Talk:Grey-faced Sengi

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A fact from Grey-faced Sengi appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 4 February 2008.

[edit] First in 126 years?

I restored this sentence. It has been claimed that Rhynchocyon cirnei shirensis was described only in 1968, but the page on Rhynchocyon cirnei, or the Checkered Elephant Shrew, says 1847. Are we talking about a subspecies maybe? The ternary name seems to imply so, and in that case the original claim still stands.

In any case, we should get this issue sorted out quickly, since it's the chosen hook for the article as a DYK nominee. Lampman (talk) 10:21, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Of course it is a subspecies, that's why it has a ternary name.

The original claim is - I'm sorry to say it - at best debatable, at worst nonsense. It claims that the last discovery was made 126 years ago, and the context suggests that it is about elephant shrews in general. In this case, it is certainly not true, since Nementchatherium was described in 2001. It is also not true when it refers to Rhynchocyon, because R. c. shirensis was described in 1968. The only case when the sentence is true is when it is about living species of Rhynchocyon, the last of which was described in 1881, but I cannot see how one can deduce that from the context of the sentence. Note that there are also two fossil Rhynchocyon, R. clarki en R. rusingae, described in 1969. Ucucha 10:46, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Lampman (talk) 17:56, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. By the way, a suggestion for DYK: "... that the largest species of sengi, the Grey-faced Sengi, was described only in 2008 and was the last new species of sengi to be discovered since over a century?". Ucucha 18:54, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I've put up a short and a long alternative: "...that the Grey-faced Sengi is the first living species of elephant shrew to be described in over a century?" and "...that the largest species of elephant shrew, the Grey-faced Sengi, was described only in 2008, and is the first living species of sengi to be discovered in over a century?" Lampman (talk) 20:37, 2 February 2008 (UTC)