Talk:Scientific study suggests dinosaurs flapped their wings as they ran

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Seeing that you've walked away, I've went ahead and restructured the story and submitted it for review. --Gryllida (talk) 01:09, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

And a lovely act it is. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:59, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

EDIT: Some probs, though. Where did you get "improved running performance"? I didn't see it in either of the normal sources. The study itself is pretty dense, and I might have missed it if it was in there. Did you see it? From what I picked up in the study, the bird flapping its wings as it runs is a bit like humans swinging their arms as they walk. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:41, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

I'll check. Gryllida (talk) 03:42, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

I thought the running dinos preceded any form of active or passive flying, hence the conclusion. No? Gryllida (talk) 03:43, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Running itself preceded any form of active or passive flying, yes, but that's not what the study's about. The researchers did not choose Caudipteryx because the think it's the direct ancestor of birds; they don't. They picked it because it had the body type that they wanted to study. If I could find a sentence explicitly stating so in any of the sources, our article would state so explicitly as well. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:46, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

I think this point is important because if it was not the case -- i.e. if the running with wing flapping did not precede gliding -- then they would not be able to come to the conclusion that flying evolved from the former and not the latter.

Or why did they come to this conclusion? Gryllida (talk) 04:05, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

No no no.

There are many ideas of how flying dinosaurs came about (see introduction of the study itself). This Wikinews article deals with two. 1) Running, feathered dinosaurs learned to fly with flapping with no real intermediate steps and 2) running/walking dinosaurs learned to climb trees, then learned to parachute and glide, then learned to fly with flapping.

This study shows that #1 could have worked. The authors probably think that flying dinosaurs evolved from an as-yet-undiscovered theropod that ran and had feathers. But they can't study that therapod because no one's found its fossils yet. But they do have fossils of Cheropteryx, so they built their model of that instead. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:52, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

kk, clarified. Gryllida (talk) 06:36, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

A few snips: 1) "Offering" suggests that this is the first time the up from the ground hypothesis has been posed, and it's actually been around for many years. I heard about it in school when I was a nerdling. 2) "Alternative" says that there's one main theory and a bunch of less popular theories. Honestly, I'm not sure that's not the case here, but none of our sources say it. Again, if you saw it and I missed it, go on and put it right back in, no problem, but if it's not there in the sources it shouldn't be here in our article. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:25, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Actually "in contrast" does the job well. Thank you! Next time you make corrections like this I would suggest that you mention what change you have made in your talk page message clearly so that I don't have to go back to the article to check. --Gryllida (talk) 11:30, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

(Sometimes I wish each change to the article generated a new talk page section in which the diff is provided.) Gryllida (talk) 11:30, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Review of revision 4479118 [Passed]

Revision 4479118 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 22:55, 5 May 2019 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: See (as always) the detailed history of edits during review. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Revision 4479118 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 22:55, 5 May 2019 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: See (as always) the detailed history of edits during review. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Typo

Should be Tsinghua University ChinskiEpierOzki (talk) 02:56, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, you are right. I am not sure what is the standard procedure, ie whether a {{correction}} is needed in this case. I am marking this for check by another reviewer.

{{editprotected}} Gryllida (talk) 03:55, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

@Gryllida, ChinskiEpierOzki: Since the typo doesn't change the meaning, we just fix it. Done. (If the typo would have resulted in readers really getting the wrong idea from the article, then we'd need a {{correction}}.) --Pi zero (talk) 12:40, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, Pi zero. Gryllida (talk) 04:39, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps not a typo, but a stylistic choice, but in the sentence "It weighed about ten lbs (five kg) and the researchers estimate it had a top speed of about 18 mph (8 m/s)", I think the general convention (at least among scientists) is that unit abbrevations shouldn't be combined with non-numerals, i.e., "10 lbs" or "ten pounds", but not "ten lbs". Here is what the U.S. standards agency suggests, and it's generally the style used in the sciences. Now Wikinews is not a scientific publication but a general news website, so style choices vary, though it's not made clear in the style guide, beyond the general advice of spelling out numbers <20. —mikemoral (talk · contribs) 04:55, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing this, I think it makes sense. Gryllida (talk) 06:25, 9 July 2019 (UTC)