User:J. Spencer/Sandbox

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Contents

[edit] Dinosaurs

[edit] Protoceratops

Further information: Protoceratops

Protoceratops is featured in the Walking With... special The Giant Claw, shown nesting. It is also featured in Dinosaur Planet, in which Protoceratops eggs were a source of food for Velociraptor and Oviraptor. Protoceratops also had a brief cameo in The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs, fighting two Velociraptor. All of the above documentaries show the Protoceratops's relationship with Velociraptor.

[edit] Mammals

[edit] Dire Wolf

Further information: Dire Wolf

[edit] update of top 20

Current standings:

[edit] Anatosaurus

Refs to be added

The dinosaur genus originally known as Anatosaurus is now officially designated Edmontosaurus. Please see that article for more information.
Edmontosaurus
Fossil range: Upper Cretaceous
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Sauropsida
Superorder: Dinosauria
Order: Ornithischia
Suborder: Ornithopoda
Family: Hadrosauridae
Subfamily: Hadrosaurinae
Genus: Edmontosaurus
Lambe, 1917
Species: E. annectens (Marsh, 1892)
vide Chapman and Brett-Surman, 1990
Synonyms

Anatosaurus Lull & Wright, 1942

Anatosaurus (meaning "duck lizard") is a deprecated genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur. It was originally coined to clear up confusion resulting from multiple species based on good material referred to multiple genera based on poor material. Now that hadrosaurids are better understood, it has been reassessed and its species divided among two genera: Edmontosaurus (to which the type species A. annectens was referred); and Anatotitan. Although it is no longer in use by professionals, it lingers in the public mind as a catchall general duckbill.

[edit] History and Taxonomy

(See Creisler, 2006 for a much expanded account) The story of the species that would become Anatosaurus starts with the early years of North American paleontology, and several early, fragmentary forms. Joseph Leidy named three taxa in the 1850s that would dominate the nomenclature of duckbills until 1942: Trachodon mirabilis in 1856 for teeth from the Campanian-age (Upper Cretaceous) Judith River Formation of Montana; Thespesius occidentalis later in 1856 for two caudal vertebrae and a phalanx from the late Maastrichtian-age (Upper Cretaceous) Lance Formation of South Dakota; and Hadrosaurus foulkii in 1858 for a partial skeleton from the Campanian-age Matawan Formation of New Jersey. Leidy was never sure of his generic assessments, and was the first to realize that Trachodon was a chimera of two kinds of teeth, some belonging to duckbills and at least one, with double roots, belonging to what is now known to be a ceratopsid. He tried various combinations of the three genera, including informally assigning the duckbill teeth of Trachodon to Hadrosaurus and leaving it the ceratopsid material.

The situation became even murkier with the appearances of Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, and the first discoveries of decent material. Each coined a genus that would add to the confusion: Marsh with Claosaurus (1890) for a partial skeleton from Kansas, and Cope with Diclonius (1876), additional teeth from the Judith River Formation of Montana.

[edit] Diclonius mirabilis and Claosaurus annectens

Cope's collectors brought him a nearly complete skeleton and skull of a duckbilled dinosaur from the Lance Formation of South Dakota in 1882, which he dubbed Diclonius mirabilis. He came by this formulation because he believed that Leidy had abandoned Trachodon, and so referred its material to his genus Diclonius. A planned larger publication was left unpublished at his death in 1897, and the specimen became known as Hadrosaurus mirabilis

Meanwhile, in 1891, collectors working for Marsh (including John Bell Hatcher) brought him two skeletons from the Lance Formation of Wyoming, which he named Claosaurus annectens in 1892. Unlike Cope's new material, Marsh had his well-published and illustrated, which may account for its relative taxonomic stability in the years to come.

[edit] Implosion to Trachodon and new material:Big Crunch to Big Bang

The five genera now involved were combined and recombined endlessly, until Hatcher (1902) took the ultimate step and assigned Hadrosaurus, Thespesius, Diclonius, "Claosaurus" annectens, and a couple of other genera now seen as dubious (Cionodon and Pteropelyx, plus problematic ceratopsids Polyonax and Claorhynchus) to Trachodon, leaving only Claosaurus agilis apart. Based on Cope's Diclonius mirabilis, he found Trachodon mirabilis and "Claosaurus" annectens to be the same thing, the differences based on pressure and individual variation (a theme that would be echoed in 2004 as justification for synonymizing their more recent incarnations, Edmontosaurus annectens and Anatotitan copei).

The hegemony was gradually broken with new finds in Canada and Montana. With these finds, paleontologists first began to reassess the names based on formation: Trachodon would be used for fossils of the Judith River Formation, and Thespesius would be used in the Lance. This led to two new species from Lance-age rocks in Canada: Thespesius edmontoni (or edmontonensis; Gilmore, 1924), and T. saskatchewanensis (Sternberg, 1926). In addition, a new taxon, Edmontosaurus regalis was added by Lawrence Lambe (1917) for a large hadrosaurid found in a new formation, the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, intermediate in age to the Judith River and Lance.

[edit] Lull, Wright, and Anatosaurus

In an influential monograph, Richard Swann Lull and Nelda Wright (1942) completely reassessed North American hadrosaurids, and coined a new genus to take care of the mess: Anatosaurus. This genus absorbed five species from the early, fragmentary genera, which the two authors suggested not be used. The new combinations were:

  • A. annectens, the type species, for Marsh's "Claosaurus" annectens;
  • A. copei, an entirely new name for Cope's "Diclonius" mirabilis;
  • A edmontoni, for Gilmore's "Thespesius" edmontoni;
  • A. longiceps, for a very large dentary from the Lance Formation of Wyoming named Trachodon longiceps by Marsh (1890); and
  • A. saskatchewanensis, for Sternberg's "Thespesius" saskatechewanensis

The new genus was differentiated from closely-related Edmontosaurus on minor points. This division prevailed for many years.

[edit] A new crunch: Edmontosaurus

Michael Brett-Surman, in his doctoral dissertation (1989), suggested that A. annectens and Edmontosaurus belonged in the same genus. This idea was soon adopted, and Anatosaurus was formally broken up in 1990. A. annectens became E. annectens, A. saskatchewanensis E. sasakatchewanensis, and A. edmontoni was sunk into E. annectens. The remaining two species were given a new genus, Anatotitan.

[edit] Postscript

The tenor of the times continues to be to lump taxa. In 2004, Anatotitan copei was sunk into Edmontosaurus annectens by Horner et al., using the same arguments as Hatcher a century before. Whether or not this is accepted remains to be seen.

[edit] to be checked

From the desk of the prolific 69.221.36.167/69.221.38.11 and associated IPs:

Miscellaneous invertebrates

Fish

Therapsids

Mammals

Chalicothere mammals

Birds

[edit] Toolbox

When starting a new page or revamping an old page, the easiest thing to do to get the "boilerplate" parts is just to copy chunks of a previous page. This is also a good way to see how the elements work. But what if you've unwittingly got a bad page, or you want some other tags, or you can't remember how to find articles in other languages? This page should help.

[edit] Taxobox

For more information about how taxoboxes work, check here and here (scroll down to the bottom on this one to get the full list of elements that can be used). There are other ranks that can be added, but these will get you the basics. This taxobox is set up for genera; modify accordingly for higher-order groups. To show you what goes into one, here is a version that is not wikified:

{{Taxobox
| name = '' ''
| image =
| image_width =
| image_caption =
| fossil_range =
| regnum = [[Animal]]ia
| phylum = [[Chordate|Chordata]]
| classis = [[Reptile|Sauropsida]]
| superordo = [[Dinosaur]]ia
| ordo =
| familia =
| genus = ''''' '''''
| genus_authority = [[ ]],
| subdivision_ranks = [[Species]]
| subdivision =
* '' '' <small>([[Type (zoology)|type]])</small>
* '' '' <small>[[ ]], </small>
}}

The above is specially set up to be copied and pasted without going into edit mode. It generates this:

Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Sauropsida
Superorder: Dinosauria
Genus:
[[ ]],
Species

A couple of other points:

  • If you were writing a family-level article, you'd stop at family and have "familia_authority"; ditto for order, or whatever else.
  • If you had an unranked level, you use "unranked_familia" or "ordo". You only get to use one of either version in a taxobox.
  • You don't need every level in the taxobox.

[edit] Order of things

If you've got a well-described dinosaur, you can usually find something for most if not all of these topics. We've been putting them in about this order, but it's not locked in stone.

  • Lead
  • Description = anatomical stuff; functions, unless too short for their own heading, should go in Paleobiology
  • Classifcation = higher-order group and nearest relatives
  • History/Discovery = the human background; who found it, when, and where; what did they think about it; how has that changed; etc.
    • Species = can be a heading or subheading, or may not even be necessary, depending on how many species have been named and how well they are known. Information here has included species (surprise!), who named them, how many specimens, distribution, and if they are accepted as valid or not.
  • Paleoecology = the habitat of the animal, its contemporaries and interactions; extrinsic attributes
  • Paleobiology = feeding, locomotion, reproduction, display structures, biomechanis; intrinsic attributes
  • Cultural depictions/popular culture = try to restrict to "lead" roles, as opposed to cameos in video games or robots that look like dinosaurs in certain modes.
  • References
  • See Also
  • External links
  • stub tag, categories, interwiki links to other languages

[edit] Clade template

  • Template:Clade = a handy tool to make nifty cladograms, albeit not perfect across all browsers. It's a bit hard to explain how to use it; you may want to borrow a version from another page as a base, or screw around with it on your own. Once you get the hang of it, it's essentially doing the same thing over and over. How it works:

{{clade| style=font-size:X%;line-height:X%
|label1= [[label]] 
|1={{clade
     |1=Y
     |2=Z
     }}
}}
For a branch that doesn't fork further, all you need is the "|n=" element, where n=number of the branch. For a branch that splits, you need "|labeln=", then "|n={{clade". Each forking is closed with a }} placed vertically below it, but all descendant forks must be closed above a given fork before it can be closed. For unnamed clades, use <font color="white">unnamed</font> for the label. Nonbreaking spaces are useful before and after clade names to keep them pretty. Go here for a variety of trees, some more advanced than others.

[edit] Tricky links

  • [[Morphology (biology)]] = morphology
  • [[Basal (phylogenetics)]] = basal
  • [[Body of vertebra]] = vertebral centrum
  • [[Vertebral arch]] = neural arch
  • [[Spinous process]] = neural spine
  • [[Vertebral foramen]] = neural canal
  • [[Anatomical terms of location]] = all directional terms
  • [[Foot (unit of length)]] = ft
  • [[Pound (mass)]] = lb
  • [[Metre]] = meter (the kind you measure with; British spelling also goes for centimetre, millimetre, etc., but oddly, not for kilogram, etc.)
  • [[John Horner (paleontologist)]] = Jack Horner
  • [[Armour (zoology)]] = armor
  • [[Club (zoology)]] = club
  • [[Egg (biology)]] = egg
  • [[Ilium (bone)]] = ilium
  • [[Ischium (bone)]] = ischium
  • [[Pubis (bone)]] = pubis
  • [[Talus bone]] = astragalus
  • [[Synonym (taxonomy)]] = synonym
  • [[Inclusion (taxonomy)]] = inclusion
  • [[Predation]] = predator
  • [[Process (anatomy)]] = process
  • [[Phalanx bones]] = phalanx or phalanges
  • [[Metacarpus]] = metacarpal
  • [[Metatarsus]] = metatarsal

[edit] Elements

  • {{dinosaur-stub}} = stub tag
  • {{portalpar|Dinosaurs}} = Dinosaurs portal tag
  • {{WikiProject Dinosaurs}} = WikiProject Dinosaurs talk page tag
  • Global Wikipedia Article Search: Use this tool to find articles in other wikis.

[edit] Reference templates

  • {{reflist}} = the reference template for the end of the page; if you don't have it, or an equivalent, your templated references won't show up.

For citing, you can use a template, or mimic the format.

  • <ref name= ></ref> = all you really need to get started; give your reference a name, and then plug in the information between the ><, or copy and paste a template between them. These are by far the most commonly used templates:
  • Template:Cite book
  • Template:Cite journal
  • Template:Cite web

[edit] Measurements

  • &nbsp; = use between all measurements and the unit of measurement
  • Metric should go first, followed by imperial. Metric units are not abbreviated, but imperial units are. We've been told to put "long", "tall", etc. after the unit and conversion (i.e. 1.0 meters (3.3 ft) long).

[edit] Helpful external links

Looking for references or technical information?