Talk:Heterodontosauridae

Frustration
Argh... I rewrote almost this entire article over the last few days and then I lost it all by accident. So now I will re-rewrite it! Sheep81 07:46, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

GA Passed
Based on the criteria listed at WP:WIAGA I am going to pass this article as a Good Article! Congrats! --Jayron32| talk | contribs 04:14, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you! J. Spencer 05:21, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Footprints
Can we please have some citations of these prints and published speculation about heterodontosaurs making them? Sheep81 (talk) 03:06, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Olsen, P. & Baird, D. (1986) "Ichnogenus Atreipus and Triassic Biostratigraphy" in Padian, K. The Beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs: Faunal Change Across the Triassic Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521367794 has a small bit on page 77 about the ichnogenus Atreipus having a bird-like tridactyl pes; the authors compare it to Heterodontosaurus.


 * Pazzaglia, F.J. (2006) Excursions in Geology And History: Field Trips in the Middle Atlantic States Geological Society of America ISBN 0813700086 has an illustration showing the somewhat bird-like fossil footprint of "heterodontosaur Atreipus milfordensis" (but no hallux). They're only discussing the eastern U.S. however.


 * The Paleobiology Database indicates Atreipus lived in Europe, North America, and South America. I don't know what sources Dysmorodrepanis was using, and don't know anything about the specific ichnogenus mentioned in the new entry, but speculation about Tr/J tridactyl footprints belonging to heterodontosaurs has definitely been published. Let's get some citations for all the new info, though. :) Firsfron of Ronchester  12:27, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah my knowledge of footprints is crappy... wish I knew more. Sheep81 (talk) 19:25, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, if there is some area of paleo that you must be knowledge deficient in, footprints are probably the way to go, Sheep. ;) Firsfron of Ronchester  05:55, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I always suspected that they were bitey little so-and-sos
From a DML post on this year's Palaeontological Association meeting:

"Two studies of heterodontosaurs agree that they were not sexually dimorphic and that the tusks were already present in juveniles. Morphology, wear and the weakness of the lower jaw suggests that the teeth were used for straight biting, but not tearing or slashing. The conclusion was that the tusks were probably not used for intra-species fighting or display, nor for defence, but that heterodontosaurs were omnivores living in semi-arid habitat and used the teeth to kill smallish prey."

I'm hoping for a Tetrapod Zoology post out of this. J. Spencer (talk) 21:45, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm hoping to at least see the abstract so I can add a little snippet to this article! Sheep81 (talk) 06:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've found the PalAss abstract volume pdf; the relevant abstracts are p. 45, 79, and 83. J. Spencer (talk) 21:27, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

 * This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Heterodontosauridae/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

GA Sweeps: Pass
As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria. I went through the article and made various changes, please look them over. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. Altogether the article is well-written and is still in great shape after its passing in 2007. Continue to improve the article making sure all new information is properly sourced and neutral. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have updated the article history to reflect this review. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 22:22, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Eocursor and Pisanosaurus
What other family would Eocursor and Pisanosaurus fit into if not Heterdontosauridae? They may be farther apart than the other Heterodontosaurs, but they are also the closest animals to it and share features in common with them. Most importantly they are more related to the Heterodontosaurs than to any other family and are not placed in any other family of their own. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CF97:4500:41AB:2414:FB4D:C366 (talk) 15:59, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The thing is, researchers haven't consistently found them in a family, and in fact they don't have to be in a family at all. J. Spencer (talk) 04:14, 7 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Also, you are making the common mistake to assume that species one step down the evolutionary tree are more closely related to species one step up than to the remainder of the tree. This is incorrect. Heterodontosaurus is, presuming it's more "basal", just as closely related to Eocursor as it is to Paralophosaurus. Whether branches are placed on the same side of the tree trunk is basically arbitrary. And the number of branching events has no implications for the closeness of the relationship. Putting Eocursor into the Heterodontosauridae would make the latter group paraphyletic.


 * While it is true that Eocursor has traits in common with heterodontosaurids, this is also true for any other living being on the planet. Furthermore, modern taxonomy is not based on similarity of build but merely on descent. But even if it were otherwise: Eocursor is in fact very different from the heterodontosaurids which are an extremely specialised group.


 * As regards Pisanosaurus: this is a good example of why paraphyletic taxa are such a bad idea. According to recent research it is not even a dinosaur.--MWAK (talk) 09:15, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Pisanosauridae is Synonymous with Heterodontosauridae
When searching for the classification of Pisanosaurus under the classification heading of the Pisanosaurus page I found this:

Pisanosaurus is the type genus of the Pisanosauridae, a family erected by Casamiquela in the same paper which named Pisanosaurus.[5] The Pisanosauridae family has fallen into disuse, as a 1976 study considered the group synonymous with the already named Heterodontosauridae.[8]

The paper cited in support of this is here:

''Bonaparte, J.F. (1976). "Pisanosaurus mertii Casamiquela and the origin of the Ornithischia". Journal of Paleontology. 50 (5): 808–820. JSTOR 1303575.''

As such Pisanosaurus would belong to the Heterodontosauridae, as would intermediary genera between Pisanosaurus and later heterodontosaurs such as Eocursor. For this reason I have added both Pisanosaurus and Eocursor to the page. (from User:Jfraatz)


 * As if 1976 taxonomy still holds up today. Lythronaxargestes (talk &#124; contribs) 04:40, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

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Pronating hands or not?
Could this group pronate their hands?184.186.4.209 (talk) 21:04, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
 * No, active pronation of the forearm was not possible, as far as we know, in any animal except for mammals and chamaeleons. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:13, 1 August 2019 (UTC)