Wikipedia:Peer review/Fossil/archive1

Fossil
This peer review discussion has been closed. A very important article in the history of the study of life on earth. It needs some work, including better organization. I would like to bring this article to GA status and would like to know the other areas of weakness that the article has, and how best to approach them.

Thanks, Harizotoh9 (talk) 15:42, 29 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Yomangani's cursory comments
 * First thing that jumps out is the number of images. These are not effectively illustrating the article - for the most part they are a distraction and several of them are lost behind the references on my screen which looks sloppy at best. Many of the photos are just pictures of fossils that are unconnected to the text, or when they are connected the placement on anything but the smallest screen size makes them seem unconnected. I'd say about 75% of the images need culling from the article or moving to a gallery format between sections.
 * The article itself doesn't make bad reading - it's not any easy skill to use summary style and you pull it off quite well most of the time.
 * "The study of fossils across geological time, how they were formed, and the evolutionary relationships between taxa (phylogeny) are some of the most important functions of the science of paleontology. Such a preserved specimen is called a "fossil" if ..." - the second sentence has no connection to the first.
 * The use of the main article and see also templates is a little inconsistent. Permineralization gets an inline link, index fossil gets a main article heading, coprolite gets both
 * "The fossil record is heavily slanted toward organisms with hard parts" - doesn't sound very technical. My abs are like steel.
 * AmEng or BrEng? You have both Fossilization and mineralisation
 * There's overlinking and over-use of bolding
 * Some citations are needed but there is already a tag on the article indicating that, so I won't go over it again
 * It could do with a light copy edit. There are a few clunky sentences like: "Ever since recorded history began, and probably before, ...." and "The earth’s climate, tectonics, atmosphere, oceans, and periodic disasters invoked the primary selective pressures on all organisms, which they either adapted to, or they perished with or without leaving descendants"
 * I'm not sure about the "Example of modern development" which seems rather shoehorned in. I'd drop it or roll it into a single sentence in "Modern view" or add it to another section on research (see below)
 * Most of the "see also" section links aren't needed or could be incorporated into the text or image captions
 * There is little on the research. What do fossils tell us about evolution, biodiversity etc. etc? We have what they are and how they were explained but there is a only a few sentences in the "Further discoveries" and "Modern view" sections. The lead tells us "The study of fossils across geological time, how they were formed, and the evolutionary relationships between taxa (phylogeny) are some of the most important functions of the science of paleontology" but we don't get much more than this in the article itself Yomangani talk 13:55, 1 October 2012 (UTC)


 * In regards of images, I noticed the same thing. I'm going to go ahead and remove the extra ones that aren't needed. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 16:49, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I've moved most of the images to an image gallery at the end. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 16:21, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
 * It's better, but it still feels crowded. You have two examples of petrified wood and I'm not sure how useful the "Examples of Trace Fossils" and "Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus" images are at that size. If you want to retain most of the images you still have in the body, why not try something like what is done at Coral reef fish. It would help keep the images close to the sections in which they are discussed and break the text up a little. Yomangani talk 17:07, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I really have no idea. The current solution is better than before, but I do not know which is the best solution. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 04:29, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I have a few other questions and notes: --Harizotoh9 (talk) 04:29, 8 October 2012 (utcg)
 * I'm not quite sure where to put Pseudo-fossils. Right now it's under "types of fossils", but they are not actually fossils
 * I had removed the section on Living fossils because they're not fossils at all. Should there be any mention of them in the article?
 * Should Subfossil be included somewhere?
 * Where should "Fossil trading and collecting" section be placed? Should it be incorporated into another section?
 * There is no section describing or explaining what a "body fossil" is. Is that term interchangeable with Macrofossil? That article is very small, and could be entirely merged with the main fossil article.
 * In regards to the "Limitations of the fossil record" section, keep in mind that I have recently replaced that section with a similar subheading from the transitional fossil article. The reason is that the old section ("Rarity of fossils") had zero references, and the section from the Transitional Fossil article covers the same information, while being well cited. Please review the [|old version] and compare it to the new one. There may be information and phrasing that would be worth preserving.
 * Should there be a section covering how fossils are dated?

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