Contributing to Wikipedia as a paleontologist/ geoscientist

There was a time when Wikipedia articles on palaeobiological and geoscientific topics where almost exclusively abysmal, including unreferrenced children's-book-like fossil animal portrayals 30 years behind the state-of-the-art.

That there has been a change during the last years, is more or less the consequence of the infusion of expert or semi-expert knowledge. Compare this and this version of the English Wikipedia article on a famous fossil taxon and you may acknowledge that a 5 year riping process can result in a nice and relatively up-to-date encyclopedia article.

Scepticism from the scientific community had different causes:

(1) unreliability as a data source/ lack of references - these problems were mostly solved when the community of WP writers established higher standards and agreed on that all major points made by an article have to be supported by independent sources.

(2) WP-related plagiarism by students. I suppose this is merely a problem of teaching youngsters the difference between right/honest and wrong/inhonest use of source texts and nothing Wikipedia can be blamed for.

(3) potential influence by people with a special agenda. Mostly neutralized by the overload of sensible/ unbiased Wikipedia workers. In most cases the WP community has enough background knowledge - so that unsupported/biased statements are recognized and rejected/presented in a neutral way.

There is also the question of utility, especially from the expert's point of view...

Why writing WP articles can be a worthwhile operation...

(1) Your contribution will be read. Search engines mostly place Wikipedia articles very high on the list. Anyone searching your article's lemma will find your text and use it. Thus you will be the provider of primary insight into a specific scientific topic.

Your article may be helpful even for serious research - namely for scientists of related fields searching for the explanation of a term (and references to further technical literature/ online sources).

(2) You can bring rarely publicised aspects of your science to public awareness by the choice of the topics you are writing about. By creating a featured article on a rare species of ammonoids you can direct the focus of paleo-enthusiasts to an otherwise neglected field (you gain more publicity for what is really at the heart of your interest).

(3) Sometimes it is a good excercise to recount for a non-specialist audience what appeared plausible in the internal discourse among scientists of your field. You may find that some concepts are hard to explain (and perhaps don't make much sense when in the cold light of day...).

This list could be could be continued.

Hindrances for new expert authors?

Frequent misunderstandings about the Wikipedia project are listed under "What Wikipedia is not" - you should read this to prevent later disappointments.

There are some Wiki formats - mostly as easy or easier to handle than HTML codes - and you are facing a growing body of rules and conventions. A recipe is to copy and paste the style/format features of an existing article code and to fill in your new content.

Don't argue too much about styles and formats with established Wikipedia users. Your primary aim as a specialist should be to provide up-to-date information, scientific background and overview knowledge, and corrections on misconceptions/ misunderstandings which often arise from the popularization of science.

If you out yourself as an expert you will find that amateurs among the experienced Wikipedia users will give you much support at the beginning and back you up in discussions (which can arise if you are working on controversial topics).

My own Wikipedia experience

I had my first edits in the German Wikipedia in 2005 when I was still an undergrad. If English is not your mother tongue you may think about editing articles in your own language WP, but mostly in the en:WP there is more substance to start with.

In any case you will find that much work is to be done and that you have to be selective with your engagement. Look at the points that you believe are most important and easily done. If you have done a literature search for your professional work you may use some of the data again for a WP article. If you are a PhD student, be aware of the Wikipedia procrastination potential!

EAVP Meeting 2009 in Berlin, Germany

This week the European Associatuon of Vertebrate Paleontologists had its 7th annual meeting at the Humboldt University of Berlin Museum of Natural History, organized by Daniela Schwarz-Wings and her team.

Between Tuesday and Thursday about 34 oral presentations were held and 22 posters were displayed. Sorted systematically:

reptiles: 19.5 oral presentations (dinosaurs: 11) + 10.5 (7) posters
synapsids: 8.5 (mammals: 7) + 6.5 (6)
fish/ sharks: 3 + 3.5
anamniote tetrapods: 3 + 1.5

Apparently the EAVP is mostly a paleoherpetological society.

The two field trips organized for Friday covered the Rüdersdorf Muschelkalk Quarry (which yielded Nothosaurus, Placodus and others critters of the marine Middle Triassic) and the Pleistocene Rixdorf horizon of Niederlehme to the SW of Berlin.

Christian A. Meyer from Basel became new president of the EAVP, he takes the office over from Eric Buffetaut who is new editor-in-chief of the society's online-only journal Oryctos. Next year the meeting will be held in Aix-en-Provence in southern France, Greece is planned for 2011.

Chroniosuchians and stay in Moscow

To resolve the riddle: The bonified eyeball from the last post represents a a ball-shaped intercentrum of a chroniosuchid from the Permian of Russia.

In chroniosuchian reptiliomorphs the intercentra (white arrows) are interlocked with the amphicoelous pleurocentra in a ball-and-socket-like fashion. The image on the left shows some section of a Chroniosuchus vertebral column in ventral view. Intercentra become bony balls only in the adult individuals - not fully bonified in sub-adults and juveniles they are preserved with a crescent, disk-like or ellipsoidal shape.

Also, the fusion of the neural arch with the pleurocentrum - a feature otherwise characteristic for "higher reptiliomorphs" such as seymouriamorphs and diadectomorphs - is only completed in the course of ontogenesis (so that you can find suture lines in the subadult individuals).

Moscow: Paleontological Institute and Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences (PIN)

The paleo-style PIN building has a castle-like rectangular shape with an inner courtyard featuring life-size sculptures of fossil critters from Russia and areas of the former Soviet Union. The exhibition has almost everything you wish for as a vertebrate enthusiast (here depicted: the two-story dinosaur hall). Rich in type specimens the collection is essential for some and important for many studies - so earlier or later many of the fossil vertebrate people spend some time there.

Concering the Chroniosuchia: With the exception of bystrowianid chroniosuchian remains from Kupferzell, Germany (Witzmann et al. 2008) and China (Young 1979) and some rather questionable Chinese chroniosuchid chroniosuchians (Li & Cheng 1999), all yet described Permian and Triassic chroniosuchian taxa come from the European part of Russia and are mostly archived in the PIN. I am thankful to Valery Golubev who helped me a lot during my week of stay when I was studying the type materials and to Jury Gubin who nicely put up with me in his room.

Some literature on chroniosuchians

Here considered: titles also available in English (plus the Chinese ones mentioned above).

Golubev, V. K. (1998). "Narrow-armored Chroniosuchians (Amphibia, Anthracosauromorpha) from the Late Permian of Eastern Europe." Paleontologicheskij Zhurnal 1998(3): 64- 73. [Russian, English]

Golubev, V. K. (1998). "Revision of the Late Permian chroniosuchians (Amphibia, Anthracosauromorpha) from Eastern Europe." Paleontologicheskij Zhurnal 1998(4): 68- 77. [Russian, English]

Golubev, V. K. (1999). "A new narrow-armored chroniosuchian (Amphibia, Anthracosauromorpha) from the Late Permian of the East Europe." Paleontologicheskij Zhurnal 1999(2): 43- 50. [Russian, English]

Li, J., Cheng Z. (1999). " New anthracosaur and temnospondyl amphibians from Gansu, China." Vertebrata PalAsiatica 37(3): 234- 247. [Chinese with English abstract]

Novikov, I. V., M.A. Shishkin (2000). "Triassic chroniosuchians (Amphibia, Anthracosauromorpha) and the evolution of the trunk dermal ossifications in the bystrowianids." Paleontological Journal 34(supplement): S165- S178. [English]

Novikov, I. V., M.A. Shishkin, V.K. Golubev (2000). Permian and Triassic anthracosaurs from Eastern Europe. The Age of Dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia. M. A. S. M.J. Benton, D.M. Unwin, E.N. Kurochkin. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 60- 70. [English]

Witzmann, F., R.R. Schoch, M.W. Maisch (2008). "A relic basal tetrapod from the Middle Triassic of Germany." Naturwissenschaften 95(1): 67- 72. [English]

Young, C. C. (1979). "A new Late Permian fauna from Jiyuan, Honan." Vertebrata Palasiatica 17: 99- 113. [Chinese with English abstract]

Bonified eyeball

Or what the hell is this?

Lineage concept vs cladistics in continental biostratigraphy

The white hair of my chief Ph.D. supervisor is to some degree explained by his livelong efforts to get a grip on Carboniferous to Permian continental biostratigraphy - trying out different groups such as cockcroaches, conchostracans, freshwater sharks, and amphibians.

One of the underlying concepts which I suppose I will always find hard to believe is the idea of searching for and finding so-called lineages, i.e. series of species occurring subsequently in the stratigraphic record which show stepwisely distinct anatomies because each species has descended from the respective next-oldest species.

Of course every species has an ancestor and many have descendants but how can I define them from the fossil record? Is there not the typical problem of epistemic vagueness of the ancestor in any kind of phylogeny (e.g. discussed by Wolf-Ernst Reif in some of his many theoretical papers on cladistics in paleontology)?

Searching for lineages leads to a fallacy?

The idea that whithin a continental sedimentary succession a certain species occurring deeper than a related species should be regarded as the ancestor of the latter - unless disproven - always reminded of a type of logical fallacy called post hoc ergo procter hoc: "B occurred later than A, therefore A must be the reason for B." In terms of imposing the lineage concept: "Species B occurred subsequent to species A, therefore A must be the ancestor of B."

If a multiple- and irregularly branched bush is a good analogon to how evolution works I daresay the idea of a biostratigrapher to pick up the isolated fragements of branches (i.e. fossils) and glue them together in a few long continuous branches results in a bad model of the bush.

The problems occur after I have established a biostratigraphic zonation concept on the basis of what I think is a lineage: Someone working on the same material puts the species of my 'lineage' into a cladistic analysis and finds that there is almost no concordance between the appearance date of a species and its likely phylogenetic position.

If I do agree that similarities/ dissimilarities in morphology, histology, behavior, etc. should form the basis of a classification and consider the data basis of the phylogenetic analysis as sufficient I will have to admit that my scheme has been proven wrong. Or else if I suppose that the data are not sufficient and I myself cannot add more then I will have to concede that my scheme is at least no more valid than the alternative.

Proving microevolution depends on the sufficiency of "population" samples?

Im not saying that it is impossible to find arguments in favor of an ancestor-descendant relationship: Imagine I have large enough sample of specimens of the supposedly related species A, B, and C from three successive horizons. For A, B, C the empiric distributions of morphological parameters can be compared:
If the mean value & variance for A is not signficantly distinct from the mean and variance of B and
if the mean value & variance for B is not signficantly distinct from the mean and variance of C
but given a significant difference in the mean values/ variances of A and C,
I could infer that from A to C microevolution took place...
...but do we have such samples, let's say for tetrapods?

An example: Amphibian Biostratigraphy

These problems have been discussed for the amphibian biostratigraphy of the European Permocarboniferous as developed by Werneburg and Schneider and applied for various amphibian occurrences, see for example:

R. Werneburg & J.W. Schneider, 2006, Amphibian biostratigraphy of the European Permo-Carboniferous. In: S.G. Lucas, G. Cassinis and J.W. Schneider, Editors, Non-Marine Permian Biostratigraphy and Biochronology: Geological Society of London, Special Publications 265 (2006), pp. 201–215. [Link]

R. Werneburg, A. Ronchi, and J.W. Schneider, 2007, The Early Permian Branchiosaurids (Amphibia) of Sardinia (Italy): Systematic Palaeontology, Palaeoecology, Biostratigraphy and Palaeobiogeographic Problems. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Volume 252, Issues 3-4, 3 September 2007, Pages 383-404 [Link]

The zonation scheme and proposed lineages have been criticized by Steyer (2004) as being a stratophenetic rather than a true phylogenetic approach considering the criteria how the authors relate different species:

J. S. Steyer, 2004, Phylogenetic or stratophenetic systematics? - Comment of R. Werneburg: The branchiosaurid amphibians from the Lower Permian of Buxières-les-Mines, Bourbon l’Archambault Basin (Allier, France) and their biostratigraphic significance. Bull. Soc. géol. France, 2004, 175 (4), 423-425
[Link]

Another particular problem is that amphibians are known to be abundantly subject to heterochronous evolution - evolutionary shifts in the ontogenesis, in particular, neoteny, is a common phenomen and can obscure characteristic features.

A recent analysis by Schoch & Milner (2008) on branchiosaurids, a group of neotenic small dissorophoid temnospondylians which is often considered for biostratigraphy, features a cladistic approach and proposes a scenario, related to which nodes of the tree neoteny/ life style changes occurred:

R.R. Schoch & A.R. Milner, 2008, The intrarelationships and evolutionary history of the temnospondyl family Branchiosauridae. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology (2008), 6 : 409-431 [link]

While the relationship of Branchiosaurus forming the outgroup of major clades (Melanerpeton-clade, Apateon-clade) is correspondent to the order of occurrences in the stratigraphic record, certain long ghost lineages occur - in particular the interpretation of Apateon gracilis/Melanerpeton gracile shows a mismatch between the cladistic approach of Schoch & Milner and the scheme of Werneburg & Schneider. This divergence is also the consequence of conflicting interpretations of the gracil(e/is) material, however, it demonstrates the potential for stratigraphic misinterpretation:

If I believe that a species forms the end member of a lineage because it is the youngest in certain sedimentary sequences I may underestimate the species' stratigraphic range - unlike the cladistic analysis which (if well-founded) would imply a deep divergence suggesting that some of the earlier record of the species is missing.

Decoupling (continental) biostratigraphic zonation from the lineage concept

Assuming that evolution works rather bush-like than lineage-like, I dont' see why we can't keep a biostratigraphic zonation even in the case of sparse continental records. I still can associate a series of morphologically defined taxa with a certain stratigraphic range and spatial distribution - until the concept has been shown not to be adequate (or not outside a more narrowly defined spatiotemporal window).

Whether it is a lineage-like relationship of species or another factor (related to geography, climate, ecology or else) that makes biostratigraphy work is a question which might be solved only in some cases.