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Revision as of 23:38, 21 December 2006

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• {{Paleontologist-stub}} - Notice placed on a paleontologist's stub.

This WikiProject, WikiProject Dinosaurs, aims to organise an effort to do something about the current relative lack of content about dinosaurs in Misplaced Pages.

These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!

A full list of the WikiProject Dinosaur team's achievements can be found here.

Goals

The main goal of WikiProject Dinosaurs is to create and gather better information and articles on dinosaurs. Important tasks always include expanding and cleaning up articles, adding taxoboxes and standardising all articles.

Participants

See List of participants. Feel free to add yourself if you have contributed or intend to. Fossil and model images should also be added

Open list of tasks

Below is a list of open tasks that the project is currently working on. If you feel like you could help with the task, place your name below it by typing ~~~. Also, if you would like to post a task for others to look at, post it below or on the project talk page. If you feel a request has been fixed, please scratch it off the list, but do not delete it. Do not feel urged to place your name under every open task.

All members and non-members are also encouraged to elaborate on any existing article or stub, so long as the information provided is correct and current, with appropriate sources provided. If you are in doubt about your information, post it on the project talk page for it to be read over.

Tasks

Please add new tasks to the bottom.

What dinosaur groups merit new articles?

• Articles should not get any more specific than genus level. Individual species should be discussed in the article about the appropriate genus. "Significant" higher order taxa should also get their own pages.
• See also: next section
• Classification should be standardized according to Benton 2004. See List of dinosaur classifications for the standard taxonomy to be used in taxoboxes.

Taxomonic structure

• See Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Birds#Structure for a discussion of which clades should have articles.
• The use of informal taxa in taxoboxes (e.g. Maniraptora, Thyreophora) should be stimulated.

Article titles

The titles of all articles about individual genera should be composed simply of the scientific generic name (see next section), except where the name is preoccupied. For example:

• Avalonia (dinosaur) - Article Avalonia preoccupied
• Coloradia (dinosaur) - Article Coloradia preoccupied
• Dilong paradoxus - Article Dilong preoccupied
• Galtonia (dinosaur) - Article Galtonia preoccupied
• Gastonia (dinosaur) - Article Gastonia preoccupied
• Laelaps (dinosaur) - Article Laelaps preoccupied
• Mei long - Article Mei preoccupied
• Minmi (dinosaur) - Article Minmi preoccupied
• Saturnalia (dinosaur) - Article Saturnalia preoccupied
• Scrotum (dinosaur) - Article Scrotum preoccupied
• Smilodon (dinosaur) - Article Smilodon preoccupied
• ...

The titles of all articles about higher level taxa should consist of the common name of the group (see next section), with a redirect for the formal scientific name, or vice versa. This way both formal and common names will lead to the same article.

What dinosaur images should be used?

General guideline for image use:

• Any image that is anatomically accurate within known constraints.
• If image is included for historical value. In these cases the image caption should explain that it is an outdated reconstruction. Historical interest images should not be used in the taxobox or paleobox, but preferably in a section of the text discussing the history of a taxon.

Criteria for removing an image:

• Image differs appreciably from known skeletal elements.
  • Example: If a Deinonychus is reconstructed with four fingers.
• Image differs appreciably from implied skeletal elements (via bracketing).
  • Example: If an oviraptorid known only from postcranial elements is reconstructed with teeth, a feature made highly improbable by its phylogenetic position.
• Image differs appreciably from known non-skeletal elements.
  • Example: If an image of Microraptor gui lacks primary feathers.
• Image differs appreciably from implied non-skeletal elements.
  • Example: Nomingia should not be depicted without feathers, since a skeletal feature (the pygostyle) and phylogenetic bracketing (more advanced than Caudipteryx) imply that it was feathered. Similarly, Ceratosaurus should not be depicted with feathers, since a skeletal feature (osteoderms) and its proximity to Carnotaurus (extensive scale impressions) imply that it was fully scaled.
• Image pose differs appreciably from known range of motion.
  • Example: Theropod dinosaurs reconstructed with overly flexed tails or pronated "bunny-style" hands.
  • Exception: If the range of motion is debated in the scientific literature, as is the case with sauropod neck position.

Please consider submitting new images for peer review at WikiProject Dinosaurs Image Review.

Dinosaur taxa naming conventions

Species

When a species is mentioned (on its own page or another), the scientific binomial name should at least be mentioned once. After this, the genus name or common name can be used.

• common names: lowercase e.g. tyrannosaur or tyrannosaurus (but tyrannosaur is much better)
• scientific names:

• Genus: Uppercase, italicised
• species: lowercase, italicised

So:

• scientific:

• binomial names: Deinonychus antirrhopus; Microraptor gui
• genus names: Deinonychus; Microraptor

• common:

• genus names: deinonychus, microraptor

Do not use common names too much, they look amateuristic. If you use them, realise that you are referring to the genus, or to an order ending on -ia. For example ankylosaur can be used for Ankylosaurus or for Ankylosauria. Even more informally it can refer to the family, as equivalent to ankylosaurid. Inconsequential use confuses the reader.

Plurals:

Best use common names, as they may be pluralised in English : e.g. 45 tyrannosaurs, but never 45 tyrannosauruses.

Don't pluralise scientific (Latin) names in an English way: Velociraptors is wrong. Velociraptors is correct, but now you are meaning several species belonging to the genus Velociraptor, some of which you don't recognize. It may sound strange, but "Sarah is attacked by lots of Velociraptor and 3 Utahraptor" is the correct way. The same applies to pluralising binomial names: "John was stampeded by a large herd of Yunnanosaurus huangi and 5 Yunnanosaurus robustus". There is no change. Don't use binomials in this case unless you want to confer that the identification of the species is very important.

Note: the correct plural of Velociraptor would be Velociraptores, that of Tarbosaurus would be Tarbosauri. Luckily, nobody uses these.

Higher order taxa

The formal names of all groupings higher than genus are capitalised, never italicised. If fitting the situation, common names are preferrable. These are in lowercase.

Example:

"Lambeosaurus is a genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur" sounds a lot better than "Lambeosaurus is a dinosaur genus belonging to the Hadrosauridae". The same applies to other higher-order taxa.

Note that a hadrosaur belongs to the genus Hadrosaurus, while a hadrosaurid belongs to the family Hadrosauridae.

Categories

Categories have been created for location, age, and taxonomic status, along with a few special interest categories (feathered dinosaurs, fictional dinosaurs, etc.). Please visit the "Dinosaur" category page (see bottom of this page) and use these pre-existing categories rather than creating new ones without running them by the Project talk page first. All dinosaur articles and stubs should include the location, age, and taxonomic categories.

For taxonomic categories, the Project prefers not to get too specific, and most groups will not get their own category. Few family-level taxa are represented except for those that are very large (hadrosaurids, titanosaurs) and/or very notable (dromaeosaurs, tyrannosaurs). In order to keep the category navigation streamlined, please use only the most specific possible existing category for taxonomy. Multiple location and age categories may be used if applicable.

Here is the hierarchy reached by general consensus on the talk page. Please discuss changes or additions there first!

• Dinosaurs - would include any species that cannot be determined to belong to either order
  • Saurischians - would include any saurischians that do not belong to either suborder
    • Theropods - would include any theropods that do not belong to any group listed below:
      • Ceratosaurs
      • Carnosaurs
      • Coelurosaurs
        • Tyrannosaurs
        • Ornithomimosaurs
        • Therizinosaurs
        • Oviraptorosaurs
        • Dromaeosaurs
        • Troodonts
    • Prosauropods
    • Sauropods - would include any sauropods that are not included in Titanosauria or Diplodocoidea
      • Diplodocoids
      • Titanosaurs
  • Ornithischians - would include any ornithischians that do not belong to any particular suborder
    • Thyreophorans - would include any thyreophorans that do not belong to either infraorder
      • Stegosaurs
      • Ankylosaurs
    • Ornithopods - would include any ornithopods outside of Iguanodontia
      • Iguanodonts - would include any iguanodonts outside of Hadrosauridae
        • Hadrosaurs
    • Marginocephalians - category does not currently exist, if any primitive members are found, it could be created for them
      • Ceratopsians
      • Pachycephalosaurs

Resources and references

Primary References

The best source for accurate information on dinosaurs is the primary literature, where original research is published. After you get a basic feel for the terminology, it becomes possible to learn by immersion by reading articles and trying to piece together what the authors are saying. A big problem, however, is access. Finding a copy of a journal can be difficult, and making copies can really add up. Subscriptions are usually obscenely expensive because most of these journals have pretty low circulation. So how do you get a hold of technical papers?

Most scientific journals now offer PDFs of their articles online. Unfortunately, you are usually required to subscribe to the journal, pay a bunch of money, or go to a library that subscribes to the journal in order to access them. If you do live near a university or public library, it is not a bad idea to find out what journals they subscribe to and then spend a few hours in the library downloading PDF files and emailing them to yourself... it's a lot cheaper than making copies. However, if you don't have that kind of time or don't live near a major library, there are still a lot of places to find papers online for free, which some of you may already know about. But I'll list some of the ones I know about here:

• The American Museum of Natural History Digital Library provides free PDF copies of all four of their major publications. They are working to have every single issue from beginning to end. Many new dinosaurs have been reported in American Museum Novitates in particular.
• The Polish journal Acta Paleontologica Polonica also provides free PDF access to all issues dating back to 1997 on their website. Although the journal is Polish, all articles are in English.
• The French journal Geodiversitas commonly publishes paleontology articles. The website provides free PDF copies of all articles back to the beginning of 2000.
• A special edition of the Portuguese journal Gaia was released in 2000, although all the articles date from 1998. These articles are available for free online in PDF format.
• Science, perhaps the most prestigious American science journal, now allows free web access to all research articles more than 12 months old, to anyone who registers on their website (and is willing to receive a few emails). Articles are in PDF format and date back to 1997.
• The Royal Society of London is a scientific organization that publishes several journals. All articles in all journals are made freely available online in PDF format twelve months after publication. Of these journals, dinosaur articles are most commonly published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
• If you go to the online archives of many major journals, some provide a few PDFs as samples, usually of more recent issues. Digging through these sites is also a way to net the occasional free article.

Good non-primary sites (technical)

The following sites provide some scholarly information on dinosaurs, but are not primary sources. Most are actually tertiary sources, so information may or may not always be complete, current, and/or accurate.

• Dinosaur Mailing List archives
• DinoData
• The Dinosauria On-Line
• T. Mike Keesey's Dinosauricon
• Mickey Mortimer's Theropod Database
• George Olshevsky's Dinosaur Genera List
• Palaeos vertebrates on dinosaurs
• German page describing almost all known prehistoric reptiles (with all dinosaurs)

  Click here for English translation

Individual Researchers

• Ken Carpenter of the Denver Museum of Natural Sciences has most of his papers online at his webpage. Some, but not all, are just PDFs of photocopies, the downsides of which are that quality is not that great sometimes, and they are not searchable by text, but it's definitely better than nothing.
• Phil Currie has many of his papers from 2004 and before at this site.
• American paleontologist Jerry D. Harris has PDFs of a number of his publications available for free at his website, as well as a page of links to many, many journals. As of June 2006, his website also features the entire Proceedings of the 2006 Goseong International Dinosaur Symposium. This series of papers was originally published in an out-of-print edition of the Journal of the Paleontological Society of Korea but are now made freely available in PDF format.
• Sunny Hwang of the AMNH has a few theropod papers linked on her online CV.
• The Lusodinos site, run by Portuguese paleontologist Octavio Mateus, has PDF copies of many of his papers, which usually involve Portuguese fossils.
• Several papers authored by Robert Sullivan of the State Museum of Pennsylvania are available in PDF format on his personal website.
• Jeffrey Wilson has some of his publications as PDFs at his website.
• Lawrence Witmer of Ohio University includes a list of his publications on his faculty page, some of which are available in PDF format.

Other Sites

• This site has free web access to recent issues of a lot of journals. Right now they only have the 2006 issues of Ameghiniana, a very important journal from Argentina, but hopefully in the future they will add more. The Revista Geologica de Chile has some articles online as well, back to 1997. Not too many dinosaur papers in this one, although here is the description of Rinconsaurus. Both of these journals are only available in HTML format, not PDF, which means you can't reference specific page numbers, but all the text and figures are there.
• This site has issues of Paleobiology and Journal of Paleontology archived online, but apparently they are not in PDF format, and don't provide any figures.
• Not all articles are in English, so The Polyglot Paleontologist can be very useful to English speakers. Free online English translations of many papers originally written in Spanish, Chinese, Russian and French are available, many in PDF format. However, sometimes there are no images, and because they are not the original copy, you can't reference the original page numbers.

I'm sure other people know of other places to get articles. Please add them to the appropriate section above, as long as they are legal. Google searches or searching for "pdf" on the Archives of the Dinosaur Mailing List might also nab you some more.

Parentage

WikiProject Dinosaurs is a descendant of WikiProject Tree of Life.

WikiProject Science.

WikiProject Biology

WikiProject Tree of Life

WikiProject Dinosaurs

• WikiProject Tree of Life
• Dinosaurs