Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Plateosaurus

Plateosaurus

 * This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page. 

The result was: scheduled for Today's featured article/March 22, 2016 by Brianboulton (talk) 14:38, 6 March 2016 (UTC)



Plateosaurus (probably meaning "broad lizard", often mistranslated as "flat lizard") is a genus of plateosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic period, around 214 to 204 million years ago, in what is now Central and Northern Europe. Plateosaurus is a basal (early) sauropodomorph dinosaur, a so-called "prosauropod". It is now among the dinosaurs best known to science: over 100 skeletons have been found, some of them nearly complete. The abundance of its fossils in Swabia, Germany, has led to the nickname Schwäbischer Lindwurm (Swabian lindworm). Plateosaurus was a bipedal herbivore with a small skull on a long, mobile neck, sharp but plump plant-crushing teeth, powerful hind limbs, short but muscular arms and grasping hands with large claws on three fingers, possibly used for defence and feeding. Unusually for a dinosaur, Plateosaurus showed strong developmental plasticity: instead of having a fairly uniform adult size, fully grown individuals were between 4.8 and 10 m long and weighed between 600 and 4000 kg. Commonly, the animals lived for at least 12 to 20 years, but the maximum life span is not known.
 * Most recent similar article(s): January 29, 2016 (but it was Columbian mammoth)
 * Main editors: HMallison
 * Promoted: January 9, 2012
 * Reasons for nomination: no dinos on mainpage for a few months....
 * Support as nominator. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:52, 17 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment - one dead link. sst ✈(conjugate) 12:49, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
 * removed. doi will have to do Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:25, 22 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Support. This is a well-written, thoughtfully-illustrated article on an interesting subject that presents new research on the animal's biology and behavior. Bede735 (talk) 01:38, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Support: dinosaurs ruled the planet; they deserve more front page treatment. The article looks to be in good shape. Praemonitus (talk) 02:53, 27 February 2016 (UTC)