Template:Did you know nominations/Acer ivanofense

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by BlueMoonset (talk) 21:02, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Acer ivanofense

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• ... that the extinct maple Acer ivanofense is known from only four Alaskan fossils?

• Reviewed: Paleontology in the United States
• Comment: See the A. ivanofense entry on page 230 of Wolfe & Tanai; nomination for review of Paleontology in Minnesota (part of Paleontology in the United States multi-nomination hook.)

Created/expanded by Kevmin (talk). Self nom at 22:52, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• Created on Dec 17, so new enough. Long enough at 2591 characters of prose. Inline sources throughout the article. Could not detect problems with close paraphrasing. QPQ done. The hook is fine, backed by an inline citation. However: it says that the species is known from only four fossils - the source lists them, but how do we know there aren't more? GregorB (talk) 22:32, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

• We don't know this, we also don't know if the four still exist, but reported in the published literature for the species, verifiably there are only four.--Kevmin § 23:52, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

• Well, that's what I meant: strictly looking at the provided source, how do we know it reports on all known examples? GregorB (talk) 08:22, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

• It is the only recorded source where fossils of the species have been identified as that species. Any identification of fossils as A. ivanofense without description in a paper are not considerable as reliable. Remember venerability and not fact for a wiki article, and the only verifiable record at this time is the type description of the species.--Kevmin § 00:22, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

• This is precisely the problem: while I have no reason to believe that what the hook says is not true (on the contrary), the table in question is captioned "Occurrences and cited specimens of fossil Acer in North America". So, if there were other A. ivanofense fossils (i.e. outside of North America), they would not have been listed in this table. This means that the table can only support the assertion there were four fossils found in North America, not necessarily in the world. Apparently, Acer species grow (or did grow) in the northern hemisphere, which - unless there is a reliable statement to the contrary for this particular species - does not rule out Europe or Asia. While I've indeed found no mention of other fossils, making the statement in question highly plausible to say the least, I'd still like to be cautious with the interpretation of the hook and its sources. I'm therefore provisionally passing the hook, but I'm also hereby asking for a second opinion. GregorB (talk) 18:36, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

• If I'm reading the above correctly, I believe omitting the word "only" from the hook allows for the possibility of there being others out there that aren't discussed (albeit not from Alaska or North America), while not removing much of the impact of the hook, so I'm promoting it to a prep set. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:02, 22 December 2012 (UTC)