2 hours, 55 minutes ago
 |
Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo! |
Posted on 08/13/2003 9:02:05 PM PDT by nwrep
|
2 hours, 55 minutes ago
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
From the Science instructions to authors:
By submitting a manuscript, the corresponding author accepts the responsibility that all authors have agreed to be so listed and have seen and approved the manuscript, its content, and its submission to Science. Any changes in authorship must be approved in writing by all the original authors.
You don't co-author a paper whose conclusions you disagree with. That's fraud. If you use someone's computer program, you cite the program in the reference section, and maybe thank the author if it's not generally available.
My own professional society, ACS, has published a quite detailed statement of ethical principles, at: http://pubs.acs.org/instruct/ethic2000.pdf
Quoting The co-authors of a paper should be all those persons who have made significant scientific contributions to the work reported and who share responsibility and accountability for the results. Other contributions should be indicated in a footnote or an “Acknowledgments” section.
I can see where the mechanism mentioned limits--as in "somewhat suppresses"--the rate of mutation. I don't see where it would over vast amounts of time completely cap the total number of mutations which do get through. The latter sort of limit was what Patrick was asking Ditto about. Without such a cap, once two populations have speciated, mutational differences just keep on accumulating. Everything we know about mutational clocks says that this idea works.
Molecular clocks. Time for a break.
Caveat emptor, cave canem, cave perfidia.
I noted a Vitamin C DNA segment that did not change.
I noted in my post #1969 that this was highly misleading, since the Vitamin C synthesis psuedogene actually changed significantly. The fact that one can pick an arbitrarily small "segment" within it which wasn't among the portions which changed is a red herring. A fixation on "but not *all* of it has changed" is a failure to see the forest for the trees, or an attempt to distract attention from the actually significant regions (i.e., those which *did* change, and in what manner).
Guinea Pigs are not primates.
DittoJed2, notice that this is a red herring -- I never said that they were, nor does this obvious fact in any way change my points or the study I cited.
Of course there is no telling when they no longer could make Vitamin C.
Actually, there are several ways to tell, including: Guinea pigs possess a highly mutated gene for L-gulono-gamma-lactone oxidase, the key enzyme for L-ascorbic acid biosynthesis missing in this species , which used the amount of mutation in the guinea pig GLO pseudogene relative to the rat GLO gene to conclude, "...the date of the loss of L-gulono-gamma-lactone oxidase in the ancestors of the guinea pig was roughly calculated to be less than 20 million years ago."
Furthermore, DittoJed2, notice that the nature of the guinea pig mutations in the GLO pseudogene also fulfill the predictions of evolution and common descent. If the guinea pig GLO pseudogene were "broken" in the same way as the primate GLO pseudogene, this would pose a large problem for evolutionary theory, as it would strongly imply that guinea pigs were more closely related to primates (and vice versa) than any other lineage. So evolutionary theory predicts that although guinea pigs can't synthesize their own Vitamin C either, it must have arisen as an independent mutation from the one which occurred in the primate lineage, and that therefore it would be expected to be almost certainly a different set of mutations. And that is exactly what we find when we examine the DNA of guinea pigs, primates, and mammals with working GLO genes. Remember from my prior post, the human GLO pseudogene exhibits a missing Intron VIII, and a missing or highly damaged Exon XI. Meanwhile, the guinea pig GLO pseudogene is missing Exons I and V, while VIII and XI are present. It's "broken" in a different manner, and shares no statistical mutational similarities to the human/primate GLO pseudogenes. Evolution is, again, confirmed.
So if anyone hoped to imply a problem for evolutionary theory by pointing out that guinea pigs are not primates, they were mistaken.
I am getting tired of repeating this.
CURSE/SIN/WAXING OLD/DEATH/EROSION/WEAKENING/DEGRADING/DE-EVOLVING
Then feel free to stop repeating it.
CURSE/SIN/WAXING OLD/DEATH/EROSION/WEAKENING/DEGRADING/DE-EVOLVING
This fails to have any explanatory power.
For example, if "DEGRADING/ETC." only began at the time of the Fall, which if it occurred would (obviously) be sometime after mankind had existed, then it fails to explain those many, many genetic "degradations" which are configured exactly as one would expect if they had arisen in a common ancestor prior to man first arriving on the scene.
For example, you are invited to explain how you feel that "DEGRADING/ETC." explains the pattern of shared endogenous retroviruses in man and other species, as well as the pattern of pseudogene mutations and so on. Contrast your answer to the manner in which evolution theory consistently explains such observations. For a concrete example you may wish to tackle, try my posts #1969 and #1986.
Could you name a few?
There are many who believe in other sciences which have no integrity in my book. Charles Darwin rings up there at the top of my No integrity list.
Reasons?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
