Talk:Palaeotherium/GA2

GA Review

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Nominator: PrimalMustelid (talk · contribs) 04:16, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Jens Lallensack (talk · contribs) 00:47, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I will review this now. A difficult topic since a modern revision does not seem to exist. My main concern is the language; the article does not quite meet criterion 1 (reasonably well written). My general advice is to keep it as simple as possible. Within a sentence, try to mention the most important information first. Also, our audience include people without knowledge about all these technical terms, and we should get them on board, too. Below two examples how to put this advice in action:

The first sentence in the lead says Palaeotherium is the type genus of the extinct Palaeogene perissodactyl family Palaeotheriidae, close relatives of the Equidae (horses and relatives) whose closest ancestors diverged by the Palaeocene to early Eocene. – Notice that the sentence is 1) very long and therefore not simple (one resulting problem is an ambiguity with "whose", does that refer to Palaeotheriidae or Equidae?); 2) contains too many technical terms, including four (!) in a row (Palaeogene perissodactyl family Palaeotheriidae) that form a large MOS:Seaofblue; 3) does not provide the key information first (for example, this article is about Palaeotherium, so we first want to know when and where Palaeotherium lived, not when the "closest ancestors diverged"). Instead, you could write something like this: Palaeotherium is an extinct genus of perissodactyl that lived in Europe and possibly the Middle East from the middle Eocene to the early Oligocene epochs. The eponymous genus of the family Palaeotheriidae, it was closely related to the ancestors of horses (Equidae).

Paragraph "List of lineages": Since 1968, many species of Palaeotherium have multiple defined subspecies due to taxonomic revisions conducted by Franzen involving new species plus subspecies erections and conversions of some species into subspecies that were accepted by subsequent authors. From his dissertation was he able to justify the subspecies by proof of various intraspecific variations. – A lot of text here for stuff that you already discussed in the paragraph on Franzen. Instead, I would just stick with the crucial points – what does this list show? I'm not sure myself because you don't explicitly say; how do you determine what to put into this list and what not?

There are technical terms that you could avoid, e.g., replace "at al." with "and colleagues",

Missing wikilinks make it hard for readers to follow (e.g., deciduous teeth, cusp, lacustrine, limestone, hothouse climate (to Greenhouse effect), Ma (shouldn't it be mya?); others may need in-text explanation (e.g., molarized, mesostyle).

Another problem is, in my opinion, the level of detail, which in places seems excessive, especially in the "Description" section. Much more readers will enjoy the article if you keep it concise (and reviewers will be happer, too). Again, few examples for now:

Compared to the earlier-appearing pachynolophines, the palaeotheriines have more molarized deciduous premolars. For instance, Stehlin illustrated a Mormont fossil of P. renevieri with erupted dP1-dP4 plus an unerupted M1. dP1 appears small and triangular in shape with two buccal cusps (paracone and metacone cusps) and a smaller posterolingual cusp. dP2-dP4, in comparison, are molariform in shape and have four major cusps. Stehlin theorized that the dP1 tooth is unreplaced by any adult P1 due to the similar sizes of the milk tooth to the adult tooth. A juvenile skull of P. magnum with deciduous premolars was described by Remy in 1985, who noted their molarized forms. As is the case for the juvenile P. renevieri, the dP1 of the juvenile P. magnum is triangular in shape and has two close buccal cusps plus a smaller posterolingual cusp. It also shares the trait of molariform, four-cusped dP2-dP4. While Remy proposed that an adult P1 had already replaced its deciduous counterpart in P. magnum at an early age, there is no strong evidence to support his claim. – I think that this can easily reduced to just two sentences without loosing pertinent information.

I don't see the point for giving all those measurements for the footprints; those will be different for every discovered trackway anyways. The footprint section could be much condensed.

The cladogram seems pretty large, too; some genera could be collapsed (e.g., we don't need to see all the species of Pachynolophus when we don't even see them for Palaeotherium itself?)

Yet another problem is the lack of recent revisions, and that the literature where many of the claims are based on is pretty old to a point where we often cannot assume that the stuff is still accepted knowledge. We need to be very careful here. For example, I don't think that most trackers would agree with Ellenberger that particular footprints can be ascribed to particular genera or even species; and in newer articles you see Palaeotheriipus being introduced as a paleotheriid track only.

Minor comments:

As shown in the above phylogeny, the Palaeotheriidae is defined as a monophyletic clade – It's the other way around: Every taxon is defined as a monophyletic clade. We define clades based on stem or node, e.g., "all taxa that are more closely related to taxon x than to taxon y". This is the definition, and a taxon which such a definition is monophyletic per definition. A phylogenetic analysis can either demonstrate this monophyly (then, you could write "is recovered as a monophyletic clade"), or render the clade redundant.

postcanine diastemata – There is only one diastema per side, right? So why use plural here, when you use singular when referring to the paired skull bones?

Hope this helps so far. Please go through the article again with these things in mind, and when you're ready, I will have a another look. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 00:47, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, and thanks for initiating the review! I will get to implementing your suggestions within a few days and update you on when I’ve done so. PrimalMustelid (talk) 01:05, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]