Talk:Sea urchin/Archive 1

Archive 1

Etymology

In the introduction, it is mentioned that "urchin" comes from "hedgehog" from a long time ago. This information has no source, but I did find one. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=urchin&allowed_in_frame=0 However, I am unable to add any details in the introduction. --Foxboyprower (talk) 13:37, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

With regards this, I have seen "urchin" used commonly and interchangeably as a term for hedgehogs in the 1700s in churchwardens' accounts books wherein they pay a shilling to a parishioner for every three caught (presumably they were pests back then). It seems the jump to "sea urchin" is not a big one, on account of the shared characteristic of spines. I don't know how you could cite this evidentially though! GSOGreenwood (talk) 12:44, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Added ==Geological history== text from an article I originally wrote in 1998 and published on the Web.

Dlloyd 21:07, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC) ijkkhhhkjbhhjjk

Nice! Dpbsmith 11:15, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Oops, I have a question. The page in question, http://www.palaeos.com/Invertebrates/Echinoderms/Echinoidea/Echinoidea.htm , says "page by M. Alan Kazlev. Are you M. Alan Kazlev? Also, it says "this material may be freely used for non-commercial purposes" which is NOT the same as saying it is released under the GPL. For the record, I think you should add a note here explaining the connection between your work and M. Alan Kazlev, and stating specifically that you are "releasing the material under the terms of the Wikipedia license." Sorry to be a nuisance. I guess the theoretical question is that it is conceivable that you gave your material to the www.palaeos.com website and that it is no longer yours to give to Wikipedia. In such a case, probably the Right Thing to do would be to get the www.palaeos.com to give you a formal statement saying that it OK to use Paleos material in Wikipedia, which they might be happy enough to do. Dpbsmith 11:22, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hi, Sorry I'm not quite sure I understand. I'm not M. Alan Kazlev, and the original article I submitted to the Web back in 1998 was written by me. It was published on my now defunct site www.fossil-company.com (The Fossil Company). I can supply you with a link to an archived version of the site if you wish. (By the way, the picture of Lovenia woodsi in the article on the site M. Alan Kazlev was copied from my 'The Fossil Company' site, as was some of the text....).

Dlloyd 11:37, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Here is a link to an archive of my original article from Apr 28, 1999:

http://web.archive.org/web/19990420022446/www.fossil-company.com/about_fossils/echinoids.html

I'd say Alan Kazlev "borrowed" from it extensively:

http://www.palaeos.com/Invertebrates/Echinoderms/Echinoidea/Echinoidea.htm

Dlloyd 11:49, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Here is my copyright statemant from the bottom of the original Echinoid article:

Copyright © 1995-1997 The Fossil Company Ltd. © 1997-1999 The British Fossil Company Inc.

Both businesses are now defunct and were owned by me.

Dlloyd 11:56, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

OK, it's clear you own the copyright. In a sense when you contribute your material to Wikipedia you are implicitly releasing it under the GFDL because of the notice on the bottom of the edit page, but I think it would be a good idea for you to explicitly say so here. Read Wikipedia:copyright#Contributors' rights and obligations. Then just put something here saying, in so many words, that you are "licensing this material under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright." Probably not necessary, but better to be sure. If you make more contributions of this material, and I hope you will, you may want to make up a little stock sentence saying something like "Copyright © 1995-1997 The Fossil Company Ltd. © 1997-1999 The British Fossil Company Inc. and licensed by the owner under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright." I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty that should do it. Dpbsmith 13:41, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining this :-)

Should I add the copyright information to the Talk page for each article, or the article text itself ??

Dlloyd 00:45, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It should go on the talk page (here), not in the article itself. Articles themselves do not have by-lines or similar notices, because once it is contributed it can be freely edited—nobody has any "ownership" of the text and any statements about its origin would become outdated the first time someone edited it. Information about the article goes on the Talk page for the article. Dpbsmith 01:07, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Portions of this text are :

"Copyright © 1995-1997 The Fossil Company Ltd. © 1997-1999 The British Fossil Company Inc. and licensed by the owner under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright." Please contact me if you need further clarification on this.

Dlloyd 00:48, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Request for User:UtherSRG to explain the recent deletion

I don't understand why you removed a four-paragraph section from Sea urchin.

I don't understand why you removed a four-paragraph section from Sea urchin without giving any reason here on this Talk page.

I don't understand why you removed a four-paragraph section from Sea urchin and flagged it as a minor edit.

Please explain. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:29, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

SRG saw that you added this to category Animalia to this page (this is not what we want - see below) and reverted it - but accidentally swept your previous edits.

Only phylum taxa (or above) should be added to the animal category - below that the phylum should have its own category - here echinoderm category - as a subcategory of the animal category. SOrry for the confusion. Please visit us at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Tree of Life for more. Pcb21| Pete 23:51, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining and for putting back the section. (It wasn't me who added the category, by the way, and it wasn't my paragraphs). Apologies for the tone of voice in my query. I overreacted. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 01:56, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Dlloyd, in case it isn't clear... in the process of fixing up categories, see above, UtherSRG accidentally deleted your entire section. All explained now. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 12:28, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

OK, what about all the other articles.... Dlloyd 09:13, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fossil image

Nice! [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 12:13, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC) Thanks :-) Dlloyd 18:21, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Starfish

please don't use the term 'star fish'. the term 'sea star'/'sea stars' is preferred by invertebrate zoologists. i'd fix the picture caption at the bottom of the article, but it doesn't appear when editing the main body of the article, and it doesn't appear when editing the image linked to the main body (?)

in any event: 'star fish' == archaeic misunderstanding of Astroidea

(never mind, found it, stupid firefox doesn't search the text in child text boxes on a page. probably not a bug, but a feature, but still...)

curtains 00:33, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Starfish is perfectly acceptable.

The dictionary gives several meanings, and specifically includes among these meanings "3. Any of various primitive aquatic vertebrates of the class Cyclostomata, lacking jaws and including the lampreys and hagfishes" and "4. Any of various unrelated aquatic animals, such as a jellyfish, cuttlefish, or crayfish."

The same dictionary gives the main definition under the entry starfish, with "sea star" being only an "also called." The entry for sea star in that dictionary simply refers us to "starfish."

I maintain that the use of the phrase "sea star" is silly pedantry. You won't find it used anywhere outside of textbooks and classrooms. Among themselves professionals do not say "sea star." They say "asteroid" or "starfish."

For no particular reason, someone must have decided at some time that the ordinary English word "fish" should be restricted to the vertebrate class Pisces. But that's silly, and it reflects neither common usage nor the dictionary.

The use of the word "fish" to refer to any aquatic animal has a long and respectable history, as in "shellfish" and "the lobster fishery" and so forth. Herman Melville defined a whale as "a spouting fish with a horizontal tale." Dpbsmith (talk) 13:45, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

wait, i'm relatively new to wikipedia, so i want to be a good wikizen, but this seems wrong to me. the *dictionary* trumps people with PhDs in the field and who have devoted their lives to studying the organisms in question? who's being the pedant here?

curtains 00:33, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, I happen to be a Ph. D. in zoology, though not currently active in the field. But I am sure there are other Ph. D's who agree with you. Perhaps you should quote a publication in which one of them expresses an opinion on this matter and gives a good rationale for it. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:37, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Monterey Bay urchin population

As a student studying invertebrates at the Long Marine Lab on Monterey Bay with Professor Allison Gong (who studies urchins professionally) I must take issue with the whole urchin population explosion/algae crash portion of the article. what're your sources? we're seeing an *urchin* population crash due to an otter population increase. if this section can't be substatiated, i suggest removing it.

the reason remarks like this chap the hides of invertebrate zoologists is that people are always ready to believe the best of charismatic, celebrity species like Enhydra lutris, but poor old Strongloycentrotus purpuratus gets the short end of the stick every time.

If urchins had frickin' fur and big saucer eyes you guys wouldn't get away with this crap... nauseating. really.

curtains 00:33, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Hey, ease up. Just remove it. The polite thing to do would be to remove it from the article BUT paste it here on the talk page with a note saying that you removed it because a) you think it's inaccurate and b) no source is cited. (See Wikipedia:Cite your sources). If you wanted to be really punctilious you might check the article history and contact whomever put that paragraph in (it wasn't me) and see what they have to say about it. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:45, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

P. S. You might consider creating an account. It takes only seconds, you don't need to reveal so much as an email address, and you get to choose a user name. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:57, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually that was humorous sarcasm (sarcastic humor?). I actually don't care that much, but the tone doesn't come through well in text. My fault. It is just strange to me to see something contrafactual asserted with so much authority in the main body of the text with no sources. I guess that's the rub in the wikipedia.

curtains 00:33, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Most encyclopedias, unfortunately, don't cite sources, either. (That's one reason encyclopedias are never cited as authorities in scientific literature).

But with Wikipedia, when you see something wrong, you can fix it. So... go ahead and fix it. Wikipedia:Be bold.

By the way... if you look at the Columbia Encyclopedia you'll notice it "asserts with authority" that Jack London "committed suicide at the age of 40." That is extremely debatable and most contemporary scholars do not believe it. Unfortunately, the Columbia Encyclopedia does not have any "edit this page" tab. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:02, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

P. S. I've had trouble eating scallops ever since I've seen them looking up at me with their dozens of sweet little blue eyes. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:05, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Need to add info

1 Sea hedgehogs has their spins made of SILICON DIOXIDE - it is important. 2 Sea hedhehogs are IMMORTAL - they live forever!

uni caviar?

Which species of sea urchin is most commonly used for "uni" sea urchin caviar?--Sonjaaa 18:47, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I got this information from the Japanese Wikipedia entry, and according to it the most commonly consumed species are: Green sea urchin (Hemicentrotus pulcherrimus), Ezo bafun uni [couldn't find English name] (Strongylocentrotus intermedius), Aka uni [again, no English name] (Psedocentrotus depressus), and the Hard-spined sea urchin (Anthocidaris crassispina). Hope this helps.--Koheiman 05:02, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

UNI...

I am a sucker for exotic foods but I must say the most exotic of them all would be the Japanese influenced Uni Sashimi, expensive yet so delectable!

I loved it so much that I went to a local beach and got some edible Urchins over there, got their roes and kept the test for my shell collection!

Their shells are so nice and it really looks different from the other shells that we have. Really unique!

I find them weird though. They look like aliens and a creature from another planet!

?

What do sea urchins eat?

• They typically scrape algae off the surface on which they are walking. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:35, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
• Sea urchins may also eat kelp —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.36.49.125 (talk) 03:46, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Echinoidea

Why does Echinoidea redirect to Sea Urchin?

• Because Echinoidea is the scientific name of the class of Echinodermata which corresponds very closely to the group of animals whose common name is "sea urchin," and because the naming convention is to use the most common name as the name of the article itself, and make less common names redirects. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:35, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

But the class Echinoidea also includes sand dollars and sea biscuits. I clicked on the page "Echinoidea" expecting to see information on all three animals and not a redirect to the sea urchin which I was not interested in. Sand dollars and sea biscuits are the irregular echinoids and sea urchins the regular echinoids based on their physical anatomy. I think something should be done about the redirection or "misdirection" in my opinion. --Aznfyrepixie 19:59, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

We should not include information on self-treating urchin wounds

Recently added, then removed by another editor:

One way of removing Sea Urchins that have stuck themselves upon you, is to spray them with Human Urine.

Although this is indeed a folk remedy, I think we should just stay away from this topic. It's much, much too close to offering medical advice.

In Curaçao I was told that urinating on the site of a puncture wound is indeed a folk remedy for sea urchin spine injuries, and I found a published source for this method: a number of travel books by Harry S. Pariser, e.g. [1], which say "take a blunt object to mash up the spine inside the skin so that it will be absorbed naturally. Then dip the wound in urine; the ammonia helps to trigger the process of disintegration."

Bu an emergency medicine text[2] says "External percussion to achieve spine fragmentation is contraindicated" and "Spines within a joint or adjacent to a neurovascular structure should be referred to a surgeon to extract all fragments as soon as possible, and surgical exploration for embedded particles should be delayed until a diagnosis can be made by soft tissue radiography or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)."

That suggests that in some situations self-treatment by Pariser's method could be a serious mistake.

By the way, there is a scene in Ian Fleming's Thunderball in which James Bond extracts a sea urchin spine from an attractive woman's foot with his teeth.... 12:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Comments from Laymen

The size of the test is stated as 1-4" or 3-10mm, I am assuming that's the diameter?Lucky 23 04:13, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Minor Changes

Removed what was possibly half-hearted vandalism:

Sea urchins are those bloody spiny sea creatures of the class Echinoidea found in oceans all over the world.

was changed to

Sea urchins are spiny sea creatures of the class Echinoidea found in oceans all over the world.

and

At first glance a sea urchin often appears to be an inanimate object, but its not!!, or one which is incapable of moving.

was changed to

At first glance a sea urchin often appears to be an inanimate object, or one which is incapable of moving.

Laserbream

Sea Urchin Genome Project

Now to add more information in! Adam Cuerden ^talk 16:59, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Sea Biscuits

Currently the article refers to the article Hardtack from the words "Sea biscuit." This is silly but there is no article for "Sea biscuit (marine animal)." Stenitzer 18:38, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced medical advice

I'm deleting the material below, for these reasons:

• No source is given.
• It amounts to medical advice; if we give medical advice at all, it is absolutely essential to have a solid, unimpeachable, first-rate source.
• When this came up a while ago, I consulted a few books and concluded that the range of advice in books was so wide (and discrepant) that it was really going out on a limb to say anything. Some books made a point of saying that sea urchin spine wounds could potentially be very serious and should always be taken to an emergency room for evaluation... rather alarming since I must have gotten hundreds of them myself and never even thought of seeking treatment for them. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:22, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

In Case of Contact

So often while swimming in the sea, a person might accidentally step on a sea urchin, the urchin will be on a rock and when stepped on, the urchin will release its spines into the body. This can be sometimes painful (depending on how many spikes went through the skin).

In the case of stepping on an urchin, avoid further pressure on skin surface with the spikes as it will force the spikes deeper and they will be harder to remove. Then to remove them, simply pull the obvious large spikes out and if any spikes are left in the skin, heat some oil (preferably olive oil as it also has an antibiotic effect), and gently immerse the part of skin into the warmed oil (or by using a cotton bud). This will make the skin area around the spike soften and dilate. Then by using a sterile needle force the spike out of the skin and finally pull out by a forceps.

Generally, there is no need for any antibiotic for an urchin spike, however in some cases; doctors might suggest a suitable anti-inflammatory medication.

Larva

Isn't the larva called Echinopluteus? - 00:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

• It can be, but "pluteus" is also correct. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge Aristotle's lantern into Sea urchin

The crux of my proposal is that Sea urchin already contains the information available at Aristotle's lantern, as well as additional info in the form of the quote. Rather than move the quote over there, I figured the most reasonable of all options was a merge. --mordicai. 20:51, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• There's not really any information to merge. I'd support a backwards merge, i.e. the removal of the lantern quote from sea urchin (as it doesn't really belong here anyway), to give Aristotle's lantern more purpose. Otherwise I think the only thing to do is nominate Aristotle's lantern for deletion. Ford MF 22:18, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
• I'd just redirect it here, we hardly need whole articles on a body part of a sea urchin. Remember that there are many species out there that don't even have articles. Richard001 23:41, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

While we're discussing merging, how about urchin barren as well? Richard001 23:55, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead & make this merge, since we've got a 2-1 consensus & no one else seems to want to weigh in. As to urchin barrens, I personally see a lot more growth potential there than at Aristotle's lantern, so I'm not going to nominate it, though I definitely think it needs expanding. --mordicai. 21:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I just find this thread, and I am very sad I come too late. When there is enough information to make a separate article, it is always better to have a separate article, as it will probably grow : saying that "there are many species out there that don't even have articles" is not a reason for any deletion ! Before making such deletions, it could be useful to look at other languages in order to see if there is any useful information that could help upgrade the article. And you would have found it in French, for example (with sources in English). Regards, FredD (talk) 07:47, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Sea Biscuits and Snapper Biscuits

This article still links to an article on the sort of sea biscuits which are made out of flour. (They _do_ look sort of like they could be related to sand dollars, and I did a horrified double take until I realized what I was looking at.) I am going to change that to the disambiguation page for now....but there is not really an article on the marine Sea Bicuits.

There is, however, an article on "Snapper Biscuits" or Arachnoides_zelandiae, linking from Arachnoides, further linking from Arachnoididae, from Sand_dollar, from that Seabiscuit_(disambiguation) page. How do these fit into the bigger picture, and how should they link to this article? I'm no biologist, but I just ate sea urchin tonight so I got curious. Sojambi Pinola (talk) 10:58, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Agricultural

The article is lacking, in general, about the agricultural and culinary uses of sea urchin. There was one specific fact I was looking for, and I found it elsewhere on the net. The part of the sea urchin that is eaten is called the roe or caviar (implying eggs) but is actually the gonads of the animal.[3] Being hermaphrodites, they give you a healthy balance of both types. Enjoy! Ham Pastrami (talk) 14:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

The article had a section on the culinary usage of urchin but someone it seems has deleted it somewhere along the way. It needs to go back in.

The eating of sea urchin is not exclusive to Japanese cooking, and that should probably be pointed out. Fishermen off the coast of Maine have been known to enjoy it on saltine cracekrs... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.182.163.125 (talk) 19:36, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Food and drink Tagging

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Sea Urchin Growth

Did you know that sea urchins grow their entire lives (lasting as long as 200 years)? This should be added to the article.

Illidan92 (talk) 00:44, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Another sea urchin photo

Here's a photo I took. If it's useful please add it. If not, no worries. Also, the main infobox photo seems misleading to me because that is not how they look underwater (I don't think). A better photo of sea urchins in their natural environment would be far superior.

Live sea urchin sold at a California seafood market. The sea urchins are cut open and eaten raw

ChildofMidnight (talk) 05:22, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Uni / Sea Urchin in Peru

I had uni /sea urchin in two (local) ceviche restaurants in Peru as part of a ceviche (in the form of an orange sauce unlike the semi-hard uni in Japan). So I presume it is also significantly eaten in (coastal?) Peru and possibly Chile, Ecuador. Might be worth adding to the article. bamse (talk) 13:05, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Stupid Bot!

Someone please check The 'Evolutionary history'. I tried to remove the repeating part but the bot keep reverting it, saying I was doing some blanking. Fix it! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.163.248.16 (talk) 16:39, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Replaced image

I replaced my own image. They are about the same, but a new one shows sea urchin better.--Mbz1 (talk) 01:57, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Awful. Just awful.

Atrocious writing. Style, grammar, content, all horrible. Like it was written by a retarded 5th grade English-as-a-second-language student with multiple personalities.

Here's an example: "Many urchins in the Toxopneustidae are venomous as well, but the danger does not come from their spines (short and blunt) but from their pedicellariae, like the collector urchin and especially the flower urchin, the only potentially lethal echinoderm known to date."

Not even a sentence!

72.16.17.161 (talk) 01:27, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:SOFIXIT. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 03:23, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, feel free to fix it instead of raging on the talk page. FredD (talk) 07:50, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Clarity needed

As in the previous section, I agree that the writing is disjointed and unclear and all over the map.

"The sea urchin builds its spicules, the sharp, crystalline "bones" that constitute the animal’s endoskeleton,..." Is this referring to the spines or the shell/test? The spines are surely not bones., but if it is referring to spines, why not put this sentence in the spine section immediately below it. Much earlier it says "The plates are covered in rounded tubercles, to which the spines are attached.", but this is not mentioned in the Spines section either.

I'm going to try and upload photos of the inside of the test since the description of the plates, ambulacral grooves and interambulacral areas is extremely confusing.

There must be more information somewhere about how the feet work too.

Lehasa (talk) 21:48, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

oops! I never got around to this, but I will do it in the next week or so. I've been trying to get a seaurchin shell so that I can break it open and show the fascinating way that it looks from inside. Lehasa (talk) 00:01, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Sea urchin/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Basilosauridae (talk · contribs) 05:18, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

This article contains great, detailed information on sea urchins. I hope the article with be revised and re-nominated. The overall reasons that I failed the article are:

1. Grammar. This article contains many run-on sentences and other grammatical errors.

Checked and copy-edited; no fused sentences, however. Some apparent issues may be British English; and in all forms of English, many uses of conjunctions and relative pronouns are not errors.

2. The tone does not meet encyclopedic standards. For example, the article currently states "Sea urchins have conquered most sea habitats...", which doesn't meet encyclopedic standards for discussing organisms.

Removed.

3. Includes several of what seem like personal observations that aren't supported by citations. For example "At first glance, sea urchins often appear incapable of moving."

Removed.

Some more minor observations:

-some formatting issues with the text associated with the main image.

Fixed.

-in the first section it states that sea urchins are found in all zones, but adult sea urchins are strictly benthic to my knowledge.

Fixed.

-The section on diversity lacks sufficient citations

Fixed.

@Basilosauridae: Thank you for taking on this review which I see is your first review. Few articles are perfect when nominated. It is the custom when reviewing nominations to list the aspects you find unsatisfactory and give the nominator a chance to put them right, putting the article on hold for a period to allow improvements to be made. You will find instructions for reviewers here. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:03, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, I'll do that Basilosauridae (talk) 06:05, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for taking this on. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:30, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Passed

Thanks for revising the article. I removed one sentence in the introduction which I felt was a bit speculative and uncited. Overall, great job! Basilosauridae (talk) 15:37, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the review. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:10, 2 June 2018 (UTC) and from me Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:24, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Aboral Surface

Can you clarify what the note means: "The tube feet are present in all parts of the animal except around the anus, so technically, the whole surface of the body should be considered to be the oral surface, with the aboral (non-mouth) surface limited to the immediate vicinity of the anus." I'm unaware of a connection between where feet are located and what is the oral/aboral surface, but I haven't read the cited material Basilosauridae (talk) 16:55, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

The source for the statement is Ruppert, Fox, Barnes' Invertebrate Zoology. If you consider starfish, the oral surface includes the parts with the tube feet while the aboral surface does not have tube feet. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:37, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

This is correct of sea stars, however, I'm not positive there is a correlation between tube feet placement and aboral/oral surfaces. Aboral, as I'm sure you know, just means the side opposite or farthest from the mouth. I'll try to access this text and see exactly what it says. Basilosauridae (talk) 19:32, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

I wasn't able to access the original text, but I was able to find information supporting the claim in the article that the aboral surface is limited to the area around the anus so you can ignore me, thanks for discussing. :) Basilosauridae (talk) 20:02, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

The article neglects to mention they can go into stasis when no food around

https://www.treehugger.com/ocean-conservation/eat-sea-urchins-save-oceans.html reads "Once the kelp forests have been consumed, the urchins starve but remain alive in stasis for years". Is there a scientific term for that ability? Shouldn't it be in the article somewhere? Dream Focus 17:19, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Dream Focus, if a better source could be found discussing it, this would be a useful inclusion. That Treehugger article isn't ideal though - it doesn't mention whether or not that is a trait exhibited across all species, and I think we'd want something a bit more scholarly to give us reliable information on this. GirthSummit _(blether) 17:30, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Just checked and instantly found https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/02/why-sushi-could-be-the-solution-to-a-sea-urchin-invasion-aoe "Once the voracious echinoderms run out of kelp to eat, they do not simply die. Instead, they can stay in stasis for years, billions of them starving in their shells. This makes it impossible for the kelp forests to recover, unless the urchins are removed entirely." The paragraph before then says all the species do this apparently. Dream Focus 17:53, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Dream Focus, yeah, but it's still a newspaper rather than a biology textbook. (Also, did you notice that the photographs used in both the Treehugger and the Guardian articles were exactly the same? I'm smelling a press release...) Newspapers are a good source for news, but for scientific information about species we should be aiming for better sourcing - assuming this is true, there must be proper sources discussing it. GirthSummit _(blether) 17:57, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

• I just added a bit in their feeding section [4] Dream Focus 17:56, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

The Guardian is a fine paper but the article is not a suitable source for a scientific fact, nor does it name any scientists or research papers that might be such a source: it isn't that kind of article. We would need a proper scientific source for such a claim: primary research might be all right, though a secondary (scientific review) source would clearly be better. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:59, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

I concur with Chiswick Chap - newspapers and 'general interest' websites aren't the standard of sourcing we should be looking for (especially since this is a GA - they definitely wouldn't pass GA review for this sort of assertion). I don't have any undergraduate textbooks about sea urchins on my shelves, but that would be the sort of thing we'd be looking for, both to give better reliability, and more presumably detail. GirthSummit _(blether) 18:06, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

The undergrad textbook I have to hand (Brusca Moore Shuster 2016) says nothing about it. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, of course. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:19, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Uni?

It's not really clear in the "as food" section, which species of sea urchin are used as food in Japan.

Kortoso (talk) 02:02, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I found a source that equates the most commonly uni species with their Japanese names. Enjoy.

On different kinds of Sea Urchin (Uni/うに) found in Japan and around the world.

Kortoso (talk) 02:09, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Parking this here:

Japan, Honshu

Bafun Uni (バフに) Hemicentrotus pulcherrimus

Murasaki Uni (ムラサキウニ) Heliocidaris crassispina

Japan, Hokkaido

Ezo Bafun Uni (エゾバフに) Strongylocentrotus intermedius

Kita Murasaki Uni (キタムラサキウニ) Heliocidaris crassispina

Japan, Kyushu

Aka Uni (赤うに) Pseudocentrotus depressus

America, California

Purple Sea Urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus

Long Spine Red Sea Urchin, Strongylocentrotus franciscanus

America, Maine

Spiny Sea Urchin, Strongylocentrus droebachienisis

Kortoso (talk) 02:14, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks for the effort, very interesting. Unfortunately, however, the source seems to be a blog which is probably not sufficiently reliable for our purposes, unless it can be shown that the author is a well-respected authority on the matter. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:14, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

shepherds crown amulet neglected -- deserves its own article

My interest was drawn to this topic by this popular science article: [https://www.livescience.com/64614-ancient-briton-faces-photos.html Photos: See the Ancient Faces of a Man-Bun Wearing Bloke and a Neanderthal Woman[, which mentions a shepherds crown found with the Neolithic "Whitehawk Woman" (mentioned in our FA article Whitehawk Camp). Then the popsci article mentions that a shepherds crown was found on remains from 3,000 years later, the Iron Age "Slonk Hill man". Thousands of years later... seems important enough for a Wikipedia article! I went to Google scholar and found this facinating article:

• McNamara, K. J. (2007). Shepherds' crowns, fairy loaves and thunderstones: the mythology of fossil echinoids in England. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 273(1), 279-294.

..and finally for public interest there's the Pratchett novel The Shepherd's Crown.

• Finally, avoid replying with "thank you, write it yourself". I care about Wikipedia's readers, but fuck Wikipedia. It's a POV-driven fever dream.OneOffUserName (talk) 01:16, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

It's an interesting topic, and not being a POV-driven fever dreamer, I might have a go! Cwmhiraeth (talk) 08:59, 5 March 2021 (UTC)