Talk:Enantiornithes

Class
Dinoguy2, your Aves change points up a problem in taxonomy. What class do non-avian avialae belong to? Reptilia? The current class system is paraphyletic and, thus, pretty artificial.Jbrougham (talk) 15:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Yup. Actually, Sauropsida, since we're generally using Benton as a source for Linnean ranks. Classification is artificial by definition. Phylogeny is not, but that's not really classification. Nobody has ever named a class Avialae so using one here is original research. Dinoguy2 (talk) 16:09, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Status of enantiornithines
Kurochkin (2006) shows the enantiornithines, along with archaeornithines, to be theropods, thereby forming the clade Sauriurae. This means that the clade Enantiornithes is not related to Ornithurae.

Kurochkin, E.N. (2006). Parallel evolution of theropod dinosaurs and birds. Zoologicheskii Zhurnal. 85(3): 283-297.


 * Only if we should take him seriously :o)--MWAK 10:14, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

K-T extinction / survival
Does anybody have any evidence-based theory on why the Enantiornithes went extinct at the K-T boundary and the Ornithurae didn't? -- Writtenonsand (talk) 07:50, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Hey Editors!
I have been adding several references to the monographs today trying to build up our many stumps. If anyone else has good research, please help me ! We have tons of unsourced and/or missing articles in this section that just need a ref or two to be credible. Thanks.Jbrougham (talk) 20:28, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Wing structure in Enantiornithes?
The article fail to say much concrete about the wings of this group. Some of the illustrations show claws on the manus, did they all have claws? Did they have three free fingers like the older groups, or just two like modern birds? What separate them as a group from the Confuciusornithidae? How do they differ from the more derived Ornithurae? Petter Bøckman (talk) 21:49, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll see about adding some of this, but the answer to all those questions is going to vary a lot. This is a highly diverse group. Some retain clawed fingers, some lost them (even within a single family like Longipterygidae). There were three fingers that were not fused together in a carpometacarpus like modern birds, but were free like in confuciusornithids, Archaeopteryx, etc. They are separayed from confuciusornithids (probably, some have hypothesized that confuciusornithids ARE enantiornithes) by their phylogenetic positiion and lak of derived confuciusornithid characters like toothlessness and fenestrae in the deltopectoral crest, among other things. The main thing that differentiates them from ornithurines is the eponymous "opposite" shoulder joint articulation, but they also lacked fanning tails with true pygostyles, having more confuciusornithid-like tail streamers in most cases. MMartyniuk (talk) 13:53, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

So, we have a group that are as primitive as the confuciusornids (or more so in Conficiornis lacking teeth), but set apart by the peculiar shoulder joint? The reason I ask these questions is that I'm editing Archaeornithes‎ these days (I love these quaint groups), and I want to understand why Livezey and Zusi (2007) added confuciusornids, but not enantiornithes to the group (I'm at home can't access the paper).


 * I did some edits for clarity, please check if I bugged something up! Petter Bøckman (talk) 18:24, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Enantiornithines are more derived than confuciusornithids in a number of ways (they're more adapted to flight, for instance). The toothless beak in confuciusornithids is convergent with that in modern birds, rather than being an indication of a closer relationship. Albertonykus (talk) 13:18, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * That was my impression too. Perhaps that's why Livezey and Zusi grouped the confuciusornithids with the Archaeornithes. I really should stick to amphibians. Petter Bøckman (talk) 17:05, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Just looked up Livezey and Zusi (2007). Wow, that's... interesting. Either they reject all classifications of Mesozoic birds used by modern research or they're unaware of most studies in the past few decades. What the heck is Rahonavis doing as an enantiornithine? Clearly these are modern bird specialists attempting to retrofit a couple of token Mesozoic bird lineages into their scheme... Bottom line is, this does not reflect our current understanding of prehistoric avian relationships in any way. Now I've got to go add all their useless "new names" (i.e. junior synonyms) to existing articles :) MMartyniuk (talk) 17:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The wonders of classification, eh? The way I read the article, they have tried to put a Linnaean structure on our current understanding of living birds like you said. Their classification of fossil groups seem more of an afterthought. If I understand them correctly, they are grouping the birds into three main groups: The Archaeornithes grade, the Enantiornithes (possibly also to be understood as a grade) and the Ornithurae. It's a neat and tidy scheme, but will no doubt have the phylogenetic nomenclaturists knickers in a bunch. Petter Bøckman (talk) 07:06, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It's neat and tidy in theory, but their included phylogeny is incredibly poor in terms of taxa sampled. None of their Euentantiornithines have been found to be enantiornithines, well, ever as far as I know. If they were using grades that made any kind of sense, Rahonavis would be in Archaeornithes and Apsaravis would be in Odontornithes. And why do they have Infraclass Aves within class Aves...? MMartyniuk (talk) 12:16, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know my birds well enough to be a judge, but what you say sounds reasonable. I think perhaps they have Dinosauria or Archosauria as a class or something like it. Petter Bøckman (talk) 13:52, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

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Enantiornithines vs Enantiornitheans
The single article that was cited as reasoning for Enantiornitheans being correct over Enantiornithines doesn’t actually mention the former being the correct terminology. In addition, many of the authors of the article have used the term “Enantiornithine” to mean a member of the Enantiornithes in later published works. Am I missing something? Luxquine (talk) 22:37, 22 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Original source that was cited for "enantiornithean" being correct, copied and pasted:
 * You, Hai-lu; Lamanna, Matthew C.; Harris, Jerald D.; Chiappe, Luis M.; O'Connor, Jingmai; Ji, Shu-an; Lü, Jun-chang; Yuan, Chong-xi; Li, Da-qing; Zhang, Xing; Lacovara, Kenneth J.; Dodson, Peter; Ji, Qiang (16 June 2006). "A Nearly Modern Amphibious Bird from the Early Cretaceous of Northwestern China". Science. 312 (5780): 1640–1643. Bibcode:2006Sci...312.1640Y. doi:10.1126/science.1126377. PMID 16778053.
 * In case a mistake was made and the incorrect journal was cited to the claim, I spent a significant amount of time to look for any source that backed up the claim on Wikipedia. I could not find any. As the term "enantiornithine" is used significantly more than "enantiornithean" in published research (a search on google scholar for "enantiornithine" returned 1,400 results, for "enanriotnithean" 44 results), it would be correct to follow along with the majority of research. The claim that "enantiornithean" is correct seems to be a fabricated claim, which is in violation with Wikipedia policy. Luxquine (talk) 00:28, 28 March 2021 (UTC)


 * The discussion of this issue is in the Supporting Online Material for You et al. 2006, under Section 1, Materials and Methods, where it says: "'The term “enantiornithean,” rather than “enantiornithine,” is used herein as an informal shorthand for a member of the clade Enantiornithes because the latter implies the existence of, and membership in, a clade “Enantiornithinae” despite the fact that no such clade has ever been recognized. Similarly, “ornithothoracean” is used instead of “ornithothoracine” because there is no clade “Ornithothoracinae,” only Ornithothoraces. The same logic applies to “ornithuran” versus “ornithurine” for Ornithurae, “hesperornithean” vs. “hesperornithine” for Hesperornithes, and “neornithean” versus “neornithine” for Neornithes. This pattern conforms to prevalent usage for other avian and non-avian theropod clade names with similar suffixes (e.g., “avian” rather than “avine” for Aves, “avialan” rather than “avialine” for Avialae, and “tetanuran” rather than “tetanurine” for Tetanurae) and brings paleornithological terminology into congruence with the nomenclature of other organisms (e.g., “gnetalean” for Gnetales, “aranean” for Araneae, “schizacean” for Schizaceae, etc.).'" Basically, "enantiornithine" suggests a group with a subfamily suffix called "Enantiornithinae" and while it is used as a matter of habit by the handful of people who extensively study this group (hence the stats favoring "enantiornithines", though there are workers who are aware of this issue and really do use and prefer "-eans" in practice), it doesn't follow the conventions used to construct other such terms and might lead to confusion for researchers, especially those working on other organisms and unfamiliar with Cretaceous bird jargon. One way to potentially avoid this controversy might simply be to use the universally accepted "Enantiornithes" in cases where it can be used interchangeably with "enantiornithines", which has the added benefit of saving some space, and then carefully reword the few places where the adjective "enantiornithine/enantiornithean" must be used.  E.g.: "Enantiornithes became extinct at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary." Cf.: "Gnetales did not become extinct at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary." Balaena857 (talk) 07:07, 12 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Indeed, the group name is not Enantiornithinae. As an encyclopedia, we need to be accurate and not mislead the reader. So the term Enantiornithines, which originated as a very ignorant mistake, had best be avoided. Enantiornithes, the correct scientific name, is a perfect alternative. Several adjectives are defendable - enantiornithean, enantiornithan, enantiornith - but enantiornithine is suboptimal.--MWAK (talk) 07:31, 18 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Adding to the above, a similar passage arguing for the use of "enantiornithean" can also be found in the main text of Harris et al. (2006). Albertonykus (talk) 23:54, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you everyone for the corrections! I've used Belaena857's suggestion of replacing "Enantiornithine" and "Enantiornithean" with "Enantiornithes" through careful rewording. Hopefully this will keep this sort of misunderstanding from occurring again. Luxquine (talk) 08:07, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

I think the "enantiornithine" battle might be lost at this point. Since 2022 I can only find the word "enantiornithean" used once in one article. I don't see "enantiornith" used at all. Meanwhile, "enantiornithine" appears ubiquitous across the literature. I agree that "-ine" is a suboptimal ending to turn a bird taxa into an adjective, but it is a common way to create adjectives (for example equine from equus). The "-ine" suffix isn't great, but it appears to have won out in usage, and we should probably accept it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DinoGarret (talk • contribs) 07:57, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

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