, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm sick of vandals putting creationism stuff on the dinosaur page! 1, if we put a section on creationism & dinosaurs, this would open the flood gates for all the creationists to unload themselves & pretty soon, I almost assure you, the section would be huge & out of control... 2, As per above, creationism & dinosaurs should be put on the creationism page. Infact, I think they should be separate. All these ideals crowd the findings & exploration of dinosaurs. This page should keep to the facts, not the fiction.... Spawn Man 23:22, 11 December 2005 (UTC) BTW, I've never heard of a dino hoax in Glen rose. I deleted the reference to it on the dinosaur article as it had no references, information or facts what so ever. If you have loads of info on it, please drop it off at my talk page, & I will surely rewrite it, find a place for it & polish it here.

But, then your selling the views of creationists as fiction, not fact, while creationists can just as easily call data pertaining to evolution and such fiction. As such, it proves another problem with the 'neutral point of view' requirement, as this topic cannot be covered with a neutral point of view. Evolution hasn't been proven any more than creationism has. So, perhaps you should keep that in mind. --24.214.132.62 21:35, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I just can't seem to figure out what this has to do with dinosaurs at all. There's no section on creationism over at Mammal or Bird, why put one here? Dinoguy2 21:50, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Because the majority of contributors are evolutionists. Just because a article lacks somthing doesn't mean it doesn't need it. And as it is, this article is extremely bias to a view point. So, technically, it violates the neutral point of view requirement. So, you have to either remove all references to a 'old earth' and evolution, or a section on creationism needs to be added. Even still, if you want to get technical, you need to still remove references to evolution and 'old earth' from the article and move them to their own section in the article, lest you promote one view over the other. But I doubt anyone is going to try and get that specific, but I felt it important enough to at least point out.--24.214.132.62 01:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

What a load of crap. NPOV doesn't mean including every nutty theory with no basis in science, which creationism & intelligent design both are. You might as well credit UFOs with kidnapping Amelia Earhart & Elvis being a mutant from ΕEridani. Trekphiler 14:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Revising footnotes

I don't have experience setting up footnotes and I don't want to mess this up, so I'll wait a while and see if anyone wants to take the lead here. Anyway, I hadn't noticed this, but somebody at the featured article nomination page pointed it out - almost all the footnotes point to magazine or news articles. It's bad enouhg that these are secondary or tertial sources (finding primaries should be easy, especially using the DML archives ), but I read a lot of news reports on science and, particularly when dinosaurs are involved, the reporters invariably get about 80% of the information flat-out wrong, not to mention the fact that the links change often for online articles. This is not good for an encyclopedia guys! Dinoguy2 15:00, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I'll look into it... Spawn Man 22:11, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Detailed classification

This is listed under pending tasks. Now, about a year ago I and a bunch of other dinophiles added a very in-depth classification to the main entry, which was subsequently erased after we stopped keeping tabs on it. We're now trying to replicate this effort on List of dinosaur classifications. Should some or all of this material be moved to the main entry? Personally I think it might make the whole thing a little cluttered, but what do you guys think? Dinoguy2 22:43, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea, just not too detailed & long.... Spawn Man 23:52, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Seconday refs

All the notes in the article are secondary discussions of primary research. For example in note 1 it tells you that the article which reported the discovery: Italian paleontologists published in the March 26, 1998, edition of the journal Nature the discovery of an extraordinarily well preserved dinosaur. Go to the nature site (this also works for science and new scientist), do a keyword search for the organism or author and it will give you this information:

Exceptional soft-tissue preservation in a theropod dinosaur from Italy

Cristiano Dal Sasso, Marco Signore

SUMMARY: The Lower Cretaceous Pietraroia Plattenkalk (Benevento Province, southern Italy) has been known since the eighteenth century for its beautifully preserved fossil fishes. During Albian

Nature 392, 383-387 (26 Mar 1998) Letters to Editor

To reference the paper you can do it manually or use a template. The reference would look like this

• Dal Sasso, C. and Singnore, M. (1998). Exceptional soft-tissue preservation in a theropod dinosaur from Italy. Nature 292:383-387

Include the reference with the note.

Now there are a mixture of references in Harvard style and those using footnotes, this is a Harvard reference: The end result would again be an unnatural winter, ultimately freezing the dinosaurs (Koeberl et al., 2002) - this should be converted to a note and the reference listed with the note so that a consistent style is applied throughout the article.--nixie 05:23, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

References vs notes

I haven't looked into the history of the article, but the dichotomy of both a notes section and a reference section is rather absurd. I assume that the notes are actually references, but are only separated because of a later introduction of a footnote system. These should be merged as a single Reference section. Some refs as noted above use the Harvard style of referencing while others use a superscripted number link. I am aware that there is some debate about the use of the footnote system partially employed here. I ask before delving into the history, was this discussed or did someone simply start using the footnote system with no discussion or consensus? Whichever way it goes - consistency please - and get rid of that small print Notes section, those are references and as such should be alphabetized. I haven't paid any attention to FAC guidlines lately, are they pushing footnotes there? Vsmith 02:25, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, Vsmith, it was discussed if you read the FAC for Dinosaur. The harvard style is being converted into foot notes. As you may have already noticed.... Spawn Man 23:37, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Say what?

Can anybody include pronouciations of these critters? (Also Bob Bakker...) Trekphiler 14:39, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

That would be stupid! Look on the dinosaur's article & usually they have it there... Spawn Man 02:19, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Finding references

I'm having trouble finding any references for some of this material, most notably the stuff on the Cenozoic dinosaurs and the Environment changes. I don't know who added this material, but whoever did, please state where you got the information. Shortly I will be adding a few references to extinction theories and history. --Spangineer (háblame) 16:43, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

The enviromental changes source:

earthwatch nov 2000 p 6- 13

You can find it in any American library in the online SIRS or EBSCO (Academic) database. 70.57.93.147 00:04, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

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