Talk:Lazarus taxon

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Schinderhannes bartelsi
I do not believe that this belongs as a Lazarus taxon. There has never been a live specimen ever discovered. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.186.62.83 (talk) 06:35, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

examples given
I replaced the example given Pink-headed Duck with Takahe. While the Pink-headed Duck may one day be shown to have survived (and let's all hope it has), the possibility that it might does not alone make it a Lazarus taxon. Sabine's Sunbird 15:09, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Does the Coelacanth belong here?
The coelacanth was believed to have been extinct since the end of the Cretaceous period until a live specimen turned up off the east coast of South Africa in 1938. ==Samuel Wantman 06:03, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't complicate things further. The relation between living fossils and lazarus taxa is explained at living fossils, with the coelacanth as an example. Phlebas 12:34, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm not trying to complicate, I'm trying to understand. I had never heard the term "lazarus taxon" until I saw it in Wikipedia.  After reading the article, I wondered if Coelacanth belonged here.  Exploring some more, I read in living fossil that "a living species that was thought to be extinct (the coelacanth fish for instance) is not a living fossil by strict definition, it is a lazarus species."  So why is it mentioned in that article and not this one?  I get the impression from both articles that the Coelacanth is a lazarus species.  How does it complicate things further to mention Coelacanth in this article?  I think both articles need some work to make them clearer.  I'm offering my comments to help in that direction. == Samuel Wantman 19:19, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I meant duplicate (repeating examples-one of wikipedia's flaws imo). But you're right, both pages should become more integrated, and living fossil is perhaps a bit too technically written. Phlebas 22:23, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * The species Latimeria Chalumnae is not a Lazarus taxon, because it was never known as a fossil before the extant population was found. However, its existence makes various higher taxa that it belongs to, such as the Coelacanthiformes, Lazarus taxa because these were known as fossils before a living representative was found. Orcoteuthis (talk) 09:52, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I made the same argument at Talk:Necrolestes_patagonensis. It would be nice if we could apply the term (and Category:Lazarus taxa) consistently, or else point out that the world uses the term in ways that are not entirely consistent. Art Carlson (talk) 08:47, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Arakan Forest Turtle?
Should the Arakan Forest Turtle be added to the list at the bottom of the article? &mdash; Eoghanacht  talk 20:22, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Black footed ferret?
Should the black footed ferret be included?
 * Maybe, but Lazarus taxa are usually those that have been declared extinct. I don't think this species was ever thought to be extinct - people don't assume straight away that when they can't find them they are extinct. Sabine&#39;s Sunbird 09:09, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Laotian Rock Rat
"Laotian Rock Rat (Laonastes aenigmamus), a member of a clade (Diatomyidae) thought to have gone extinct 11 million years ago. Found in 1996."

Shouldn't that be 2006?
 * It was discovered in 1996, published in a paper dated 2004 that actually came out in 2005, and was determined to be a Lazarus taxon in 2006. --Aranae 22:55, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Montreal Melon
Does it qualify? Toscaesque 20:53, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

More species
If someone would like to add more species.... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080428-extinct-plants.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/07/0709_020709_cloning.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080312-frog-picture.html http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/search/species_search.html?action=SpcHTMDetails.asp&sid=2159&m=0 http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/species/index.html?action=SpcHTMDetails.asp&sid=4624&m=0 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.199.66.195 (talk) 19:21, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

History
I think the page would benefit from stating when the term was first used.Andycjp (talk) 03:06, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Birds and reptiles sections
Why is the birds section made into a subsection under reptiles? Birds might have originated in the reptilian line, but they are everywhere today accorded their own family, and no one catalogs or thinks of birds as being reptiles. Myles325a (talk) 10:17, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Stick Insect
Read the most wonderful story of Lazarus taxon in Discover Magazine about two years ago, although it wasn't identified there as such. A bit hazy on details but these exceptionally large stick insects were native to some Pacific Islands, and became victims of imported rats and the like. Then a severe storm came and for about 70 years it was thought that they had been completely wiped out. Then, a few years ago, on a very steep cliff, on an unihabited island, on a SINGLE windswept tree, they were found, about 70 of them, the only survivors of that species, deeply inbred, but healthy. Now they have been bred, and are found all over the world, but not in the wild. Article had wonderful photos of these stick insects, and they are massive.

Anyone shed light on this? I'll try to chase it up myself. And are these insects Larazus taxon? Myles325a (talk) 10:25, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Israel Painted Frog
Why does the link 'Israel Painted Frog' leads to 'Corsican painted frog' (which was never considered extinct as far as I know) insted of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discoglossus_nigriventer ? Can anyone change it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.199.239.241 (talk) 14:02, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Florida Bonneted Bat
I believe this species meets the criteria as it was believed extinct and a population was later discovered. It was also first described from a fossil jaw bone from the Pleistocene before the fossil was linked to the extant species. Sources include a National Geographic article about endangered species from 2010 and a peer reviewed article found here: I apologize for not knowing the best way to add these in. Thank you. 50.53.5.147 (talk) 21:34, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

two suggestions
(1) I don't understand the sentence, "If the extinction is conclusively found to be total (global or worldwide) and the supplanting species is not a lookalike (an Elvis species), the observational artifact is overcome." Could someone explain it to me and reword it for more clarity?

(2) Could we find a place to mention Lazarus taxa that do not involve extant species? For example, palaeos.com states
 * There are also examples of "Burgess Shale type fauna", best known from the Early and Middle Cambrian periods, but which, since 2006, have been found in rocks from the Ordovician, Silurian and Early Devonian periods, in other words up to 100 million years after the Burgess Shale (KÃ¼hl et al 2009; Siveter et al 07).

Art Carlson (talk) 08:54, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Pygmy Right Whale
Does it belong here now? Found: Whale thought extinct for 2 million years --71.50.8.53 (talk) 04:07, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

It most definitely belongs there Dunkleosteus77 (talk) 00:10, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Eidothea (Night Cap Oak)
I had added wikilinks to Eidothea hardeniana as well as Eidothea zoexylocarya. Citations were also added to the Night Cap Oak information. --Tg11297 (talk) 03:53, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

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Lack of citations
At the least, the uncited red links should be either cited or removed. And there's a lot of other uncited information where citations might be able to be found in blue-linked species. The article needs more work before more species are added. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 09:02, 12 March 2021 (UTC)


 * I would support this, but the person adding them all is the one you need to educate. They are using either the IP account 107.202.228.117 or the various "2600:1700:c281:7000:xxx" accounts, it's all the same editor from Los Angeles, according to WHOIS tracing. They seem to be culling mass media, and accordingly including things that are often not extinct, but local extirpations that the media reports conflate with extinction (e.g., "extinct in Scotland" or "extinct in Spain") and clearly do NOT qualify as Lazarus taxa. One also has to wonder where the line actually is to be drawn on the rediscovery. If a species is officially declared extinct and "rediscovered" two years later, is it still a Lazarus taxon? If not, where is the cutoff? One thing to consider: instead of the present compilation into a single list, would there be any merit to reorganizing it into categories such as "Presumed extinct for over 200 years", "Presumed extinct for 50-200 years", and "Presumed extinct for fewer than 50 years"? That, at least, would funnel all of these trivial examples based on premature declarations of extinction into the lowest tier, so the real examples are set apart. Dyanega (talk) 18:29, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Do Dinosaurs Count?
When Dinosauria was first described, it was presumed extinct, until we then found that birds are dinosaurs. Does that make it a Lazarus taxon?Dromeoraptor (talk) 02:41, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

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