Talk:Spinosauridae/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Jens Lallensack (talk · contribs) 14:42, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm happy to see you doing some nice article work. Lets work on this one together.

• The lead needs a lot of expansion, should summarize the whole article.
• The description is much too short. Currently, it is more of an accumulation of sentences in random order rather than a readable text with a common thread. Remember that you are writing for people who do not know anything about the group. Best, you first give general information on the bauplan and work out how the group differs from other theropods, then how these features vary within the group. Also add information on body size. It might be good to have anatomical details in separate paragraphs after the more general info, so that it is easier for readers to jump over if they are not interested in that.
• You are extremely lucky that there are two relatively recent reviews on the group, but you used none of them, although both are freely accessible full-text via google scholar. Review articles are considered the best sources you can find for Wikipedia, you should make heavy use of them. Most information in the Hone and Holtz review should appear in the article, best assembled with additional information from the sources cited in that review.

• Bertin, 2010: A catalogue and material of Spinosauridae.
• Hone and Holtz, 2017: A Century of Spinosaurs - a review and revision of the Spinosauridae with comments on their ecology.

• Research history is lacking (for a start, see the Hone and Holtz review).
• Better group the paleobiology by biological topics ("Feeding", "Habitat", "Locomotion" etc.), not by anatomical ("Teeth", "Skull").
• Bone histology is not discussed.
• Neither is locomotion (quadrupedal or bipedal?), and probably others (see the Hone and Holtz review).
• This should keep you busy for some time. I will return with more precise comments once you are ready. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:42, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the review! And I gotta say I saw this coming, to be honest. I realized while doing research for expansions on the Oxalaia article, that the Spinosauridae one is very incomplete, a lot of crucial information is missing from various sources. Even though our knowledge of this dinosaur family is quite fragmentary, we definitely know more than this. It's gonna take me some time for sure, but I'll get it done. ▼PσlєοGєєкƧɊƲΔƦΣƉ▼ (Contribs) 15:15, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Great! Let me know if you need any sources, as I have most of it. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:33, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

• There is one more recent spinosaur review paper freely available here:[1] Also, most review papers are cited in the Baryonyx article, you could take a look at that one, since its featured. FunkMonk (talk) 01:23, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Also note that the species of Lepidotes mentioned as prey for Baryonyx here has since been assigned to the genus Scheenstia. It is probably good to double check the info here about Baryonyx with that in the featured article, because it is more up to date than many other older sources. FunkMonk (talk) 16:34, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

There seems to be a bit of an issue, I decided to start off by writing a more comprehensive Description section for the article, and I thought I'd begin with a paragraph on spinosaurid body size. I then realized after checking the articles for Spinosaurus,Suchomimus, and Baryonyx that the measurements in the size diagram are a bit shaky, the author of the original chart used before I made this one said the sizes were based off of Scott Hartman's skeletals. But they seem inconsistent with those mentioned in their respective articles, Baryonyx has estimates from 7.5 to 10m, in the diagram it is 10m. Suchomimus was initially estimated from 10.3 to 11m and then 9.5m in 2010 by Gregory S. Paul, the diagram once again goes with the more extreme of 11m. Also, which one should we choose for Spinosaurus? it varies from 12 to 18m but from what I've seen 15m is the most agreed upon length, whereas in the chart it's 14.5m. You guys can look at all this and tell me what you think, preferably we should go with the most reliable estimates, and if it isn't clear then maybe use an averaged out length as we do in those cases? (eg. if example estimate is between 4-6m we should go with 5 for the chart.) Overall, I'm not sure. Irritator looks fine though. ▼PσlєοGєєкƧɊƲΔƦΣƉ▼ (Contribs) 02:31, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Nevermind, I've found and checked multiple reliable sources and I think I got the body size issue straightened out, although I do need to change the diagram a bit. ▼PσlєοGєєкƧɊƲΔƦΣƉ▼ (Contribs) 00:21, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

• I'd also appreciate it if someone could find me a reference for the palaeoecology of Irritator's habitat? There is some very relevant information about its habitat in the respective section on the Irritator article but it lacks a citation. ▼PσlєοGєєкƧɊƲΔƦΣƉ▼ (Contribs) 04:52, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

There is information on that in the first description of Mirischia (Naish et al., 2004). --Jens Lallensack (talk) 05:42, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Oof, have I gone down a rabbit-hole. The more I look the more I keep finding a truck-load of lengthy papers on spinosaurids, this edit is gonna take a while, there's enough information to expand the article perhaps even twofold. I can't believe just how short it actually is. ▼PσlєοGєєкƧɊƲΔƦΣƉ▼ (Contribs) 01:49, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, its a big fish, this article. Take your time. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 05:39, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Archiving now, with approval of the author who needs a lot more time. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:31, 4 June 2018 (UTC)