Talk:South American native ungulates

Atlantogenata vs Laurasiatheria
I just rewrote the page to reflect paleontological views on meridiungulate relationships. There's no evidence from morphology that meridiungulates are related to Xenarthra. Until there's DNA, theres no molecular evidence period. Linking meriungulates with xenarthrans might be convenient for some molecular phylogeneticists since it would support their biogeographic ideas, but there's really no evidence for it at all. But.... notoungulates and litopterns did survive until a few thousand years ago, so DNA may be coming. Until then, morphology is the only option. Helioseus 21:27, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Sudamericungulata
I really don't see the need for the Sudamericungulata article. It's a hypothesis entirely based on cladistics published within the last few months that has had currently zero impact on the established literature, and I don't see why it should be given precedence over numerous other classifications schemes that have been proposed for South American ungulates, including the molecular results based on collagen finding Notoungulates to be pan-perissodactyls. Given that it is likely that other molecular results will come out for notoungulates in the future, and the proven unreliability of cladistics to recover accurate higher-order relationships of Cenozoic mammals, these results have a high probablility of being overturned, so it should not be treated as established information, and the controversy over how these animals are related to each other is better treated in a single article. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:57, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Pinging who has previously worked on South American ungulates and, the article creator. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:05, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Generally I see no problem with having separate articles on closely-related topics, as Wikipedia is not paper, but I think this is a case where having separate articles amounts to POV forking, and as such is inappropriate. However, I would argue that Meridiungulata might not be the most neutral possible name for the article—the term "South American native ungulates" is widely used in the literature, with slightly more Google Scholar results than Meridiungulata, and is more neutral to whether the taxa in question form a clade or not. I would argue that the main page for this topic should be titled South American native ungulates, with both as redirects. Ornithopsis (talk) 22:49, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with a move to South American native ungulates, the term is widely used in the literature and does not implicitly imply monophyly. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:54, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I also agree with the notion of merging Meridiungulata & Sudamericungulata into South American native ungulates. This topic is controversial at the moment, so I do agree they should be merged into a single article to address this. Monsieur X (talk) 05:20, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 31 August 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: page moved by Hemiauchenia. If you were just going to boldly move it the same day you submitted the requested move, then you should have just done that, rather than waste my time to close this for you. You see two more supports than I do. See WP:RMCI. wbm1058 (talk) 22:17, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Meridiungulata → South American native ungulates – I'm making a formal move request section for my above-mentioned proposal that South American native ungulates is a more appropriate name for this page than Meridiungulata, so that we properly alert people to the move discussion. The term "South American native ungulates", commonly abbreviated SANUs, has slightly more Google Scholar results than "Meridiungulata", so the proposed title fulfills WP:COMMONNAME. The name Meridiungulata, as a clade name, implies the SANUs are monophyletic, which remains disputed in the scientific literature, and so the title Meridiungulata arguably violates WP:NPOVTITLE. Having a separate article for every proposed higher-level SANU clade (e.g. Sudamericungulata) would arguably count as WP:POVFORK, and so should be avoided. Furthermore, as argued above, centralizing our coverage of the debate over higher-level SANU taxonomy on a single page would be best for usability, so all higher-level SANU clade names of disputed taxonomic status should redirect to the page (i.e. any proposed higher groupings of the five major SANU groups). As such, at least until such a time as a taxonomic consensus is reached, I believe that South American native ungulates is the most appropriate title for this topic. Both and  have already offered their support for this proposal above. Ornithopsis (talk) 05:48, 31 August 2021 (UTC) I've gone ahead and made the move, per the 3 supports. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support per nom and my previous comments. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:30, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

SANU Cladogram
I found a reputable source for a cladogram for the South American ungulates I think would be useful to this page on the SANUs.

•https://studentportal.gu.se/digitalAssets/1760/1760918_bio603-atlanta-alexandra-koraszewicz-vt2019.pdf ^ Source 좀비 브렌다 (talk) 05:04, 3 June 2022 (UTC)