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.
Yes. And I meant to say "hoof prints".
Good, and please tell me if a deletion, a C , a T, and a G at the same location does not imply 3 mutations? Plus unless the macaque is a kissin cousin to the rat and mouse there is another 3 mutation spot.
That's where new species arise, but not what they are. By the dawn of the age of exploration, the human race had spread around the globe. The varying environments and the isolation of various subgroups from the rest of the gene pool had produced the beginnings of speciation processes that would eventually have gone to completion had we not re-discovered each other and re-connected all the gene pools. Now we're basically re-melding.
Thus, up to a somewhat blurry point, the process is reversible. Put in barriers to gene-mixing, differences arise. Take out the barriers, re-mixing can occur. (But in nature, it doesn't always. Sometimes the process once started simply runs away because of sexual selection pressures or a lack of situational viability of hybrid types.)
... or hybrids of the type similar to when horses and donkeys mate to produce mules.
The product (a mule) of horse-donkey hybridization is not a new species. It's not even fertile. (It's a useful farm animal combining some of the better points and skipping some of the drawbacks of its parent species.) You misinterpret the significance of the situation. That horses and donkeys are cross-fertile but produce sterile offspring is a sign that speciation has already occurred and relatively recently.
Despite all the similarities between the species and the near-compatibility that allows the production of mules, there is no way for horse and donkey populations to re-meld in the way humans are doing. They are on the other side of the speciation barrier and will go their separate ways now.
concisetraveler: Those are the most illuminated words you have said.
You liked that one? It fits.
Ol' Ted's still around. He's not posting (much) on the crevo threads any more, but he's here. I'll bet he enjoys reading all the comments about him, as well...
It's mostly the fault of the charlatans at AiG and ICR, who make a living telling lies to uneducated and highly susceptible children in grown-up bodies, people who just want to keep believing that fairy tales are real.
There are no "Missing links" because macro evolution can not occur. You have a few HIGHLY DISPUTED examples of what you say are macro evolution, but even most evolutionists will admit that the fossil record does not record the kind of information you would like for it to record.
You have no idea what most mainstream experts think on the subject, as that's exactly the kind of thing that AiG is lying to you about. As I've already shown you (to no particular effect), there's plenty of fossil evidence. This is not controversial out in the real world.
Some people here have an unduly high opinion of their place in the world.
Speciation is what you're going to see in a human lifetime. (But, as I told you, speciation is the irreversible event.)
Once again, Tempo and Mode of Speciation. You need this material. As long as you only know the AiG version of what evolution is, your arguments will be risible. Here's the part you're having trouble with right now:
 |
We still have populations that seem quite isolated. Have there been any studies about whether the Congo pygmies or the Kalahari bushmen mingle reproductively with the surrounding populations? The same question applies to other isolated groups like Australian natives, Amazonian tribes, and highlanders in remote Indonesian areas. Even if there were occasional "melding events," it may be that the bulk of such populations continue to be reproductively isolated, and if this continues, it's conceivable that speciation could result in a few tens of thousand of years.
It says on their news release it's the same paper. They say in
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0821rate.asp
and I quote
There is now powerful independent confirmatory evidence that at least one episode of drastically accelerated decay has indeed been the case, building on the work of Dr Robert Gentry on helium retention in zircons. The landmark RATE paper,1, though technical, can be summarized as follows: (yadda)
Reference 1, cited is Humphreys, D. et al., Helium diffusion rates support accelerated nuclear decay, www.icr.org/research/icc03/pdf/Helium_ICC_7-22-03.pdf. That is the paper I've been analysing, the one where they buried the fact that the initial data, collected under conditions where the crystal was unaltered by heat, gave identical reuslts to previous values and did not support their hypothesis at all.
Common ancestry simply makes far more sense than "common designer." Why fill the ocean with fish, but then make whales from mammal parts? Why also put fossils in the rocks that seem to show land animals slowly losing their legs and becoming whales?
Why use something homologous to insectivore tree-dweller hands to make bat wings, but something like dinosaur claws to make bird wings, and just one incredibly stretched-out reptilian pinkie to support the pterodactyl wing? The supposed answer: you can't question the designer. (That's an answer!!??)
If something looks like design, it's proof of design. If it doesn't look like design, you're not allowed to notice or question. Can this be right?
The argument from design is not a theological argument, because we aren't necessarily talking about God. But any rebuttal of the design argument is theological, because it requires us to say "God wouldn't do it this way", and this is not legitimate.
It seems my comment bears repeating.
A thousand points of light. Whip Inflation Now! The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind. Puff the Magic Dragon, too.
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.
