Talk:Stegocephali

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Why are there a fox and an owl on the page?[edit]

I can almost see the idea of having the frog on there, although it's not in the modern definition of Stegocephalia, but you can't get from Stegocephalia to foxes and owls without going all the way up to Chordates and then back down to Tetrapods. The phrase near the end of the article, "As such, it encompasses all presently living land vertebrates as well as their early amphibious ancestors," does not match ANYTHING about the rest of the article or the sources. Can someone who knows this stuff explain, please, and either update the article or get rid of the pix? Last1in (talk) 15:31, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The article explains how Stegocephalia was originally used for stem tetrapods and has now been redefined cladistically to include all crown tetrapods, which include frogs and owls and even pussy cats. The phylogenetic tree shows the crown tetrapods as part of Stegocephalia. From that perspective the taxobox images make sense.

However, given the alternative uses of the term it might be better to just show stem tetrapod images in the taxobox. Let's see what others say. — Jts1882 | talk 15:56, 17 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Stegocephali or Stegocephalia?[edit]

Fanboyphilosopher recently unilaterally moved the page from Stegocephalia to Stegocephali, despite a previous discussion that did not find a consensus for such a move. A preliminary look at Google Scholar results reveals that Stegocephalia (640 hits) is more commonly used than Stegocephali (360 hits). Limiting to the last decade turns up a similar pattern (93 hits vs. 63 hits). Delving into the results in more detail, a large percentage of the results for both spellings are simply turning up papers that cite papers with the taxon in the title, and a large portion of the papers that do use the spelling Stegocephali substantially are by the same author, Michel Laurin. The taxon was originally spelled Stegocephali when first named (Cope 1868), and is spelled Stegocephali in the works that defined it phylogenetically (Laurin 1998, Laurin 2020), but taxa above the rank of superfamily are not strictly regulated by the ICZN and Stegocephalia is in widespread usage. I think we need to either return to the status quo by moving this article back to Stegocephalia, or we need to have a formal move discussion retroactively to determine whether Stegocephali or Stegocephalia is the preferred title. HFoxii and Lythronaxargestes participated in the previous discussion, and I would like their input. There is also the ancillary issue of whether this article should refer to Stegocephali sensu Laurin or to Stegocephalia in the traditional, paraphyletic sense. Ornithopsis (talk) 17:59, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support move back to Stegocephalia per nom. Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:19, 12 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Ornithopsis and Hemiauchenia: As discussed earlier, stem tetrapod taxonomy is very confusing, and when it comes to discussing phylogenetic definitions, there seems to be no consensus at all. I still support the variant of the name Stegocephali because Laurin coined the cladistic use of the name Stegocephalia, but later abandoned it himself in favor of Stegocephali. The spelling "Stegocephalia" is widely accepted due to older literature where extant tetrapods were not included in this group. Moreover, attempts to redefine Stegocephalia/Stegocephali have been made almost exclusively by PhyloCode proponents (such as Michel Laurin), who feel it necessary to assign Tetrapoda to a crown group. The name Stegocephali is "official" in terms of PhyloCode (as defined in Phylonyms).

Extremely alternative:

Given the lack of consensus on stem tetrapod taxonomy, perhaps we should wait before choosing any one classification. The name Stegocephali(a) is still closely associated with the historical understanding of this taxon, even among paleontologists. There is no such obvious support as, for example, in the case of the inclusion of Aves in Dinosauria and Mammalia in Synapsida. In the end, it is not only about choosing between Stegocephali and Stegocephalia, but also about the definition of Labyrinthodontia, and about the definition of Tetrapoda, etc. Might be worth to merge Stegocephali(a) into Labyrinthodontia since historically the names "stegocephalians" and "labyrinthodonts" have been used interchangeably (with Google Scholar suggesting that the name Labyrinthodontia has been used more frequently). In this case, information about phylogenetic definitions can be transferred to Labyrinthodontia#Phylogenetic classification. HFoxii (talk) 16:26, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]