Talk:Menoceras

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Synonym of Diceratherium?[edit]

See: http://www.paleodb.org/cgi-bin/bridge.pl?a=checkTaxonInfo&taxon_no=43211&is_real_user=1 FunkMonk (talk) 16:55, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Edit required.[edit]

The sentence which reads "However, other sites i.e. Martin-Anthony site Martin County, Florida, and Cady Mountains Horse Quarry, San Bernardino County, California." needs a verb and probably more. But the original author is going to have to supply it because the site doesn't make apparent what the point is.67.87.199.163 (talk) 17:41, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This edit is STILL required in Spring 2013. The above referenced sentence is incomplete. If Wikipedia is expected to be taken seriously these things need to be addressed ASAP. Zoongitozi (talk) 22:42, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Rather than waste everyone's time complaining about Wikipedia being taken seriously, perhaps you could try helping to fix the statement yourself?--Mr Fink (talk) 22:44, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Mass and citations[edit]

Morphology

Three specimens were examined for estimated body mass by M. Mendoza, C. M. Janis, and P. Palmqvist. [8] These specimens were estimated to weigh:

91.7 kg (200 lb)

129.3 kg (290 lb)

482 kg (1,100 lb)

One specimen was examined by Mikael Fortelius, University of Helsinki and J. Kappelman[9] and estimated a body mass of:

202.6 kg (450 lb)

I've seen this kind of text in several prehistoric mammal articles, always citing the Paleobiology Database but just today when checking information on Diceratherium I realized that those weight estimates were very likely done by someone at the Paleobiology Database, I have the two papers cited and none of them makes any mention of either genus, in the case of Mendoza et al.(2006), they provide the formula and did estimate the mass of several ungulutates but neither Menoceras nor Diceratherium were part of them. Fortelius & Kappelman (1993) was completely about Paraceratherium, they also did some estimates for some mammoths and did provide formulas for mass estimation for Rhinocerotidae but that's it.

Saying that either Mendoza et al. (2006) or Fortelius & Kappelman (1993) made this estimates is not only inaccurate but misinformation.

I know that the Paleobiology Database is edited by professionals but this estimates are still original, unpublished research and the worst thing is that we can't even identify what researcher actually made them and because of this I don't think we should use them, I'll start removing them as long as I can provide a reliable citation to replace them. Mike.BRZ (talk) 08:02, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If the Paleobiology Database provides such unreliable, if not blatantly incorrect information, then we should stop using it as a source entirely.--Mr Fink (talk) 14:40, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You can check for yourself, Mendoza et al(2006), Fortelius and Kappelman (1993) is available in The Rhino Resource Center but it seems to be down for the moment. Mike.BRZ (talk) 16:14, 9 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the Paleo DB even needs to be used as a source directly, since it usually refers to other citations itself. FunkMonk (talk) 02:25, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]