Talk:Dire wolf/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Adam Cuerden (talk · contribs) 11:39, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Let's dea with clarity issues first:

COMMENT 2. Thanks for that, you have just added to the article - I was not aware that Merriam had it all sorted in 1912.  William Harris  &#124;talk 08:30, 20 December 2016 (UTC) COMMENT 3. Perhaps we just run with "synonym" and leave the complexity of "subjective synonym" out of it altogether.  William Harris  &#124;talk 08:30, 20 December 2016 (UTC) COMMENT 4. I concur and shall remove it from this paragraph, plus we catch up with Aenocyon dirus nebrascensis under Evolution. (The statement was connected with the taxobox listing at some stage in the past but not any more.)  William Harris  &#124;talk 08:36, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) In Taxonomy:
 * 2) I presume Canis dirus won out over Canis indianensis due to time of coinage, despite the type specimen of the latter being older. Nonetheless, briefly explaining the rules of nomenclature - e.g. oldest name barring strong reasons to the contrary - would help those who don't already know it.
 * 1) "subjective" in "subjective synonym" is a somewhat obscure term; a definition wouldn't be a bad idea.
 * 1) "All of the above taxa were declared as subjective synonyms with Canis dirus according to Nowak in 1979, except for Aenocyon dirus nebrascensis". - Aenocyon dirus has been mentioned before; Aenocyon dirus nebrascensis has not, so this statement needs revised.

COMMENT 8. An excellent criticism, hopefully now addressed, with extra material added to the article.  William Harris  &#124;talk 11:03, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) In Evolution:
 * 2) This section starts off with "In China, the Pliocene wolf Canis chihliensis was a sister taxon of the lupus clade and may have been the ancestor for both Canis armbrusteri and Canis lupus" - The article hasn't even mentioned Armbruster's wolf yet. The information in this section simply isn't presented in a logical order, and it needs rearranged so that concepts are properly introduced before the concepts that build on them.

COMMENT 5: I suggest that Aenocyon dirus has been introduced - "In 1918, Merriam studied these fossils and proposed consolidating their names under the separate genus Aenocyon (from Aenos:terrible and cyon:wolf) to become Aenocyon dirus, however not everyone agreed with this wolf departing from genus Canis." Perhaps it would be helpful if I clarified that not everyone accepted C. dirus and that some were happy with Merriam's 1918 designation? I have added onto the end "...and the opinion of paleontologists remained divided." Regarding the complicated sentence, I have made an amendment.  William Harris  &#124;talk 09:09, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) "The late Irvingtonian wolf Aenocyon dirus nebrascensis (Frick 1930 undescribed) fossil specimens from four sites in the Hay Springs area in Sheridan County, Nebraska, may represent the earliest record of the largely Rancholabrean Canis dirus" This sentence should be taken out back and shot. Among other things, "Aenocyon" hasn't been defined or properly introduced - and is presumably a synonym for Canis dirus, so using it in this way without qualifications (e.g. "the dire wolf specimens originally named Aenocyon dirus nebrascensis") is appalling. And if that's not the meaning, what is?

"Irvingtonian" and "Rancholabrean" are presumably geological divisions, but they're not well-known ones, so need defined.

COMMENT 6: Now removed altogether. The inclusion of North American Land Mammal Ages in a number of sections only complicated the article.  William Harris  &#124;talk 09:09, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

COMMENT 9: Agreed (however it was the same citation), now fixed with one mention.  William Harris  &#124;talk 11:03, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) "however the identity of the earliest fossils is not confirmed." ends two paragraphs in a row. Sloppy.

COMMENT 10: Now fixed. It refers to the ranges of these taxa - dirus did not enter the territory that gave rise to Canis gezi and Canis nehringi i.e. Argentina.  William Harris  &#124;talk 11:03, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) "Its remains have not been found in Argentina that produced Canis gezi and Canis nehringi." - I presume there's a missing word here. Should this be "Argentinian excavations that produced", perhaps?

COMMENT 11: Agreed, now reduced to one simplified paragraph and further detail can be found on the links to C. gezi and C. nehringi. The section was designed to address the North America/South American origin of dirus controversy.  William Harris  &#124;talk 20:24, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) The whole discussion of C. gezi and C. nehringi is poorly-organised, not well connected with the discussion of C. dirus, and, frankly, very hard to follow as poorly-presented details of studies tend to conceal the main flow of information. While it's good to show how scientific ideas are derived and how they changed over time, the key facts are getting lost in unimportant details, many of which are arguably off-topic for this article, as opposed to the ones on the other species and Canis itself.


 * 1) Radiocarbon dating: People aren't going to know that YBP is short for years before present (and certainly not that "present" is defined as 1950).

COMMENT 7: Now defined under Taxonomy section.  William Harris  &#124;talk 09:09, 20 December 2016 (UTC) COMMENT 12: Paragraph now relocated as a lead-in to section "Behaviour".  William Harris  &#124;talk 20:35, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) Description: Why is the only subcategory "Size"? Frankly, this section and Adaptation are... wrongly organised. After "Paleoecology" and "Diet", Adaptation suddenly becomes "Description: Part II" for a bit
 * 2) Paleoecology The paragraph on the La Brea tar pits appears to be completely misplaced in this section.

COMMENT 14: Now relocated again, this time under Diet - as a lead-in to the tar pits and what we found about their prey from these.  William Harris  &#124;talk 10:57, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I can keep going, but the problems keep being the same issues: This article's organization makes it much harder to follow than it needs to be. Find a logical structure, organise everything to that structure, use topic sentences to help focus the reader before going into complex, detailed descriptions; define terms; and remember that things can be moved to more appropriate articles, so you can simplify discussions here, but keep the research.


 * COMMENT 1. As the main issue identified is structure, let us address that first. I have now further developed the reasoning as to why I chose a section titled "Adaption" in the paragraph immediately below that title - environment gives rise to herbivore prey which leads to wolf craniodental adaption. If this is not acceptable, then given that the dire wolf's old competitor Smilodon has been a featured article, is there any issue that you can see with applying a similar structure to Dire wolf? Regards,  William Harris  &#124;talk 07:42, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I'll continue this after lunch, but I think this is going to require some rewrites to get up to Good article status, due primarily to disorganization. The actual research is good, references look fine, and the breadth of coverage seems decent. I mean, it's hard to judge that perfectly without doing all the research again, but it doesn't have obvious missing material, save that it would be nice to have some genetic studies if they exist (there's neanderthal data, so dire wolves are in the range that they could be analysed, it's whether they have been).


 * COMMENT 13: I have been sitting on Janczewski 1992 for a while now because the attempt to extract mDNA failed. To the best of my knowledge, nobody else has tried since then. Now is the time to add it into the article. Given the advances in aDNA (ancient DNA) technology, it is only a matter of time - and funding - before another attempt is made. (PS: Reporting DNA analysis of Late Pleistocene wolves is what I do here on Wikipedia - refer Evolution of the wolf - and you can safely assume that when that work is published I will have it referred to on Wikipedia within 24 hours!)  William Harris  &#124;talk 04:07, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
 * For the record, it appears that DNA doesn't preserve well in asphalt deposits, which seems to be where most dire wolves are found (La Brea). FunkMonk (talk) 17:13, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

As it stands, this fails the GA requirements. But there is some excellent research in here. It just needs some reworking. Adam Cuerden (talk) 11:39, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'll just chime in here, as I encouraged WH to nominate this, as his first ever GAN. He works fast, so I think he should be given the chance to fix the above and the general issues of accessibility, which I think can be solved by more in-text explanation of uncommon terms and concepts. As I've mentioned before, Smilodon could be a good place to look for precedents. FunkMonk (talk) 14:06, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I should clarify that I have no intention of closing this at present. I was just stating where things stood at the moment; not there yet, but given all the research is done and there's an excellent grasp of the subject behind it, it can easily pass with some work. I'm being harsh because those few little issues are so badly hurting an article that clearly has the potential to be excellent. Adam Cuerden (talk) 14:16, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Nice, that's what I thought, I also just wanted to assure WH that I haven't just pushed him overboard, hehe. FunkMonk (talk) 14:27, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The harsher the criticism the higher the final standard, is my opinion. I like higher standards, and shall address these items shortly, thanks. Regards,  William Harris  &#124;talk 02:20, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I apologise; I will get to the next stage of this tomorrow. It's been a busy couuple days. Adam Cuerden (talk) 02:43, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It is not an issue, and we are all on the run-up to a hectic Christmas. Regards,  William Harris  &#124;talk 03:37, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Second review, and this is looking good. I'll take notes here, but if they're as minor as they're looking at first glance, I'll just leave them to be fixed after.
 * 1) If it's possible to link Salamander Cave, do so, otherwise maybe Black Hills of South Dakota?  Done.
 * 2) In the section on identification through baculum, at the end of "Description",  think it's worth specifying "complate male dire wolf specimens"? Done.
 * 3) "the bone-consuming feliform, the spotted hyena" - is it necessary to introduce a well-known species with a much less familiar term like "feliform"? I presume this is meant to indicate it's not a canid, but... Feliform removed.
 * 4) "the P4 had a relatively larger, more massive blade " etc - basically all of "Skull and dentition" - can you explain or link the tooth abbreviations for P4 and M1? Or just gloss them? (I know the latter could just be written as  "first molar (M1)", for instance; I forget what P is short for offhand. Intro sentence on dental notation added.
 * 5) in the chart following the above, why no P2 for Canis lupus? The differences in P2 between dire and grey wolves was not discussed outside of the chart, so the significance of the missing figures is unclear. The issue is that Leonard 2007 did not cover 3 mandible teeth for the lupus specimens (but did cover the upper 3), which were provided from another study on the Dire wolf. However, I will see if anyone else has produced these figures.


 * 1) (from "Range") "In the United States, its fossils have been reported in Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming,[10] and Nevada." - this might be worth showing in map form, though doing it well might be annoying. I had created such a map! Only it did not show a pattern so I did not upload it. However, given that the work has already been done and you believe it would be beneficial, I shall load it via Commons. Now done.
 * 2) (ditto) "...the Rocky Mountains and include Friesenhahn Cave, Texas, Carroll Cave, Missouri..." if we can't link the caves, can we give the nearest town and link that? E.g., "Carroll Cave, near town, Missouri"? Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:23, 12 January 2017 (UTC) Done.
 * 3) (ditto) it'd be good to link the Mexican and South American localities as well. Done.
 * 4) (from "Extinction") "The extinction of the large carnivores and scavengers is thought to be caused by the extinction of their megaherbivore prey,[18][57][71][73][83][84][85][86][87] when the dire wolf became extinct in both North and South America." - I think because of being divided up by the massive reference list, the two halves of the sentence don't actually flow together. What's meant here? Restructured sentence.
 * 5) The "Exinction" section feels a little less detailed than other sections. Added a lead in on extinction; basically we don't know all that much and it is assumed that the megaherbivore extinction was the cause - but that is an assumption.

I went ahead and fixed some minor issues myself. See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dire_wolf&type=revision&diff=759583470&oldid=759389892 to review them.

I think the remaining issues are minor, and can be fixed on the way to FA. ✅. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:36, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks Adam, I shall commence addressing those minor items shortly, and your changes to the article use better grammar than was there previously. Regards, William Harris •   (talk) •  01:42, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The minor issues above have now been addressed. Regards, William Harris •   (talk) •  21:51, 12 January 2017 (UTC)