Talk:Othnielosaurus

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Good article Othnielosaurus 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.
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To-do list for Othnielosaurus: edit · history · watch · refresh

Here are some tasks you can do:
  • Copyedit: The first section would ideally be more concise
  • Cleanup: Lead should reflect the content of the whole article, and ideally should suffice as a stand-alone version of it. See lead guidelines.
  • Expand: Cover all key aspects of the dinosaur: add details of diet and ecology.
  • Other:
    Jargon 
    Make sure that new terms are explained when first mentioned. The article should be approachable even to someone with very limited knowledge of palaeontology.

[edit] GA: Fail

Reasons for failure include: a confusing lead which does not cover much of the article; Jargon used without explanation (e.g. specimen numbers); Excessive detail provided in the first section; unclear prose [for example, the bracketed "(which see)"]; spelling errors; superscript references; lack of detail of key points - e.g. diet, ecology.

GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): b (MoS):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
  5. It is stable.
  6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
    a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
  7. Overall:
    a Pass/Fail:
I'm confused about some of your points. There aren't any spelling errors (the only thing I can find is "analyses" as a plural of analysis; there are a lot of words not in the spell-check, but that's noting new for a dinosaur article), and the references are supposed to be superscript. J. Spencer 19:23, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I've now fixed these myself. The culprit was
"prticularly Hexinlusaurus[1][who considered it to be a species of "Othnielia", O. multidens].[2]"
Verisimilus T 19:33, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I found it at the same time, and got an edit-conflict! J. Spencer 19:34, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I always get mixed up on the restoration/reconstruction thing. I guess I think of it as "if you build the skeleton, that's a reconstruction", and "if you make it look as in life, it's a restoration." J. Spencer 19:38, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Maybe this is a US/UK thing, but as my understanding of the terms is that restoration means bringing something back to its former state and would be something you'd do to an old house or painting - a "restored" dinosaur suggests a fossil being brought back to life! And I suppose reconstruction suggests actually constructing, rather than illustrating, something. Perhaps "Artist's impression" would be a better caption. Verisimilus T 09:03, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
I also don't understand some of the objections, though I will gladly help with any improvements that are suggested (by anyone). I nominated this article, but I did not write it: this is Justin's work, and I thought it met the criteria. What's wrong with the prose and the image? Firsfron of Ronchester 21:06, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Whilst I can accept a few of the points being objective and thus debatable, I still feel that the GA criteria aren't met. I've put up a to-do list with what I feel are pretty uncontroversial points which will need addressing before GA can be awarded. Verisimilus T 09:03, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure about the diet and ecology section. I'm not sure about this particular case, but that sort of thing is almost never published for individual species, and it would be redundant to just copy/paste an identical discussion of hypsilophodont diet and ecology onto each sub-page (would we include a discussion of burrowing, even though there's no direct evidence in this particular genus?). Better just leave that sort of thing out, it could border on original research (unless, of course, there have been papers on the diet and ecology of Othnielosaurus). Dinoguy2 13:55, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Last paragraph

The last paragraph begins with:

"A skull described as Nanosaurus or Othnielia and pictured in some sources (see here for example[28]) has a great deal of reconstruction..."

I think a reference tag may not be the best way to link to an external site, because the reader can't simply click on the link: if s/he clicks on the footnote, it just takes him/her down to the note itself. I humbly suggest changing it to:

"A skull described as Nanosaurus or Othnielia and pictured in some sources (see here for example) has..."

I figured I'd mention it here, though, before I removed any in-line citations, as those are (IMO) a pain to create. Firsfron of Ronchester 04:25, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about changing it too much; with tabbed browsing, it's easy to copy and paste removed material out of past versions. The article has far larger problems anyway: structure, needless detail, nonsequitorial inclusions on other species of Laosaurus, and just in general being interminable. It reads like its parents were stream-of-consciousness essays that worked hard to provide their child with a better future. J. Spencer 04:50, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA--On hold for now

I'm putting the GA on hold for now because of some issues that I feel should be addressed. Overall, it's a pretty good article, but it's not as good as other dinosaur articles I have read around here. The issues I see are less about style and grammar and more about the broadness of the content. Since I haven't watched the writing or discussion on this article, I'd like to discuss this with the primary contributors. Here are my suggestions:

  • I think the connection between Othnielosaurus and Othnielia is unclear and would be better incorporated into a level 3 heading section. If Othnielia has been renamed to Othnielosaurus, then it might be advisable to merge the two articles. This is the most pressing issue to me.
  • Maybe a little more could be mentioned about the specimens, especially the complete ones such as "Barbara."
  • In the last paragraph in the section "Paleobiology and paleoecology," the last sentence "It was one of the smaller members of the diverse Morrison Formation dinosaur fauna, diminutive in comparison to the giant sauropods" seems out of place from what the paragraph is talking about. I think it would be better if it were moved to the first paragraph.

I'd like to hear from the main contributors first and see before I make any quick pass/fail decisions. bibliomaniac15 21:57, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

  • On Othnielia and Othnielosaurus: it is complicated, as befits any revision of the fevered work by Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope in the Bone Wars. Othnielosaurus and Othnielia are not taxonomic synonyms, but Othnielosaurus is for all intents and purposes what everyone thought was Othnielia. Othnielia was named by Galton for an old Nanosaurus species based on a femur because Nanosaurus itself is based on crud. Galton then assigned to Othnielia a good headless skeleton (the BYU skeleton) and the Laosaurus consors skeleton. Twenty years later, he comes to a different conclusion: that the femur that started this all is not distinctive enough to have its own genus, so a new name is warranted. He goes back to the next oldest name for the material, Laosaurus consors, and gave the L. consors skeleton a new name because Laosaurus is also based on crud. The BYU skeleton also goes into the new genus. Thus, Othnielosaurus is not based on the same original material (the femur) as Othnielia, but essentially replaces Othnielia because it incorporates the good skeletons that everyone had used to discuss Othnielia for twenty years. The morals of the story are to not name a bunch of things because you are in a rivalry with someone else, and to not name things for random bones.
  • I'll see what can be done about the other specimens; "Barbara", unfortunately, is only known through photographs at this point.
  • On the paleoeco/bio: good suggestion, so I made the switch. J. Spencer (talk) 05:38, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Seems to me people doing this kind of nomenclature either really, really like making things confusing or really, really hate neotypes :P Dinoguy2 (talk) 06:02, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
So should Othnelia be merged with this article, or should it stay as two separate articles? bibliomaniac15 23:55, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
No, because the two names are based on different material; it's just that Othnielosaurus has absorbed most of the material that had been assigned to Othnielia (also, if they are synonyms, Othnielosaurus merges into the older name Othnielia). Something similar to Othnielia versus Othnielosaurus, but not quite as drastic, is going to happen to Iguanodon in a short time. J. Spencer (talk) 01:03, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Yup. And another comperable situation is Coelophysis vs. Rioarribasaurus, isn't it? Dinoguy2 (talk) 21:10, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Almost, but nipped in the bud. J. Spencer (talk) 05:35, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I went back and did some picking at the Othnielia/Othnielosaurus portions. Did that help or blow it to smithereens? J. Spencer (talk) 05:35, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Also, I moved the "other specimens" section to Othnielia, because Galton only formally dealt with the two skeletons and the femur. Thus, the other specimens have not been reassigned (or, in the case of Barbara, assigned in the first case). They will doubtless be added to Othnielosaurus if other researchers support Galton's reasoning, but that will have to wait. J. Spencer (talk) 21:50, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the article has been sufficiently improved, and have passed GA status. Good job. bibliomaniac15 23:44, 31 January 2008 (UTC)