Talk:Apataelurus

Apataelurus was nominated as a Natural sciences good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (June 28, 2025, reviewed version). There are suggestions on the review page for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

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Missing critical biostratigraphic and geological information

Hello any potential editors! I have tried my best to write this up, but I am unfortunately missing lots of information about how the Uinta Formation actually looked in the late middle Eocene (48-40 mya). This article is paywalled and I am unable to access it, but if anyone has permission to read it or use it, please feel free to add to the paleoecology section of this page. Thank you! Csarhelicopterfan (talk) 01:40, 1 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I sent you the paper to your wikimail. See also our Resources page. Thanks for the nice article! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 11:03, 1 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much! I'll be expanding the paleoecology section greatly with this new information. Csarhelicopterfan (talk) 14:48, 1 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We made it to B-class!

Thank you to all other editors working on this project. This has been a joy to make! Independentgeoscience (talk) 22:35, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lavalizard101, please explain the deletions you made to the page

You deleted several chunks of work with only the barest explanation. Please define your changes and explain why you'd like to make them. Thanks. Independentgeoscience (talk) 02:41, 6 June 2025 (UTC) Lavalizard101 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Independentgeoscience (talk • contribs) 02:45, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Apataelurus/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Independentgeoscience (talk · contribs) 20:30, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Jens Lallensack (talk · contribs) 23:21, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewing now!

Note. I agree that the "Temporal distribution within Oxyaenidae" is off-topic. Context is important, yes, but the article also has to stay focused on the topic (this is a GA criterion). The timeline could be a nice addition to the Oxyaenidae article, but not here. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 23:21, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• extinct genus of saber-toothed hypercarnivorous placental mammals – we need to simplify this, it is throwing too much at the reader at once. The first sentence of the lead has to be particularly digestible, and should focus on the essential points only. Make a separate sentence. "Hypercarnivorous" needs a link or explanation if kept.

• paraconid, talonoid – link and/or explain these terms

• The ascending ramus featured a deep masseteric fossa – Again, try to explain a bit. The average reader won't understand. You are not writing for paleontologists here.

• The articular process, which ended below the dental plane, was also much smaller. – Smaller than what?

• The entire lower jaw reached a height of 1.8 cm (0.71 in). – The word "entire" does not make sense to me; delete?

• The mandible of A. kayi is less dorsoventrally buttressed (a bodily structure reinforced from the top to the bottom) – the explanation does not seem to mach what it is suppoed to explain ("dorsoventrally buttressed")

• Panthera pardus – Link? Also should be in italics (genus and species names are always in italics)

• interbedded sequence of silt, clay, and small amounts of gravel – also need a bunch of wikilinks here.

• Uinta A is post-Bridgerian – needs explanation

• Mammalian biostratigraphy – The section does not seem to have anything on "biostratigraphy". I suggest to just remove both subheadings; we don't usually use them for single paragraphs unless there are good reasons.

• faulted basin, again and similar terms: Please look through the article for terms that should be linked. For terms that the reader needs to know to at least roughly understand the sentence, it is recommended to explain them in-text.

• All taxa in the cladogram should be linked.

Sources review

• Zack (2019) is in the references list twice.

• paleobiodb.org is not a reliable source for a sentence like "This genus was defined by teeth that were well-adapted to a carnivorous diet". You also do not repeat in the body how the genus was "defined" (I am also not sure what you mean here. Autapomorphies?)

• "Apataelurus kayi: Type Specimen CMNH 11920". paleobiodb.org. – Again, not a good source, just cite the original publication.

• "New Paleocene insectivores and insectivore classification". digitallibrary.amnh.org." – We need author and journal, at least.

• SP, Zack (2022). "Project 4091: Diegoaelurus, a new machaeroidine (Oxyaenidae) from the Santiago Formation (late Uintan) of southern California and the relationships of Machaeroidinae, the oldest group of sabertooth mammals". morphobank.org. Retrieved 1 June 2025. – Did you really want to cite morphobank here or the PeerJ paper?

• Metering | MorphoBank". morphobank.org. Retrieved 2 June 2025. – Link does not work, and again, citing morphobank does not make sense

• "Ferae Linnaeus, 1758". www.gbif.org. Retrieved 1 June 2025. – Also a poor source and does not seem to support the content.

• One of the earliest sabre-toothed mammals discovered in the USA | Natural History Museum". www.nhm.ac.uk. – Where does this support the claim that Apataelurus was the size of a leopard?

• Make sure everything is sourced. There are sentences in "Hetaoyuan Formation" which are not sourced.

• Stopping here now, as there are too many issues with the sources. The issues above are only examples.

Overall assessment: The article is well-written, but needs more explanations of terms. However, we have a problem with the sources, and this aspects needs a lot of work. Often, source formatting is so messy that I cannot see what source is actually cited; sometimes the link points to the morphobank site rather than the paper, and so on. You cite a lot of news pages, which, wherever possible, are better replaced by scholarly literature (the peer-reviewed papers). Most importantly, I found a lot of information in this article that I cannot find in the sources cited. So, GA criterion 2 (verifiable) is not met. To move this article forward, the first step should be to get the sources right. Most importantly, make sure that source-text integrity is always warranted (the sources have to contain the information you are citing them for). Putting this "on hold" to give you some time to work on it. Will then need to take a second look. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:06, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Independentgeoscience: If you are stuck somewhere or need advise how to do things efficiently, let me know. For example, inserting references is easiest with the autocompletion feature of the editor (just copy/paste the DOI of the paper and it will give you the correct citation); you could also use Citer Tool. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:10, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Closing note: Procedual close; it is clear that the article needs more work, which might be better to do in your own time, without the tight time constraints of GAN. This should not affect you; I will still be available to help out, and I would be happy to pick-up the review again if renominated. Thanks, --Jens Lallensack (talk) 05:49, 28 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.