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Dear Dr. Jun Liu,
I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript Ms # 30973 entitled "The tetrapod fauna of the upper Permian Naobaogou Formation of China: 3. Jiufengia jiai gen. et sp. nov., a large akidnognathid therocephalian from China", co-authored with F. Abdala, is now accepted for publication in PeerJ. There are minor typos noted by Reviewer 1, which should be addressed in production.
Thank you again for considering PeerJ and we look forward to your future contributions to the Journal.
sincerely,
Claudia Marsicano
# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Laura Wilson, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #
The manuscript has been substantially improved. I still have a number of minor, mostly grammatical, revisions, for which see below:
Line 19: change “to the Member III” to “to Member III”
Line 19: change “resulted in” to “yielded”
Line 20: change “new fossils discoveries” to “new fossil discoveries”
Line 27: change “vomer” to “the vomer”
Line 27: change “lacking ventromedian crest” to “lacking a ventromedian crest”
Line 28: change “after” to “above”
Lines 34–35: change “a meticulous collective effort” to “meticulous collection efforts”
Line 35: change “resulted in” to “have resulted in”
Line 35: change “of the knowledge” to “of our knowledge”
Line 37: change “has also been” to “have also been”
Lines 37–38: change “in the record for the first time of therocephalians” to “in recording for the first time therocephalians”
Line 43: change “parareptile” to “parareptile genus”
Line 48: change “Later, Akidnognathidae was proposed to include” to “Later authors considered Akidnognathidae to include”
Line 61: change “second akidnognathid” to “second akidnognathid genus” (because Ivakhnenko described a second species of Annatherapsidus, A. postum, this is actually the fourth akidnognathid taxon overall from Laurasia).
Line 88: change “Nei Mongolia” to either “Nei Mongol” or “Inner Mongolia”
Line 113: change “upturns” to “is upturned”
Line 115: change “with a short, trapezoid” to “in a short, trapezoidal”
Line 119: change “sharp conical” to “sharply conical”
Line 125: change “with the” to “the”
Line 142: “a wide diastema”—please include a measurement
Line 196: change “contacts with the” to “contacts the”
Line 221: delete comma before “and Olivierosuchus”
Line 275: change “almost form” to “form almost”
Line 291: change “posteriorly to” to “posterior to”
Line 297: change “located laterally” to “located lateral”
LIne 356: change “phalange” to “phalanx”
Line 363: delete comma after “wangi”
Line 370: change “is different” to “differs”
Line 370: change “by the” to “in the”
Line 375: change “Remaining” to “Other”
Line 388: delete extraneous space between “and” and “included”
Line 398: change “politomy” to “polytomy”
Lines 400–401: Totally rewrite this sentence. I think you mean, “Current evidence shows that most Laurasian akidnognathids were of medium-to-large size.”
Line 405: change “represented by Olivierosuchus is the smaller representative” to “represented by Olivierosuchus, is one of the smaller representatives” (n.b. Olivierosuchus is not the smallest akidnognathid; it is larger than Akidnognathus and Euchambersia)
Line 412: change “produce” to “support”
Line 416: add space in “unknownin”
Line 421: change “Whaitsoidea” to “Whaitsioidea”
no comment
no comment
Publishable following minor revisions.
In this manuscript, the authors describe a new therocephalian, Jiufengia jiai, from the Naobaogou Formation, Nei Mongol, China in a comparative framework considering cranial and postcranial material. Moreover, the authors include the new specimen in a phylogenetic analysis in order to test its affinities.
This is the second time I review this manuscript. The authors have performed the changes suggested and, in my view, it is ready for publication.
This manuscript is very interesting as it presents a new taxon that represents only the second therocephalian recovered from Naobaogou Formation and the second akidnognathid from China. I hope to see it published soon.
Leandro Gaetano
No comments
No comments
No comments
Dear Dr. Liu
You Ms # 30973 entitled "The tetrapod fauna of the upper Permian Naobaogou Formation of China: 3. Jiufengia jiai gen. et sp. nov., a large akidnognathid therocephalian from China", co-authored with F. Abdala, has been reviewed by two reviewers and the editor.
Both reviewers are coincident that your contribution is suitable for publication and should be accepted after minor revision. In this context, the reviewers have pointed out many changes concerning misspellings, missing references, minor changes in the figures, and rewording, among others.
Please, review carefully all of them and pay attention to suggestions made by Reviewer #1 (C. Kammerer). As he mentioned, the text requires extensive tightening before publication and the "Discussion" should avoid paragraphs that are already in the "Introduction" of the Ms. Therefore, as suggested by C. Kammerer, you should include in the final discussion a detailed analysis of the Permian theriodont biogeography, particularly taking into account the new Chinese records. Moreover, and in relation to the figures, I agree the reconstructions would benefit if you could clearly note where the boundaries among bones are estimates, probably with a dashed line.
Reviewer #2 (L. Gaetano) also indicates several changes in the text and he includes most of them in the annotated manuscript.
Therefore and as mentioned above, there are several comments related to the language by both reviewers so I recommend you to check the text by a native English speaker before re-submission.
Thank you for submitting your Ms to PeerJ and I look forward to receiving your revision.
Sincerely,
Claudia Marsicano
This is an important new specimen from both a paleodiversity and biogeography standpoint. It is well-figured and I agree with the descriptive text for the most part. I do however have some worries about the extent of the sutures depicted, particularly in the occiput—the preservation of bone surface on the specimen does not look like it preserves sutures well, and the extents of various bones depicted in the drawing does not closely match that of closely-related therocephalians. I would ask the authors to check these points carefully and note where suture boundaries are estimates.
The text of the paper requires extensive tightening to be ready for publication, and should be edited carefully for grammar. I have noted a number of corrections to make below but this is not an exhaustive list. The Discussion is relatively short and repeats some of what was said previously in the Introduction. I recommend expanding it to talk more broadly about Permian theriodont biogeography, considering that the therocephalian records from China are some of the first of their kind and seem similar to those in Russia. It appears that some provincialism was present even back in the Permian--very similar patterns have now been found for Gorgonopsia (see Kammerer & Masyutin 2018b, on Kotelnich gorgonopsians) and this pattern may be Laurasia-wide. (No gorgonopsians have been published from China yet, but I believe it is only a matter of time before they are discovered). The presence of the otherwise-Scottish Elginia in these deposits also is indicative of a broad trans-Laurasian tetrapod faunal province, which deserves further discussion here.
Sincerely,
Christian Kammerer
Title: It is unnecessarily repetitive to say that this is about the “tetrapod fauna of the upper Permian Naobaogou Formation of China” and also “a large akidnognathid therocephalian from China”. Please change to: “The tetrapod fauna of the upper Permian Naobaogou Formation of China: 3. Jiufengia jiai gen. et sp. nov, a large akidnognathid therocephalian”
Line 21: change “new fossils discoveries that increased” to “new fossil discoveries increasing”
Line 25: change “clear difference respect to” to “clear differences from”
Line 26: change the semicolon to a comma
Lines 28–30: change this sentence to: “Updating a previous phylogeny of therocephalians, we recover the new species as a basal member of Akidnognathidae, above a basal polytomy including the other two Laurasian akidnognathids, Annatherapsidus and Shiguaignathus, adding support to the hypothesis that this group originated in Laurasia.”
Lines 38–39: change “and also has been successful in the record for the first time of member of therocephalians” to “and also has produced the first records of therocephalians”
Line 41: change “a medium-sized and well-preserved snout” to “represented by a medium-sized and well-preserved snout”
Line 42: decapitalize “Akidnognathid”
Lines 49: change “Akidognathidae” to “Akidnognathidae” (Nopcsa originally misspelled it as Akidognathinae, but subsequent usage should be “Akidnognathidae”)
Line 56: change “included into” to “included in”
Line 63: change “Gondwanean” to “Gondwanan”
Line 90: capitalize start of sentence
Line 96: change “intermedium” to “intermediate”
Line 97: decapitalize “Akidnognathids”
Line 102: change “be collected” to “being collected”
Line 116: change “ a short trapezoid” to “a short, trapezoidal, ”
Line 122: add a comma after the closing parenthesis
Line 133: change “foramen” to “foramina”
Line 137: change “maxilla exposure” to maxillary exposure”
Line 140: change “crown having more than 3 cm” to “crown being greater than 3 cm”
Line 142: change “stripes” to “striations” (also, are these latitudinal or longitudinal?)
Lines 143–144: change “wide massive base, posteriorly curved crown” to “massive base and posteriorly curved crown”
Line 171: change “the parietal forms the median of the lambdoidal crest” to “the parietal forms the central portion of the lambdoidal crest”. Also, how confident are you of the extent of the parietal in the occiput? I find it very hard to see sutures in the photograph, and it appears unusually large.
Line 177: change “which form” to “forming”
Line 186: change “of last incisor” to “of the last incisor”
Line 189: change “unpaire” to “unpaired”
Line 189: add a comma after “anteriorly”
Line 192: change “several” to “most”
Line 193: change “with exception” to “with the exception”
Line 205: change “same plane to” to “same plane as”
Line 205: change “crista choanal” to “crista choanalis”
Line 223: change “ventral” to “ventrally”
Line 241: delete extra space after “while”, change “form” to “forms”
Line 296: change “in CT image” to “in the CT image”
Line 297: change “inclined posteriorly” to “posteriorly inclined”
Line 302: change “where it dorsal” to “where its dorsal”
Line 311: change “most posteriorly” to “more posteriorly”
Line 329: change “subcracoideus” to “subcoracoideus”
Line 374: change “have less” to “have fewer”
Line 421: change “Chtonosauridae” and “Akidnognathia” to “Chthonosauridae” and “Akidnognathidae”
No comment.
No comment.
No comment.
In this manuscript, the authors describe a new therocephalian, Jiufengia jiai, from the Naobaogou Formation, Nei Mongol, China in a comparative framework considering cranial and postcranial material. Moreover, the authors include the new specimen in a phylogenetic analysis in order to test its affinities.
In my opinion, this manuscript is very interesting and worth of publication as it presents a new taxon that represents only the second therocephalian recovered from Naobaogou Formation and the second akidnognathid from China.
The manuscript is well written and it only needs minor re-wording and re-phrasing. The most important issue to be addressed relates to the figures: some captions are not labelled and some labels are not in the captions. The authors should check this thoroughly. Hence, my recommendation is that this manuscript is accepted with minor changes. I have made some suggestions in the two word files attached (main text and table 1).
Please, do not hesitate in contacting me should any question arise.
Leandro Gaetano
This is an original primary research within Aims and Scope of the journal.
Research question well defined, relevant & meaningful. It is stated how research fills an identified knowledge gap.
Conclusions are well stated and linked to the research performed.
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