Talk:Titanosauria

Untitled

Heh, I can see "Jurrasic Park 4: Titanosaur eats the Spinosaurs" in the making.--Lucky13pjn 15:12, Nov 8, 2004 (UTC)

Titanosauridae and coordnate families

The text under classification includes: [Titanosauria is named after the poorly known genus "Titanosaurus", which was coined by Lydekker in 1877 on the basis of a partial femur and two incomplete caudal vertebrae. Fourteen species have since been referred to "Titanosaurus", which distribute the genus across Argentina, Europe, Madagascar, India and Laos, and throughout 60 million years of the Cretaceous. Despite its centrality to titanosaur systematics and biogeography, the genus "Titanosaurus" has never been revised. A re-evaluation of all "Titanosaurus" species recognises as diagnostic only .ve. The type species T. indicus is invalid because it is based on 'obsolescent' characters - once diagnostic features that have gained abroader taxonomic distributionover time. Consequently, the genus "Titanosaurus" and its co-ordinated rank-taxa (e.g. Titanosaurinae, Titanosauridae, Titanosauroidea) must be abandoned. source* DinoData [2]]

Under ICZN rules, this does not follow. Just bcause a name is invalid does not mean its coordinate family names are abandoned. See Caenagnathidae, which is retained even though Caenagnathus is a junior synonym of Chirostenotes. See also other major taxa named for nomen dubia, including Hadrosauridae, Ceratopsidae, etc. A similar situation also exist in the "conroversy" between Megalosauroidea and Spinosauroidea, which is not a controversy at all (even though Megalosaurus may or may not be a nomen dubium, ICZN rules clearly state Megalosauroidea retains priority).

I'm gonig to adjust this page to use the most recent definitions of the coordinate "Titanosaurus" ranks listed on Sereno's Taxon Search site, and if there is no disagrement, we can start adjusting the family names and such on individual taxon pages accordingly. If anyone has issues with this please let me know.Dinoguy2 17:07, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Well it's not a huge issue for me, because the South Americans still use Titanosauridae as far as I know, but it takes them longer to get published so who knows what they are using currently (assuming they all would use the same terms in the first place, which I am sure is not true). But most North American and European workers have now abandoned it (including Wilson and Upchurch, who disagree on a lot of things but agree on this, as well as Sereno whose TaxonSearch you are using, for that matter). ICZN rules do not forbid taxa to be abandoned because of dubious founding members, so sauropod workers seem to be moving in that direction at this time. On the other hand, ceratopsian and hadrosaur workers clearly are not. Different strokes for different folks. I don't think it is our place to be making decisions about which names are correct, just to report the names scientists actually use. But it could still go either way at this point so I am fine with leaving it as you have set it up at least until the consensus goes one way or the other. Sheep81 02:31, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the best thing to do would be to just adopt one current source for the taxonomy. I think Curry Rogers (2005) is a good choice, since it's from last year and included a large number of taxa. However I'm a bit short on titanosaur papers at the moment, so until I hunt this one down, somebody else is going to have to fill me in on the details before I can contribute much :)Dinoguy2 12:44, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

That sounds like a plan, if you want to pick one to go with for the taxoboxes, and we can list any discrepancies here or the individual taxon pages. Curry Rogers (2005)... is that the one from the new sauropod book? If so I will have it for you next week if you want it. There is also Upchurch et al., 2004 and whatever Jeff Wilson's latest paper is (I think it would still be 2002 for his full phylogeny, although he published a great paper on nemegtosaurids in 2005). Jaime Powell published a titanosaur phylogeny in 2003 as well, which I am in the process of getting my hands on. Sheep81 15:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, which phylogeny is used in Dinosauria 2? (another book I need to start saving up for...)Dinoguy2 17:00, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Upchurch wrote the sauropod chapter for The Dinosauria, although his current phylogeny (unpublished) looks more like Wilson's and Curry Rogers', with the nemegtosaurids as titanosaurs (they are diplodocoids in The Dinosauria). Because of publishing delays, all the chapters are a few years out of date... not as bad as The Dinosauria I though, where some of the chapters had been written in 1985. Sheep81 09:54, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Paralititan

I have just noticed that Paralititan is not listed in the Taxonomy section of this article. Is there a good reason for this? - Ballista 06:45, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and also Argentinosaurus, why? --Dropzink 21:15, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Taxonomy

There is some discrepancies between the taxonomy in the Titanosaur article and the one in the Macronaria article. Could somebody look into it and make sure that there is consistency when we navigate from one page to another? That will be useful, I think. ArthurWeasley 18:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

References

I updated the references in the article to all use the <ref> tag, instead of having mostly <ref> tags and a few inline hyperlinks scattered around. I'm not entirely satisfied about the way the TaxonSearch references are cited, it would be helpful if someone more familiar with this subject area could have a look at that. Also it seems that lots of material in this article isn't cited, so I'm dropping a {{Refimprove}} on it. Icalanise (talk) 15:27, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Bruhathkayosaurus

Bruhathkayosaurus has never actually been classified as a titanosaur, only as a sauropod incertae sedis. Any Gondwanan sauropod that size almost certainly is a titanosaur, but there's no actual source on this. Vultur (talk) 07:22, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Auca Mahuevo

Has there been anything further on the taxonomy of the Auca Mahuevo egg-layers? (i.e. what should they be most properly called at this time?) J. Spencer (talk) 02:11, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Atsinganosaurus

According to the article body, it is part of the Titanosaur clade. Wakari07 (talk) 18:05, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Classification

The cladistic analysis by D'Emic (2012), places Phuwiangosaurus, Tangvayosaurus, and Malarguesaurus outside Titanosauria, contrary to previous cladistic studies which place these genera within Titanosauria. Any idea why these genera fell outside Titanosauria in D'Emic (2012)?

Contrary to previous studies, D'Emic considers reports of Jurassic titanosaurs to be unsubstantiated.

D'EMIC, M. D. (2012), The early evolution of titanosauriform sauropod dinosaurs. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 166: 624–671. doi: 10.1111/j.1096-3642.2012.00853.x. 68.4.28.33 (talk) 01:56, 30 October 2012 (UTC)Vahe Demirjian

Does the classifications need to be be updated? A number of dinosaurs have since been discovered to be the same ref: https://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_shape_shifting_dinosaurs 07:40, 9 May 2019 (UTC)~

Unnamed_Patagonian_titanosaur

This page should refer to the Unnamed_Patagonian_titanosaur, so that information doesn't get lost. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:72:0:41C:DD32:9552:53DA:329E (talk) 15:06, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Vahiny

Titanosauria incertae sedis. I notice it's not in the list. Lythronaxargestes (talk) 06:08, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Titanosaur

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Titanosaur's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "desc":

• From Matheronodon: Godefroit, P.; Garcia, G.; Gomez, B.; Stein, K.; Cincotta, A.; Lefèvre, U.; Valentin, X. (2017). "Extreme tooth enlargement in a new Late Cretaceous rhabdodontid dinosaur from Southern France". Scientific Reports. 7: 13098. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-13160-2.
• From Maxakalisaurus: Kellner, A.W.A., Campos, D.A., Azevedo, S.A.K., Trotta, M.N.F., Henriques, D.D.R., Craik, M.M.T., and Silva, H.P. (2006). "On a new titanosaur sauropod from the Bauru Group, Late Cretaceous of Brazil." Boletim do Museu Nacional (Geologia), 74: 1-31.
• From Zhuchengtitan: Mo, J.; Wang, K.; Chen, S.; Wang, P.; Xu, X. (2017). "A new titanosaurian sauropod from the Late Cretaceous strata of Shandong Province". Geological Bulletin of China. 36 (9): 1501–1505.
• From Triunfosaurus: Carvalho, I.S.; Salgado, L.; Lindoso, R.M.; de Araújo-Júnior, H.I.; Costa Nogueir, F.C.; Soares, J.A. (2017). "A new basal titanosaur (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) from the Lower Cretaceous of Brazil" (PDF). Journal of South American Earth Sciences. doi:10.1016/j.jsames.2017.01.010.
• From Oardasaurus: Codrea, V.A.; Venczel, M.; Solomon, A. (2017). "A new family of teiioid lizards from the Upper Cretaceous of Romania with notes on the evolutionary history of early teiioids". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 181 (2): 385–399. doi:10.1093/zoolinnean/zlx008.
• From Patagotitan: Carballido, J.L.; Pol, D.; Otero, A.; Cerda, I.A.; Salgado, L.; Garrido, A.C.; Ramezani, J.; Cúneo, N.R.; Krause, J.M. (2017). "A new giant titanosaur sheds light on body mass evolution among sauropod dinosaurs". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 284 (1860): 20171219. doi:10.1098/rspb.2017.1219.
• From Dinosaur size: José L. Carballido; Diego Pol; Alejandro Otero; Ignacio A. Cerda; Leonardo Salgado ; Alberto C. Garrido ; Jahandar Ramezani ; Néstor R. Cúneo ; Javier M. Krause (2017). "A new giant titanosaur sheds light on body mass evolution among sauropod dinosaurs". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 284 (1860): 20171219. doi:10.1098/rspb.2017.1219.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 10:40, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Rename

This page should be renamed to Titanosauria to be consistent with others, e.g. Ankylosauria, Ceratosauria etc.  Dinosaur (talk) 🌴🦕🦖 -- 00:42, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

The pages diplodocid and hadrosaurid have the same issue. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 00:45, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I suggest "titanosaur", "ankylosaur", and "hadrosaur" are WP:COMMONNAMEs, whereas "diplodocid" and "hadrosaurid" are not. 2001:569:782B:7A00:C1F:6EF:29FD:532F (talk) 04:12, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Hadrosaur is too ambiguous to be used as the article title, as Hadrosauroidea and Hadrosauromorpha also exist (in addition to Hadrosauriformes, which doesn't have an article). Ditto for "ankylosaur", which can refer to Ankylosauria or Ankylosauridae. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 04:36, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Classification section too detailed

While I appreciate the effort being made to improve this article, I think that the expansion to the classification section being made by IJReid is too detailed. We don't need to fill the page with phylogeny-cruft of cladograms for what seems like nearly every published phylogenetic analysis. More than one cladogram may be necessary, to show different competing hypotheses and some of the more notable historical ones, but I don't think the classification section needs to be nearly as detailed as it is becoming. Ornithopsis (talk) 06:38, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

I do plan to cut it down still. The text itself is almost certainly going to remain, but the options are either describe the trees more or display them. Everything 1993-2005 is significant in some way, being the first to name a clade, first to define a clade some way, first to suggest _ as a titanosaur, etc. Post-2005 I plan to organize it based on the matrix basis, eg. Carballido-based analyses only display one cladogram, Mannion-based only display one, Gorscak-based only display one. The problem with post-2005 is the results are drastically different with each study, and the problem with pre-2005 is there is no way to group studies together through one being based on a previous one. Titanosauria really is only relevant for the classification; description, paleobiology etc is really more focused for the internal well-known groups like Saltasauridae. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 16:22, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

As well, only one of the points of WP:TMI is even up for debate here, and I don't think the brief descriptions and displaying a cladogram counts as "excessive detail", the text itself is underdetailed. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 16:23, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

I disagree with you on several points here. First of all, there are no well-known internal groups. This is Titanosauria! The dinosaur clade with the least phylogenetic consensus! Saltasaurini is pretty much the only titanosaur subclade not subject to debate. Furthermore, I would say that, in general, in the current state of knowledge, most knowledge on titanosaur paleobiology is either at the species level or the level of titanosaurs in general, so the page on Titanosauria is exactly the correct page for such information. Titanosauria is also the most recognizable clade name to a lay audience—for example, both the AMNH and FMNH market their Patagotitan mounts as titanosaurs and do not mention other clades such as Lognkosauria or Colossosauria to which it belongs. Therefore, an audience seeking to learn more about these animals is most likely to go to the titanosaur page, and I'm sure your average curious museum-goer would rather learn about anatomy and paleobiology than the specific results of a rarely-cited twenty-year-old phylogenetic analysis. As such, I think this page should, in fact, go into detail regarding anatomy and paleobiology. As for whether the cladograms fall under WP:TMI, I'm not sure which point of WP:TMI you think is the only one up for debate, because this seems to be a pretty clear example of both "excessive detail" and "trivial content" to me. The only one it isn't is "irrelevant content". I don't consider, for example, the cladogram from the original description of Rapetosaurus to be particularly important; the most important piece of information from that study is the position of nemegtosaurids, but as that had been proposed years prior and was not universally accepted for some time after, even that's fairly minor. Details such as "Upchurch et al. 2004 was the first analysis to include Austrosaurus" are also trivial, especially as the Austrosaurus OTU in that analysis was based on what would become Wintonotitan, not the holotype of Austrosaurus, IIRC. I think only one or two paragraphs is necessary for the section "Titanosauria Named", and no cladograms. If any of these analyses had become a major paradigm of titanosaur evolution, maybe they'd be necessary, but none ever really did. Ornithopsis (talk) 17:29, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

I think the idea of cutting this down to the degree you suggest is utterly ridiculous... your argument seems to boil down to pretending that the history of their classification is an irrelevant topic that should be ignored in favor of anatomy and paleobiology just because layman have more interest in that. It is of equal importance to the other topics. That titanosaur classification has a rocky history and poor understanding is reason for the section to be longer and go into more detail, not for it to be short, as there is much to talk about. The third and fourth cladograms could perhaps be cut, but anything more would be very excessive. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 23:38, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

OK, first of all, I do care about titanosaur taxonomy and in fact kind of consider it my area of expertise, in as much as I have one; I'm not saying this just because I don't care about the subject. I'm also not saying that there should be no section on classification; I just think that the section is currently far too detailed. Does any article on any other clade have a comparably thorough blow-by-blow coverage of its phylogenetic history? I don't think so, even in cases of clades that have had dramatic paradigm shifts in their taxonomy such as Theropoda. Every subtle vagary of the phylogeny of a clade with a notoriously unstable phylogeny isn't notable. If you really think it's that important, maybe y'all should create another article called "Phylogeny of Titanosauria" or something, but you're suggesting that nearly every phylogenetic analysis of Titanosauria published between 1997 and 2004 should be included in this article, no matter how obscure or how similar to other published phylogenies. That seems excessive to me. Ornithopsis (talk) 00:01, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I also focus my time on titanosaur relationships. There is no way I could possibly justify the removal of the sections about B&C93, P03, W&U03 or U04 because they detail the original content, first major review, review of the type genus, and last significant review as well as name basically every clade currently considered (for Eutitanosaurus Sea99 is also needed). U95/98 is also significant because he proposed to replace the clade name with Titanosauroidea, and Cr&F01 is significant because of Nemegtosauridae. W02 is the only real fluff section I can tell, but that one is the first major use of Saltasauridae in the current accepted trichtomy format of Salt+Opisth, Salt>Opisth, Salt<Opisth. Every paper about the early relationships of Titanosauria also set up the later supermatrices, like CR05, who takes characters and names from all the previously mentioned studies. Sure the cladograms for some may be unnecessary, but I'm not willing to overlook 20 years of the history of a confusing clade because the relationships don't hold up nowadays. The point of the history is to display the shifts: of Opisthocoelicaudia from basalmost to most derived, Nemegtosaurs from without to within, the addition of the more stable taxa, early clade name uses and changes, and set up the more important content, the current outlooks and contrasting beliefs. If you can name paragraphs or studies I should delete, and give solid reasons why, I will remove them, but deleting history for the sake of space isn't justifiable. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 00:09, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

First of all, thank you for cutting it down a little, that does help. Anyhow: I don't think any specific paragraph needs to be deleted. Rather, I think that the section should be condensed considerably into one or two summary paragraphs; things like a complete list of what titanosaur taxa Jaime Powell reviewed in his thesis, for example, are clearly extraneous fluff. I'd also like to cite precedent because AFAIK this level of detail does not occur on any other Wikipedia page—for example, the Wikipedia page on theropods doesn't contain a cladogram of Gauthier 1986 or Holtz 1994 or any of dozens of other phylogenetic analyses that made contributions to our understanding of theropod phylogeny. I'd like to hear what some other editors think, because to me this seems like a pretty quintessential example of TMI. Maybe FunkMonk or Shuvuuia has something to say? Ornithopsis (talk) 16:59, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I think it's a tough issue, because we don't have many recent higher level taxon articles to compare with, the old ones were pretty inadequate by today's standards, and one was therefore recently demoted (Ceratopsia). I think classification is an even more important section for higher level taxa, but I personally think it's excessive with this many cladograms. I think maybe a few very key studies could have cladograms, while the rest could be briefly mentioned in prose, unless they were really monumental. FunkMonk (talk) 18:32, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I have to agree with Ornithopsis. While the lack of consensus in titanosaur phylogeny should definitely be talked about, nine different cladograms is overkill. It's like twice the size of the rest of the article. Personally, I'd say only a couple recent and/or key cladograms should be included, to represent current thoughts for the average reader. Including e.g. the Upchurch 1998 topology is interesting as a historical footnote, but ultimately not of vital importance. Going this in-depth doesn't happen for other archosaur pages, why should it here? The major contributions of older topologies and the shifts within can be summarized via one or two paragraphs of text, and if the reader really wants to see the topology, they can go to the cited reference and see for themselves. Shuvuuia (talk) 20:21, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

If it really needs to be talked about in that depth, it should be its own article, as with Phylogeny of pterosaurs. Shuvuuia (talk) 20:22, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Alright but in order to revise this expect the text to increase by about 50%. Cladogram display what the text will be describing anyways, because part of the significants I will change into text will be things like nemegtosaur placement, Opisthocoelicaudia, the clades recovered and their relationships to one another. I was considering a Phylogeny of titanosaurs article, but removing the classification from here leaves this page with essentially nothing but the most general description and paleobiology that can't be shoved elsewhere. The point is to be comprehensive without being overwhelming, and the use of images and diagrams (which is what cladograms are), is to alleviate the need for large amounts of text dedicated to describing what could otherwise be presented visually. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 00:26, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I would support the creation of a separate page for the topic so that it can go into appropriate detail. Lusotitan (Talk | Contributions) 01:36, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I've given the 1993-2005 section a go through, leaving only 4 cladograms up and detailing more about diagnostics and relationships and less about taxa numbers. I don't see removing any more as a good move (except maybe Upchurch 2004), because they represent the significant, Salgado ea being the first, Powell 2003 being the most recent of the Sanz matrix which happens to name Eutitanosauria and get a unique result, and Curry-Rogers being the first with nemegtosaurs. If I removed the Upchurch 04 one I would replace it with the Wilson & Upchurch 03 because they are basically the composites of the previous studies before the major works of CR05 etc. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 02:34, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I think that the best approach here is to have a separate detailed page and a short summary section on this page, around three paragraphs and one to three cladograms probably. See WP:SUMMARY. Obviously, this page should cover titanosaur phylogeny in some detail. Since Lusotitan, Shuvuuia, and I all agree that a separate dedicated page would be acceptable, I say go ahead and do that unless FunkMonk or anyone else objects. That page can go into more detail; if you think that numerous cladograms are the better approach to convey that information in detail I certainly won't stop you from doing so there. But for an article likely to be read by an audience seeking a general introduction to titanosaurs, a blow-by-blow description of their entire taxonomic history with so many cladograms is excessive. So if we're all agreed, you can create a new page "Classification of Titanosauria" and we can work on trimming down the section here to a few summary paragraphs. Ornithopsis (talk) 04:53, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I would think cutting some cladograms would be enough (I don't think more then four is really necessary, and some of them could be placed side by side as they often are in scientific articles that summarise past findings). I dislike content splits unless it is due to article size problems (which would be far larger articles than this one), because it just forces the reader to jump through more hoops to find their information. But I'm not the one writing the article, so do whatever seems fitting. FunkMonk (talk) 07:30, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

There is a chance I would place all the cladograms on another page, but I really object to the removal of any of the text. I was prompted to expand the article and clarify the classification by someone complaining to me that titanosaur classification didn't make sense to them because of the constantly shifting clades. I will still make minor adjustments to the 1993-2005 section (potentially removing Upchurch 04 and putting CR01 and Powell03 side-by-side), and the post-2005 section still will undergo significant changes since I've only gotten to about 2007. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 16:03, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

If your goal is to clarify titanosaur taxonomy to somebody who doesn't understand it, you are failing to do so. I was prompted to bring my concerns here in the first place following a couple of discussions with people who found your additions to the article confusing in their excessive detail. Somebody trying to read this as their introduction to titanosaur classification would struggle to see the forest for the trees. I also feel that the level of detail you are using may be giving undue weight to historical hypotheses that have only ever been supported by a single study. I think that the classification section on this page needs to be condensed substantially; whether it is supplemented by a new page dedicated to the subject is up to you. Since Wikipedia is not paper, I think there is no harm in creating a new page—the current state of things, I think, is enough to show that this page may become very long otherwise. I'm currently working on a draft of a more condensed classification section which I think covers the salient points at hand. What I think we should do here is: create the new page and copy the current classification section to it; I will replace the classification section on this page with my summary version once it is ready; my version can then be modified, expanded, trimmed, or even reverted as appropriate. Ornithopsis (talk) 02:42, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Hah, forest for the trees. Shuvuuia (talk) 23:28, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

I have added an introductory section to the classification section which I think should be useful for making things clearer to a casual audience. I also think that the cladogram I have added placing Titanosauria within Sauropoda will provide some useful added context for a casual audience. I still think that the extremely long history section should be moved to a new page titled Classification of Titanosauria, and still intend to move it there soon and replace the history section with a shorter summary, 500–1000 words long. There is an overwhelming amount of extraneous detail currently on the page. If IJReid wants me to go into detail on that, I will; I have refrained so far since it would take me a while to list all of it. Ornithopsis (talk) 05:58, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

I would be very interested into what you think is extraneous detail. As well, I see no point for a separate page on classification, so if you want to remove content from here I guess it'll just be removed period or perhaps shifted to specific articles already existing. As well, the current sentences about clade definition and Lithostrotia are outdated and controversial and probably not suitable for a neutral introduction. IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 06:12, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

I'll get to listing some of the stuff later, but for the moment: what do you mean by "outdated and controversial" specifically? I admit I didn't go into every nuance, but I don't see anything outright wrong. Ornithopsis (talk) 06:21, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

The definition of Titanosauria is still up in the air post-D'Emic, Titanosauridae hasn't been synonymized with anything officially, and the diagnostic traits of Lithostrotia change with every analysis (eg, hyposphene-hypantrum is specifically diagnostic of Eutitanosauria by definition if the paraplastotype is referred). IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 17:45, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

I have revised the section according to your critique. I still think that Andesaurus+Saltasaurus is the only definition which needs to be mentioned in the introductory paragraph, as the three other definitions have not been widely used since their proposal; I have rephrased it slightly to be less definitive. I have changed the stuff on Lithostrotia; hopefully that seems more acceptable now. I'm not really sure what you mean about Eutitanosauria, though; it's not an apomorphy-based clade so it can't have a diagnostic character by definition. Both D'Emic 2012 and Mannion 2013 list loss of hypo-hypa as diagnostic of Lithostrotia. Ornithopsis (talk) 19:49, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

The changes to the definition are fine now, Zaher et al. 2011 uses Saltasaurus>Euhelopus for example. Titanosauridae synonymy suggestion is fine now. The problem with both D'Emic 2012 and Mannion 2013 is neither actually includes Epachthosaurus or Ampelosaurus, two taxa which have supposed hypo-hypa articulations (I doubt they are but thats what the literature suggests them as). Stuff like Gorscak's have both nested deeply within Lithostrotia, and some others (Gonzalez 2019 etc) have Epachtho more derived than Malawi (Eutitanosauria is everything more derived than Epachtho so unless Ampelo has it a lack of hypo-hypa has to be diagnostic of at least that clade). IJReid ^{{{T - C - D - R}}} 22:42, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

The presence of hypo-hypa in Epachthosaurus is considered to probably be an autapomorphic reversal in the topologies where it is deeply nested within Lithostrotia, IIRC. As such, the absence of hypo-hypa can still be diagnostic of Lithostrotia, just with one or two included taxa which differ autapomorphically. Do Zaher et al. explicitly use that definition? If they do I'm overlooking it; they don't include Andesaurus in their analysis, so they could just as well be arbitrarily placing Titanosauria according to taxonomic content, as Phuwiangosaurus is sometimes included in Titanosauria. Ornithopsis (talk) 22:59, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

lifespan

What about lifespan? It seems like tha this topic isn't highlighted in anyway. AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 14:23, 6 December 2022 (UTC)