Talk:Machairodontinae

Extra "Facts"
There are a lot of bits from this article that don't seem to be adding to the knowledge behind it. Somebody clearly added them in because they're passionate on the subject, and they don't read very professionally.

Example: "At first glance, fossils tell you what and animal ate and how tall it was at the shoulder, but to the trained eye and to a mind able to put the pieces of a puzzle together, they can reveal much more. Fossils are the remnants of a living animal and are usually bones which are the bones are the template for a vertebrate in large part. By using the bones and understanding how the living animal's life affects the development, shape, and damages to bones within the creature, a great deal can be learned, much more than just how big it was."

Most people understand what fossils are. Information like this should be concise and not placed here, it should be on the Fossil article.

The first paragraph of Machairodontinae is mostly irrelevant and appears to be a small rant about paleontology in general. There are other areas. Someone needs to read through this article and delete a quarter of it. --Guest

Miracinonyx
Someone added a line to the article, claiming that Miracinonyx belongs to Machairodontinae. This is not correct!
 * The abstract of Ross Barnett's DNA study in External links prompted the addition of a remark based on Barnett's updated family tree for the ancient cats. For perfect consistency, perhaps the Barnett reference in Current Biology reference should be cut too. --Wetman 04:50, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Merge with Saber-toothed cat?
No, unless all the other lineages of sabercats get their own articles. And then we would need an umbrella article, perhaps "Saber-toothed cat".--Curtis Clark 23:36, 4 September 2005 (UTC)


 * OK... clearly I misunderstood when I made the merger suggestion. The intro to this article implies that Machairodonts and saber-tooths are the same thing. The saber-toothed cat article suggests this too. But are some saber-tooths not Machairodonts? The Singing Badger 23:39, 4 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Digging through the part on "evolutionary tree", I find Borhyaenidae, Hyaenodontidae, and Nimravidae in addition to the felids. The convergent evolution is striking, and as you point out, not all machaerodontines have saber-teeth.--Curtis Clark 03:20, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Lots of changes
I edited this section extensively because i felt it there was a lot more to discuss. I included the section on convergent evolution because the saber-toothed cat page does not go over in any extent comparison between the major groups, so i tried to make a point not to redefine what is on that page, but compare the other groups to machairodonts in terms of morphology. i was planning on developing the pages for the other groups in the same mannor (the barbourofelids page having a comparison of barbourofelid morphology to all other saber-tooth groups, etc.). Should these be left out and all the comparison information be located only on the saber-tooth page with a link on the pages of the specific groups' to there? --Coluberssymbol (talk) 01:03, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
 * can i get some feedback on this?--Coluberssymbol (talk) 21:02, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The section is good, but maybe it goes too much into detail with the images? Those could probably be moved to the saber tooth article, but the text seems alright. FunkMonk (talk) 21:05, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd think that comparison between the different groups belongs best at the sabre-tooth article, which should (ideally) give an over-view of all the groups and the differences and similarities between them. A brief summary here would be fine with a link to the main article for detail. I don't see any need for the images of non-machairodontines here - unless, perhaps there were an image that showed the two side by side, with differences annotated, or something like that (I know we don't have such an image, but if we did, that would be the sort of thing that would seem reasonable to me). Anaxial (talk) 21:59, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Such an image could be made, of course. FunkMonk (talk) 22:41, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that this section should go the saber-toothed cat article, instead of here. Also, did you organize the "five instances" by chronology or phylogeny?  If it was chronological, the thylacosmilids (Miocene) should come after Machaeroides (Eocene). Tennesseellum (talk) 17:03, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Citations need expansion, article seems over-developed

 * 1) I just ran a Citation bot that filled in a few DOI's for articles, but most of the references from 18 to 52 are incomplete, which makes it more difficult to assess the timeliness or veracity of the source (the links to About.com articles, blogs, and other un-scientific sources are especially suspect).
 * 2) This article is awfully detailed, and can very likely be simplified in several ways. Several studies are unnecessarily described in depth (see Smilodon and the La Brea tar pits and its huge table), or main points of articles are belabored (see The face of Miller's machairodont, further extended with 3 photographs tangentially related at best. Several passages seem to have little or nothing to do with the animals involved, such as the paragraph on lions hunting in Botswana. Other sections provide too much detail in examples, such as the mention of kestrels in Sexual characteristic.  From the sheer depth of information and the way in which it's presented (especially with leading statements like "One of the biggest questions about this predator's biology remains unanswered: how did the living and real animal use those teeth?"), one gets the sense of original research and synthesis, as if this was a lengthy (albeit well-researched and composed) term paper or essay, rather than an encyclopedic article, which is what Wikipedia is all about. I'm not saying anything in this article is necessarily false or wrong, but the length and detail actually detract from the actual information regarding Machairodontines. --Animalparty-- (talk) 23:04, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

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Machairodont Classification
I am curious to know if the name Pontosmilus should be deleted from the list of genera and the family tree. The name redirects to the article Paramachairodus, is apparently synonymous with the latter genus, and creates confusion regarding machairodont family ties. --Saberrex-Strongheart-- (talk) 17:08, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:BOLD Lythronaxargestes (talk &#124; contribs) 02:50, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

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External links modified
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