Talk:Hypsilophodontidae

Monophyly of Hypsilophodontidae
The page http://www.taxonsearch.org/dev/taxon_edit.php?Action=View&tax_id=172 labels Hypsilophodontidae as active, based on the definition by Sereno (1998), which defines this family to include "all euornithopods closer to Hypsilophodon than to Parasaurolophus".

P. C. Sereno. 1998. A rationale for phylogenetic definitions, with application to the higher-level taxonomy of Dinosauria. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie, Abhandlungen 210(1):41-83.

Hexinlusaurus, a non-ornithopod ornithischian
Barrett et. al. (2005) showed Hexinlusaurus to be outside of Ornithopoda and placed it as Neornithischia incertae sedis. For this reason, remove Hexinlusaurus from this page.

Barrett, P.M., Butler, R. J., et Knoll, F. 2005. Small-bodied ornithischian dinosaurs from the Middle Jurassic of Sichuan, China. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 25:823-834.

Hypsilophodontidae
Why isn't the title Hypsilophodontidae?--MWAK 07:47, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think we have any guidelines about this--Wiki guidelines say all articles should use common names or as close as possible, and while most dino articles use the full scientific name, some don't (like Therizinosaur), especially some category names (like Cat:Tyrannosaurs). Dinoguy2 08:25, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
 * That, and there really isn't much of a Hypsilophodontidae as far as a monophyletic group goes, so the idiosyncracy comes in handy in this case. J. Spencer 14:23, 15 August 2007 (UTC)


 * But of what exactly would "hypsilophodont" be the common name? Not of a member of Hyspilophodontidae, for then the correct English form would be "hypsilophodontid". It would be the name for a member of Hypsilophodontia, a rather recent term that has been rarely used and has fallen completely out of favour now. Of course applying a vague concept can be very useful in science sometimes, but in an encyclopedia the poor resolution of basal Iguanodontia should not serve as an excuse to keep the paraphyletic ghost of a stillborn notion alive — especially as the vast majority of readers will be utterly confused about the exact status of such a notion. So perhaps we would best make it a guideline to use the scientific name in these cases :o). Another, minor, point is that the names of groups should be plural — even if the set has a known content of one...--MWAK 16:22, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't thisarticle be merged with Hypsilophodon? FunkMonk (talk) 04:05, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Merge
At best it could be used to explain the historical term and general palaeobiology of that grade of ornithopod, but at worst it's still being linked to by ornithopod articles as if it's valid, and it itself even tries its best to treat it as one. I think, unless it is significantly altered, this article should be merged with its sole member, Hypsilophodon. Lusotitan (talk) 01:46, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Such articles should not be deleted, but merged into whatever they're synonymous with. There is still useful historical information, at least. Use FunkMonk (talk) 02:00, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Original comment has been edited as such. Lusotitan (talk) 02:12, 21 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I still believe my suggestion above (of 2007 :o), to rename it Hypsilophodontidae, is the best solution. The concepts simply do not coincide. Making Hypsilophodontidae a redirect to Hypsilophodon could be very misleading when that term, used in its old scope, is linked. And a thorough treatment of the historic use of the concept is out of place in the Hypsilophodon article. Indeed, under the WP: Summary Style policy such information should be split off! Furthermore, it was defined as a clade by Sereno in 2005. This has already led to a very broad Hypsilophodontidae in the Zheng (2009) analysis and future studies could also recover a clade that was not monospecific. The only practical attitude in such situations is to simply explain the meaning and history of a certain term and forego metaphysical questions about its "ultimate scientific validity". Wikipedia is not a biology textbook.--MWAK (talk) 22:09, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I think this article is still relevant, if significantly re-done. Norman et al 2014 recovers the clade defined as Hypsilophodontia, including Hypsilophodon and Tenontosaurus. This may not be the consensus but it shows that the group is potentially still useable, as well as having historical importance. IJReid { {T - C - D - R} } 05:26, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think that should be added then. FunkMonk (talk) 11:20, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm, it appears that this article is focused on the family Hypsilophodontidae and not the group Hypsilophodontia. Hypsilophodontia has a separate article, but I'm unsure at to whether is has the preferred name or nor. I'll keep looking, but I'm wondering if this article should be moved to Hypsilophodontidae and have Hypsilophodontia redirected to it? IJReid { {T - C - D - R} } 01:14, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I did a Google Scholar search, and Hypsilophodontidae comes up with 500 more results than Hypsilophodontia, so I'd like to request to move this article to Hypsilophodontidae to follow our other family-level articles. I don't have the power to more over a redirect. IJReid { {T - C - D - R} } 03:13, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
 * "Hypsilophodont" refers to either, no? In that case, only the text would have to be changed. FunkMonk (talk) 13:01, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Ok, later today I'll redirect Hypsilophodontia here and combine and rewrite the text. IJReid { {T - C - D - R} } 14:42, 27 October 2017 (UTC)