New Dinosaur Species Found in India

AP ^ | August 13, 2003 | RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM

[nwrep]

New Dinosaur Species Found in India

2 hours, 55 minutes ago

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By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM, Associated Press Writer

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.

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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.

India has seen quite a few paleontological discoveries recently.

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.

[balrog666]

To: Right Wing Professor

What if their paper proves the other paper wrong. You just assumed it does not.

1,895 posted on 08/21/2003 1:09 PM CDT by DittoJed2

You know, if YOU can't read and understand either paper, why do believe either one at all? Or anything at all?

[DittoJed2]

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/444.asp

[Right Wing Professor]

What if their paper proves the other paper wrong. You just assumed it does not.

I'll bet real money it won't even acknowledge the other paper.

Errors in this sort of work tend to go one way; they tend to overestimate the diffusion constant. The reason is, if there are defects or cracks in the crystal, diffusion can proceed rapidly along the cracks or through the defects, and appear anomalously fast. The slowest diffusion will be in a nearly perfect crystal. I can't imagine how you could slow diffusion any further than that, at the same temperature. So, if two groups measure diffusion constants, and one is substantially smaller, I tend to believe the smaller value.

[balrog666]

I'll bet real money it won't even acknowledge the other paper.

You just can't teach a pig to sing or some YE Creationists to think.

[DittoJed2]

Try to keep up balrog. My criticism is that once again a creationist resource has been discounted out of hand. He has no clue what kind of experiments they did to come up with their conclusions. He has no clue what their paper is about. He just read a, not very detailed, summary of the arguments in a short article and said "we've already demolished that...next."

[Right Wing Professor]

Because it is still a fish. I am not an ape.

You are in the same family as an ape. A fish may not even be in the same order as another fish.

[DittoJed2]

You are still judging the work before you have even seen it. This group of scientists has spent 5 years working on studying radiometric dating. They have published a report that will stand or fall on its own merits. AIG likes what they see, but I haven't trumpeted "aha! the fall of evolutionary dating schemes!" because I haven't seen their paper yet either. At least give them the professional courtesy of presenting their findings and defending them if necessary.

[DittoJed2]

According to human classifications.

[DittoJed2]

Going to take a breather and get something to eat. Will return at some later time.

[attiladhun2]

I wouldn't go that far to say Homo sapiens and dinosaurians were contemporaries. Nonetheless, Rajasaurus narmadensis was a created being, just like everything else in this universe.

[balrog666]

Did YOU read and understand both articles?

Do you understand why one is science and one is BS?

If not, on what basis do you evaluate them?

[AndrewC]

but I haven't trumpeted "aha! the fall of evolutionary dating schemes!"

Yep, and I said the authors thought it was world shattering.

[AndrewC]

Where is the ICE Water?

[Alamo-Girl]

Er, if I may interject something.

It seems to me that - sometimes - where scientists have bothered to read both sides of a scientific argument and form an independent view, they have been called "Intelligent Design" theorists - and thus end up being rejected out-of-hand by both sides. LOL!

[DittoJed2]

No. I did not. But I did not make claims about either.

Regarding your little flame war over this discussion you are trying to start, I invite lurkers and everyone to view the comments made. I made no claims for accuracy, just a desire that someone not just dismiss something based on what someone else's paper said at some time past. The Creationists may not have rebutted that paper, or they may have. We haven't read their work. So, to dismiss it outright is the epitomy of bias, exhibits bad faith, and is frankly arrogant. These men are not just Joe Schmoe off the street without any kind of understanding of science at all. They deserve to be heard. If you disagree with them, that's fine -but good grief it is just BS to condemn a paper of BS before you have even seen it.

[jennyp]

It's the same nonsense we demolished about two months ago. It's based on the unfounded assumption that helium diffuses easily in zircons. It doesn't. A recent paper found a activation energy for helium diffusion of 44 kcal/mol., and a closure temperature of 190 C. (The closure temperature is the temperature below which diffusion is negligible). A zircon which has not been exposed to temperatures above 190C should retain its helium.

He diffusion and (U-Th)/He thermochronometry of zircon: initial results from Fish Canyon Tuff and Gold Butte. Reiners, Peter W.; Farley, Kenneth A.; Hickes, Hunter J. Department of Geology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA. Tectonophysics (2002), 349(1-4), 297-308.

Is this true? The last I had heard, Humphreys had defended himself against Joe Meert's claim that he had gotten the closure temperature horribly wrong. I hadn't heard about this 2002 paper you mention.

Did I miss a thread somewhere? I thought this issue hadn't been resolved yet. I certainly haven't seen any resolution posted anywhere on the Net (that I have looked).

[PatrickHenry]

Er, neither AiG nor talkorgins are objective websites.

I certainly agree that talkorigins isn't neutral, but I do think they take an objective look at the evidence. In this, and in their lack of "quote mining" and such, I think they do a better job of being scientific than AiG. On the other hand, I give AiG credit for being upfront about their scriptural approach to these things.

[PatrickHenry]

You are assuming the millions of years exist [to provide time for micro-evolution to cumulatively result in macro-evolution]. I am not. There is a mechanism in and of itself.

Ah, we're making progress. Then tell me this: if the earth were as old as astronomy and geology tell us, would you then agree that there is no mechanism that could prevent micro-evolution from eventually resulting in macro-evolution?

[Alamo-Girl]

Truly, I wish I knew how to make people check their intellectual prejudice at the door before doing science or debating it on these threads.

But it'll never happen. I believe it was js1138 who pointed out that it takes decades to change a paradigm. All you can do is present the information and let the people who read everything draw their own conclusions.

Epistemological materialism is intended to keep science objective, but that leaves religion completely out of science which is repugnant to some in science who put faith first – and worse, epistemological materialism is embraced by metaphysical naturalists as authority to promote atheistic social agendas associated with it (everything from animal rights to infanticide) – thereby making it twice as repugnant. (BTW, I suggest we not "go there" in this discussion.)

My two cents...

[Cronos]

No, this is not close to the largest. I'm thinking the largest might be the Christian Chronicles in the Religion forum. Right now it is at 940 posts, but the previous thread was in 5 digits, 65535 to be exact. big thread
Wow, you're right! http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/656646/posts

[DittoJed2]

No.

[DittoJed2]

No. Time plus primordial soup does not equal macro evolution any more than time plus airplane parts in a blender equals a 747.

[balrog666]

No. I did not. But I did not make claims about either.

Why would you post a link to something you don't understand and cannot defend? How is that different than posting links to and excerpts from The Journal of Irreproducible Results or The Latvian Dating Guide? What is the point, except to load the thread with SPAM?

[Doctor Stochastic]

Is "fish" a kind?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your post and the information about talkorigins!

However, it is because of the prejudice associated with certain websites that I personally try to find third party sources (e.g. universities, professional journals, credible news organizations or government websites) so that the article stands a better chance of being read by the Lurkers.

[jennyp]

You've got freepmail.

[goodseedhomeschool (returned)]

Let's face it Ditto. They have NO CLUE period!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for checking it out!

It is downright amazing how many people are registered and post on Free Republic. Just imagine how many come by to read but don't post!

It is also interesting to see all the different professions represented here.

[jennyp]

or The Latvian Dating Guide

LOL! There almost is such a thing...

[PatrickHenry]

No. Time plus primordial soup does not equal macro evolution any more than time plus airplane parts in a blender equals a 747.

Okay, so "old earth" doesn't change your mind about the possibility of micro-evolution gradually resulting in macro-evolution. That still leaves the question of why? Given that micro-evolution happens, what mechanism prevents an enormous sequence of these little changes from accumulating?

[PatrickHenry]

Er, if I may interject something. It seems to me that - sometimes - where scientists have bothered to read both sides of a scientific argument and form an independent view, they have been called "Intelligent Design" theorists - and thus end up being rejected out-of-hand by both sides. LOL!

I don't think ID guys like Behe borrow all that much from creationism. I'm not aware that he doubts old earth, or the value of radiometric dating, or the geologic column, or that he argues for the Flood, for example. He just doesn't see that evolution is the total answer. ID isn't a "middle of the road" position, so much as it tries to be an alternative to, or suppliment of evolution. Or so it seems to li'l ol' me.

[Alamo-Girl]

Indeed. Point taken. Thank you!!!

[js1138]

enormous placemarker

[BMCDA]

OK. Evolution (in biology) means that a population changes over time. This change happens during the reproduction process of the individuals this population consists of. So you get offspring that has a mix of its parents genetic material plus some mutations which always occur to some extent. Some of these new configurations can produce individuals that are better suited to their environment than their parents or their siblings, so they have higher chances to procreate and on average they also have more offspring.
Over time the genetic makeup of this population can change considerably. So if you had a specimen from the current population and one from the ancestor population and compared them, it can make sense to assign them to two different species.
Of course a population can also split up, and the two (or more) groups get reproductively isolated. This means that changes that arise in one group are no longer shared with the other group(s). Usually these subpopulations are exposed to different environmental conditions which means that natural selection affects them in different ways.
If they stay isolated long enough, it can happen that they changed so much that they don't recognize each other as potential mates. This can be nicely observed in ring species where the two populations at the end of the 'ring' don't recognize each other (here is a nice illustration of a warbler ring species).

[Right Wing Professor]

He has no clue what kind of experiments they did to come up with their conclusions. He has no clue what their paper is about. He just read a, not very detailed, summary of the arguments in a short article and said "we've already demolished that...next."

The paper is at http://www.icr.org/research/icc03/pdf/Helium_ICC_7-22-03.pdf. It's been referenced previously on FR, and I have read it.

The creationists discuss three data sets. The first is an old Russian data set of radiation-damaged zircons, where they don't even know how to interpret the data. That's useless, and I'll ignore it. The second is the Nevada data of Reiners et al that I cited. From those data, Reiners obtained an activation energy, which roughly quantitates how easy it is for helium to diffuse. The higher the activation barrier, the slower the diffusions, and it's a very non-linear relationship. The activation energy is obtained using something called the Arrhenius equation, where you plot the natural log of the diffusion constant versus reciprocal temperature, and find the slope, which is the negative of the activation energy divided by the gas constant R. The guys who actually took the data - Reiners et al - claimed 44 kcal/mole. I extracted a slope from Figure 5 of the creationist paper, in which they reproduce Reiners et al's data, applied the usual Arrhenius equation, and got 43.5 kcal/mole, in agreement with the original authors. However, the creationists claim they get an activation energy of 34.4 kcal/mol, and go on to claim the data at the bottom part of the curve, where they have no quoted error, is as low as 29.4 kcal/mol! That's what they need for their young-earth model!

So, wondering why, I went to their appendix C - the report from the 'independent expert' which contains the results for the zircon data for which the creationists claim an activation energy of 34.4 kcal/mol. The expert says, and I quote "The first 14 steps lie on a linear array corresponding to an activation energy of ~ 46 kcal/mol and a closure temperature of ~183ºC assuming a cooling rate of 10ºC/Myr". That's in excellent agreement with Reiners et al! The much lower activation energy was obtained only when he temperature-cycled the zircons. He says the change might be due to temperature damage of the zircons by the experiment, or by anomalous retardation of helium release in the original sample. In either case, the slope that's relevant to helium retention over geological time is the original one, before the crystals has been altered by heating. The creationist's use without comment of the data from crystals that are temperature cycled, without acknowledging that without temperature cycling, the diffusion constants are orders of magnitude lower and in agreement with established work, looks to me like scientific fraud.

Now aren't you glad you baited me into giving the paper a more careful read?

[BMCDA]

Here is also a good source to learn more about evolution:

Evolutionary Biology 3rd edition, by Douglas J. Futuyma

[AndrewC]

I think I saw a mist.

[Right Wing Professor]

See post 1935. They cheated. The real closure temperature was reported by their independent expert as 186 C.

[AndrewC]

Did you bait someone into doing what they should have done before commenting? Bad girl!

[Junior]

Okay, I'm not sure I made myself clear. "Norm" is the point about which the species clusters. No individual member of the species ups and mutates so much that he cannot breed with the rest of the species. Mutations make their way through a population. Sometimes when a species is split in two (usually by geography), the mutations which accumulate in the two separate populations make it eventually impossible for those populations to ever again interbreed.

[f.Christian]

I watched a tv special about ayres rock in australia and it was the most convoluted evolution bs I'd ever seen .

My theory -- explantion is ...

it's an underground blowup - out --- through a soft spot hole in the earth's crust - plate !

If evolution was true and these were plates turned sideways ... their would be some fossil evidence in them and my theory would make their presence nearly * impossible * --- they could be drawn in from the surface and resurfaced in the extruding process !

* Here it is * ...


Most of the canyons and gorges (( revealing layers forming below surface cambrian layers )) actually formed by drying - shrinking cracks ... water naturally flowing through them because of their lower elevations - depth (( evo erosian phooey )) !

At some point plates collapsed upon themselves forming rocky mountains and some fragmenting - opening allowing islands and mountains to protrude - rise above and through the plate valley - ocean floor edges !

Heating and cooling would have changed the size of the earth ... probably hot --- very small !

Starting to cool forming a surface crust ... getting larger again --- and then like a cake bubbling rising up sections and with more cooling drying cracks !

Towards the center top middle half of the geologic column life forms appear fully formed ... cambrian explosion --- nothing below !

There are ... * NO precambrian fossils * ---

except for worms - mollusks (( unless the earth was hollow and they floated to the surface )) !

While the top layers were being formed from flooding and volcanic activity ... most of the column layers were formed from below and at the same time forming most of the above ground ... i.e., buttes - hills - mountains -- surface plate geography we see today --- not enough time for all this evolution nonsense that wouldn't be possible with unlimited time anyway --- pure fantasy- fiction !


Cambrian plates are on mountain tops and rising mountains would raise plate and ocean floors to various elevations !

All this geology and life washing out of a mudball is OBVIOUSLY an evolution hoax -- legend !


Also catastrophic cosmic collisions would interrupt evolution so many times over a long period of time it would also make evolution IMPOSSIBLE !

[Lurking Libertarian]

dust-of-the ground placemarker

[Right Wing Professor]

I read the paper, commented that their results were at variance with the literature, and gave the charitable explanation they were looking at a damaged sample. In fact, they were well aware of the literature, had failed to acknowledge a discrepancy with it, failed to note a major anomaly in their data, and omitted to note that if they used the data before temperature cycling, they got a result identical with those of the 'uniformitarians' they deride. In other words, I assumed incompetence, when a more careful read suggests malice.

[Right Wing Professor]

My mistake: that should have been to 'All'. Sorry.

[Right Wing Professor]

Just to add that if you'd like me to write this up in a more polished form for your forum, I'll be happy to.

[Ichneumon]

It helps to think of a species as a cloud of dots clustered around a central point we'll call "Norm."

Norm!

(Sorry, but if I didn't do it, you know someone else would have.)

[Doctor Stochastic]

The one on the left is probably a "species." The one seated is more like a "kind." Neither looks like an "ilk."

[Ichneumon]

Score one for Reason, Ping!

You might want to read post #1820 before you declare premature victory.

Also note that although MM's post was long on general declarations of evolution's demise, it contained no examples, and no specific evidence. It was just a diatribe that the reader was expected to take on faith.

People can (and have) written similar diatribes against Christianity -- does that prove anything?

Furthermore, for some perspective check out this web page on The Imminent Demise of Evolution. Creationists have been continuously predicting that evolution was about to come crashing down any day now since 1840... That page contais quotes predicting the crash of evolution from 1840, 1850, 1878, 1895, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1912, 1922, 1929, 1935, 1940, 1961, 1963, 1970, 1975, 1976, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002. But surely, they're finally right *this* time, eh?

[null and void]

Ooh! Oooh! You ran out of unsigned 16-bit integers!

Ummmm, actually I don't think I ever posted to that thread.

They ran out of unsigned 16-bit integers...

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Creationists have been continuously predicting that evolution was about to come crashing down any day now since 1840...

You're forgetting it takes millions of years for wildly successful theories to fall. The punk-eek version of "evolutionary crashing" (a.k.a., ec) requires mechanisms that have not yet been completely described or understood in the creationist/ID model of anti-science. ;)