Talk:Mammal-like reptile

Almost all of the content on this page is duplicated in the section "Mammals and reptiles" on Synapsid. I think we could probably cover all the vital information about this outdated term on that article. I can't imagine that there's much potential here for anything of great substance. Osiris (talk) 15:19, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Synapsid is a term for a huge clade of land animals lasting some 300 million years from the earliest egg-laying amniotes to the living mammals (it excludes the sauropsids).
Therapsida (the proper name for mammal-like reptiles) is a clade of synapsids which excludes the earlier Pelycosaurs; also by tradition, the mammals (which are treated under their own heading).
The page does a job on a topic where almost all learners have problems. And as for 'great substance', well if that's going to be a criterion what would we have left?! Anyway, the page's intention is to steer students away from a common error, whereas the pages on taxonomic groups are wider, and more formal. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:35, 20 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, well, if you Google the term you get a whole range of uses. A lot of them just describe it as a synonym for either Therapsids or Synapsids as a whole. The English Wikipedia's article on "Synapsid" cites the exact same sources (Carroll and Brenton), but states that it was used to describe the "non-mammalian members" of the clade. There aren't any page numbers in our citations, but maybe if you have access to the books you can try and find some quotations that we can use to clear it up. Whether to Synapsid or Therapsid, though, redirecting is just a suggestion. The potential for substance is what I'm talking about: There's only so much one can possibly write about an outmoded synonym without starting to duplicate the content on the other article. It just seems a little confusing to have two articles on the same subject, but if it is helpful to keep them separate then great. Osiris (talk) 12:18, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A great comment from a palaeo blog site was "You do realise that if Synapsids are reptiles, then we're all reptiles!" Anyway, I think we should leave well alone. People's use of what they fondly imagine to be "terms everyone can understand" is full of pitfalls. The trouble is, readers run across them in books written by authors who prefer non-technical terms in an effort to get empathy with the reader. The term "mammal-like reptile" was invented in the 19th century when little was known about the evolution of early tetrapods. There are some palaeontologists who would like to ban the word "Reptile" from taxonomy. They argue it causes trouble, and is contaminated by our familiarity with the Squamata, which are untypical of the main fossil groups. Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:08, 22 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]