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Evolutionary history of plants

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because…

I've recently re-written the article from a combination of my own reading and a Paleobotany course I recently attended. I know it could benefit from a good copyedit, and suspect there are areas which are a big jargon-padded, but am sure these things will be gradually addressed with time. My main concern at this stage is to ensure that the article hasn't omitted anything important, and doesn't portray an inaccurate "point of view". Any comments on its completeness or accuracy would be warmly welcome.

Thanks, Smith609 Talk 12:35, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: Interesting and quite detailed article - here are some suggestions for improvement:

  • The article is written at a very technical level. This is OK, but you might want to consider writing a separate, simpler version and linking that at the top of the article with the {{seeintro}} template. For a nice example of this two-tiered approach see Virus and Introduction to virus. If there is a good intro article, I think the jargon concerns are lessened.
  • A model article is also useful for ideas on structure, style, refs, etc. Virus is a Good Article and may be a model for a technical vs introductory approach as noted. I also note that Evolutionary history of life is a good article and may be another suitable model.
  • By the WP:MOS there should be an image in the upper right corner of the article. Image:Crossotheca nodule.JPG is interesting and a possible candidate.
  • Per WP:LEAD the lead should be a summary of the article (which I think it is, for the most part), it should be three to four paragraphs long (the second paragraph could be split at Evolutionary innovation continued after the Devonian period.), and most importatly The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article. It is even more important here than for the rest of the article that the text be accessible This is where the lead needs work - there is a lot of jargon in it.
  • I am not a plant person, so I have to click on the links to see what a gymnosperm and angiosperm are. I think it would be helpful to expalin these briefly as well as provide links. The explanations could be functional (gymnosperms have "naked seeds") or they could be descriptive (gymnosperms include conifers and ginkos). In any case try to both provide context for the reader WP:PCR and to avoid or explain jargon WP:JARGON. I will also note that you only have to explain what gymnosperms are once - this does not have to be repeated over and over.
  • The article also needs more wikilinks to help clarify and provide context for interested readers - just in the lead the following could be linked (and are not now): cladistic analysis, Ordovician period, Silurian period, Triassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, and perhaps links to some of the concepts - so new mechanisms of metabolism could be linked to the Calvin cycle perhaps.
  • Article needs a copyedit - Further, most cladistic analyses (although these are often at odds!) suggest that each "more complex" group arose from the most complex group at the time. - the exclamtion point is not encylcopedic in tone, the sentence seems overly complex, and it illustrates a tendency to overuse words in quotations - here "more complex". Or here a word seems to be missing This may have set the scene for the evolution of flowering plants in the Triassic (~200 million years ago), which exploded [in?] the Cretaceous and Tertiary.
  • Also avoid contractions like Plants weren't the first photosynthesisers on land, though:...
  • Last three paragraphs of colonisation of land are not referenced - every paragraph, direct quote, statistic, and extraordinary claim should be referenced - see WP:CITE and WP:V
  • Images are generally good and well placed. Try to make the captions more detailed - is the trilete mark the horizontal brown line? Is this a modern spore or a fossil? Or in the banded tube photo - it all looks fairly opaque to me.

I hope this helps - if you found my comments useful, please consider peer reviewing another article, especially one with no or minimal responses at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 14:11, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestion. My impression is that these areas are quite speculative - could you suggest links to Wikipedia articles, or better still primary sources, that I could use as a starting point to expand these aspects? Thank you, Smith609 Talk 19:47, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Addendum: I've just come across Plant evolutionary developmental biology which strays more onto this topic than its title suggests.
I guess that will prove a useful starting point - although there is quite a bit of overlap! Smith609 Talk 08:34, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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