Talk:Lystrosaurus

Walking with Monsters
In the Walking with Monsters program, it is said that all living lystrosaurus made up 50% of living organisms on earth after the permian extinction? If this is accurate than it should be mentioned here. this is the video, mentioned at around 5:36 --Philip Laurence 19:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I have just seen a repeat of a BBC Horizon program, in which at the end it mentions that this animal was the ancestor of all mammals, including humans. If it is generally believed by scientists, that this is true, I think this page should mention it.  --Jason404 15:07, 06 July 2007 (GMT)


 * Only tme one organsosm has dominated::

The article states "It is the only time a single species of animal dominated the Earth to such a degree". What about Homo sapiens? I'm guessing that we now outnumber these animals by an order of magnitude.138.77.2.131 01:17, 9 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The BBC program seems accurate, in assigning Carboniferous amphibians, and early Permian primitive reptiles, to northeastern North America, and western Europe, which 300Ma were connected in the supercontinent of Larussia (North America + Baltica); whereas assigning late Permian / early Triassic reptiles to Siberia & Antartica. For, in the Permian, amniotic reptiles finally expanded beyond the ancestral amphibian homeland of northern Larussia -- all early amphibian & reptilomorph fossils have been found near Greenland & Scotland; none ventured far from their swamps, much less over the  Variscan mountains.  Only after 300Ma did full-fledged reptiles begin to expand throughout the rest of by-then-assembled Pangea (Siberia to the northeast, Gondwana to the south).  The fact that Lystrosaur fossils have been found in China suggests that China was connected by land to Gondwana.  i offer that, after the Devonian c.400Ma, whereas Gondwana continued southwards, towards earth's south pole, China remained near (even north) of earth's equator. Ipso facto, a rift must have opened up between equatorially-bound China, and southward drifting Gondwana.  That rift progressively widened from 400-200Ma, rifting off (in sequence)  north China,  south China,  Cimmeria, off from the northern coasts of Gondwana.  Then, c.200Ma, the rift propagated into the core of Pangea, ripping open the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, and sundering North America from Gondwana.  i have tried to illustrate these general trends in the following figure:
 * http://s10.postimage.org/bv1m3h0p5/Reptile_expansion.png
 * 66.235.38.214 (talk) 11:06, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Fossil fish (Materpiscis) from northwest Australia, 380Ma, show that the rifted inland seaway, between China & Australia, depicted in the aforecited figure, must have extended at least that far into Gondwana, by the middle Devonian.66.235.38.214 (talk) 12:36, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Alternatively, most conventional plate reconstructions seem to show Australia as forming the northern-ish shore of Gondwana, with China located far to the north & east, connected to Gondwana off of eastern Australia. If so, then Materpiscis could have swam over the continental margins of western Australia, directly, with no need for speculated rifting.66.235.38.214 (talk) 13:10, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Human species
The Human species in terms of number is very small when compared to "all living organisms". Regarding the Lystrosaurus, it's very feasible if you know the size of devastation which occured at the end of the pernian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marco123456789 (talk • contribs) 18:13, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

Genus vs. species
"This genus survived the end-Permian mass extinction and went on to thrive, becoming the most common group of terrestrial vertebrates during the Early Triassic. It is the only time a single species of animal dominated the Earth to such a degree."

Should the latter be "genus" as well? The rest of the article treats Lystrosaurus as a genus, not a species. B.Bryant (talk) 07:49, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Recent edits
I'm not happy about the results of the 2 edits following :
 * Moving the distribution map to the left makes the bullets mis-align in the current Firefox.
 * There are now too many images mixed in with the text, and most of them as simply artists' impressions of various Lystrosaurus species.
 * I think adding a sample of Lystrosaurus’ colour in the distribution map is clearer than brown, because another shade of brown is used to show where Cynognathus fossils have been found. Philcha (talk) 23:45, 6 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd recommend that all the artist reconstructions be placed within a Gallery at the bottom of the article, thus keeping the palaeo-distribution map and skeleton reconstruction in the text (in a position that doesn't misalign text preferably). In addition, the Lystrosaurus mccaigi head reconstruction is in no way accurate and should be removed. [[User:Mark t young|Mark t youn


 * Galleries generally aren't recommended in articles, and I don't see a problem with having images within the article itself if it can easily contain them, that's how practically all other Wikipedia articles have it, but I agree that the mccaigi drawing should be removed if it's inaccurate. As for the colour on the map, Cynognathus is shown in orange, not brown, but on second thoughts it's a cool touch to have the colour in the caption, I just removed it because it isn't standard. Also, moving the distribution map to the right creates unwanted white space because it then collides with the taxobox. Unless it is moved further down, of course. FunkMonk (talk) 00:12, 7 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi, thanks for the prompt replies.
 * Like all middle-aged males, I'm not great at colour vocabulary, but to my poor eyes the Cynognathus colour is not vivid enough to be called orange and it's closer to the colour of some sands. I think adding a colour patch removes ambiguity.
 * I prefer to use only images that add something to the article. I'd go for 2 Lystrosaurus reconstructions as Lystrosaurus is the subject of the article; the Lystrosaurus skeleton adds value; so does the palaeo-distribution map. IMO additional Lystrosaurus reconstructions do not add value.
 * Images that might add value, if someone knows of good sources: L.’s pre- and post-P-Tr-extinction abundance relative to other land vertebrates; anything that illustrates some aspect of L.’s lifestyle, especially after the P-Tr extinction; images of its larger descendants such as Kannemeyeria (some of these survived until the beginning of that Late Triassic); images of Triassic predators on L.; relative abundance of plant types pre- and post-P-Tr-extinction. Any other suggestions?
 * I do not like images on the left as they make the text harder to read by varying the position of the starts of lines. Wikipedia articles are meant to be read, not viewed from 10ft like art exhibits.
 * I dont' know about inaccurate, but it struck me that the Lystrosaurus mccaigi head reconstruction looks more like a Gerald Scarfe cartoon. Philcha (talk) 08:06, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I've put the brown back in the caption and removed a redundant image, but are you sure you want the map on the right of the section it's currently in? It'll severely screw up the layout, articles with large taxoboxes always have the first image on the left so they do not interfere with the box (throughout articles, images are usually aligned left-right-left-right). I've also removed a Lystrosaurus image without species name, but I don't think it's necessary to remove one more, since they're, well, good drawings that help readers notice some superficial differences between species (we have two reconstructions of murrayi, but they're quite different from each other, so it leaves their appearance up for interpretation for the reader), and there is plenty of room for them. What would be nice is to find out what Lystrosaurus georgi is a synonym of, and change the name (if it is a synonym, of course)... FunkMonk (talk) 14:55, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Re image positioning, personally I don't like left-right-left-right, but I now think it's premature to reach any conclusion. The article was little more than a stub before I recently edited it. It's still far from complete if one compares it with the better dinosaur articles, and Lystrosaurus is important enough to deserve that level of coverage, because it dominated Early Tr faunas. As the article matures, the lead will also grow to about 3x its current size, and that will make the infobox much less intrusive. I suggest re-examining the image positioning when the article grows to that stage. Philcha (talk) 16:22, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, good work ith the expansion, if the article gets a description and clasification section, for example, I'm sure the section about species distribution will end in a place where the map can be moved to the right. By the way, shouldn't the title of that section be changed? "Species found in Africa" doesn't seem to cover what the whole section is about. FunkMonk (talk) 16:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * While looking for something else I found the Botha & Smith article, which only covers the Karoo. When someone finds material about Lystrosaurus in India / China / Antarctica they can re-title. Who knows, that may also answer you query about Lystrosaurus georgi. Philcha (talk) 18:14, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Here's a PDF paper on georgi I found (fossils from Russia), which might become helpful: http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/benton/reprints/2005lystrosaurus.pdf FunkMonk (talk) 18:25, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Excellent find, I'm going in now! Philcha (talk) 19:44, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

start class?
Daft point possibly, but how can this be start class at the paleontology wikiproject and be up for FA status? TerriG 86.11.1.228 (talk) 10:02, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Relative size
The image showing the relative sizes of Lystrosaurus and human silhouettes seems to use a quite small Lystrosaurus specimen: just over half a meter long. The text (and its citation) gives a significantly longer size: nearly one meter. Is there a reason for the discrepancy? --170.145.0.100 (talk) 20:35, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

seems since i last checked a lot of material disappeared?
someone here that can look at a backup? 92.109.153.185 (talk) 00:07, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Lystrosaurus. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20071012225407/http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/268/ to http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/268/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 01:58, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Odd claim
Is there some source to back up this odd and poorly written claim? "It also used these tusks for defense and rip small predators apart, despite being a herbivore." Alexandermoir (talk) 18:27, 15 November 2023 (UTC)


 * This reads to me like someone just watched Jurassic World Dominion and added this, because the lystrosaurus in the movie inexplicably bites the head off an oviraptor. 2600:1700:10F0:F1E0:E1FA:1875:DBB2:FD0 (talk) 07:16, 29 November 2023 (UTC)