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Most of these aren't fossil sites but rather formations, meant in the very narrow geological sense of "a laterally expansive group of genetically related rocks." For example, the Smoky Hill Chalk "fossil site" can not be said to refer to anything smaller than an area of several hundred square miles in Kansas and adjoining states. A better use for this list would be for individual locations at which fossils are found, have been found, or can be found. E.g., Olduvai Gorge, Penn-Dixie Quarry, La Brea Tarpits.
These are two different things. So I'm not sure why a list of "fossil sites" contains links to a number of sedimentary formations, many of them obscure, that just happen to produce fossils. If a formation is associated with a landmark fossil site (meaning that it's famous) that's fine, but I don't think every stratigraphic unit that has ever produced a fossil ought to be in this list, which is being made less useful by overzealous inclusions. Geogene ( talk) 00:33, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
As it stands, this list does not obey the guidance on list criteria, because there is no objective way to decide how to include a site or formation in this list that is supported by reliable sources.
My proposal is that we follow CSC#1: this should be a list of fossil sites (not formations), and to be included in the list, the fossil site must be both named and notable. That is, a site should have a name (not just a location or description), and it should be supported by multiple independent reliable sources (per WP:GNG).
In practice, adopting this criterion would shrink the list down to a list of fossil sites that already have WP articles. We could expand the list beyond that, if an editor wants to provide citations to reliable sources to new additions.
What do other editors think? — hike395 ( talk) 22:36, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Whew! after ~5 hours work I have converted the lists to a set of wikitables for each of the continets (plus New Zealand). Please check it over and not any mistakes that i missed. I was able to find several redlinks were just incorrect wikilinks to existing articles but i may have missed some so check the areas that you know. - Kevmin 06:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Should this page and the Lagerstätte page be merged? PAR ( talk) 18:03, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
This is a stand-alone list, so it must satisfy specific notability criteria for stand-alone lists. In particular, " A list topic is considered notable if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources ... The entirety of the list does not need to be documented in sources for notability, only that the grouping or set in general has been."
I have provided a couple of references for such a list, but they highlight the main problem for this list: How exactly is this list defined? What are the selection criteria? The title implies a comprehensive list of fossil sites, but extrapolating the list for the U.S. and Canada to the globe would result in an enormous list. Also, lists should not be indiscriminate. On the other hand, the lead says the sites must be "important and/or well-known", but that is hard to interpret. I have seen several lists nominated in Articles for deletion because editors objected to such wording on the grounds that inclusion on the list becomes just a matter of personal opinion. Also, the only link I found for important sites ( Fossil sites) is much shorter than this one. A another reasonable selection criterion is that all the entries are notable enough to be the subject of separate Wikipedia articles. Most of the sites in this list satisfy that criterion, although there are too many red links.
So ... what is the purpose of this list? RockMagnetist ( talk) 16:11, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Since multiple formations can be found at the same site, and the same formation can be found at multiple sites, listing them in the same column is problematic (and is not done consistently in the current list). Also, sorting by time period would be improved if all the continents were in the same list. Below is an example of what this could look like.
Group, Formation, or Unit | Site | Age | Continent | Country | Noteworthiness |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cross Valley Formation | Seymour Island | Upper Paleocene | Antarctica | ||
Hanson Formation | Early Jurassic | Antarctica | |||
La Meseta Formation | Seymour Island | Eocene | Antarctica | ||
López de Bertodano Formation | Seymour Island | Upper Cretaceous – Lower Paleocene ( Maastrichtian – Danian) | Antarctica | ||
López de Bertodano Formation | Vega Island | Upper Cretaceous – Lower Paleocene ( Maastrichtian – Danian) | Antarctica | ||
Nordenskjöld Formation | Longing Peninsula | Jurassic | Antarctica | ||
Prebble Formation | Middle Jurassic | Antarctica | |||
Santa Marta Formation | James Ross Island | Upper Cretaceous | Antarctica | ||
Arikaree Group
|
Agate Fossil Beds National Monument | Miocene | North America | USA: Nebraska | |
Aquia Formation | Potomac River | Paleocene | North America | USA: Maryland and Virginia | |
Arkona Shale | Devonian | North America | Canada: Ontario |
Any comments? Elriana ( talk) 20:35, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
You do realize, you can sort by continent, right? The reformat now allows you to sort by other things, too, such as time period, country or notability. Elriana ( talk) 03:46, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
I have been looking for sources for the Zhongming Formation but can't find any. The article itself is a one liner. Does this really exist? Additionally I can't find any information regarding Fangou Formation which is listed in this article but is a red link. Rincewind42 ( talk) 03:27, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
It might be useful to associate archaeological ages ( ASPRO chronology?) with Hominin sites. Using these Period names instead of the Geological ones, however, would make the Age column messy and inconsistent. Any proposals of a systematic solution? What about sites with animals and other fossils as well as Hominin? The geological periods are universally applicable, even at Hominin sites, but the archaeological ones have finer resolution and may be more useful to some people. Thoughts? Elriana ( talk) 21:57, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
Should rock shelters be considered 'fossil sites' if no animal or plant fossils are described there? Wikipedia does already have a List of archaeological sites by country. Surely sites notable for their rock art and tools should be on a list like that one rather than this one. While there is overlap between archaeological sites and paleontological sites, they are actually rather distinct in their definitions. Elriana ( talk) 19:00, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Twice now an IP editor has replaced the entry for Kamabai rock shelter in Sierra Leone with one for the Djebel Mela rock shelter in a different country. I am going to do some looking to see if I can put together an entry for Djebel Mela, but I have verified that these two locations are NOT the same, and that Kamabai should not be deleted. For more details on Kamabai, I would need to track down hard copies (electronic seem to be lacking) of frequently cited papers by Atherton in ~1972, but a number of pictures of artifacts from this rock shelter/cave can be found in books, websites, and wikimedia commons. Elriana ( talk) 18:51, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
This list is almost unworkable in its current format. Is there any reason why it isn't split by continent, as almost every other similar list of places and features is? It would make it far easier both to edit and read. (And before anyone says it, yes, I know you can sort by continent, but that doesn't make it any simpler to edit!) It would also make it far easier to split into separate continental list pages if this page grows too large. Grutness... wha? 15:36, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
I want to add the Yea Flora Fossil Site to this list, but gave up when I cam to the field titled "data-sort-value". What on earth do I write there? HiLo48 ( talk) 06:03, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This article is rated List-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
This page has archives. Sections older than 365 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 10 sections are present. |
Most of these aren't fossil sites but rather formations, meant in the very narrow geological sense of "a laterally expansive group of genetically related rocks." For example, the Smoky Hill Chalk "fossil site" can not be said to refer to anything smaller than an area of several hundred square miles in Kansas and adjoining states. A better use for this list would be for individual locations at which fossils are found, have been found, or can be found. E.g., Olduvai Gorge, Penn-Dixie Quarry, La Brea Tarpits.
These are two different things. So I'm not sure why a list of "fossil sites" contains links to a number of sedimentary formations, many of them obscure, that just happen to produce fossils. If a formation is associated with a landmark fossil site (meaning that it's famous) that's fine, but I don't think every stratigraphic unit that has ever produced a fossil ought to be in this list, which is being made less useful by overzealous inclusions. Geogene ( talk) 00:33, 27 June 2014 (UTC)
As it stands, this list does not obey the guidance on list criteria, because there is no objective way to decide how to include a site or formation in this list that is supported by reliable sources.
My proposal is that we follow CSC#1: this should be a list of fossil sites (not formations), and to be included in the list, the fossil site must be both named and notable. That is, a site should have a name (not just a location or description), and it should be supported by multiple independent reliable sources (per WP:GNG).
In practice, adopting this criterion would shrink the list down to a list of fossil sites that already have WP articles. We could expand the list beyond that, if an editor wants to provide citations to reliable sources to new additions.
What do other editors think? — hike395 ( talk) 22:36, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Whew! after ~5 hours work I have converted the lists to a set of wikitables for each of the continets (plus New Zealand). Please check it over and not any mistakes that i missed. I was able to find several redlinks were just incorrect wikilinks to existing articles but i may have missed some so check the areas that you know. - Kevmin 06:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Should this page and the Lagerstätte page be merged? PAR ( talk) 18:03, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
This is a stand-alone list, so it must satisfy specific notability criteria for stand-alone lists. In particular, " A list topic is considered notable if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources ... The entirety of the list does not need to be documented in sources for notability, only that the grouping or set in general has been."
I have provided a couple of references for such a list, but they highlight the main problem for this list: How exactly is this list defined? What are the selection criteria? The title implies a comprehensive list of fossil sites, but extrapolating the list for the U.S. and Canada to the globe would result in an enormous list. Also, lists should not be indiscriminate. On the other hand, the lead says the sites must be "important and/or well-known", but that is hard to interpret. I have seen several lists nominated in Articles for deletion because editors objected to such wording on the grounds that inclusion on the list becomes just a matter of personal opinion. Also, the only link I found for important sites ( Fossil sites) is much shorter than this one. A another reasonable selection criterion is that all the entries are notable enough to be the subject of separate Wikipedia articles. Most of the sites in this list satisfy that criterion, although there are too many red links.
So ... what is the purpose of this list? RockMagnetist ( talk) 16:11, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Since multiple formations can be found at the same site, and the same formation can be found at multiple sites, listing them in the same column is problematic (and is not done consistently in the current list). Also, sorting by time period would be improved if all the continents were in the same list. Below is an example of what this could look like.
Group, Formation, or Unit | Site | Age | Continent | Country | Noteworthiness |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cross Valley Formation | Seymour Island | Upper Paleocene | Antarctica | ||
Hanson Formation | Early Jurassic | Antarctica | |||
La Meseta Formation | Seymour Island | Eocene | Antarctica | ||
López de Bertodano Formation | Seymour Island | Upper Cretaceous – Lower Paleocene ( Maastrichtian – Danian) | Antarctica | ||
López de Bertodano Formation | Vega Island | Upper Cretaceous – Lower Paleocene ( Maastrichtian – Danian) | Antarctica | ||
Nordenskjöld Formation | Longing Peninsula | Jurassic | Antarctica | ||
Prebble Formation | Middle Jurassic | Antarctica | |||
Santa Marta Formation | James Ross Island | Upper Cretaceous | Antarctica | ||
Arikaree Group
|
Agate Fossil Beds National Monument | Miocene | North America | USA: Nebraska | |
Aquia Formation | Potomac River | Paleocene | North America | USA: Maryland and Virginia | |
Arkona Shale | Devonian | North America | Canada: Ontario |
Any comments? Elriana ( talk) 20:35, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
You do realize, you can sort by continent, right? The reformat now allows you to sort by other things, too, such as time period, country or notability. Elriana ( talk) 03:46, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
I have been looking for sources for the Zhongming Formation but can't find any. The article itself is a one liner. Does this really exist? Additionally I can't find any information regarding Fangou Formation which is listed in this article but is a red link. Rincewind42 ( talk) 03:27, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
It might be useful to associate archaeological ages ( ASPRO chronology?) with Hominin sites. Using these Period names instead of the Geological ones, however, would make the Age column messy and inconsistent. Any proposals of a systematic solution? What about sites with animals and other fossils as well as Hominin? The geological periods are universally applicable, even at Hominin sites, but the archaeological ones have finer resolution and may be more useful to some people. Thoughts? Elriana ( talk) 21:57, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
Should rock shelters be considered 'fossil sites' if no animal or plant fossils are described there? Wikipedia does already have a List of archaeological sites by country. Surely sites notable for their rock art and tools should be on a list like that one rather than this one. While there is overlap between archaeological sites and paleontological sites, they are actually rather distinct in their definitions. Elriana ( talk) 19:00, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
Twice now an IP editor has replaced the entry for Kamabai rock shelter in Sierra Leone with one for the Djebel Mela rock shelter in a different country. I am going to do some looking to see if I can put together an entry for Djebel Mela, but I have verified that these two locations are NOT the same, and that Kamabai should not be deleted. For more details on Kamabai, I would need to track down hard copies (electronic seem to be lacking) of frequently cited papers by Atherton in ~1972, but a number of pictures of artifacts from this rock shelter/cave can be found in books, websites, and wikimedia commons. Elriana ( talk) 18:51, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
This list is almost unworkable in its current format. Is there any reason why it isn't split by continent, as almost every other similar list of places and features is? It would make it far easier both to edit and read. (And before anyone says it, yes, I know you can sort by continent, but that doesn't make it any simpler to edit!) It would also make it far easier to split into separate continental list pages if this page grows too large. Grutness... wha? 15:36, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
I want to add the Yea Flora Fossil Site to this list, but gave up when I cam to the field titled "data-sort-value". What on earth do I write there? HiLo48 ( talk) 06:03, 1 June 2020 (UTC)