Talk:Porcupine ray

	Porcupine ray 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 May 12, 2011 Good article nominee Listed
	A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on June 7, 2009. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that although classified as a stingray, the porcupine ray (pictured) does not have a stinging spine on its tail?

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This review is

transcluded from Talk:Porcupine ray/GA1

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Reviewer: Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:59, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'll begin review now. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:59, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

30 m (98 ft) - better to say 100 ft here.

Fixed.

Aha, nice to see the "-1" parameter - will remember it for next time....Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:10, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

asperrimus is actually Latin superlative meaning "roughest" or "very rough"...but don't sweat it if we can't get a reference stating that (i.e. only go in if ref, otherwise don't lose sleep over it)

The entire original description is in Latin, so would that represent a translation and thus not OR?

hmmm, I guess luckily the fact that it is a superlative is obvious and uncontroversial to anyone who's studied Latin, so I think we're fine on this one. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:10, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There may be more than one species of porcupine ray, as is currently recognized - whoa, any further info in the source to add as to why this is thought so? Can it be added?

This one's tricky. The sentence is a one-off mention in Smiths' Sea Fishes. There is a species Urogymnus laevior described by Annandale in 1909, but there are only two modern sources that even mention it: Michael (1993) assumes it's a second species, and it appears in a 2002 single checklist of Thai elasmobranchs. The vast majority of literature doesn't acknowledge it, nor does it appear as either a valid species or a synonym in FishBase or other databases. I debated what to do about this, because there aren't any sources that talk about the taxonomic validity of U. laevior at all. I ended up leaving it out for now. -- Yzx (talk) 22:22, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay - I think how you've phrased it is the most accurate way to have done so with the sources at hand. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:10, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Any other information on why they are in their own genus would be good to add (just the lack of a stinging tail?)

I don't have Müller and Henle's publication where they proposed Gymnura, but that was probably a factor.

Ok you do what you can do. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:10, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwsie looking good. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:28, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Let me know of further issues. -- Yzx (talk) 22:22, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

1. Well written?:

Prose quality:

Manual of Style compliance:

2. Factually accurate and

References to sources:

Citations to reliable sources, where required:

No original research

:

3. Broad in coverage?:

Major aspects:

Focused:

4. Reflects a

Fair representation without bias:

5. Reasonably stable?

No edit wars, etc. (Vandalism does not count against GA):

6. Illustrated by

Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have

fair use rationales

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Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with

suitable captions

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Overall:

Pass or Fail:

Thanks for the review. -- Yzx (talk) 06:15, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Two minutes between proposed merge and actual merge doesn't leave much room for discussion. Anyhow, I've reinstated the page, as it seems the merge was based on a misunderstanding. It is an entirely separate species, but the problem is the nomenclature, as two separate authorities have used the name Raja africana: First in 1801 where Bloch & Schneider used it to describe a population later considered a synonym of the porcupine ray. Almost two centuries later, Capapé, evidently unaware that someone already had used this name many years earlier, described a new species of skate as Raja africana. Two entirely separate species (not even in the same family), but only one name. Capapé's name is a homonym, but

RN1970 (talk) 00:59, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply

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