Talk:Therizinosaur

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I still think a family page needs detailed information on its members. Lets consider grouping the species (by age, location, or common characteristics) or discussing them in some fashion outside the species box. The material below taken from a previous edit. WBardwin 02:47, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

The following are species which have been placed in this group.

There's a tiny problem: exactly the only two species we have articles on do not belong to Therizinosauridae but only to the more including Therizinosauroidea. :o)

--MWAK 08:09, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

We do have an article on T. cheloniformis, it's just Therizinosaurus, though. --Whimemsz 22:50, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
I created one on Nothronychus mckinleyi. WBardwin 05:51, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

So, what if we did something like this???WBardwin 22:46, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

THERIZINOSAURIA 
|-Falcarius
|-Beipiaosaurus
  |
  |-Therizinosauroidea ("true" therizinosaurs)
     |-Alxasauridae
     |  |-Alxasaurus
     |
     |-Neimongosauridae (unofficial clade)
     |  |-Neimongosaurus
     |
     |-Therizinosauridae (ischium in direct contact with pubis)
        |-Nanshiungosaurus 
        |-Nothronychus
        |-Segnosaurus
        |-Therizinosaurus   
           |-Chilantaisaurus
           |-UNNAMED CLADE (ischium fused to pubis)
           |  |-Enigmosaurus
           |  |-Erlikosaurus (*=no pelvis known for this species)
           |-Nanshiungosaurus (spoonshaped ischium & fused cervical vertebrae)
I like the look of that, personally. --Whimemsz 22:50, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Well, again there are a few problems. :o) Firstly, as a encyclopedia we can only follow analyses of others. Creating cladograms of our own constitutes the notorious wikicrime of Original Research. Secondly, the analyses are in constant flux. E.g. Mortimer last week on the DML gave the following analysis of the phylogenetic setting of Falcarius:

          - +--Protarchaeopteryx
            `--+--Falcarius
               `--+--+--IVPP V11309
                  |  `--+--Beipiaosaurus
                  |     `--Nothronychus
                  `--+--Alxasaurus
                     `--+--Nanshiungosaurus
                        `--+--+--Neimongosaurus
                           |  `--Erlianosaurus
                           `--+--Erlikosaurus
                              `--Segnosaurus

Not too different from yours and his project is far from finished, but it shows we can on wikipedia give either only the vaguest outlines abstaining from too much detail, or all analyses and clade definitions.

Thirdly, your cladogram seems to be purely based on some "key" synapomorphies. That's a very dangerous method, today abandoned by serious cladistics. Of course twenty years ago it was considered state-of-the-art science. But the times have changed (though some have refused to change with them ;o). Besides many of the characters you use are caused by bone fusion, a phenomenon that's age and size-related and might well reflect individual variability instead of species variation.

--MWAK 09:13, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

I certainly bow to your expertise biologically (believe me, the patchwork chart above, from two sources and a guess, is not original research) -- but our readers still need to understand some relational scheme between the various animals. Latin usage in the names is probably too obscure. We can date our clade chart, and try and keep it updated as new research and ideas come in. Or we can show two contrasting charts highlighting older thinking and new criteria. The ongoing flux in dinosaur research is probably an interesting highlight for this article, and perhaps articles about other dinosaur families. Comments welcome. WBardwin 13:48, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I see what you mean. Most readers won't notice the difference between therizinosauroid and therizinosaurid. And if they do, they think it's a typo :o). I would advise though to give only the simplest of cladograms, like this:
    Therizinosauroidea
            |
            `--+--Falcarius
               `--+--Beipiaosaurus
                   `--Therizinosauridae
Trying to follow the flux is a hopeless undertaking. Even the real experts (and I'm hardly one of them :o) have great difficulties doing so. Every publication is already very much "yesterday's cladogram" the very day it's printed.

--MWAK 07:19, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

That's one of the fascinating things about paleontology, paleohistory and human prehistory as well -- all the little bits and pieces can fit together in so many ways, and we are never going to have more than a fraction of the puzzle. And it will always change tomorrow.
  • But if we do a clade, let's put a little information by the various animals (such as dates, just general years BP, site location and/or something that makes them distinctive) so people will start to understand where the puzzle pieces fit (at least as well as anyone here at wiki does). I would hope that readers would be intrigued enough by articles/charts to go looking for other dinosaur relatives as well.
  • In regard to Latin usage, maybe an article explaining scientific nomenclature should be created (if there isn't one already ---found one! Scientific classification) and then highlighted on relevant pages.
This could all grow into a big project. Do you know of other Wiki dinosaur "freaks" we could draw in? Is there a dinosaur project page? WBardwin 08:22, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Well, there's plenty of freaks of any kind around here :o) And quite a few dinofreaks; the number of dinoarticles is already quite high, certainly compared to other groups of extinct animals. But precisely because it's such a very fascinating subject, people with all possible levels of expertise are drawn to it; and this will make it very difficult to reach any consensus on anything. Personally, I'm by nature too much of a loner to be a useful member of any project. I'm also Dutch and on the Dutch wikipedia (a lot less crowded of course ;o) I've made pages for most Saurischian higher level clades in the cladistic fashion - so without empty talk about ranks, but with some recent clade definitions - but here I would be unable to do so as there are too many people insisting on using them, even when they're utterly idiotic such as the "Class: Archosauria" you see in all those taxoboxes, pretending to give a "scientific" classification. Indeed the complete Wikispecies project will probably remain fruitless for the same reason - though I haven't dare to check this recently. So there are some general objections to a project also :o).

--MWAK 09:06, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with -oidea

I still support merging the higher-level therizinosaur taxa into one page, as we used to have for Tyrannosaur until we developed enough information to split them. This is actually a wiki guideline--it's better to have one page covering closely related subjects than a few closely related stubs.Dinoguy2 13:08, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hip girdle of Segnosaurus (and, presumably, other Therizinosaurs)

I'm looking at an old dinosaur reference (it's dated at 1989), and it gives a picture of the Segnosaurus hip girdle, while, while it shares a small number of similarities with both ornithischian and saurischian hip girdles, sets itself quite apart from them (thus the reason for the creation of the Segnosauria infraorder in the past). Is this hip girdle common across all therizinosaurs? I could provide a scan if you so desire. --JB Adder | Talk 14:49, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

For a long time the hips of segnosaurs made them really bizarre. They have features of saurischian hips, but strongly backward-pointing pubes like ornithischians. Some people even put them in their own order, as some kind of transition between sauropods and ornithiscians. Discovery of primitive species like Falcarius, Beipiaosaurus, etc over the last ten years show beyond a doubt that they're theropods which developed ornithiscian-like characteristics in parallel, due to evolving a herbivorous diet. So, to answer your question, the distinctive hip girdle is seen in very advanced forms, but is less distinctive progressivly as you go back to the primitive species that are now known.Dinoguy2 01:03, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inosaurus

Add Inosaurus to the Therizinosauria page. The placement of Therizinosauria follows http://staff.washington.edu/eoraptor/Therizinosauroidea.htm. Inosaurus, if a therizinosaur, represents the first record of Therizinosauria from Africa.