New Dinosaur Species Found in India

BOMBAY, India - U.S. and Indian scientists said Wednesday they have discovered a new carnivorous dinosaur species in India after finding bones in the western part of the country.

The new dinosaur species was named Rajasaurus narmadensis, or "Regal reptile from the Narmada," after the Narmada River region where the bones were found.

The dinosaurs were between 25-30 feet long, had a horn above their skulls, were relatively heavy and walked on two legs, scientists said. They preyed on long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs on the Indian subcontinent during the Cretaceous Period at the end of the dinosaur age, 65 million years ago.

"It's fabulous to be able to see this dinosaur which lived as the age of dinosaurs came to a close," said Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago. "It was a significant predator that was related to species on continental Africa, Madagascar and South America."

Working with Indian scientists, Sereno and paleontologist Jeff Wilson of the University of Michigan reconstructed the dinosaur skull in a project funded partly by the National Geographic (news - web sites) Society.

A model of the assembled skull was presented Wednesday by the American scientists to their counterparts from Punjab University in northern India and the Geological Survey of India during a Bombay news conference.

Scientists said they hope the discovery will help explain the extinction of the dinosaurs and the shifting of the continents — how India separated from Africa, Madagascar, Australia and Antarctica and collided with Asia.

The dinosaur bones were discovered during the past 18 years by Indian scientists Suresh Srivastava of the Geological Survey of India and Ashok Sahni, a paleontologist at Punjab University.

When the bones were examined, "we realized we had a partial skeleton of an undiscovered species," Sereno said.

The scientists said they believe the Rajasaurus roamed the Southern Hemisphere land masses of present-day Madagascar, Africa and South America.

"People don't realize dinosaurs are the only large-bodied animal that lived, evolved and died at a time when all continents were united," Sereno said.

The cause of the dinosaurs' extinction is still debated by scientists. The Rajasaurus discovery may provide crucial clues, Sereno said.

In 1997, villagers discovered about 300 fossilized dinosaur eggs in Pisdura, 440 miles northeast of Bombay, that Indian scientists said were laid by four-legged, long-necked vegetarian creatures.

Indian scientists said the dinosaur embryos in the eggs may have suffocated during volcanic eruptions.

As you said, whether they are indeed feathers is debatable even in evolutionary circles.

Not really. I know you find little rays of hope even where there aren't any, but I'd say the door is about slammed shut on any non-feather interpretation.

And, as I said, feathered dinosaurs don't equal transitional species any more than hairy long tailed dogs equal cats.

Think about this. The thing is not a bird and it has some feathers, although no way are they enough to fly.

You're saying Archaeopteryx is a bird, but Archaeopteryx has almost the same underlying skeleton as the thing which may be a young Sinornithosaurus and which may have some feathers but is a dinosaur.

What modern bird has the skeleton of what modern reptile?

Then, there are the claws.


Fig. 1: Archaeopteryx	Fig. 2: Deinonychus

Fig. 3: Hoatzin chick	Fig. 4: Hoatzin adult

From here.

( What's a Deinonychus?)

Why do birds have foreclaws that look like dinosaur foreclaws, at least before the bones fuse? Why do fossil birds have unfused dinosaurian foreclaws? (Sort of like, why do fossil whales have legs, if you get my drift.)

Archie is classified as a bird. It wasn't my idea he be called a bird. Something about the feathers and lungs and lack of an embyonic thumbs, wishbone, and littletuff like that made him a bird.

Fallacy of argument from semantics. You have a scoop on Archy's lungs. Such soft tissue has not been preserved anywhere among the seven or so specimens. You also have a scoop on his embryonic development. At least, I've encountered no commentary on any such. You seem tired, cranky, and need to go to bed.

Yes, Archy is mostly classified as a bird. It nevertheless has far, far more reptilian features than any modern bird, including the hoatzin, ostrich, and penguin combined.

Dromaeosaurid Archaeopteryx.

It's meaningless to try to make this go away by screaming "It was classified as a BIRD!"

That's mainly a historical accident. At the time it was found, feathers were considered diagnostic of birds. That has since proved indefensible and has been abandoned, another instance of science "changing its story."

Again and again, you see things not-so-related now looking more and more related as you go back in time (down in the sediments). Birds and dinos are just one example.

This web page gives more such and explains the fallacy of arguing from arbitrary classification schemes back to reality.

Here, for instance:

Thus, the different perissodactyl groups can be traced back to a group of very similar small generalized ungulates (Radinsky, 1979; Prothero, et al., 1989; Prothero & Schoch, 1989) (Fig. 8). But this is not all; the most primitive ungulates (hoofed mammals) are the condylarths, which are assemblages of forms transitional in character between the insectivores and true ungulates (Fig. 9). Some genera and families of the condylarths had been previously assigned to the Insectivora, Carnivora, and even Primates (Romer, 1966). Thus, the farther you go back in the fossil record, the more difficult it is to place species in their "correct" higher taxonomic group. The boundaries of taxa become blurred.

And here:

Moving further up the taxonomic hierarchy, the condylarths and primitive carnivores (creodonts, miacids) are very similar to each other in morphology (Fig. 9, 10), and some taxa have had their assignments to these orders changed. The Miacids in turn are very similar to the earliest representatives of the Families Canidae (dogs) and Mustelidae (weasels), both of Superfamily Arctoidea, and the Family Viverridae (civets) of the Superfamily Aeluroidea. As Romer (1966) states in Vertebrate Paleontology (p. 232), "Were we living at the beginning of the Oligocene, we should probably consider all these small carnivores as members of a single family." This statement also illustrates the point that the erection of a higher taxon is done in retrospect, after sufficient divergence has occurred to give particular traits significance.

The kind of thing you're wishing away here is all over the place. All over!

Creation Science is the science of "You can't make me see!" It's the science of "Maybe we can get the evidence thrown out!"

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