Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Bharattherium/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Karanacs 03:10, 13 October 2011 [1].

Bharattherium

Featured article candidates/Bharattherium/archive1

Nominator(s): Ucucha (talk) 00:27, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

More than 65 million years ago, a group of weird mammals with high-crowned teeth lived across the southern continents. They may have been feeding on grasses long before any other mammalian grazers appeared. This article is about the Indian member of the group, Bharattherium bonapartei, which is known only from a handful of teeth. Several gondwanathere species are known from only one or two teeth, so that handful is enough to place Bharattherium among the better known gondwanatheres. This article received a helpful GA review by Casliber, and I'm looking forward to the FAC comments. Ucucha (talk) 00:27, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment (GermanJoe) You may want someone completely and utterly ignorant in that topic for an outside perspective - i am volunteering:

Prose looks fine, no DAB links, no dead links.
Lead "Bharattherium is known from a total of eight isolated fossil teeth, including one incisor and eight molariforms" ==> 1 plus 8 doesn't add up to 8 (unless i am missing some background detail).
- Oops, there are only seven molariforms. Ucucha (talk) 14:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
~~link "hypsodont" in lead~~
- Done. Ucucha (talk) 14:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
~~perhaps link "grazer"? - pretty common, but maybe of interest in this specific context.~~
- Seems like overlinking to me. Ucucha (talk) 14:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - OK, no problem. GermanJoe (talk) 15:20, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Taxonomy "A gondwanathere tooth, known as VPL/JU/NKIM/25 ..." ==> would "catalogued as", "registered as" or something similar be more specific?
- Yes, "catalogued" sounds better. Ucucha (talk) 14:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Description ==> again a total of 8 teeth, one team has 7, the other team 2. Please clarify (also see list in table with 8 entries).
- That's because VPL/JU/NKIM/25 is included in both counts, which I've attempted to clarify in the taxonomy section. Ucucha (talk) 14:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
~~not terribly important, but is the table of known remains sorted somehow within locality? If not, maybe use fossil number as second sort.~~
- I don't think there was any reason for the order they were in; I've now sorted them by locality and then number. Ucucha (talk) 14:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Molariforms "VPL/JU/NKIM/25 was the first Indian gondwanathere [] to be described" ==> missing a "fossil" or some other noun here.
- "Gondwanathere" can also be a noun. For example, in Prasad et al. (2007), "Cenozoic xenarthrans might have evolved from Cretaceous hypsodont gondwanatheres". Ucucha (talk) 14:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - On second thought, because this is referring to an individual fossil and not a species, it does seem better to add "fossil"; I've done that. Ucucha (talk) 14:51, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Range ==> could you clarify the connection between general gondwanatheran range and specific Bharattherium range? I guess, being related they inhabitated similar close locations, but it isn't really obvious from the text (first para notably omits the Bharattherium itself).GermanJoe (talk) 08:57, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I've expanded on this a little. Bharattherium is the only described gondwanathere from India, so I used "gondwanathere in India" and Bharattherium interchangeably, but that can only be confusing. Thanks for the review! Ucucha (talk) 14:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Above points have been addressed, the "Range" section reads much better now and provides better context - thank you. The article seems comprehensive and well-structured. No glaring MOS issues found. (Disclaimer: as a non-expert i can't comment on all scientific details, just on the broad overall information presented). GermanJoe (talk) 15:20, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done. Be consistent in whether initials are spaced or unspaced. That is all. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:12, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed the inconsistency; thanks for the check. Ucucha (talk) 14:47, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from J Milburn-

~~Category:Monotypic mammal genera? Category:Animals described in 2007? Category:Extinct animals of India?~~
- Added. Ucucha (talk) 19:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
~~What's a "junior synonym"?~~
- In zoology, the junior synonym is the younger (and usually invalid) synonym; but I don't really need to use that term here. Ucucha (talk) 19:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
~~"with the Ancient Greek therion "beast"," how about "meaning "beast",", or a comma after "therion"?~~
- Used the first. Ucucha (talk) 19:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
~~"a diversity of fossils" Curious phrase~~
- Reworded. Ucucha (talk) 19:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Do we have no idea what these things looked like? Cows? Giraffes? Rodents? I'm afraid my limited knowledge of physiology is meaning that I can't extrapolate much from the denture details
- The short answer is "no, we have no idea", and I don't think there has been any speculation specific to Bharattherium. If I recall correctly, Sudamerica has been compared to a beaver, but I think that idea is now not quite accepted. Bharattherium may have been a small grazing mammal, so I guess a rabbit might be a good analog. Ucucha (talk) 19:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Do you perhaps have a source saying something like that? Including a note in the article that we simply don't know what they looked like/how big they were would be good. If there's no source, then that's fine. J Milburn (talk) 10:03, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Not specifically about Bharattherium. Gurovich (2009) says that sudamericids might be herbivores, or folivores specifically, or browsers, or perhaps fossorial. We really don't know. Ucucha (talk) 14:23, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Generally looking very good. J Milburn (talk) 16:26, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments. Ucucha (talk) 19:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I am confident that this is a very high quality article. J Milburn (talk) 10:33, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Copyscape review – No issues were revealed by Copyscape searches. Graham Colm (talk) 16:09, 1 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support. looks .."neater" than when I read it before. Can't find anything to improve - fine on comprehensiveness and prose grounds. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:28, 5 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support I can't see any significant problems Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:03, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Supreme quality. A couple of minor comments only:

per WP:REPEATLINK you could link in Bharattherium#Description Gokak, Kisalpuri & Naskal, but not strong feelings about this.
- Yes, I don't feel it is necessary. Ucucha (talk) 20:28, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Is this : "^ This tooth is stored in the collection of mammals from the Naskal fossil site in the Vertebrate Palaeontology Laboratory at the University of Jammu, numbered 25.?UNIQ72d9296d44b02ba6-nowiki-00000004-QINU?2?UNIQ72d9296d44b02ba6-nowiki-00000005-QINU?" how this note is supposed to look like, or "?UNIQ72d9296d44b02ba6-nowiki-00000004-QINU?2?UNIQ72d9296d44b02ba6-nowiki-00000005-QINU?" is some kinf of a temporal anomally?--Egmontaz♤ ^talk 18:28, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Should be gone now, had the same problem (maybe something weird with the last used codepage) and it displayed ok after a reload of the article page.GermanJoe (talk) 19:17, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - That was bugzilla:31374, which has now apparently been fixed. Thanks Egmontaz (and the other commenters) for the reviews. Ucucha (talk) 20:28, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.