Talk:Shastasaurus

Shastasaurus not a suction feeder
I removed references to suction feeding, per this post by Brian Switek: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/12/13/ichthyosaurs-didnt-slurp-squid-after-all/

Not being a paleontologist I didn't want to add anything and get the specifics wrong but removed the information to avoid providing false/debatable information.

Huxley75 (talk) 15:40, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * In any case, it should be mentioned that it was once proposed. FunkMonk (talk) 22:19, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I added the line back to the Description with a link to the new PLoS ONE paper. Huxley75 (talk) 14:41, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Guanlingsaurus
I've noticed that a lot of the description section of this article is about S. liangae. However, we have a separate article for this species, as it is often classified within its own genus, Guanlingsaurus. G. liangae was sunk into Shastasaurus by Sander et al. (2011) but reinstated as distinct by Ji et al. (2013), and opinion among ichthyosaur workers seems to be divided. Bindellini et al. (2021), Lomax et al. (2018), Ji et al. (2016), Druckenmiller et al. (2014), Huang et al. (2019), and Stubbs & Benton (2016) among others, retaining Guanlingsaurus while Sander et al. (2021), Moon (2017), Sander et al. (2022), Dick & Maxwell (2015), Scheyer et al. (2014), and Lomax et al. (2017) considering the two genera synonymous. I'm wondering if the information on G. liangae in this article should be relocated to Guanlingsaurus, as the "separate genera" hypothesis seems to be slightly more favored nowadays. If the Guanlingsaurus stuff is moved; that raises a question: should the writing on S. sikkaniensis be relocated to Shonisaurus; or could it warrant an article of its own? (S. popularis has been extensively researched and could easily fill up an article on its own; the rather controversial nature of S. sikkaniensis' taxonomy also would make its own article a potentially more stable alternative here.) --Slate Weasel &#91;Talk - Contribs&#93; 20:30, 28 June 2022 (UTC)