Wikipedia:Peer review/Leptictidium/archive1

Leptictidium

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A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for June 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it is an FA in Catalan wikipedia and has attained GA status in the Spanish wikipedia. I think its content is good enough for FA here as well, and possibly only needs tweaks in language or style issues. Only one thing is non-negotiable; I am not going to change the text from British English to American English.

If possible, I'd also like to keep the lead as it is (since I believe leads should be just an introduction, not a fully-fledged overview), but I can adjust that to the WP:LEAD standards if necessary.

Thanks for your time and attention, Leptictidium (mt) 23:13, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Casliber

Fascinating choice of article. No-one minds if it is british english, as long as it is british english all the way through. I will change anything i see to help out.

A good thing to do is make stubs for the redlinks if possible. it is not a huge issue but does put some people off.

I will read and make more notes later when I have time. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:29, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

together with macropods and humans, they are the only known completely bipedal mammals. - having 'mammal' twice like this looks a little ungainly, however I am not sure yet how to rephrease it.

~~probably due to the fact that they were adapted to live in forest ecosystems and were unable to adapt to the open plains of the Oligocene.~~ ~~- try to avoid using 'adapt' twice here. I don't have an immediate alternative, but have a think about it.~~

possible suggestions:

is an extinct genus of small eutherians; together with macropods and humans, they are the only known completely bipedal mammals.

probably due to the fact that they had evolved to live in forest ecosystems and were unable to adapt to the open plains of the Oligocene.

Do you think these are OK? Leptictidium (mt) 10:46, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

yep. definitely better. As well, as I go through, you are more than welcome to revert any of my changes which may accidentally alter meaning. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:22, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The first paragraph in the behaviour section is interesting given the animal has been dead for millions of years - the fossil evidence which allows us to hypothesise would be interesting.

~~Thanks to high humidity and temperatures, most of the European continent was covered in vegetation.~~ ~~- Due to is better, and, well, there is vegetation everywhere,~~ could this be qualified - lush vegetation? alot of vegetation?

Under Comparison of the Messel species - I am sure there is some article which talks about biodiversity and how you expect to see many different spcies of small animals and only a few large ones, it would be improtant to mention here.

Ruhrfisch comment: I do think that to get to FA, the lead will need to be expanded per WP:LEAD Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:34, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

True that. We'll get there :) Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:15, 6 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Aranae

I don't see how macropodids qualify as bipedal, but other saltatorial mammals such as Pedetes and some heteromyids and dipodids don't. Is there a citation for this? The lead also tells us that Leptictidium were bipedal, but the body then

tells us that it's controversial. There should clearly be some qualifiers.

There are some verb tense problems. References to the animals should be past tense, right?
There's a reference in the text to leptictids which links to Leptictidae, but the taxobox places them in Pseudorhyncocyonidae. Okay, I see now at the bottom that Leptictidae is a distinct family and I guess if Leptictidium were a type genus, it would be spelled Leptictididae. I still think some clarity in that section would be helpful. Perhaps "leptictids, members of a related family" or something.
I assume by C1, upper canines is meant as indicated by the capital letter? Was there more than one canine or something? Why not just say upper canine to allow for better access to a broader audience. For that matter, that whole paragraph seems to be jargon-filed when jargonless options are available. For example, "incisor-shaped" might be better than "incisiviform" (isn't the term "incisiform"?). A dental formula would be nice too. How are the molars shaped.
The statement: "While some paleontologists argue that Leptictidium was obviously a running animal, others reply that what is obvious is that it was cursorial" makes no sense. A cursorial animal is a running animal. Is saltatorial meant here?
How in the world does anyone know that it hunted twice a day - once in the morning and once in the afternoon? I haven't seen any of these Walking with Beasts shows, but it's very clear that they have to make up a great deal about their subjects because only fossils are available. One might as well say "Leptictidium is the only mammal with purple hair." All of these sorts of statements lacking support from the fossil record need to be removed. They are fiction.
~~I think the "In German" reference is in French and the "En alemany" references are in German.~~
Has there been no attempt to tie them to any modern eutherian groups? I notice that McKenna and Bell (1999) considered them to be basal epitherians. Has there been any other discussion of this? This should be discussed.
Fossil mammals usually either discuss all species in the genus article or have separate article for all species. This article seems to want to do both.
Overall, I find the article to be an awkward mix of technical descriptions and a regurgitation of a marginally fictional TV show. The technical stuff can be simplified to be more accessible to a general audience without losing its content. It should also be tied in with how it informs our knowledge of the natural history. The locomotion section does that fairly well. The other anatomical sections (particularly the dental anatomy) should follow suit.

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

You said you wanted to know what to work on before taking to FAC, so I looked at the sourcing and referencing with that in mind. I reviewed the article's sources as I would at FAC.
- Journal articles and other sources that are in non-English should state that in the reference. Nothing wrong with using them, just need to warn readers.
- Current ref 8, is that a journal article? We just have title and author, need more bibliograhic data to be able to find the information.
- Current ref 11 is just a plain url. Needs to be formatted with title, publisher and last access date at the very least, and other bibliographic data if known.
- Current ref 12 is missing page numbers
- What makes http://www.helsinki.fi/~mhaaramo/ a reliable source?
- Likewise http://www.scotese.com/earth.htm?

Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 23:03, 15 June 2008 (UTC)