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Merger proposal: Sulcimentisauria[edit]

Sulcimentisauria is a rarely used clade that includes all core silesaurids and may include or not include core ornithischians. I can’t imagine how it would be possible to write a full-fledged article about a group whose possible composition varies so much. Although Sulcimentisauria may be a clade within Ornithischia, it is currently associated with Silesauridae and may be covered by this article. Sittaco (talk) 12:22, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have mixed feelings. One of the reasons why Sulcimentisauria is rarely used is simply because it's pretty new, at only 5 years old and within a relatively small and semi-obscure group. It's also pretty well-diagnosed and well-defined, Asilisaurus is reliably found to be one of the most basal silesaurids so it makes sense to cluster the core of Silesauridae into a clade. Which is more than can be said for a lot of clade articles on Wikipedia, many of which have very shaky support and acceptance. That said, I'm not opposed to the logic of the merger. Clade names are simply convenient labels to describe the structure of a phylogenetic tree, not fundamentally unique or "important" subdivisions of the tree of life. Pretty much all of the content which could be developed to elaborate on Sulcimentisauria would also be useful on Silesauridae, so it's superfluous to have both pages. It's kinda like subfamily articles: many subfamilies are ecologically, anatomically, and geologically distinct (like say, Borophaginae), while others are not much more than cladogram labels. This touches on a broader discussion which WP:TOL probably has a lot to say about. NGPezz (talk) 14:56, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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