Talk:Vertebrate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Animals
 Vertebrate is within the scope of WikiProject Animals, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to animals and zoology. For more information, visit the project page.
Animals Portal
Start This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale.
Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.
WikiProject Animals To-do:
WikiProject Tree of Life
Biology Portal
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Tree of Life, an attempt to better organise information in articles related to taxonomy and the phylogenetic tree of life. For more information, visit the project page.
Start This article has been rated as start-class on the quality scale.
High This article has been rated as high-importance on the importance scale.

Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.
Vertebrate is included in the 2007 Wikipedia for Schools, or is a candidate for inclusion in future versions. Please maintain high quality standards, and make an extra effort to include free images, because non-free images cannot be used on the CDs.

Shouldn't we be able to access Agnatha(fishes) from this page, since it is the superclass under Vertebrata? I looked around, and I could only access Agnatha from its own article page (correct me if I'm wrong). So on the table to the right, I think it should include Agnatha superclass under the 'typical classes'... Buzoo 10:30, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Agnatha is not a proper superclass. It is paraphyletic.--Dustin Asby 20:36, 13 of 2005

My Biology Textbook lists it as a proper subclass...

I wouldn't call this a stub; it's concise and accurate. Unless, of course, you want further elaboration and examples. Kelvin Palm 22:05, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Toxonomic Confusion

I was wondering: If veretebrata is a subphylum, what is craniata?--Dustin Asby 20:36, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

It's an unofficial grouping of animals with skulls. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 | T | C | @ 04:09, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Odd phrase

"Vertebrates strted to evolve about 530 million years ago ..." the article states. So before that we just sat around passing the time? Jimp 01:33, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


Well no, most mammals weren't even around at this time so i dont think you were just sitting around waiting for time to pass, the forms of life around at that time had other means of movement, so they didnt just sit around all day.

[edit] Toxonomy

The list of classes should be better organized.

It's organized roughly in evolutionary order, with indents indicating line of descent... do you have anything specific to suggest?Dinoguy2 02:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lamprey taxon?

The lamprey page lists them as class Cephalaspidomorphi, while this page lists numerous lamprey classes under Hyperoartia. As I know next to nothing about lamprey, could someone please standardize this? It's very confusing when different pages use different taxonomies :) Dinoguy2 14:29, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Although I made the change to Hyperoartia, I must agree that it's somewhat confusing. Part of the blame lies with my formatting. Listing "Hyperoartia (lampreys)" right after the bullet, with no rank, may suggest to some that the classes and orders listed below it are all types of lampreys. However, this was not my intent; if the groups below it were subsets of Hyperoartia, their bullets would be indented farther in. Instead, the groups listed below it (Conodonta, Thelodonti, etc.) are different groups of jawless fish that are not lampreys. I'll think of a clearer way to type that line, but the recent classifications I've seen do not assign Hyperoartia a Linnean rank.
The article for Cephalaspidomorphi provides some explanation why different authors disagree about where to classify lampreys. Essentially, Hyperoartia includes lampreys with certainty because it's defined to include them. By contrast, Cephalaspidomorphi is anchored on a group of fossil jawless fish that may or may not be close relatives of lampreys. So Hyperoartia may be a subgroup of Cephalaspidomorphi, or it may be unrelated, as Mr. Janvier argues on the Tree of Life site.
I agree that we should make the classification as uniform as possible among articles, but we shoudln't try to obscure that there are arguments out there for more than one classification. I don't want to remove all reference to Cephalaspidomorphi on the lamprey pages, but will include Hyperartia in the hierarchy and list it as a possible subgroup of the cephalaspidomorphs.
Cephal-odd 07:32, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Ah, I see. I had checked the lamprey page and could not find any mention of Hyperartia in the taxonomy section, which is what threw me. If Hyperartia were listed as unranked somewhere in the Lamprey taxobox, or Cephalaspidomorphi included on this page as a sub-bullet of Hyperatia, it would help enourmously.Dinoguy2 13:36, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Over Precision

The openning paragraph quotes the number of vertebrates as "about 57,739 species". That doesn't seem much like an approximation to me. I know that most people agree the only additions to most families will be from arguments over species and subspecies, but there is still room for expansion; fish in particular seem to be found at a rate of a few species a year. I'm not an expert in the area, but I think 57,739 is far too precise a number. I'd change it, but I thought it might be a good idea to leave that to someone who knows more about what they're talking about. Morgrim 09:40, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please read this

Bold textThis homepage is rubbish. I am trying to do my homework and there is nothing here of my interest and its a load of poo. Can you please try and edit the vertebrate script and try and make it better? I need it for my homework for extra points at school and there is no other good website.

I second that notion this article is a disgrace to wikipedia.Fheo 22:22, 16 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Vandalism

This page has been subject to alot of vandalism i suggest that somone put a lock on this page to solve this problem.Fheo 22:24, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

looks like someone likes to keep taking tetrapods out of lobed fishes... probably creationists —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.189.206.11 (talk) 15:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)