Talk:Subfossil lemur

Article creation and upcoming expansion

Due to unintended delays, I decided to publish this article prematurely just to fill the unnecessary void. (Also, by putting it in the mainspace, maybe that will light a fire under my butt to finish it.) In its current "1.0" state, it could use a serious proofread and copy-edit. I will try to do that myself immediately following this post, but at some point I need to call it a night. In general, I prefer that others proofread my work anyway, since I'm not good at catching my own mistakes. A quick class assessment would be greatly appreciated. Once the article is finished, I will obviously push it through WP:GAC followed by WP:FAC. Over the coming week or two, I plan to work on the article, hopefully finishing the last two sections. The "Extinction" section, in particular, is expected to grow significantly. Anyone looking at the source will see the hidden references I intend to use, so please do not delete them. Otherwise, enjoy the article and feel free to ask questions. – VisionHolder « talk » 04:53, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I should also note that I am trying to avoid using any life restoration images that have not been approved by subfossil lemur expert, Dr. Laurie Godfrey. I have been working with her and two skill Wiki artists, Smokeybjb and FunkMonk, to create more. As additional "approved" images become available, they will be included on this page. – VisionHolder « talk » 05:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Comments

• Lead: "ranging as high as 20 or more species"—better to give the actual maximum
• The lead should have something about the history of research (the proliferation of names and papers around 1900, the silence of subfossil lemur research after WW II, and recent renaissance), and about why they went extinct, but that should perhaps wait till the relevant sections have been written.
• "striped possums"—the link goes to the species Dactylopsila trivirgata and therefore should be capitalized, unless you actually mean the genus Dactylopsila.
• "gallery forests that surviving lemur species are most often studied in."—not "found in"?
• "not all habitats in which they occurred would have allowed them to be strictly arboreal, including gallery forests and the spiny forests of southern Madagascar."—not clear what the "including" refers to here.
• "Yet despite this pressure to specialize and differentiate, some of the extinct subfossil lemurs, such as Archaeolemur, had island-wide distributions during the Holocene, unlike the living lemurs"—wouldn't the appropriate comparison here be the genus for living lemurs? Various extant genera do have virtually island-wide distributions.
• "Subfossil lemur diets have been reconstructed using analytical tools, including dental gross morphology, shearing quotients, microwear, mesowear, dental microstructure, biogeochemistry, and the dissection of fecal pellets associated with subfossil remains"—as I told you, I think you should explain what this all means. I'll say what I think they refer to, but am not familiar with all of them. "Dental gross morphology" is just the way the tooth generally look—crest arrangement etcetera. "Shearing quotients" might be something related to hypsodonty (high-crownedness). "Microwear" and "mesowear" look at the way the tooth is worn on a microscopic level; I'm not sure what the difference between the two is. "Dental microstructure" looks at the microscopic arrangement of the tooth enamel, with things like Hunter-Schreger bands. "Biogeochemistry" may be isotopic analysis, like C-13 levels.

• • I've got an introduction to mesowear and microwear from someone who does know about it. Microwear is looking at the occlusal surface of teeth under a microscope and noting the scratches and holes and little things in the surface. Mesowear looks at the sides of the teeth, at the cusp profiles. When an animal eats hard (abrasive) food, it gets blunt, low cusps, but when it eats soft food, it gets higher, sharper cusps. Ucucha 10:30, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
• You link "niche differentiation" twice in the "Ecology" section, once piped to "resource partitioning".
• The piece about seed dispersal makes me wonder how those plants that depended on subfossil lemurs survive now.
• "Most subfossil lemurs also had high retinal summation (sensitivity to low light), resulting in poor day vision (low visual acuity) compared to anthropoids."—what is the evidence for this?

Ucucha 06:26, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm a little torn between addressing these and writing the rest of the article. At the moment, I think I'm going to work on writing more material and will come back later to address these issues. – VisionHolder « talk » 14:48, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Do what you think best; there's no hurry. Ucucha 14:50, 12 June 2010 (UTC)