Talk:Prosauropoda

Monophyletic?

Why does this say that prosauropods are monophyletic? That is exactly the opposite of what Sauropodamorpha states <font: Monial>[[User:Innotata|''innotata'']]<font> <small>([[User_talk:Innotata|Talk]] &#124 [[Special:Contributions/Innotata|Contribs]])</small> (talk) 16:40, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Taxonomic Ranking

"Archosauria" isn't a class, and shouldn't be represented as such. See vertebrate taxonomic hierarchy according to Benton 2004

• Benton, M. J. (2004), Vertebrate Paleontology, 3rd ed. Blackwell Science Ltd

This is a well-respected text-book (I have the 2nd edition, which has a similar but less upto date taxonomic hierarchy), and should be used as a guidline. In it, Sauropsida is the Class, Archosauria has an intermediate informal rank of Division. Is it possible to add the option of taxonomic rank: Division to the taxobox? M Alan Kazlev 00:38, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Not presently, and I'm not sure it should be added. It seems like adding any more ranks would just make for overly long and complicated taxoboxes (remember the purely cladistic, page-long boxes a few folks tried last year?). In my opinion Class, Subclass, Infraclass, Superorder, Order, Suborder, Infraorder, Superfamily, Famly, Subfamily is way more than enough. If a link to Archosauria in the taxobox is really necessary, such as on a page discussin an order-level taxon, unranked_ordo can be used. Or, use Infraclass Archosauromorpha instead, which is actually more useful now that Archosauria is no longer considered a Superorder like its counterpart Lepidosauria.Dinoguy2 20:25, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Technical Diagnosis

re "cleaning up" the Technical diagnosis, in plaeontological literature you always find stuff like this. Ok i guess it can be rewritten and expanded out so every technical term gets its own phrase or sentence, but that would really make it a very long and rather dull essay. Maybe it can be converted to a point list? Anyway i'm not well up on this sort of thing; i find the technical diagnoses pretty boring, although theya re necessary in the paleontological science M Alan Kazlev 02:21, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Anchisauridae?

Whoever insists on removing Anchisauridae from Prosauropoda needs to add it elsewhere; there is only a single passing reference to the genus and a link on a cladistic diagram for the family. This is far too important of genus for this. Just because ONE source removes it from Prosauropoda, does not mean this has been accepted by a majority of researchers. And if you remove it, THEN ADD IT TO WHERE YOU BELIEVE IT SHOULD BE!!! The result has orphaned BOTH the family and the genus. Also, is it really proper for the clade to link to the genus, but there be a seperate link to the famly? CFLeon (talk) 02:05, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

"Slow down there, pardner". Prosauropoda has kind of been blown to hell, and more or less consists of "Plateosaurus and its best friends". Usually the massospondyls end up there too, but not always. Anchisaurus doesn't always sort out as a true prosauropod in the sense of a clade, but it is a prosauropod in the sense of a grade (non-sauropod sauropodomorph). If anywhere, it would go at Sauropodomorpha, but it wouldn't go in the Benton-gram (at least not without a citation), as Benton doesn't include Anchisauridae in that reference. J. Spencer (talk) 03:06, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

total rewrite - help needed

This article needs a total re-write. It is massively outdated, recent studies have trashed any notion of a monophyletic group, and even the "grade" idea is crumbling hard considering that Sarahsaurus comes out as a close relative of Plateosaurus in the Yates matrix, but as a basal sauropod(!) in the Upchurch et al. matrix.

I am a biomech guy, I have little knowledge and understanding of phylogeniy and taxonomy. Is there anyone knowledgeable in these areas willing to help me? HMallison (talk) 22:57, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I know about Anchisaurus and Ammosaurus. That's two of them (well, really just one). J. Spencer (talk) 01:24, 7 December 2010 (UTC)