Talk:Teratornis

message: Is there any evidence to associate the Native American Thunderbird with Teratorn? That's a good question. It seems that Thunderbird is more associated with Thunder and Nature. Yet indipendant legends of physical giant birds exist in native american folk context, regardless of wheather or not these are considered "Thunderbird" or other giant birds like the Condor. Some good info can be found here: http://sped2work.tripod.com/evidence.html
:The dry fact remains that these were the only birds of their size which are definitely kown to have been encountered by humans. So if the Thunderbird references back to any real bird, this is it. Perhaps also the California Condor, but less so than Merriam's Teratorn, as it was less impressive. Which should give an idea of how impressive this here tweety was.... Dysmorodrepanis 00:51, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: 

message: "T. merriami is the largest species of flying bird that was encountered alive by man."
... yet it's mass is said to be 15kg. There are a few birds that get that get bigger than that: swans and bustards come to mind. Albatrosses have it outclassed in the wingspan stakes too. I think the sentence should be removed, or change to "predatory bird" (maybe). — John.Conway (talk) 18:54, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Biggest flying bird encountered by man?

message: :Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *Support or *Oppose, then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.
*Oppose Monotypic genera only have the genus name as the title, per paleontology project guidelines. FunkMonk (talk) 21:39, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: Teratornithidae lists a second Teratornis species. postdlf (talk) 21:10, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems right: http://scholar.google.dk/scholar?hl=da&q=Teratornis+woodburnensis&btnG= FunkMonk (talk) 21:19, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: So let's revisit the move discussion from above... Should we move this existing article to Teratornis merriami and then create a new article at Teratornis to cover the genus, or refactor this one to cover the genus while still weighted towards T. merriami? postdlf (talk) 21:22, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I think both should be included here, as is the case for most prehistoric genera with multiple species. There isn't much to say about the species included that isn't identical. FunkMonk (talk) 21:35, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Is this something you can handle, or should we post a note to the paleontology project? It's not my usual subject matter. postdlf (talk) 13:28, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll see if I can fix it up later today. FunkMonk (talk) 13:30, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Great, thanks. postdlf (talk) 13:36, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Monotypic genus? 

message: I added this passage to the article: "It has been suggested by anthropologist Paulette Steeves that the oral tradition of the thunderbird in certain North American indigenous peoples' history and culture describes memories of Teratornis," only to have my edit reverted on the grounds that Steeves is a "fringe author", a label I dispute. --Abstractgrant (talk) 13:29, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Paulette Steeves thinks that people were in the Americas 130,000 years ago, which is far outside the mainstream. At any rate, Wikipedia is based on secondary sources, so we'd need to see what some unrelated author thinks about this to include it in the article. - MrOllie (talk) 13:33, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: My argument is as follows: 1) Wikipedia articles for extinct genera cite plenty of primary sources. Just look at Deinonychus for example. 2) Dr. Steeves' opinion about the length of time people were in the Americas may be unorthodox, but no more so than, for example, Gregory Paul's opinion that dromaeosaurs were secondarily flightless. She's a Canada Research Chair with a book published by University of Nebraska Press, not some self-published kook saying that Neanderthals built Atlantis or something. 3) Even if Dr. Steeves is wrong about the length of time people were in the Americas, it's not a fringe position to say that humans coexisted with Teratornis. The page already cites Campbell & Stenger (2002) which states that T. woodburnensis came from a stratum that also had evidence of human occupancy. --Abstractgrant (talk) 22:26, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: 1) This is not an issue of it being primary, per se. It is about it being one person's inherently unorthodox personal opinion only appearing in a primary source. This is much less a concern for an uncontroversial description of a fossil. 2) The first part of this argument is an WP:OTHERSTUFF argument. There may well be other unorthodox scholarly opinions given in other articles, but if they are equally lacking in secondary sourcing, the solution is to remove them, not use them as rationalization to include similar here.  As to qualifications, they really don't matter. There are Nobel laureates whose fringe ideas don't get mentioned on the relevant articles. 3) This is not just claiming coexistence, but further claiming a 130,000-year cultural memory.  Even if you correct this down to 15,000 years, it would still seemingly be well out at the end of what most anthropologists consider reasonable. This takes it a step further by claiming to pinpoint a specific genus as the origin of a complex cultural phenomenon over that timeframe.  In summary, it is quite common for even respected scientists to publish fringy pet theories, but it is giving them WP:UNDUE weight to include such unless/until other scholars give it serious consideration if only to argue against it, making it a noteworthy unorthodox opinion, before we mention it. Agricolae (talk) 16:36, 29 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Thunderbirds (again)