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I added sailfish as an example of an animal with a sail. It has been removed with the edit summary: Sail of the saifish is its dorsal fin not neural spines. Yes, the sail of the saifish is fashioned from its dorsal fin. What is the authority that justifies the position that the term "sail" applies to an anatomical structure in an animal only if it is fashioned from neural spines, but not on the grounds of appearance or function, or for that matter common usage? If that is the case then the article on sailfish needs a section explaining that the term sail, as applied there, is mistaken. --Epipelagic (talk) 20:36, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It is not a question of the dictionary definition of a sail (or the definition of any other authority). Rather, it is a question of how the scope of the article is defined. This article self-defines its scope as sails consisting of neural spines. Of course, the scope could always be widened, but on Wikipedia it is a principle to have one subject per page. We are not a dictionary where all topics of the same name are covered on the same page. If there is anything to write about the sails of sailfish beyond what is in the sailfish article a separate page with appropriate disambiguation would be a better solution. Unless, of course, there are reliable sources that make a real connection between sailfish and pelycosaurs. SpinningSpark 21:14, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well that's fine so long as the article is not titled in such a misleading way. It needs a more appropriate title. Maybe Neural spine sail or Pelycosaur sail. But even if it were renamed, the current title should be retained as a disambiguation page. Better might be leaving the article as it it is, but expanding it to include other sails. The scope would be better defined by appearance and function than by evolutionary origin, since pelycosaur and sailfish sails appear to be examples of convergent evolution. It seems to me that the current lead sentence defines the scope of the article somewhat appropriately: "A sail is a large, flattish protrusion from the back of an animal colinear with the spine", though that definition would include a lot of fish that are not generally referred to as having sails. There is quite a lot that can be written about sails, and I have meaning for some time to add material about sailfish sails --Epipelagic (talk) 22:22, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Pretty old discussion, but yes, the article title seems to reflect too broad a scope, so I agree with Epipelagic about renaming. So the proposed disambig page could refer to neural spines and to perhaps Dorsal fin. Also, this article is too paleo-centric, there are extant reptiles with such sails, such as the crested chameleon. Furthermore, some extant lizards also have back "sails" which are not composed of neural spines, such as Basiliscus (genus). FunkMonk (talk) 02:28, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The opening for the function section says "The consensus amongst modern scholars is that, at least for the pelycosaurs, the sail was used for thermoregulation." and is cited.
Then, in the section immediately below, it says: "However, recent studies have put in doubt the efficiency of this purported means of thermoregulation, and indeed no extinct sailed animal is currently assumed to have used its sails for thermoregulation." and this is cited with two citations.
Because pelcyosaurs are extinct sailed animals, this is a direct contradiction.50.204.232.30 (talk) 18:37, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
