Talk:Heterodontosauridae

	Heterodontosauridae has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones Date Process Result March 13, 2007 Good article nominee Listed June 1, 2009 Good article reassessment Kept
Current status: Good article

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

This  level-5 vital article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Dinosaurs Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Dinosaurs, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of dinosaurs and dinosaur-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DinosaursWikipedia:WikiProject DinosaursTemplate:WikiProject Dinosaursdinosaurs articles Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Palaeontology Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Palaeontology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of palaeontology-related topics and create a standardized, informative, comprehensive and easy-to-use resource on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PalaeontologyWikipedia:WikiProject PalaeontologyTemplate:WikiProject PalaeontologyPalaeontology articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Argh... I rewrote almost this entire article over the last few days and then I lost it all by accident. So now I will re-rewrite it! Sheep81 07:46, 5 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the criteria listed at

Thank you! J. Spencer 05:21, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Can we please have some citations of these prints and published speculation about heterodontosaurs making them? Sheep81 (talk) 03:06, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Olsen, P. & Baird, D. (1986) "Ichnogenus Atreipus and Triassic Biostratigraphy" in Padian, K. The Beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs: Faunal Change Across the Triassic Cambridge University Press

ISBN 0521367794

has a small bit on page 77 about the ichnogenus Atreipus having a bird-like tridactyl pes; the authors compare it to Heterodontosaurus.

Pazzaglia, F.J. (2006) Excursions in Geology And History: Field Trips in the Middle Atlantic States Geological Society of America

ISBN 0813700086

has an illustration showing the somewhat bird-like fossil footprint of "heterodontosaur Atreipus milfordensis" (but no hallux). They're only discussing the eastern U.S. however.

The Paleobiology Database indicates Atreipus lived in Europe, North America, and South America. I don't know what sources Dysmorodrepanis was using, and don't know anything about the specific ichnogenus mentioned in the new entry, but speculation about Tr/J tridactyl footprints belonging to heterodontosaurs has definitely been published. Let's get some citations for all the new info, though. :) Firsfron of Ronchester 12:27, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah my knowledge of footprints is crappy... wish I knew more. Sheep81 (talk) 19:25, 13 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if there is some area of paleo that you must be knowledge deficient in, footprints are probably the way to go, Sheep. ;) Firsfron of Ronchester 05:55, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From a DML post on this year's Palaeontological Association meeting:

"Two studies of heterodontosaurs agree that they were not sexually dimorphic and that the tusks were already present in juveniles. Morphology, wear and the weakness of the lower jaw suggests that the teeth were used for straight biting, but not tearing or slashing. The conclusion was that the tusks were probably not used for intra-species fighting or display, nor for defence, but that heterodontosaurs were omnivores living in semi-arid habitat and used the teeth to kill smallish prey."

I'm hoping for a Tetrapod Zoology post out of this. J. Spencer (talk) 21:45, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I'm hoping to at least see the abstract so I can add a little snippet to this article! Sheep81 (talk) 06:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've found the PalAss abstract volume pdf; the relevant abstracts are p. 45, 79, and 83. J. Spencer (talk) 21:27, 24 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion is

transcluded from Talk:Heterodontosauridae/GA1

. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

What other family would Eocursor and Pisanosaurus fit into if not Heterdontosauridae? They may be farther apart than the other Heterodontosaurs, but they are also the closest animals to it and share features in common with them. Most importantly they are more related to the Heterodontosaurs than to any other family and are not placed in any other family of their own. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CF97:4500:41AB:2414:FB4D:C366 (talk) 15:59, 6 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The thing is, researchers haven't consistently found them in a family, and in fact they don't have to be in a family at all. J. Spencer (talk) 04:14, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, you are making the common mistake to assume that species one step down the evolutionary tree are more closely related to species one step up than to the remainder of the tree. This is incorrect. Heterodontosaurus is, presuming it's more "basal", just as closely related to Eocursor as it is to Paralophosaurus. Whether branches are placed on the same side of the tree trunk is basically arbitrary. And the number of branching events has no implications for the closeness of the relationship. Putting Eocursor into the Heterodontosauridae would make the latter group

paraphyletic

.

While it is true that Eocursor has traits in common with heterodontosaurids, this is also true for any other living being on the planet. Furthermore, modern taxonomy is not based on similarity of build but merely on descent. But even if it were otherwise: Eocursor is in fact very different from the heterodontosaurids which are an extremely specialised group.

As regards Pisanosaurus: this is a good example of why paraphyletic taxa are such a bad idea. According to recent research it is not even a dinosaur.--MWAK (talk) 09:15, 9 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

When searching for the classification of Pisanosaurus under the classification heading of the Pisanosaurus page I found this:

Pisanosaurus is the type genus of the Pisanosauridae, a family erected by Casamiquela in the same paper which named Pisanosaurus.[5] The Pisanosauridae family has fallen into disuse, as a 1976 study considered the group synonymous with the already named Heterodontosauridae.[8]

The paper cited in support of this is here:

Bonaparte, J.F. (1976). "Pisanosaurus mertii Casamiquela and the origin of the Ornithischia". Journal of Paleontology. 50 (5): 808–820. JSTOR 1303575.

As such Pisanosaurus would belong to the Heterodontosauridae, as would intermediary genera between Pisanosaurus and later heterodontosaurs such as Eocursor. For this reason I have added both Pisanosaurus and Eocursor to the page. (from User:Jfraatz)

As if 1976 taxonomy still holds up today. Lythronaxargestes (talk | contribs) 04:40, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Heterodontosauridae. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070219102659/http://www.taxonsearch.org/dev/file_home.php to http://www.taxonsearch.org/dev/file_home.php

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018.

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 07:16, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Could this group pronate their hands?184.186.4.209 (talk) 21:04, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No, active pronation of the forearm was not possible, as far as we know, in any animal except for mammals and chamaeleons. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:13, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]