Talk:Archaeoraptor

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Contents 1 NPOV of Taxonomy 2 Wrong category? 3 Status of Archaeoraptor 4 Inconsistancies in article

[edit] NPOV of Taxonomy

and second, because they do not want Olson's attempted taxonomic sabotage to succeed.

I don't think this meets NPOV. It might be the view of "Most paleontologists", but then it should be mentioned that this is their POV. I propose:

and second, because they view Olson's name as "nomenclatural sabotage" and do not want to support it.

This same POV issue is present in the Microraptor article. I don't believe the articles should be merged, since one deals with the fraud while the other deals with a real specimen. However, there should probably be better consistency between the articles (a See Main Article on the Microraptor article would do the trick). - Jokermage 06:48:46, 2005-08-28 (UTC)

• Could be a good idea. Could you implement it? - Skysmith 11:47, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

• Yes, the proposed phrasing is an improvement. Please go ahead. Gdr 17:38:42, 2005-09-05 (UTC)

Turns out there was already a link to Archaeoraptor in the text. I reworded the sentence and added the Main Article link, for style consistancy and clarity. - Jokermage 06:39:22, 2005-09-06 (UTC)

[edit] Wrong category?

Why is this article under "Archaeological forgery"? Archaeologists deal with cultural and not natural remains, i.e remains of people. It is a common misconception that archaeologists are all interested in anything fossil or bone, and that they concern themselves with dinosaur remains as well as human remains. Dinosaurs are for palaeontologists, human remains for the archaeologist (there are, after all, a few million years between the two species). I therefore suggest the article be removed from the archaeological forgery category. --Grumpy444grumpy 08:44, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Status of Archaeoraptor

Storrs Olson not only failed to establish Archaeoraptor liaoningensis as a new taxon; his designation of the Microraptor holotype as the lectotype of Archaeoraptor is not valid. [1]

1. http://dml.cmnh.org/2004Jul/msg00009.html

[edit] Inconsistancies in article

I'm not an archeology expert, but two items in this article do not make sense to me:

1) The following passage appears self-contradictory:

"By January 2000 the fossil had proven to be fraudulent and National Geographic retracted their article and promised an investigation. In the October 2000 issue, the magazine published a retraction and an article about the case. A Chinese farmer had created the archaeoraptor fossil by gluing two fossils together, one of which was a Microraptor, the other one was a fossil bird now named Archaeovolans.

On November 21, 2002 Nature announced that the front end of the fossil was the Avialan species Yanornis martini"

Is the second fossil Archeovolans, or Yanornis? Are these names synonymous, or were there three fossils involved?

2)For me, the article does not adequately explain what Olson's alleged motivation was in naming the tail portion "Archaeoraptor liaoningensis." Am I correct in my interpretation that he disputes the dinosaur-bird connection, so he was trying to ensure that the clearly "dinosaur" part of the chimeric specimen, rather than the "bird" portion bore the name "archeoraptor," which would imply a relationship to dinosaurs with "raptor" in their names? But "raptor" is obviously a term applied to groups of birds too. I think this needs to be explained more clearly.

Also I added a low-res image of the first two pages of the NG article. I think this is legit fair use, and helpful to the article.

1) Archaeovolans was sunk as a junior synonym of the previously-named Yanornis. I agree this should be more clear.

2) Olson's motivation was that he didn't want a name widely known associated with a hoax in the paleorinithological literature, so he went ahead and dumped it on the dinosaur paleontologists (the whole issue could have been avoided if nobody used the name in an official publication, ever, which makes Olson's actions seem a little malicious). For this reason, among other, dinosaur paleontologists reject the name Archaeoraptor in favor of Microraptor, even though the former is technically valid, I assume in the hopes that Archaeoraptor will eventually become a nomen oblitum through disuse, officially making it an invalid name. Dinoguy2 06:06, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and to better answer your question, I'm not sure it would be appropriate to speculate on what Olson's motivation was, especially given the circumstances--it would end up being both original research and POV. Better just to state what he did and when, rather than why. Dinoguy2 06:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I reworded the first part of the taxonomy section to eliminate speculation as to Olson's motivations, but hopefully more clearly describe their effects (in a manner relevent to the alleged motivations). The last part of the section ("nomenclatural sabotage") is still questionable from a POV standpoint though (needs attribution). Rustavo 06:48, 16 March 2007 (UTC)