Talk:South Polar region of the Cretaceous

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Untitled[edit]

Am I right in thinking there was no polar ice cap during the Cretaceous? If so, this needs to be said in the article, to clarify the section on climate. The Singing Badger 15:49, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't think there was, (the scope of this article is about Northern Antartica at the time), but as soon as I can confirm it one way or another I slap it in!Sabine 15:52, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Indeed there was no icecap. There was a six-month night, however. --Wetman 15:54, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(Bubblesorg (talk) 01:47, 26 May 2018 (UTC))I did find something about dinosaurs living in the artic. Booth in Smithsonian and BBC's Walking with Series.[1][2][reply]

References

  1. ^ "Smithosoin".
  2. ^ "stream".

Move page?[edit]

Should this article's title simply be Polar dinosaurs? It deals with dinosaurs found in both Australia and Antarctica and indeed it's not logical to treat the continents separately since they were joined together at the time. The Singing Badger 17:36, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • I think it's okay as is, South Polar Dinosaurs is kind of cumbersome and Polar Dinosaurs could also include the Polar Dinosaurs that migrated around Alaska. The juxtaposition of Polar and Australia makes it (which hopefully makes people think Australia and Anrarctica and not the Acrtic!). Sabine 18:29, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • OK... fair point about the North Pole :) ... but I'm now thinking that South Polar dinosaurs more accurately describes the contents of the article. Both titles seem equally cumbersome to me but one is a better description... thoughts? The Singing Badger 00:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
      • Early Cretaceous Gondwana? There is more in this than dinos (much as I loooove dinos). Sabine 00:56, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
        • Oh dear, it's starting to get very complicated! Let's wait and see if anyone else gives a toss... :) The Singing Badger 01:12, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
          • Nothing jumps out as radically better than the current title. I think it's a little better than South Polar Dinosaurs because it's more specific, and the juxtaposition of "polar" and "Australia" hints that the world was very different then. —Michael Z. 04:07, 2004 Nov 12 (UTC)
  • There is an entry Cretaceous, which should have subsections "Laurasian fauna" and "Gondwana fauna" that discuss all the representative fauna of the Cretaceous continents, with a strong explicit link to this entry from "Gondwana fauna." This article is simply about Polar dinosaurs, and the briefest note in it might mention that there was no Cretaceous landmass at the north pole. --Wetman 16:56, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • Eek! This makes my head hurt. This is a rather specific entry, Early cretaceous Gondwana - which at the time was only Antartica and Australia....but Polar Dinosaurs could surely also cover Jurrasic polar dinosaurs, Alaska's dinosaurs, etc etc. I've just been reading about them but info is a little harder to come by so the article is a ways off... I know, if we change it to Polar Dinosaurs then we can add a bunch of stuff on Northern dinosaurs, I don't have as much but I could dig some up some time in the next two weeks. The article won't suffer for being expanded in scope. sunbird 00:11, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)


The end product, "Polar Dinosaurs in Australia" has a syncopated lilt to it. (Was that their live tour album or their come-back album?) --Wetman 20:45, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"This combination of a habitable terrain with a long polar night is an ecological circumstance that has no present day analogue." Actually some parts of the Norwegian arctic go close. There is some forest, and historically has been agriculture and animal herding there. However it declines into tundra before you get as close to the pole as Dinosaur Cove probably was. Spitzbergen is very high in the arctic and by some definitions barely habitable. It has tundra vegetation and a few large animals.

Endothermic dinosaurs[edit]

The ability of polar dinosaurs to survive a cold polar night makes it almost certain they were endothermic. I think it's worth of notion in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.166.232.135 (talk) 01:51, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Well it depends of the reference, and how cold did it did get, I have read the temperature was warmer than today's temp. Only paleoclimatologist can give a definate answer. Enlil Ninlil 04:17, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Survival of mammoths vs dinosaurs[edit]

"Given that the dinosaurs and other fauna of Cretaceous were well adapted for living in long periods of dark and cold weather, it has been postulated that this community might have survived the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event which exterminated the non-avian dinosaurs .... 'Reports earlier this year that dwarf mammoths survived to early historical times, in islands off the coast of Siberia, give force to such speculation.' " -- I should think that this comparison is pretty shaky, given that mammoths were probably killed off by primates with pointy sticks, and dinosaurs (quite likely) by an asteroid impact. - You can run, but you sure can't hide. -- 201.53.7.16 (talk) 11:23, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No. Mammoths died out due to climatic changes. Their grassland-prairies warmed up and became forested, and so their food supply disappeared. 98.67.1.188 (talk) 01:59, 29 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The last section is only pure speculation by however added it. I could barely find a source I will keep looking. However it is good speculation, but please add your speculation somewhere else.(Bubblesorg (talk) 01:49, 26 May 2018 (UTC))[reply]
Even the "well-adapted to cold" dinosaurs must only apply to those with feathers - any sauropod or ankylosaur would have had to migrated out of the dark, frosty areas during winter.104.169.43.46 (talk) 04:07, 26 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I found a problem[edit]

This is the problem with Paleocene dinosaurs section. [1]

I remember in one of the journals I read (one of them by P. Vickers-Rich), It compared the Antarctic dinosaurs to the mammoths, so if you’re saying the problem’s unreliable source, it’s not, it’s just not presenting all sides of the argument. I’m sure there are sources that say to the contrary a bit more strongly   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  20:11, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Where should we put Eromanga sea section?[edit]

I need help on this.--Bubblesorg (talk) 18:56, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Write about the Eromanga Sea and using your own judgement, based on the size of the paragraph(s) you wrote, make a decision where it should go. You can do this   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  19:08, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not a GA review, but comments[edit]

I did not list this under a GA Review, both because I have edited the article quite a bit and it would be like a "COI" of some kind, but also because I think this is more like a pre-review.

  • the prose is not really good to be honest. And Dunkleosteus changed an addition I made "among others" to "and so forth", which would be even worse, as it is not professional language to use such wording imho.
I always used “among others” as informal and “so forth” as professional   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:28, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • the article is quite broad in scope, but heavily skews towards dinosaurs (those were the only initial categories linked too), which is understandable, but there should be a better balance, especially on geology/paleoclimatology/geodynamics, etc.
  • I have seen that New Zealand in the Cretaceous was even more south polar (70+ S) than parts of Antarctica (Seymour Island, etc., 60 S), and many fossil flora and insects (not included now in the article) were found there (see Fossilworks for information and the papers that information comes from). This article needs to be expanded with that information.
  • while I think the amount of references certainly is good enough for a GA, there are more that I found that are not included in the references right now, so I linked them under Further reading. Would be good to include their findings in the article for completeness.
  • and in general I don't like the way these articles are referenced. I know it is done in many (paleontology) FAs and GAs, but the text code becomes unreadable. Jo-Jo Eumerus's (e.g. Ubinas#References) and my own way (see Eastern Hills, Bogotá#References) of referencing is better as it makes the text better readable with short citations and also refers directly to page numbers, which should be done especially for papers that are quoted many times, like Molnar (2016) and Tambussi & Hospitaleche (2007) in this article.

Tisquesusa (talk) 17:01, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

yes i am getting everything under control. --Bubblesorg (talk) 16:32, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't the title wrong?[edit]

I would rather call it South Polar region IN the Cretaceous, analogous to France in the Middle ages. In my view, the current title assumes that a region is part of an era. But they are fundamentally different types of phenomena. In other words: Doesn't the current title imply that a region is part of an era and isn't that wrong?

I would also suggest that The should be added in the beginning. --Ettrig (talk) 10:22, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well it’d be like saying “Temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest,” it doesn’t imply temperate rainforests only exist in the Pacific Northwest   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  16:16, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This does not speak to the problem posed. It is awkward to speak about an area OF a time period. Would you rather choose to say France OF the Middle ages OR France IN the Middle ages? --Ettrig (talk) 08:54, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think it depends on the items because I can say “Temperate forests of the Cretaceous” and I cannot say “Pacific Northwest of the Cretaceous,” but it seems right to say “Pacific Northwest Region of the Cretaceous” and “Frankish Region of the Middle Ages” (though “in” is also acceptable)   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:23, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review[edit]

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Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:South Polar region of the Cretaceous/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Jens Lallensack (talk · contribs) 09:04, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]


Happy to take the review. Unfortunately, I see multiple issues with this article, most importantly regarding the lemma and scope.

  • This article comes across as an article on Eastern Gondwana after its separation from western Gondwana and before its breakup into Australia and Antarctica, if I interpret the scope correctly. This is a geological topic (as you can see if you enter "Eastern Gondwana" in Google Scholar), but the article mostly deals with paleontology. You either need to adjust the content or the lemma, but see below. I understand that an article limiting its scope to Eastern Gondwana may lay its focus on the paleontological consequences of the separation from the other landmasses (as the basic geology would remain the same and could be covered in the more general article about Gondwana). However, it is far from settled if Eastern Gondwana really was isolated (it might have had a land connection to South America, in fact). You decided to follow one hypothesis by completely ignoring the other hypothesis (at least it seems so, this is not really discussed anywhere in the article). So I wonder, what is the rationale of excluding western Antarctica and the earlier part of the Mesozoic? Rather, I would suggest to limit the article lemma to the paleontology, but to include the complete southern polar region.

Disregarding scope and lemma, the article has multiple problems. The structure needs to be redone (grouping the vegetation under "landscape" rather than under "ecology" makes little sense to me, for instance). Background is lacking, and any discussion on paleogeography. The sedimentary basis in general should be pointed out before addressing individual formations. A common thread to the information is missing, especially the geology section seems to be a conglomerate of certain details without context. Invertebrates are far underrepresented.

Some specific examples from the lead:

  • ranging from perhaps 4–8 °C – this is certainly not true in every part of the continent.
fixed   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:37, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Major fossil-bearing geological formations that record this area are – you completely miss out, e.g., the important Winton Formation.
Was that under 60°S? I saw this map shows it as over, though it's discussed in the paragraph about sauropods   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:37, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The South Polar region housed many endemic species – somehow misleading: Did it house more endemic species than western Antarctica?
  • the most diverse were the small hypsilophodont-like dinosaurs – I doubt this in light of the newer finds from the Winton (furthermore, Hypsilophodontidae is now considered paraphyletic).
It's "hypsilophodont-like" instead of just "hypsilophodont" because they're paraphyletic but maybe I should just say "paraphyletic hypsilophodonts"? From Winton, all I'm aware of are the sauropods   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:37, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • that some of these dinosaurs survived after the end of the Cretaceous because of their adaptations to cope with long periods of darkness and the cold. – This was a mere side note, a very speculative idea, as there is no evidence. It should not appear in the lead.
good point, removed   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:37, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As the article is not close to GA by any means, I probably need to fail it. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 09:04, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think what happened was most of the geology and continental drift got explained in the Ecology section and it got kinda haphazard. East Gondwana is just the name for Australia/Antarctica before they split up, but since it's just the south polar region, most of Australia got cut off (so we ended up cutting east East Gondwana). Pinging Bubblesorg, can you sort out the geology mishap?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:37, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You restrict it to the area south of 60°S? That is not stated anywhere, and seems quite arbitrary. Are there studies on the area that set the same borders? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 16:35, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That is, after all, the polar region   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  01:40, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Its only one definition, though, and you need to state that including a source which applies it to the Cretaceous. In the lead you say "The South Polar region of the Cretaceous comprised the continent of East Gondwana", which means you cover all of East Gondwana, which got me confused. Now I understand – if you are able to clearly define what the article is covering, lemma and scope is all good. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:24, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, whats the problem?--Bubblesorg (talk) 04:17, 12 November 2018 (UTC) ok heres what I found. https://australianmuseum.net.au/image/map-of-world-early-cretaceous. --Bubblesorg (talk) 21:14, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No, I mean fix the Geology section according to the problems Jens Lallensack brings up   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  01:40, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Bubblesorg Hey   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:17, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Bubblesorg You still in this?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:54, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I also just noticed that you lack a section on the climatic development. This is a central aspect of this topic also. Given the number of issues, I think I am supposed to archive for now, as we need a new review from the start after the points have been fixed. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:48, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

sorry man just in a bit of a wonky state. I will get back. So climatic development is fine. I think thanks to not research done on its climate its a bit spotty--Bubblesorg (talk) 02:19, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

well it’s a bit too late for that, the article already failed   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  15:47, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

New paper on paleoclimate[edit]

Temperate rainforests near the South Pole during peak Cretaceous warmth, Published today in NatureHemiauchenia (talk) 15:56, 1 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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