User:Roosterchair/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)Gigantothermy - Wikipedia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because it discusses a topic that will likely be discussed in my physiological ecology of animals course during spring 2021 semester. Gigantothermy is an established method of temperature regulation among life on Earth and it's study can better help us better understand the evolution of life and may also allow us to hypothesize about how large animals regulated their temperature in the past. The article was short and the information was basic but objective and correct.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

The first paragraph of the article offers a solid definition of gigantothermy and a basic explanation of how it works. The first source cited is credible and comes from a paper discussing possible thermoregulation strategies of dinosaurs. The second source, cited at the end of the first paragraph, could not be found and should be replaced. The second paragraph makes some statements that lack citation. The author uses "large turtles," ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs as examples of animals to whom gigantothermy is relevant. There is no citation backing up the claim that the two extinct groups mentioned may have been gigantotherms. There is also no citation backing the claim that gigantotherms, despite being ectothermic, have a body temperature similar to that of endotherms. As shown in the authors third citation, there is evidence to suggest that large enough ectotherms would be considerably warmer than smaller ones, but perhaps not to the level of endotherms. The rest of the article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of gigantothermy. The fourth and final citation backs the claim that gigantothermy is not as effective as endothermy in terms of an animals endurance and power due to decreased anaerobic efficiency. There is no citation behind the rest of the paragraph discussing gigantothermy's disadvantages even though it makes statements such as, "Mammals' bodies have roughly four times as much surface area occupied by mitochondria as reptiles." The advantages paragraph has no citations and discusses the slow metabolic rate of gigantotherms which allows them to eat more sparingly than endotherms. The "see also" section offers multiple links to relevant pages and there is a section which offers links to pages describing other methods of thermoregulation in animals. The tone of the article is neutral with no apparent bias and it is well written and the concepts within it are made understandable. Most, if not all, of the information in the article is credible but there is definitely opportunity to go more in depth on the subject.