Talk:Eoraptor

Untitled
There is a small problem with the opening of this article, in that only the full binomial name means "Dawn plunderer from the Valley of the Moon", but the binomial name, Eoraptor lunensis including the species, does not appear in the opening sentence, per guidelines, rendering this information false. Either the full binomial name needs to be mentioned somewhere in the opening paragraph, or the bit about the meaning of the full name needs fixing.-- Firsfron of Ronchester 19:40, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Good point - does this alteration do it? - Ballista 08:02, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

weird - I can get dawn, plunderer & 'of the moon' but I can't see no valley in the latin name (?) (does sound nice and poetic though..) Cas Liber 13:34, 18 June 2006 (UTC)


 * This was an inherited bit of text, from previous editing - the Latin 'lunensis' of course implies nothing of the 'valley' but, as I believe, the site of discovery was the 'Valley of the Moon' - may be a bit of wordsmithing is needed, to be more accurate (and thereby lose some of the poetry)? - Ballista 05:56, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I missed that wrong sigma, too - very sneaky! - Ballista 05:58, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Eoraptor' phylogenetic position
Remove Eoraptor from the Theropoda and place it as Saurischia incertae sedis, because Eoraptor is close to the Herrerasauridae.
 * No, because this is not a universally accepted position. There is a load of uncertainty surrounding the position of Eoraptor and the herrerasaurs, which should be (and is) reflected in the taxobox. I'll also point out that nowhere in the text is the word theropod even mentioned. Rather than removing it from a group in which it's not really included, a discussion of its phylogenetic position should be added, which I invite you to do.Dinoguy2 02:45, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Serano now says it's a sauropodomorph. — kwami (talk) 08:50, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Interesting to see there's already some discussion relating to the topic I'm here to ask about. Currently, the Eoraptor Wikipedia page treats it as a theropod. Is this actually appropriate? I get the impression there isn't a consensus about whether Eoraptor is a theropod, a sauropodomorph or a more basal kind of dinosaur. The Buriolestes Wikipedia page notes a paper from 2016 and one from 2018 both classified Eoraptor as a sauropodomorph. There's also a paper from February 2019 about the anatomy of Pampadromaeus that classifies Eoraptor as a sauropodomorph: 2A02:C7D:B943:5F00:BC25:2AF8:4F38:9B3 (talk) 15:45, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * The 2017 Ornithoscelida paper found it to be a theropod, and by their definition, therefore not a saurischian. But yeah, since there is disagreement, we shouldn't present one interpretation as "true". FunkMonk (talk) 15:55, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * So where appropriate on its Wikipedia page, should Eoraptor be referred to as a "dinosaur" rather than a "theropod"? Also, I think at least one of the aforementioned papers on Buriolestes/Pampadromaeus that classified Eoraptor as a sauropodomorph should be mentioned in the "Classification" section. They have relevance and show that Eoraptor is still classified as a sauropodomorph sometimes. 2A02:C7D:B943:5F00:694D:B2A9:BC63:A4C6 (talk) 00:54, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Is there an editor interested in updating the Eoraptor page to be neutral on its classification, so it no longer favours the theropod classification? Additionally, I'm not able to edit the Eoraptor Wikipedia page's taxonomy template as it says, "it has been decided to disallow new users to edit them." This taxonomy template needs editing too as it also states Eoraptor is a theropod. 2A02:C7D:B943:5F00:5047:9A11:655F:4EE0 (talk) 21:37, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Mislead
I notice many juvenile characters in Eoraptor such as a short snout and large eye sockets. Could it possibly be a juvenile herrerasaurid? Somebody please point me in the right direction.

That is a rather interesting idea, as both species were contemporary to eachother. Herrerasaurus had five visible clawed toes, Eoraptor only had three, Herrerasaurus also had three clawed fingers and one unclawed one, Eoraptor had only three clawed ones. so its possible but unlikely--50.195.51.9 (talk) 18:41, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * It should be possible to determine whether various sutures are fused or not (which indicates how mature it was). This might already be stated in one of the published descriptions. FunkMonk (talk) 15:57, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Strange date
231.4 Ma seems way too exact for dating. Did somebody take a few estimated ages and average them? There is a citation for that number, and someone with access to that source should probably change it to reflect the uncertainty in the date... at the very least, round it so that it doesn't look like we can claim to have it within 100 ka. Also, the article should probably cite Sereno et al. 1993, the first published finding of Eoraptor lunesis. (P.C. Sereno, C.A. Forster, R.R. Rogers, and A.M. Monetta, Primitive dinosaur skeleton from Argentina and the early evolution of Dinosauria. Nature 361, 64-66, 1993.)


 * The paper is free access via the doi link, but I added a direct link to the pdf for convenience. The paper doesn't express any ambiguity over the exact date. It's not uncommon for dating using radioactive direct measurement (rather than say, index fossils) to arrive at precise dates within 100k years. The problem is that this technique isn't used very often, only for high-visibility or "important" localities (K-T boundary, Jehol biota, and these earliest dinosaurs, for example). MMartyniuk (talk) 00:05, 18 February 2011 (UTC)


 * The date was once expressed as 227.8 ± 0.3 Ma based on the chronostratigraphic findings of the Ischigualasto Formation. See: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/260/5109/794 and https://paulsereno.uchicago.edu/exhibits_casts/early_dinosaurs/eoraptor/. According to the paper, the fossils were found in the formation known as Cancha de Bochas Member in the Valle de la Luna, and as per https://www.jstor.org/stable/27670566 Rogers gave an estimate in 2008 of 227.8 ± 0.3 Ma. In 2011, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/331/6014/206 brackets the age between 231.4 and 225.9 Ma. So an estimate of 228.65 ± 2.75 is likely more accurate, and aligns well with Sereno's 228 Ma value. Thangalin (talk) 22:29, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Inaccurate Body Length
The adult body length suggested by http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2013.820113 could have reached 150 cm (4.92 feet) in length; the holotype PVSJ 559 was ~1.3 m (4.2 feet) and holotype PVSJ 512 (the first specimen; https://www.nature.com/articles/361064a0) was 1 m. This then implies that the scale for https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Human-eoraptor_size_comparison.svg is off. Thangalin (talk) 22:09, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

“Five digits”
Whether this claim is true or not depends on how “digit” is defined. In a strict sense a digit only comprises the digital phalanges, but in a wider sense it also includes the corresponding metacarpal (phalanges + metacarpal = “digital ray”). According to the detailed description given by Sereno et al. (2013) E. lunensis possessed five metacarpals, but its phalangeal formula is given as 2-3-4-1?-0. This means that Eoraptor had five digital rays, but only four digits “sensu strictu”, the fourth of which was only a “stump”... --Gretarsson (talk) 22:52, 21 June 2019 (UTC)