Batrachology and Herpetology with BatrachoWiki

This page is, essentially, historical in nature. It marked the beginning of an experiment in creating web pages within the Batrachology and Herpetology course. The subject matter of this course is very broad. To test new technologies in practice, we needed to choose one specific fragment of the information field of interest. After discussing the situation with students, we selected a topic for joint development: the evolutionary history of reptiles. This section is suitable because there is a number of good information sources on it — both reference literature (to a large extent in Russian) and online sources. How will the development of these materials end? I hope it will result in an interesting package of materials. At the start of this work, I plan that when it is completed, I will discuss its future with the students who participated in creating it. If the final product is good and its creators do not object, I will move these pages into the main part of the site and list those who took part in their creation. Otherwise, I will simply delete these pages; participants will keep the experience gained in creating them (hopefully more positive than negative). How to use this? To begin, students should register on Batrachos and tell me their logins (nicknames). I will grant them permission to create and edit materials in BatrachoWiki. Which sources should be used? For the systematics of fossil reptiles, I suggest orienting to recent works of the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), one of the world’s largest centers of paleontology. A strong side of PIN RAS is that it includes not only practitioners but also strong theoreticians maintaining the school of theoretical evolutionary biology formed in the previous century. I suggest using the following publications (from the most authoritative to slightly less authoritative), taking as a basis the [[System of reptiles|reptile systematics]] according to Ivakhnenko. M.F. Ivakhnenko, E.N. Kurochkin (executive editors). Fossil Vertebrates of Russia and Adjacent Countries. Fossil Reptiles and Birds. Part 1. Reference book for paleontologists, biologists, and geologists. Moscow: GEOS, 2008. 348 p. L.P. Tatarinov. Essays on Reptile Evolution. Archosaurs and Theromorphs. Moscow: GEOS, 2009. 377 p. L.P. Tatarinov. Essays on Reptile Evolution. Moscow: GEOS, 2006. 232 p. M.J. Benton. Vertebrate Palaeontology. Blackwell Publishing company, 2005. 455 p. What should the created pages contain? I suggest a fairly simple scheme that, in my view, is appropriate for describing taxa of fossil reptiles: systematic position; phylogenetic relationships; systematics; alternative interpretations of systematic position; time of existence; localities of principal finds; morphological traits; mode of life; the most notable representatives. I ask students not to forget any substantial taxonomic groups; otherwise, the picture they create will be incomplete.