Talk:Pelycosaur

message: Shouldn't the entry mention that pelycosaurs were mammal like reptiles?
:No, because they weren't what is usually meant by the term. More properly, they were the line that led to the mammal-like reptiles, or Theraspids. CFLeon 07:47, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: At Synapsid Pelycosaurs and Theraspids are co-orders of the same class, so I've changed the article to say they are cousins. --Michael C. Price talk 10:32, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: A new definition for Pelycosauria is here provided:
Pelycosauria Cope, 1878
New defintion - All synapsids closer to Eupelycosauria and Caseasauria than to basal Synapsida.
:yes but Pelycosaurs are basal Synapsids; it's a paraphyletic group M Alan Kazlev 04:28, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pelycosauria redefined 

message: According to the text, the clade Eupelycosauria includes the Theraspids.  Acoording to the taxonomy list, they are a sub-order of order Pelycosaur beside order Theraspida. 
I get that there are competing systems out there, but someone should clean that up, at least a note or a comment.
--Sukkoth 20:55, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Text contradicts illustration? 

message: It seems a lot of bother is made over clades which are based on a concept not all that difficult to understand.  Clades of best used when evolutionary relationships are the issue, especially those which follow.  When the concern is over a particular and well defined group, such as Pelycosaurs, the cladistic approach isn't particularly useful, if at all.  In this case its better to think of them in the traditional sense as an ordinary taxon. 
When it says "At least two pelycosaur clades independently evolved a tall sail, ..etc"  it could have just as well have said: at least two pelycosauran families independently evolved a tall sail. For practical purposed in this case the two terms are interchangeable, except that clade is more ambiguous.   
Just one man's perspective. Cheers J.H.McDonnell (talk) 00:51, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Unnecessary bother

message: The late Devonian extinction c.370Ma can be construed, as resulting from the fishes' evolution of jaws, and teeth, c.400Ma; fish then went on a global feeding frenzy, and gradually drove many other species extinct; so explaining the higher background-rate of (marine) extinction after 400Ma.  A hundred million years later, the evolution of warm-blood, by basal Therapsids, may have been a similar "quantum leap" in evolution, causing a burst of Therapsid expansion across Pangea, which came at the expense, of more primitive species, who suffered Olson's Extinction c.270Ma.  The article's reference to "late surviving forms" of Pelycosaurs, echoes similar statements for (even more primitive) Varanopidae, who also eked out survival, in then-arctic South Africa, until c.260Ma.  Plausibly, warm-blooded Therapsids evolved an advanced(-for-earth) feature c.270Ma, which was then a "quantum leap" over contemporary species, even as eons earlier, jawed fish evolved an advanced feature.  Perhaps such biogenic mass extinctions become less frequent, over evolutionary time, as more advanced features become more common?  If so, then modern anthropogenic extinctions may be part of a persistent pattern, spanning nearly a half billion years, of "quantum advances" bringing about biogenic mass extinctions (not caused by geologic, or cosmologic, pheonomena).  Contact with advanced species may have caused the late Devonian, and mid Permian, mass extinctions.66.235.38.214 (talk) 12:26, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  comparison to [[Late Devonian extinction]] ?? 

message: I have real-life limitations (see my user page if curious), but they're not at their worst right now, so why can't I figure out exactly what it is that is hurting my head about comparing the information in this article with that in the section Paraphyly#Paraphyly_cannot_be_based_on_independently_evolved_traits? Sigh. 
Anyway, here are some improvements that I can suggest, although more (or different ones) are probably needed:
# It would be great if the editor who improves this article would also work on the Paraphyly section that discusses pelycosaurs at the same time. 
# Before even thinking on how to improve the intro, I'd wrestle the rest of the article into shape and then let that shape guide me to redo the intro.
#The intro's sentence, "Because more advanced groups of synapsids evolved directly from 'pelycosaurs', the term had fallen out of favor among scientists by the 21st century," is very confusing. Which term? What term if any term is now used in its stead? What changed? Did we always know that more advanced groups of synapsids &c., &c.? Is "evolved" or "directly" the more important word there? Were the terminology options clear-cut all of a sudden or was it gradual? 2 term options or more?Not all of my questions here need to be answered in a rewrite, but some at least should be to draw a clear connection between the two halves of this sentence.
# Right now, all kinds of info is sprinkled throughout all kinds of sections. I'd separately clarify (although in what order, I don't know) the histories of the name/classification and the evolution of the animal, perhaps along these headings and subheadings:
::* Development of the classification of Pelycosaurs
:::* Details of competing ideas
:::* Timeline of the classification development
::* Pelycosaurs and evolutionary history
:::* The evolution of the pelycosaurs
:::* Pelycosaurs and the evolution of modern animals
I usually don't make it back to talk pages where I suggest things (which is why I have to capture my thoughts all at once or not at all), so please use WP:Notifications if you want to get my attention back to this page—and limitations allowing, I'll try to return. Thanks in advance! --Geekdiva (talk) 21:58, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help request: Two pelycosaur-related articles need work.