Talk:Dinosaur - Misplaced Pages

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Distinguishing Anatomical Features section...

Can someone please translate that into English? This is an encyclopedia, not an academic journal. Non-experts should be able to read this and get some understanding. Instead, non-experts will read this and not understand much if any of it. This is very non-accessible. Please fix. The reason I ask is because I can't translate it...Hires an editor (talk) 02:09, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

This might be a big job, actually. Translating it to something understandable would basically be "lots of little tiny bumps and knobs on specific parts of various bones not seen in the same spots in other archosaurs". MMartyniuk (talk) 13:57, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

LOL. Abyssal (talk) 14:16, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, maybe this should be forked off into its own article, so that if someone *really* wants to know about the specific differences, that person can go look, but the lay person who only has a passing interest can know that there are differences, and leave it at that. You know, summary style. Hires an editor (talk) 22:28, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Striving to use language everyone can understand is always a good thing, particularly for people working in science. Misplaced Pages is for the layman. If the anatomy article is non-translateable, I think Hires an editor's suggestion should be considered. Petter Bøckman (talk) 08:35, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

No, Misplaced Pages is for everybody. It simply presents the known facts. Anyone can partake of them to the limit of his understanding. In this case, if this information truly could not be rephrased, it should nevertheless not be split off, because the synapomorphies are so essential to the concept "dinosaur". However, I'll try to use more common words — and indeed, that might not be a bad idea for specialists also!--MWAK (talk) 14:45, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

MWAK, in a recent edit, you say that "features common to a taxonomic group are called synapomorphies", but your edit summary says that "a synapomorphy does not have to be shared by all members of a group". Isn't that inconsistent? If I say that sharp teeth are common to members of the cat family, am I not saying that all (intact) cats have sharp teeth? The Free Dictionary defines "common" as "Belonging equally to or shared equally by two or more". In that sense, aren't many plesiomorphies common to taxonomic groups; fur to the squirrels, for example? Are these traits also synapomorphies? Peter Brown (talk) 16:10, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

That was utterly inconsistent and a lamentable consequence of my, against my better judgement, pandering to the layman ;o). I'll correct it immediately.--MWAK (talk) 16:32, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

But if I understand things correctly, a synapomorphy (say, hair in some mammals, teeth in birds, legs in snakes, possibly feathers in some non-avian dinosaurs whose ancestors did have feathers) can be lost again in a some of the members of the group. Therefore the assertion in the edit summary strikes me as entirely correct. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:12, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Missing citations

This article is lacking citations for many sentences and even paragraphs. Might threaten its status as FA. FunkMonk (talk) 11:18, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

requesting removal of paragraph

Many paleontologists note that the point at which sauropodomorphs and theropods diverged may omit sauropodomorphs from the definition for both saurischians and dinosaurs. To avoid instability, Dinosauria can be more conservatively defined with respect to four anchoring nodes: Triceratops horridus, Saltasaurus loricatus, and Passer domesticus, their MRCA, and all descendants. This "safer" definition can be expressed as "Dinosauria = Ornithischia + Sauropodomorpha + Theropoda".

If I have not missed something, this whole paragraph is flawly and should be removed. The cited paper (PDF, p. 613–614) only states that few (not many) paleontologists regard Sauropodomorpha to be closer related to Ornithischia than to Theropoda. It has nothing to do with excluding sauropodomorphs from dinosaurs or the definition of dinosaurs. That definition only prevents that Sauropodomorpha might fall within Ornithischia. Excluding Sauropodomorpha from Saurischia is a minority opinion though and may is out of place in this overview article. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:08, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, though i'm sure someone somewhere has proposed that sauropods are outside Theropoda + Ornithopoda, this is not a view more than a few people would espouse and is not supported by any study i'm aware of. Whether or not a definition is "safe" is a matter of opinion. Owen did not regard sauropods as dinosaurs when he coined the name. We place them among dinosaurs due to phylogenetics, same as birds. If it turns out they're not dinosaurs, tough. MMartyniuk (talk) 19:43, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Pseudoextinction

Might it be sensible to add a reference to pseudoextinction in the intro? After all, the Dinosauria are the prime example for the phenomenon and indeed adduced as such in that article. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:37, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

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