Talk:diprotodontoid

RFV discussion: October 2022–February 2023
Rfv-sense:
 * 1)  Any member of the Diprotodontia taxonomic order of marsupials.

Taxonomic common names in English are more regular than most people realize. With a few notable exceptions, any names that end in -oid used by scientists for animal groups refer to superfamilies, the taxonomic names of which end in. If you don't know about the superfamilies, I can see how you could guess that the "-oid" was a meaningless suffix added to one of the taxonomic names you were familiar with. I think that's what did here.

The Diprotodontia includes most of the better known marsupials in Australia, including kangaroos, wallabies, koalas and wombats, and members of that order are generally referred to as diprotodonts. The real diprotodontoids are a much smaller and more obscure group consisting of the diprotodontids and palorchestids, which are prehistoric beasts known only from fossils. Of course, all diprotontoids are also diprotodonts, but there a great many diprotodonts that aren't diprotodontoids.

If we can find references to anything not in the Protodontoidea as a "protodontoid", that would verify this sense. I have yet to see any of those, however, and I found at least one reference to the protodontoids as a sister group to the wombats, which would be impossible if one considers them to include the wombats. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:59, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I think you are correct. the animals from the order are called diprotodontians. So I have removed the order and left the superfamily definition. I checked usage, and the -oids always did belong to the superfamily only. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:01, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Is it worth adding more specific definitions for zoology uses in -oid and -ian? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:01, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

RFV Failed, already removed. Ioaxxere (talk) 19:21, 13 February 2023 (UTC)