Category talk:Feathered dinosaurs

Restrictions
It seems to me that this category is only useful if it is restricted to non-avian dinosaurs which show fossil evidence of feathers, as per the description line. As it stands about half the animals listed do not meet this criterion or are definately within clade Avialae. I'm removing these links and adding missing names. Let me know if I'm out of line here. I'll leave the present entries for family level taxa since they contain fossilized feathers. --Dinoguy2 04:59, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Psittacosaurus
I have removed "Archaeoraptor" due to it not being a real taxon and added a few missing taxa. Should Psittacosaurus count, too? We have Tianyulong... Albertonykus (talk) 23:58, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that Psittacosaurs quills have ever been explicitly linked to feathers. But it could be added as it's relevant to the topic. So should Archaeoraptor, even though it's not valid. This category isn't a phylogeny, just a collection of related articles. If the category was Avifilopluma, that's actually a clade and would be a different story. This is just a topic. MMartyniuk (talk) 01:40, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I see. However, the description says "non-avian dinosaur genera that have been shown by fossil evidence to have been feathered", which makes it sound like it only includes actual taxa and not just the whole subject, which led me to delete Archaeoraptor. And what about groups that include the feathered taxa? Would they fit? Albertonykus (talk) 04:17, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see... actually I think I put that qualifier in there years ago to help keep taxa inferred to be feathered via bracketing out :) As for groups it depends on what we want the use of this cat to be. I suppose that "mission statement" could include higher taxa the feathered species belong to, but not those inferred via bracketing. So Oviraptorosauria can be included but not Oviraptoridae. And "Archaeoraptor" is a feathered dinosaur genus, just not a valid one (it's a nomen nudum)... would be like including "Ovoraptor" under Category:Dromaeosauridae, if "ovoraptor" had its own article for some reason. Which wouldn't be a bad idea (not that I think that case deserves a separate article). MMartyniuk (talk) 05:33, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Understood. Come to think of it, there are other doubtful genera in the list, too. (Like "Cryptovolans" and "Epidendrosaurus", though through synonymy rather than being hoaxes.) How broad should the groups be, if we were to add them? Up to Coelurosauria? (Heterodontosauridae in the case of Tianyulong.) Albertonykus (talk) 23:51, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I probably wouldn't go that far, since we don't know the feather status of basal coelurosaurs (or really, which things ARE basal coelurosaurs). I'd say Tyrannoraptora at most (though we don't have an article on that one, probably for the best, don't need an article on every last clade ever named even if they're two nodes apart and are nearly identical in content). MMartyniuk (talk) 04:27, 3 June 2010 (UTC)