Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sea otter

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 02:58, 2 March 2008.

[edit] Sea otter

previous FAC (04:36, 22 January 2008)

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(Self-nomination.) Since a few months ago when it looked like this, the article has been rewritten from several quality sources, thoroughly referenced, re-illustrated with some beautiful photographs, restructured a few times, and faithfully wikignomed by several copyeditors and reviewers. I believe it now accurately depicts many dimensions of this fascinating and much-loved species. A very special thank you to Eliezg for providing sources, Russian translation, and high-quality feedback all along the way. Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 04:27, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

• Support looks great, fulfils criteria. 'nuff said...(I read over this article a few times on the way. good work) Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:38, 25 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Casliber (talk • contribs)

• Was the Marmi paper I sent you of no use? It's more recent, and I noticed some significant differences over divergence dating. Marskell (talk) 17:48, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

The paper was useful, thanks, and the quick answer is that the current version of the article does not disagree with the Marmi paper. However I understand where your question is coming from, so I'll explain the background: Until a day or two ago the article said, "The sea otter lineage diverged from the other Old World otters approximately 13 million years ago" which was sourced to a Koepfli and Wayne paper from 1998. Marmi's 2004 paper gives the divergence date at 10.1 to 7.5 mya. Both papers agree that the sea otter shares a clade with the Eurasian otter, African clawless otter, small-clawed otter, and speckle-throated otter, although they use different Latin names for some of these species.

I would have put both analyses in as opposing views (as you did with Giant Otter), however there is a new Koepfli 2008 paper. It agrees that the five species mentioned above share a clade (along with two others which had not been previously evaluated). However it positions the sea otter as a sister taxon to the speckle-throated otter and says that these two lineages diverged around 5 mya. So on the weekend I removed all mention of the divergence date that (Koepfli 1998) and (Marmi 2004) seem to disagree on, and replaced it with an as-yet-uncontested divergence date of 5 mya between the sea otter and its as-yet-uncontested closest relative, the speckle-throated otter. There are for me a lot of unanswered questions about why the three papers disagree about dates to such a significant extent, however the claims that are actually in the article appear to be well-supported and so far not controversial. Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 08:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Support Jimfbleak (talk) 06:16, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support' - wow, what an improvement ([1]). Neıl ☎ 11:21, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Support it has many citations and inline notes. Very well done. LOTRrules (talk) 17:27, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• Support. I promoted this article for GA, and it's still as good as ever. bibliomaniac15 00:41, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
• Support. But it will cost you: you need to send me Koepfli 2008 :). I don't think it would hurt to have a single sentence on earlier divergence dates. Marskell (talk) 12:06, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
• Support, looks amazing. Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:33, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.