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A fact from Holocephali appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 2 July2025(check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that male fish in the subclass Holocephali(pictured) often have special organs on top of their head that are used to grasp females while mating?
There seems to have previously been some back-and-forth over whether the article should use "holocephalan" or "holocephalian", both of which seem to be correct and in current use. I've opted to use "holocephalan" and "holocephalans" as the informal name for members of the group, as at least going by Scholar hits this is the more prevalent form and is the one I'm in the habit of using anyway. Would it be appropriate to formalize using one form or another for the article going forward to avoid inconsistencies in the text, as was an issue with some previous versions? Does anyone think the text should actually be switched over to use "holocephalian" instead? Gasmasque (talk) 16:39, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
I have addressed this in the article as a note. Gasmasque (talk) 11:10, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
Did you know nomination
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was: promoted by SL93talk02:24, 23 June 2025 (UTC)
... that male fish in the subclass Holocephali often have special organs on top of their head that are used to grab females while mating?
Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1365-2451.1997.00013.x "Sharks sometimes resort to biting in order to gain a firmer grip while mating, but chimaeroids apparently achieve the same end by means of a variety of accessory clasping organs. These can be located in a number of positions including the snout (Fig. 4a,c). A range of Palaeozoic chondrichthyans carry large and bizarre outgrowths on their heads, which we interpret (sometimes from direct evidence; Fig. 2b,c) as accessory claspers" (Ahlberg & Coates, 1997)
Excellent job on expanding the article. Image appears to be freely licensed. No copyvio detected, no QPQs needed. A few issues: WP:DYKHOOK rules state that each hook must be claimed in the article. In ALT0, you state "often have special organs" when the article just stated that modern chimaeras have the claspers - no "often" about it. Also, ALT1 seems to be more about Symmoriiformes than Holocephali. ALT2 should also probably have "were much more" rather than "was". I do like ALT0, especially in conjunction with the image. ~Darth StabroTalk•Contribs 00:38, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
I've swapped out the source used for ALT0, the use of the non-comprehensive modern animal paper was a mistake on my part that resulted from rewriting that hook's contents and forgetting to update the source. I've also provided a supporting quote from the new text since this one is not freely available online, although the author goes into more detail about the features in the article itself. I've reworded ALT1 to put more emphasis on Holocephali, and I've made the requested change to ALT2. As for being stated in the article, Alt0 is stated in the "Reproduction" subsection, ALT1 is stated in the second paragraph of the lead and in the "Modern classifications" subsection, and Alt2 is stated in the first paragraph of the lead and in the "Decline" section (although less concise in the latter). Are the provided hooks close enough to the statements in the article's text? Let me know if there are any further issues or adjustments you would want made. Gasmasque (talk) 02:07, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
@Darth Stabro: Does the above satisfy your concerns, and is this approved? If not, what else needs to be done? Z1720 (talk) 12:48, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Appreciate you taking this one on, I'm happy to provide any references that aren't easily available online. Gasmasque (talk) 15:48, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
Just checking in, any updates on the GA review? it has been a couple of weeks now and I wanted to make sure there aren't any major problems. Gasmasque (talk) 13:21, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
Notes
I'm sorry this took me so long to get to. I didn't get your message and I honestly forgot about this for a while. I've completed the review now though, and I only have a few notes notes:
You should include the Decline section as a subsection in Evolution
Done, let me know if the current layout is preferable. Gasmasque (talk) 21:47, 21 December 2025 (UTC)
In this sentence: Under this scheme, chimaeras are considered unrelated to any Paleozoic cartilaginous fish, and potentially the Mesozoic Squaloraja and myriacanthids, is it saying that chimaeras are unrelated or related to Squaloraja and the myriacanthids? I can't tell if it's saying that chimaeras are related to the latter as opposed to the former, or if they are related to both.
Unrelated to both, I've tried to clarify the wording somewhat. Would it be worth going more in-depth into the rationale here? This is suggested based on differences in the way their teeth grow, but I don't know if clarifying that is worth doing since this section is already somewhat long. Gasmasque (talk) 21:47, 21 December 2025 (UTC)
Ref [70] has some weird stuff going on, there's tildes and an email address
Fixed, this is the result of me using Wiki's shoddy automatic citation system and forgetting to double check. The links and information are all correct, the formatting just gets screwy with Paleoelectronica articles. Gasmasque (talk) 21:47, 21 December 2025 (UTC)
Spot check:
[Bear Gulch] preserves an exceptional diversity of species, and is considered the best studied and most completely preserved Paleozoic fish fauna known. - Mostly good, but unless I missed something, none of the sources mention it being the most well-studied.
Best studied is arbitrary anyway, so I've opted to just remove it. Gasmasque (talk) 21:47, 21 December 2025 (UTC)
The environmental conditions and faunal composition of Bear Gulch are believed to be representative of other, less well-known Mississippian marine fossil formations elsewhere in the world.Y
[70] Y
[87] Y
[46] Y
[4a] and [b] Y
[33b] - Unless I've missed something, this contradicts its sentence. The source says that Cladoselache is the sister to Holocephali, and not holocephalans themselves, and that this result is consistent with multiple other studies.
This Wiki article is written in the context of Holocephali as total-group Holocephali (=euchondrocephali); crown-group Holocephali would be equivalent to Chimaeroidea sensu stricto or Lund's Holocephalimorpha sensu lato. In the introduction of Klug et al. (2023) they list off authors who consider Symmoriiformes to be "stem-group Holocephali" even if they themselves opt to treat the group as not a member of the subclass. The classification semantics of stem-group vs. total-group member are arbitrary anyway, but to cover my bases I've added an "or relatives of" and adjusted the text to fit. Gasmasque (talk) 21:47, 21 December 2025 (UTC)
I appreciate the review, though I am curious if there are any further issues with the text formatting, grammar, image use, etc.? I personally worry about this being a bit too dense or technical for a Wiki article, so I do want to check if you have any suggestions or advice. Gasmasque (talk) 21:47, 21 December 2025 (UTC)
