Talk:Notiomastodon

Merge discussion again

After several years I think it is time to bring up this discussion again, For anyone here who needs a refresher, To summarise, there has been a lot of discussion about the validity of gomphothere taxa in south america. The current concensus view is that there are only two taxa, Cuveronius and Notiomastodon platensis, and that other named taxa like haplomastodon are synonyms of Notiomastodon. All current workers agree on this. A minority of workers believe that Notiomastodon platensis belongs to the genus Stegomastodon, but this isn't borne out by phylogenetic results. Since the dubious iguandon taxa have been merged by Lusotitan, and all current workers agree that Haplomastodon is a synonym of notiomastodon, it should be merged into this article. @FunkMonk:, @WolfmanSF: @Dunkleosteus77: @Onel5969: @Kevmin: @Casliber: @TheDarkMaster2: @Tisquesusa: any comments? Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:26, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Not a subject I know much about, but if there is a scientific consensus of sorts, sure. Could the key sources be listed for scrutiny/the record? FunkMonk (talk) 17:38, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Key sources: Main thrust of the argument showing that Cuvieronius and Notiomastodon are the only two mastodonts in south america. Reponse by minority that Notiomastodon belongs to Stegodon by Argentine workers, they still believe that Haplomastodon belongs to X.platensis. Unfortunately the first article is behind a paywall (Edit:it is available on researchgate) and the second one is open access but entirely in Spanish, but you should be able to google translate it. Most of the other papers are by the first camp and re-iterate the same point, so I didn't think they were including. I can provide other sources if necessary.Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:52, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

The pdf is available at ResearchGate. WolfmanSF (talk) 20:15, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, which articles/genera would be affected by this? FunkMonk (talk) 18:05, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Stegomastodon and Notiomastodon both have sections dedicated to that controversy, so there is no real need to modify them, Haplomastodon, as previously mentioned. Cuvieronius has a bit on it in the distribution section but that could be expanded. Many of the original species were known under the dubious name Mastodon so perhaps there should be a section in that article, as historically the genus Mastodon (as opposed to the genus mammut of the american mastodon where the article links) was used a wastebasket taxon to refer to many proboscideans. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:30, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Seems that the "response" paper doesn't actually cite or discuss the earlier paper? It would appear that it was published without them being aware of the proposed synonymy? @Rextron:, a native Spanish speaker, is probably our best bet at giving an overview of that later paper. FunkMonk (talk) 18:41, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

I think that paper is responding to a 2012 paper by the same authors (Mothé et al) that only discussed the lowlands which I neglected to link earlier, my apologies. An incredibly helpful detailed breakdown as well as a timeline that makes clear the convoluted taxonomic history is in the 2016 Mothé et al paper, and is essentially mandatory to understand the taxonomic history. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:45, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

There is also a second paper by the Alberdi et al from 2015 cited in Mothé et al 2016, which might shed better light on their argument. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:54, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

I can quote the whole taxonomic section from Mothé et al 2016 if that would be helpful Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:06, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

It says old school of thought is Stegomastodon is endemic to North America whereas Notiomastodon is endemic to South America. The split between them was justified based on: the absence of Stegomastodon remains in Central America, Stegomastodon is known from the Pliocene to the Middle Pleistocene whereas South American gomphotheres from the Upper Pleistocene, and apparent morphological differences based on little remains (North American forms are more graviportal, some unspecified difference in the mandible, and it says " presencia de colinas en Stegomastodon en comparación a las formas sudamericanas..." which is "the presence of hills in Stegomastodon in comparison to South American forms" and I don't know what that's supposed to mean) so the authors recommended synonymy at least until more complete remains of Stegomastodon could be found and prove otherwise. But in any case, I still see recent sources using Haplomastodon, not really consensus   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  19:12, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

@Dunkleosteus77: Can you cite those sources?, Whenever I've seen similar statements they just seem to be on papers about individual localities and are ignorant of the current literature and tend to use the name that the specimen was given historically, and don't cite recent taxonomic literature at all. there doesn't really seem to be any pushback to the idea that all of the Haplomastodon species belong to Notiomastodon since Feretti 2010, which I wouldn't consider recent literature. I should again re-iterate that this dicussion is about the Haplomastodon-Notiomastodon merger, not the Stegomastodon-Notiomastodon discussion, which is aleady adequately covered in both articles and should be kept separate as there isn't consensus to merge them anyway. It is worth noting that Mothé et al produced a paper responding to the 2016 spanish paper Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:21, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

I just want to state for the record, that I find there is at the least three genera; Cuveronius, Stegomastodon and Notiomastodon. The fourth species I'll admit is more dubious, however we must be wary to avoid the waste basket approach. Gompotherium itself is starting to be considered seperate genera.TheDarkMaster2 (talk) 21:47, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

The Spanish paper doesn't really discuss Haplomastodon at all so it's not really relevant, and no recent sources that talk about taxonomy use Haplomastodon as a valid taxon, but I see some saying it's referred to Stegomastodon ([1][2]) because they consider Notiomastodon to also be synonymous with Stegomastodon   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  00:12, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with this subject, but this recent (2019!) review article says the following:

However, there is still no clear consensus regarding the classification of the lowland gomphotheres. For instance, the genus Haplomastodon, defined based on the single species Haplomastodon chimborazi — presenting a high cranium and curved tusks without enamel band—was later integrated into the genus Stegomastodon (Parodi 1962; Prado et al. 2005; Lucas and Alvarado 2010). However, there are still authors arguing for the validity of the genus Haplomastodon (Ferretti 2010; Lucas and Alvarado 2010).

Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 02:29, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I have read that chapter abstract also. I think using literature from 2010 to imply that there is "still argument" is pretty Odd. I don't think 2010 is recent literature when it comes to the rapid pace of modern taxonomy. All of those Iguanodonid synonyms like Huxleysaurus etc came out in 2010 and after, and all of those were merged without much argument. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:56, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I support merging to go with the conclusions of the extensive review by Mothé et al.; given the shortness of the Haplomastodon article, I doubt the subject deserves the amount of discussion it has provoked. In a few more years we may have enough collagen sequences to settle the matter. WolfmanSF (talk) 07:23, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Fair enough. Latest word from the author of that review article seems to indicate a preference for sinking both Haplomastodon and Notiomastodon into Stegomastodon. From the consensus among recent literature I think a merge of Haplomastodon into Notiomastodon is in order as well. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 09:18, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm seeing that is a recent paper from Prado and Alberdi (2020) [3] that still supports that N. platensis should be included in Stegomastodon. However, it doesn't have many details about this, just says "The complex wear pattern of the molar occlusal region was a variable character (generally, molar morphology and size are markedly variable in most of the Proboscidean families). Specimens currently assigned to either Cuvieronius or Stegomastodon examined in this study showed no morphological differences across the specimens from both North and South America that may support the classification of Stegomastodon and Notiomastodon as two different genera."--Rextron (talk) 09:34, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I think it's pretty clear that individual molars are not diagnostic between gomphothere taxa beyond gomphotheriidae indet, as the original molars cuvier described in the 1805 are not considered diagnostic either. I think that with all major authors agreeing that Haplomastodon is synonymous with N/S. platensis. I support merge between the two articles. As apparently the dispute about the genus of N/S. platensis is still ongoing the respective articles should be kept separate until the issue is definitively settled. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:48, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• Haplodon has now been merged into this article   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  16:40, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Relocating Notiomastodon Sections for Consistency.

I must say I think this article about Notiomastodon is well-written that I would love to see someone (preferably the original author, but they seem inactive) promote it to at least good article status, Cenezoic prehistoric animals outside the obviously well-known (Megalodon, Smilodon, Aenocyon, Mammuthus) are extremely underrepresented as good/featured articles in general. That being said, I think that that the research history, classification, and evolutionary history pages should be transferred to the beginning of the page instead of the end to be more consistent with other paleontological pages. Do I have permission to relocate the sections myself (not doing good article-checking, I have no expertise in that nor am I an expert on prehistoric proboscideans)? PrimalMustelid (talk) 01:21, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

We can start by pinging the main writer, Rextron, for input. FunkMonk (talk) 09:35, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Sure. @Rextron, what do you think about relocating some of the Notiomastodon sections to the beginning of the article for the sake of paleontological taxon article consistency (and potentially promoting it to good article status at least if you have the time)? PrimalMustelid (talk) 11:58, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi, well, lastly I have not too much time, but if it is necessary to do a reorganization of the sections, I have no problem. with that. And I'll try to answer if there are more doubts or comments. --Rextron (talk) 08:51, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Rextron, as far as I can tell, you didn't even write most of this, this is an obvious reworking of DagdaMor's german version, who you made no attempt at crediting. I had to do a lot of work to clean this up given that it contained numerous and repeated translation errors. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:43, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Alright, I shifted the sections around for consistency. I think you'll need to investigate the "cite journal" sources of errors and maintenances to correct them (the reference style in this page might be a bit odd compared to how sources are normally mentioned) as well as mention fauna of South America it likely shared its habitat/distribution with (glyptodonts, ground sloths, toxodonts, Macrauchenia, New World horses, llamas, Smilodon, Homotherium, Panthera onca mesembrina), but otherwise I don't have any other major suggestions. PrimalMustelid (talk) 18:22, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

To elaborate on the reference style, normally the references section uses "{ { reflist|30em } }" (brackets spaced out to not create a template on accident) so that the sources list looks much cleaner. Look at the Columbian mammoth page for instance, it uses that and lists its various sources in prior sections. At least some sources you've mentioned are missing "{ {cite journal" as well, which is a bit odd. I think the source style in this page needs to be revamped to be more consistent with other taxon pages not to mention cleaner looking, but I do think this article's good work. PrimalMustelid (talk) 18:36, 3 December 2022 (UTC)