Talk:Amphicoelias

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Good article Amphicoelias has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
February 6, 2007 Good article nominee Listed
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[edit] Pronunciation

According to the pronunciation guide, the "coe" in Amphicoelias is to be pronounced "koi". Is there any rational reason for this? Is it etymologically different from the "coe" in "coelacanth", which is pronounced "see"? SpectrumDT 22:23, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

You pronounce coelacanth with a "see"? :o0 Just kidding. There are no pronunciation rules. "Koi" is as in Greek. In Latin they said something like the French "eu". Both options are less confusing than making it sound as if it were Amphicelias--MWAK 08:41, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
Dinosauria online [1] lists the pronunciation as AM-fi-SEEL-ee-as, so I'm gonig to switch to that. I can't think of any dinosaurs where "see" is not used for coe; coelurosauria, Coelophysis, etc. Even if this is a situation like Centrosaurus (correctly pronounced KEN-tro-saur-us), or Caeser (correctly pronounced Kaiser), I think common usage should be preserved.Dinoguy2 22:37, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

It should be a sound like a "k". In latin the c has the sound of a greek kappa, therefore it should be a "k" not a "C". The pronounciation of the common name is one thing, the scientific name must be pronounced in the best way possible, not differently in every country.

I concur. —Nightstallion (?) 10:21, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Title and content

Following the guidelines of Wikiproject Dinosaurs, I believe this article should be expanded to include more discussion of A. altus, not just A. fragillimus, and be merged into the article Amphicoelias. I'm going to put in a request for moerge, but i'd appreciate it if anyone with access to papers on A. altus could provide at least a little info in that department. If nobody has anything, I'll start adding info from secondary sources.Dinoguy2 22:14, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

No, this article should be moved back to Amphicoelias fragillimus. It is a good example of an article where there should be a genus-level article (Amphicoelias) which provides some basic information (a stub) on the legitimate species and a brief summary of this article. This article is a discussion of a fragmentary, legendary, possibly fictional species, and is large enough to stand alone. Combining it with a stun on A. altus and tossing them into a single article means the legitimate species would be overwhelmed with more... legendary elements. 68.84.34.154 13:51, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
You should take this up on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dinosaurs and see what the folks there think.Dinoguy2 14:20, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Length of Amphicoelias

Even if the Amphicoelias vertebra is very high, it would mean that Amphicoelias 180-200 feet long, almost the length of a B-52 Stratofortress. Amphicoelias might have had high vertebrae 8 feet above the back, suggesting that diplodicoids had sails, similar to those of spinosaurids.

Diplodocids did have tall processes on their verts, but they were much more robust than the "sails" of spinosaurs. They most likely formed muscular ridges. Either way, this is taken into account by size estimates, I think.Dinoguy2 22:31, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Catalog number for Amphicoelias fragillimus holotype

According to Carpenter (2006), the holotype of Amphicoelias fragillimus is AMNH 5777. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.194.116.63 (talk) 18:16, 21 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] GA Passed

I passed this article because I found it to be well written and comprehensive with citations of reliable sources and with appropriate treatment of the controversial aspects (the missing bones) of the subject. Beyond that I enjoyed the balance between the current science (the paleobiology section) and the historical material (Cope and Marsh). I have one very minor quible. The following sentence Carpenter (2006) also noted that, due to the extraordinary size and mysterious disappearance of the fossil, Cope's description of A. fragillimus has been met with skepticism, especially since there were several typographical errors in his measurements. Implies that there were typo's in Cope's description. My reading of the source cited (thanks for the convienent link to the paper) indicates that others have ASSUMED that there were typographical errors, which is not quite the same thing. However that is not a serious enough issue to negate what I consider to be a very good article.Rusty Cashman 02:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I may have misread that bit about the errors. I'll look into this and fix it accordingly. Thanks for your comments! Dinoguy2 16:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Height

If Amphicoelias was supposedly this long, wouldn't it be able to raise it's head above Saurposeidon's maixumum height of about 60 feet? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.44.86.223 (talk) 17:44, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

You ever tried to raise a 10-20 meter long neck? Not that it's impossible, but we'd need to have some of the neck to have a good idea about its capabilities. J. Spencer 18:06, 23 September 2007 (UTC) Perhaps it was just as tall a sauroposeiden
Perhaps, but only having one bone that was lost a hundred years ago, there's no way to know. Dinoguy2 06:36, 11 October 2007 (UTC)well just edit the page and think of the tallest hight the animal could reaach with that neck.
That would be original speculation. Big no-no in an encyclopedia. We have to base things on evidence and published facts, not just eyeballing it based on totally hypothetical outlines ;) Dinoguy2 05:02, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

well if u were to raise the animals neck by a 30 degree angle, then I by comparing amphicoelias with the green diplodocus with the 30 degree angle there for standed 25-30 feet tall, the 50 foot tall supersaurus, and the 60 foot tall sauroposeidon, then i speculate that amphicoelias is 90-95 feet tall, there is the answer, now lets get up there and stick that info to the page —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aslan10000 (talk • contribs) 19:52, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

"then i speculate that amphicoelias is 90-95 feet tall". I'm sorry, but that's original research, and is not to be included. Now, if you write this up and get it published, then we'll have somewhere to go. J. Spencer 20:29, 3 December 2007 (UTC)