Talk:Latimeria

Merge back to Coelacanth
As a split article, I don't think this is very useful. When people think of the modern era fish, they think the order name Coelacanth not the family name Latimeria. The Coelacanth page can easily accommodate Latimeria information. I propose a merger back, and possibly save the infobox (and any other Latimeria specific info) into the Coelacanth article. --Eqdoktor 09:56, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * That makes sense to me. Aroundthewayboy 03:49, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. Feel free to merge this into Coelacanth if anyone has time. Mamyles (talk) 21:24, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Makes no sense at all. Coelacanths are a huge group with dozens of extinct species, Latimeria is a genus containing the only two extant species. It would be like merging elephant into proboscidea. We don't have to conform to the ignorance of the average reader, we are here to enlighten them. FunkMonk (talk) 10:13, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, let's just merge Tyrannosaurus with dinosaur while we're at it, since that's the dinosaur everyone thinks of. Keep these separate, of course, merging them makes no sense and simply perpetuates ignorance and the myth that the modern coelacanth is a living fossil. Dinoguy2 (talk) 11:41, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed, love your sarcasm.  Gunkarta  talk 03:04, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't understand your point. Latimeria is a Genus that includes only living Coelacanth species. The page describes only Coelacanth, and goes into quite a bit of detail all of which overlaps with the Coelacanth article (how they live, at what depths, reproduction, history of modern discovery). There is no information in this article that does not fit better, or is not already duplicated, in Coelacanth. Mamyles (talk) 14:00, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe your issue is that Coelacanth is intended to be about the whole order. If that is so, Coelacanth should only summarize what is in this Latimeria article and link to it in a more prominent way ("Main article: Latimeria"), rather than go into vast details that are not all even included in this article. Perhaps a better proposal would be to merge this family's details (history, conservation, ecology, life history, distribution) from Coelacanth here. Mamyles (talk) 14:17, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Everything specific to the living genus should of course be here as well. But there is no reason to remove it entirely from the coelacanth article. FunkMonk (talk) 17:13, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree, there should be a summary or redirect to the full details/content in all related places. There is no reason, however, to maintain four articles with so many overlapping details on the same subject. I do not see why a reader, whether an expert or a layperson, would ever want to read an article that contains incomplete details, when all of the relevant information can be neatly presented in a single article. There should be one authoritative article on the living Coelacanth, so that readers can digest the (sparse) information we have on them from one page, rather than missing some important details as it is presently organized. For example, there are currently some details about the Latimeria family in Coelacanth that are not in the family article, and vise-versa.

The proposal above was to make the authoritative article be Coelacanth, as that's the name most people associate with these extant creatures and likely to be the search term. I think that the Coelacanth article would be the best location for the ~10 paragraphs of details on the two living species, at least until the amount of content outgrows a single article. Rather than confusing readers by perpetuating the 'myth' that these are living fossils, having the authoritative article be Coelacanth would clear up such myths by also prominently including sections on the evolution of the order. To prevent duplication of editing effort, and to ensure that readers get the most up-to-date information, redirects would be appropriate to the authoritative article (from Latimeria, West Indian Ocean coelacanth, and Indonesian coelacanth). Mamyles (talk) 17:54, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The main problem is that, as pointed out, much info in this article is needlessly duplicated at Coelocanth. The fact is that almost none of the information applicable to Latimeria can be stated with regards to coelocanths in general. Mawsonia, for example, is another well known coelocanth, similar in appearance and closely related to Latimeria, with an utterly different biology and ecology. The "Discovery" section at Coelocanth talks exclusively about the discovery of Latimeria, and barely even touches on the history of study of the other coelocanths, it has no information on who first found a coelocanth fossil, who named them, early interpretations, etc., just jumps right to the sensational "living fossil" story. It is problematic that people only know the term coelocanth as applicable to the one extant genus; it's a situation analogous to finding a living sauropod and then having all extinct sauropods, from Diplodocus to Brachiosaurus, lumped unceremoniously into a single article focusing on the living one which would likely be a totally different sort of animal. Very frustrating. As a compromise, perhaps we should simply move Latimeria to Coelocanth (apparently a widely used "common name" for these two species), and make the current Coelocanth article Coelocanthiformes. Either way, it's clear that somebody needs to do a lot more work on coelocanths - there is barely any information about them at wiki other than that which applies to Latimeria, which is a shame for a diverse and well known order of fish. Dinoguy2 (talk) 18:17, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * It's very disingenuous to merge Latimeria and its species articles back into Coelacanth, as it perpetuates the misconception that there is and only one "Coelacanth" ever, nevermind that the fossil record easily suggests otherwise. If anything, I would suggest that most of the Latimeria-specific information be removed from Coelacanth in order to clarify that the article is about the order of coelacanths, and not just about the last two extant species.--Mr Fink (talk) 18:48, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I would agree with Mr Fink here. -Hi there. My name is DN-boards1. This is my userpage, this is my talk page. Got it? 23:45, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, I was not suggesting that all info that is ever added to the Latimeria pages should be duplicated in the coelacanth article, just that the text that is currently there would not necessarily have to be completely removed... Rather, it should be supplemented with info about the extinct genera. FunkMonk (talk) 14:59, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * That would be better, or at least, streamlined and supplemented with information on other genera so that the bulk of the article is not devoted only to Latimeria.--Mr Fink (talk) 15:12, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that describing living Coelacanth exclusively in the order article would be misleading. Most articles about sea creature orders do focus on describing living species. Take the shark superorder Selachimorpha, a good article. It is much like Coelacanth where it includes evolution and taxonomy, and then proceeds to describe living species. Coelacanth could be structured similarly: a single article that includes the history, evolution/taxonomy, and behavior of modern Coelacanth. Interesting species like Mawsonia could be mentioned in the evolution section, to help to stamp out the 'living fossil' myth by drawing attention to fossils that do not at all resemble the modern species. The current Coelacanth article barely mentions Mawsonia at all.

Note that because the content about these creatures is so sparse, we would need all of the information on one page to get to an acceptable length and topic depth for good or featured article status. Mamyles (talk) 15:26, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The main problem of the Coelacanth article is that it focuses almost exclusively on the living species, and barely mentions any of the other extinct taxa, notable or not. But to merge Latimeria back into Coelacanth because it's the last living taxon would be like merging Red Panda back into Carnivora because it is its respective group's last living taxon.  It would be fine to have a general summary of Latimeria in Coelacanth, but, having Coelacanth as the go-to page for Latimeria will only exacerbate the "coelacanth as a living fossil" problem.--Mr Fink (talk) 15:38, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that the lack of extinct descriptions is a problem. I volunteer to do some major rework to Coelacanth when this merging discussion is over, including adding comparisons to extinct taxa, if an expert doesn't have the time.
 * What I imagine for the Coelacanth article is to make it a one-stop shop about Coelacanth, both living and extinct. It would look nearly the same as it does now, but with redirects from the living family and two species, since all of their information can fit nicely into one article. We do have articles that comprise an entire order, family, and species. Take for example Ceratodontiformes (Queensland lungfish), although rather than using the species name as the article title, use the order's name since it is the most common and recognizable of all options (order, family, species). And of course, Coelacanth would go into more detail on taxonomy & evolution than Ceratodontiformes does.
 * Admittedly, I'm relatively amateur on taxonomy, so if you experts continue to disagree with that vision, I could settle with Dinoguy2's idea: Moving Coelacanth to Coelocanthiformes, merging the two coelacanth species into Latimeria, and then moving Latimeria to Coelacanth. Mamyles (talk) 17:09, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Ceratodontiformes neatly demonstrates why I disagree, in that on that page, in that there is no discussion, let alone obligatory name-dropping, of any other ceratodontid lungfish beyond mentioning that there were others in the lede, not even an attempt at discussing ceratodontid evolution. And by merging Latimeria into Coelacanth, we would only reinforce the misconception that there has only been one Coelacanth since the beginning of time.--Mr Fink (talk) 17:37, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm starting to understand what you're getting at. Coelacanth & the living family/species articles currently have substantial problems with missing content (of extinct species) and duplication of content (of living species). However, part of the solution must be to greatly expand a description of the distinct taxa & evolution. So that then Coelacanth contains a summary of the extinct, a summary of the living, and the taxonomy table. The full details of the living species that are currently there would be put in Latimeria (with a prominent link above the living summary in Coelacanth), which would be the "one stop shop" that I desired while reading. Readers searching for information on the living species would likely end up at Coelacanth, learning that there are many extinct species and not just the modern coelacanth, and then eventually click on Latimeria for the full history & ecology.
 * Is the above more along the lines of what you prefer? If so, when Coelacanth & Latimeria are rewritten, do you think it would be a good idea to have the two species articles (West Indian Ocean coelacanth and Indonesian coelacanth) be redirects, since otherwise they would simply duplicate content in Latimeria? Mamyles (talk) 17:59, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what I had in mind exactly, and I agree that the two species of Latimeria would be better off as redirects to the genus.--Mr Fink (talk) 18:35, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Totally against merging, it is utterly nonsensical to merge a species article to a genus article. I think every species (extinct or still alive) ever roamed this earth deserves their own wikipedia article. Merging Latimeria menadoensis to Coelacanth seems to promote ignorance and overlooked diversity and subtle differences.  Gunkarta  talk 02:47, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Can you elaborate on how having one family article, that fully describes both species and all their subtle differences, would be inappropriate?
 * From my point of view, at least merging the species articles with the genus clearly falls under WP:MERGEREASON points 2, 3, and 4. These species articles would either be very short, or have huge overlap with each other and the family Latimeria. A reader should not need to click through three stubs to get the full picture, if information can be better explained in one article. From another angle, us editors should not need to maintain three articles that essentially have the same content, when a comprehensive single article could be written. Most content, such as this order's extant history and ecology, would be stated the same way on all four articles (order, family, and species). The only unique content for the species at this time are the name, picture, and conservation status. If we kept separate species articles, they would essentially have the exact same content.


 * It is clear that every species, or even every family, should not get an article. That articles have significant overlap or would be stubs for a long period of time are valid reasons to merge. If the family eventually grows long/unwieldy from new information, species can easily be split back out, just as this family article was split out from the order back in 2007. In regard to merging everything to Coelacanth, from the discussion above I understand that would be unnecessary when we write new content about extinct taxa. (I understand that you strongly disagree, but would appreciate cooling down the tone.) Mamyles (talk) 18:53, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Latimeria getting merged w/ Coelacanth is like Human getting merged w/ Homo. I think they should be kept separate. D3RP4L3RT (talk) 22:32, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Not really a similar analogy, since the amount of content in the family Homo is significantly more than can comfortably fit on one page, which is not the case with this order. What would you think of merging the two species articles into Latimeria, then re-writing Coelacanth to have more about extinct species and less about extant than presently? Again, as currently written there is significant duplication of content, and one goal is to decrease such duplication. Mamyles (talk) 18:05, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Then why not rewrite one of them? Also, there are many more coelacanth genera pages that have almost 0 content. D3RP4L3RT (talk) 22:26, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

In the absence of a neutral closer, I'll note that there's a clear consensus not to merge anything into Coelacanth, but a rewrite is encouraged (I'll try to improve it next week by adding a summary of extinct species). I've modified merge proposal headers of the other articles to continue soliciting opinions/suggestions about merging the two species into Latimeria. Thanks for humoring me - great feedback so far. Mamyles (talk) 15:30, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

THe reward poster
There is a scan here: http://gombessa.tripod.com/scienceleadstheway/id3.html 76.117.247.55 (talk) 23:33, 9 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Interesting. I wonder what sort of copyrights apply for reward posters like that? It would make a great addition to the article... Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 01:46, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Gombessa
The local common name for these fish appears to be "gombessa", also a name which is used by some conservation efforts. They are referred to as such by numerous articles and scientific publications (e.g. Bucciarelli, G., Bernardi, G., & Bernardi, G. (2002). An ultracentrifugation analysis of two hundred fish genomes. Gene, 295(2), 153-162.) Should this be used as the article title as per the Wiki policy on common names? The current title "West Indian Ocean coelacanth" seems to be more of a description of the gombessa than a name. Also, "West Indian Ocean coelacanth" currently yields 40 results on Google Scholar vs. 64 for gombessa. Several sources seem to use "gombessa" for Latimeria as a whole, I'm not sure if there is an equivalent common name for the Indonesian species? Dinoguy2 (talk) 11:36, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I believe the Indonesian species is colloquially called "ikan raja laut"--Mr Fink (talk) 14:16, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

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