Talk:Compsognathus

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March 15, 2007 Featured article candidate Promoted
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I removed the following. There may be valuable stuff here, but it's very confusing, i.e. What islands? Why is the editor talking about an island on which the vegetarians are starving?! What does "run up a lizard" mean? Why is a long tail helpful for hunting? The Singing Badger 23:18, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In spite of its small size, this dinosaur could have been the largest dinosaur on the islands. These islands could not have space for many plants, so the vegetarians did not get enough food. That made it easier for the flesh-eaters to catch them. The Compsognathus could run up a lizard, and probably also surprise and hunt down an Archaeopteryx. In the morning the tired lizards have been an easy prey. The dinosaurs have hunted down their victims, held them in their hands and bit them. The Compsognathus’ claws have not been sharp enough to kill the lizard, and maybe some of the smaller animals have been swallowed in one piece. Its very slim body and long thin tail was perfect in the woods when it was hunting.

Contents

[edit] Deinonychosaurus

In the article there is an edit link to Deinonychosaurus. I notice that we already have articles for Deinonychus and Deinonychosauria. Should the sentence be rephrased to link to one of those? — B.Bryant 06:56, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Popular Culture

This is not the dinosaur featured in the Jurrasic Park movies. The dinosaur expert in The Lost World(film) explicitly states that the little creatures are Procompsognathus. There is therefore no incorrect identifications. And the section should be moved to the correct article.

- anonymous —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.50.83.126 (talk) 02:01, 21 January 2007 (UTC).

I remember double-checking this a while back. On the DVD at least, the Bakker-parody character clearly says "Compsognathus triassicus". Maybe somebody with a copy of the official script can check on this? Dinoguy2 03:41, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting, it seems you are right. The subtitles (VHS release, irremovable) got it right though, corrupting my memory. As the speech itself is partly illegible where the "Pro" part would be. It is still uncertain for me wether he actually says Pro or not, a script would be nice. - anonymous again. God I am never going to learn this wiki formatting.

Ok, I asked about this on a JP messag board. A bunch of people there had the official script and it has "Compsognathus triassicus". One claims to have emailed Horner about this issue, and he apparently corroborated this. Why the used such a portmanteu of a dinosaur name, I have no idea, but there it is. My guess is that they wanted the smaller, more well-known Compsognathus for the movie and used triassicus in that one line of dialogue as an homage to the species used in the novel. Dinoguy2 03:33, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Collab chosen 17th feb

[edit] Compsognathus (6 votes)

(Subpage here).

  • Status: Article status unknown.

Support:

  1. ArthurWeasley 04:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
  2. J. Spencer 05:43, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
  3. M&NCenarius 00:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
  4. Benosaurus 19:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
  5. Firsfron of Ronchester 09:35, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  6. Cas Liber 23:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Comments:

  • Another non-North American genus. Surely tiny "Compy" deserves a highlight in the land of giants. ArthurWeasley 04:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
  • A new article on the osteology of the French specimen came out in the Dec. JVP, which could be helpful. J. Spencer 05:43, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I'll break the $^%(##%#%(^#*% tiebreaker my self!! (But seriously we've had a run of herbivores and a tiny dino'd be cute) Cas Liber 23:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Hee! Good choice, Cas. :) Firsfron of Ronchester 23:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moving towards FAC

Great work - the article is evolving nicely! To keep in line with the others a Description section above the Disovery and Species would be good, while more mechanical or details can come in a Paleobiology section. I was going to do it but haven't had much to do with the development of this article so I'll leave it to Arthur unless you're happy for me to do it. cheers Cas Liber 04:33, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

By all means go ahead, Cas, this article is IMO very far from FA status (especially if you compare it to Stegosaurus and Iguanodon!) and any help for expending it is welcome. ArthurWeasley 06:44, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
We had a description section, but I think it was merged into another section. Firsfron of Ronchester 04:50, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, that's right. The description section (which was extremely short) was merged with the paleobiology section because I found it hard to clearly delineate between the two. For instance, how would you describe the shape of the teeth without referring to the diet? Mmh let's see if I could resuscitate this section ArthurWeasley 06:44, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree it isn't very logical and didn't use it myself for a long while but for some reason the reviewers on FAC always want it. I guess think of it as structural with a paleobiology section as functional bits. cheers Cas Liber 07:33, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Arthur that this article is still pretty far from FA; it's only 16k long, which is considerably shorter than the shortest Featured dinosaur article, Albertosaurus, though Arthur's work has greatly expanded and improved it. Firsfron of Ronchester 17:19, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

It's certainly GA-class in its current state, though. J. Spencer 05:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

OK - I added a bit in pop culture. Question is can anyone remember which kiddies books it appeared in...........cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 03:48, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Ask and ye shall receive. I'm sure it shows up in older books as well, but those are what I had on hand (and the first was done under consultation with Paul Sereno, so there!). It's also a great favorite of more "grown-up" popular dinosaur books, like the "dictionaries" and "field guides" and "encyclopedias" of the 1980s. J. Spencer 04:25, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How long is long enough?

Righty-ho - Make Way For Ducklings is 17.2 kB (2665 words), which is smaller than compy is now at 18.7 kB (2681 words). Question is, how long should it be? cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 08:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I guess emphasis should be on quality rather than size. Compy has more references than Albertosaurus and Psittacosaurus and equal the nb for Velociraptor. As it is now, it starts to be comprehensive (there isn't as much litterature written on compy than on the better known dinos so it's rather hard to find the infos) but needs to be better written, I guess. Section like the "feathers and the bird connection" need serious rewording (doesn't sound very good right now). We can add a tiny more bits on the description section and on the classification (more precisions on the related species and phylogenetical positions) and oh yes, all the ref should be put in the proper format (was a little bit lazy on that side). Cheers. ArthurWeasley 16:02, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
While size does matter (because both WP:WIAGA and FAC require an article to be "broad in its coverage" (GA)/"comprehensive"(FA)), Compsognathus really only has two relatively complete specimens, both of the same species. There's a lot less to talk about, here, than, say, the species of Iguanodon. Firsfron of Ronchester 17:18, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citation needed

I'm pretty sure that tag can be fixed with a ref to Dinosauria II which I will check at home to see if it covers it, once I get home (unless anyone else wants to check first in the next 5 hours) cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 02:34, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Got it. It was in Predatory Dinosaurs of the World. J. Spencer 02:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Cool. I just made the stubbiest stub I could think of for Canjuers too. cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 02:48, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I added the other reference; I had added the "citation needed" templates so that I could add the references in later. J beat me to one, though. Thanks, guys. Alright, we have no paragraphs without citations now. Firsfron of Ronchester 02:53, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Are we there yet?

had a bit of a copyedit and added a teeny bit. What do we reckon guys? Go for it yet? cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 10:38, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Hey, where'd everybody go......cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 22:38, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't know, may be give it a try and we'll get some feedback on what to improve if anything is left to improve. Cheers. ArthurWeasley 02:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I had crappy 'net access yesterday, and no time today. Yes, by all means, someone (Arthur?) should go ahead and nominate it. It's looking great. Whoever nominates it will need to note self-nom and be sure to enumerate all the reasons it meets the FA criteria, in a nice, strong speech. Since there were comments on the talk page about collaborators "voting" for their own article, it may be wise for others among us who support (or oppose) to present our comments as "co-noms" (underneath the main nomination) or "comments" instead of direct supports/opposes, to keep everything above-board. Firsfron of Ronchester 05:33, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I have some issues with that - how many edits counts as a collab? As well the fact that more folk worked on it should be a plus not a minus, but anyway I should take this discussion over there i guess............cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 08:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

(PS:I left a note on AWs talk page :) cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 08:31, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Questions and suggestions

Please make sure you use   as the space between number and unit of measurement, as suggested by WP:MOSNUM. Also consider whether you can and would like to upload the images to Commons and include them in commons:Compsognathus, which you've already linked from the article. Otherwise, it looks ready to go. Best, Samsara (talk • contribs) 11:34, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Aw thanks, I was just about to do it and you beat me to it :)cheers, Casliber | talk | contribs 11:38, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
The header is still left to do. Samsara (talk • contribs) 16:54, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] DOI

I'd also recommend adding digital object identifiers to all journal references. They can be easily generated using this search and added using this template. Samsara (talk • contribs) 16:52, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Good point. Will do later. Have to run. ArthurWeasley 16:59, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

What is that picture of? Is that a model of one? It looks alive, which I'm going to go out on limb and say isn't the case. Aaron Bowen 17:11, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

It is indeed a model. I have adjusted the caption to reflect that. Dinosaurs haven't been brought back to life just yet. Firsfron of Ronchester 01:28, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reference no. 12 needs a year number

Just noticed. Samsara (talk • contribs) 14:53, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Good catch. It's fixed. Thanks. ArthurWeasley 15:45, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Speed

I found that it could run up to 40 mph in a ScienceDaily article here: [1]. Should I add this?

69.177.231.70 22:27, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I read the same thing at Times Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2433604.ece). Kazuko 19:59, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I think what you're looking for is "Estimating dinosaur maximum running speeds using evolutionary robotics" (July 2007). Proc. R. Soc. B. The Royal Society.  This may be a preliminary version of Sellers, W. I., Manning, P.L., Crompton, R.H. and Codd, J.R., . (2007), "Exploring elastic energy storage effects in bipedal locomotion using evolutionary robotics", Journal of Biomechanics, in-review. See next thread, about Comsognathus size. I think Sellers and co. included their model's estimate of Comsognathus speed to illustrate that their model need some refinement (give them credit for honesty!). Even at the size of a turkey, Comsognathus was rather small to keep up with an ostrich. Philcha (talk) 09:38, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Size

I've just been informed by a member of Dino Mailing List (where some real experts hang out; I'm not a real expert) that the chicken-sized specimen was a juvenile and adults were turkey-sized. Dinosaurs: Size confirms this - not a peer-review article but it's by Don Lessem, a world-class paleontologist, so I'll use it as a ref if I find nothing with better provenance in the next few minutes. I'll correct Compsognathus and a mention in Tyrannosaurus. Anyone who knows of mentions in other articles please follow up as a matter of urgency - at present Wikipedia risks looking foolish. Philcha (talk) 09:33, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I haven't found a peer-reviewed ref for this but will take Lessem's word for it. Please add a peer-reviewed ref if you find one. Philcha (talk) 09:45, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Of course, a quick glance at the size chart will also show that this species grew well beyond chicken size... ;) Dinoguy2 (talk) 17:52, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Maybe, but until I edited to-day the 2nd sentence of the intro was "The animal was the size of a chicken..." Philcha (talk) 18:00, 18 December 2007 (UTC)