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Posted on 08/13/2003 9:02:05 PM PDT by nwrep
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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.
I certainly agree with what you said - there are many 'virtuous non-signers' on these threads. Some have seen the agreement and chose not sign, but by their conduct do not and would not participate in a flame war.
And you are wrong.
No, I am not. You're straining for any excuse to try to attack a signer of the agreement, despite the fact that you couldn't even bring yourself to sign onto it yourself.
You're badgering people for allegedly not keeping entirely up to a standard that you yourself have rejected in its entirety.
You're trying to undercut the effectiveness of an agreement you disliked by lawyering it to death as an outsider.
You're attempting to discredit posters who made the effort to try something new by claiming that they have given offense to another signer when the other signer himself hasn't even raised an objection.
And you've done it by picking a "violation" that can easily be argued either way then disingenuously presenting it as a clearcut inexcusable breach which is worth all the obsessive effort you've put into it.
Not only is it very arguably not belittling to a complying poster or what that poster believes, as RWP has very ably explained, but a very good case could be made that it is explicitly allowed by two other clauses of the agreement ("logical criticism and rebuttal shall never be considered 'obscene or belittling'", and "If we describe a belief as silly, we will show why we believe that to be true").
As I said, you're reaching. So you might want to pick your battles a little better next time before you go off on a tear.
One person has truly apologized and another apologized with croc tears after being prompted.
Because despite your constant accusations, they *are* trying to keep the peace. Are we likely to see an apology from you now for similar reasons, after your accusations and badgering?
And you, with the hypocritical troublemaker who posted after you,
Obviously, you're in no position to accuse anyone else of uncivil behavior, namecalling, or "belittling words". Or of being a hypocrite...
When you're able to discuss things without getting overemotional yourself, and without exhibiting your personal animosities, you might be a more credible self-appointed referee.
continue to attempt to aggravate the situation which has now been settled.
...so says the guy who has continued to post multiple new posts on this topic, including a new one five short minutes after declaring it "now settled" in this post.
Attempt to be consistent.
So buzz off.
If you're not going to stop talking about it, why should I?
The irony is that just one post prior to the above, Gore3000 was crying about his alleged wish that we "treat everybody with respect and stop the insults" and bemoaning "treating nobody with respect", and just one post after this one he accuses someone of "extreme bad faith" and an alleged "attempt to disrupt a thread by starting a religious food fight".
But calling someone a tool of the devil, nothing wrong with that, eh?
I'd count how many times Gore3000 has accused *others* of hypocrisy, but I'm not sure I have that much time.
PatrickHenry remains aloof! (But I wish both sides would stop this picky picky stuff.)
Wrapping yourself in the flag under colour of complying with the agreement, eh scoundrel?
That's lawyering! Pink is red, except when pink is white.
Is that corned beef or ham?
Looks like hog jowl to me.
Really? Who?
a column which is only theory I might add and has never been observed in nature.
You are mistaken. Read and learn: The Geologic Column and its Implications for the Flood .
Note that the author, Glenn Morton, was once a young-earth creationist. As he began actually working in geology, however, he realized that what he saw in the field could not be reconciled with the falsehoods that his YEC teachers had told him.
Have you studied Mt. St. Helens and the Grand Canyon in detail to see how they were formed?
Yes.
There is no possible way the Colorado river formed the latter,
You forgot to explain why.
but the former gives clues how a canyon could form very very quickly.
No it doesn't, unless you think you can find steep canyons cut through ash (or mud) which reach a *mile* deep without collapsing.
Huh?
Why not? Be specific. "Show your work"
Right... Are you seriously claiming that less than 10000 years ago Western Pennsylvania was a swamp full of cycads and giant amphibians and other coal-age thingies?
It's never too late: Glenn Morton's Story
As a non-signatory, I was getting in a little flambe. Tongue... cheek.
The estimates of the age of the universe have been made by astronomers. Please show where any biologist had any influence on this at all.
The estimated age of the earth hasn't changed very much, has it? A few months ago there was a thread about a new estimate in the third decimal place.
But, a couple of billion years of prokaryote-only, followed by about half a billion of mixed prokaryote and eukaryote has been known for many years. It's what I was taught in school in the '50s, and it's still considered true
If ID is ever considered science, then theories about the designer would be in order. What do we have so far: 1) lousy quality control, and 2) likes to mimic standard mutation/natural selection.
If you can pad that into a textbook, maybe you can con some school board into buying it. It ain't science, but hey, it's a living!
Poll 1000 people. They'll all have some complaint about the "intelligent design." Their backs, their eyesight, hearing, teeth, allergies, headaches, varicose veins, bowels, heart conditions, etc. I hope we're still under warranty.
I think that means, yes. I think that the agreement is insane and appears to have been fashioned by drunks.
The propriety of the term "drunk or insane designer" is truly a non-issue. Anyone claiming that his feelings are hurt by such an expression has too much time on his hands.
Marilyn Monroe logic.
Yes.
But the nature of many of your claims and questions indicates that you haven't looked much beyond "what your creation buddies present you".
I would hasten to say, no.
I would hasten to say that your snap judgements are often wrong.
Have you ever seen a river flow uphill 3,000 feet?
No, but since the Colorado River doesn't do that, that's a nice straw man you've got there.
Have you ever seen a global flood? Have you ever seen a global flood produce ice beds with 40,000 annual layers? Have you ever seen a global flood that wouldn't leave large amounts of terrestrial debris on the sea floors? Have you ever seen a flood that would "sort" all dinosaur remains under all elephant remains? Have you ever seen a flood deposit layered fossil forests? Have you ever seen a flood deposite layers of salt? Have you ever seen a flood deposit thousands of meters of limestone in a short period of time, gathering such unbelievably vast amounts of microscope sea life from *where*, exactly? Have you ever seen a flood that could produce 5 x 1022 grams of limestone without boiling all the oceans of the Earth (and poaching Noah and his family) from the exothermic reaction which forms calcite?
That river did not cut that canyon. It was formed rather rapidly at the flood.
So... You're saying the Grand Canyon couldn't have been formed by flowing water, instead it was formed by flowing water?
http://answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v15n1_grandcanyon.asp
Nice, try, but that page is full of errors, straw men, failure to address all the evidence, etc. Here's a nice piece of transparently false overstatement:
At first glance this interpretation would appear to be an embarrassment to Bible-believing geologists who are unanimous in their belief that it must have been Noah’s Flood that deposited the flat lying beds [...]Um, "unanimous"? Hardly. First, most "Bible-believing geologists" believe the Grand Canyon rock formations were laid down over millions of years. Worse, just TWO PARAGRAPHS LATER they themselves quote a Christian geologist who states, "no flood of any size could have produced such deposits of sand..." I'm sorry, wasn't the Flood hypothesis supposed to be a "unanimous" one? Worse, they flatly contradict themselves later on the page:
and not by desert accumulation of sand dunes as emphatically maintained by most evolutionary geologists, including Christians like Davis Young.Do they even think about the claims they make, or do they just say whatever sounds good?
Your link discusses two points of argument: 1. "Those aren't surface animal tracks, those are amphibian tracks, dangit", and 2. "Those aren't sand dunes, those are underwater sand piles." The reason they want to argue for underwater processes instead of in-air processes is, as they freely admit, because this would cause a major problem for any Flood scenario. But their own attempted explanations leave a lot to be desired.
Let's examine each of them and see how well they hold up:
1. The Coconino sandstone layer of the Grand Canyon strata unmistakably shows animal tracks across its (many) surfaces. And yet, the creationist version of the the Grand Canyon story maintains that the thousands of feet of layers were laid down almost instantaneously (no more than a single year total, actually much less according to their beliefs about what the Flood did when).
So to "explain" (or "explain away") the animal tracks, they suggest that the sands were a) laid down underwater by the churning Flood waters, b) the animal tracks were made by aquatic amphibians running for their lives across the sea floor.
This fails on almost every level. First, there are many lines of evidence clearly pointing to a wind-blown sand dune origin for these sands, including fossilized raindrop impressions. You just don't see many raindrops under the ocean...
Second, the mighty straining to write off one kind of animal track as amphibious instead of reptilian, besides being contrary to the evidence, very conspicuously fails to even attempt to address the insect and mammal tracks which are also present in the sands. Last time I checked, there weren't a lot of spiders, scorpions, or mammals trotting around on the sea floor.
Spider track (along bottom), raindrop impressions, and piece of bark:
Bark floats -- what's it doing lying flat on the "bottom of the ocean" on top of several cubic miles of sand that has just washed into place (according to AiG) next to some raindrop impressions and the tracks of, um, an aquatic spider?
Scorpion tracks (note the characteristic tail-dragging):
There are also animal burrows preserved in the sands. Pretty amazing for animals to manage to burrow into sand as 10,000 cubic miles of it are being violently water-transported 2-300 miles through the ocean in just a few days, eh? (These are AiG's OWN FIGURES).
They also say that this happened at least 300 feet under the surface of the water, a considerable period of time after the Flood allegedly started. Just how many amphibians do they think would be left alive at that point to make countless tracks along the sea floor 300 feet underwater after all that titanic churning of rock and wave?
2. AiG claims that rather than being sand dunes accumulated over millions of years, the Coconino sandstone layer of the Grand Canyon was, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, violently shifted several hundred miles by "flood action" in incredible volumes and dumped over 200,000 square miles in "a matter of days".
There are, shall we say, several little problems with this.
The first is that such a massive "move and dump" would leave the "internal" structure of the sandstone just an amorphous pile of well-mixed sand. But that's not what we see. Instead, it's made up of many, many layers of overlapping dunes and wavy horizons:
Second, the sandstone is layered:
Note that this slab consists of two thin layers of sandstone, and must have been lifted off yet another layer since the spider tracks are a "cast" of the underlying tracks (they bump "out" instead of "in"). How exactly is the "10,000 cubic miles dumped in just days" scenario going to explain how multiple distinct thin layers of sand were nicely stacked?
Worse, animal tracks occur BETWEEN layers at various depths. AiG wrote their web page in a way to give the impression that animal tracks only occur on the *top* of the thick layer of sand, as if it was dumped there, and then animals went skittering across the top of it. That is not the case, but they sure seem to believe it themselves when they write of "catastrophic deposition of the sand by deep fast-moving water in a matter of days" followed by "in its waning stages, build huge sand waves in deep water". This begs the question, how exactly did those spiders and such manage to stroll across the various underlying surfaces of the sand as more was being "catastrophically deposited" on top? And how did *any* animal tracks (at any level) survive what AiG calls the building of "huge sand waves in deep water"? It seems that AiG would also expect to find clean animal tracks inside the remains of a massive mudslide which had been subsequently bulldozed -- from animals which made them during the mudslide itself and/or bulldozing. Color me skeptical.
Finally, the whole exercise is a graphic example of one of "scientific creationism's" favorite tactics: "resolving" one issue by proposing ad hoc scenarios that make NO SENSE in even their own larger picture. But we weren't supposed to notice that...
For example, they've tried to explain *ONE* layer in the Grand Canyon by proposing massive currents bringing in 10,000 cubic miles of sand, then "waning" to the point where it could appropriately make wavy shapes on the deposited sand. Okay, fine, so they propose that the flood waters had "waned" once the sand was deposited and then it was time to make pretty swirls on top. That's nice. THEN WHERE IN THE HELL DID THE SIX HUNDRED FEET OF ADDITIONAL ROCK OVER IT COME FROM?
See the layer marked "CS"? That's the Coconino Sandstone. See the enormous layers marked TF (Toroweap Formation), KFf (Kaibab Formation - Fossil Mountain Member), and KFh (Kaibab Formation - Harrisburg Member)? That's 600 additional feet of rock on top of the Coconino. AiG sort of "forgot" to explain how *those* ended up on top of the sand after the Flood waters had "waned".
Nor do they even acknowledge, much less explain, the 2500+ feet of rock layers *under* the Coconino sandstone, along with all their (varying) fossils, tracks, compositions, and histories.
Rather a schoolchild willing to learn than one WILLFULLY ignorant.
You are invited to point out exactly what you believe he has demonstrated "ignorance" of.
I doubt very seriously that you have ever considered flood geology, or studied Mt. St. Helens eruption and the geology of that catastrophy.
You doubt many things which you should not.
For those who care to learn, there are many articles online and elsewhere. Here is one of them: http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-157.htm
This one boils down to, "a gully a hundred feet deep can form in ash and mud in a few years, therefore the Grand Canyon, over a mile deep, could too". Not convinced.
I agree, and I have taken care to treat them as such, and will continue to do so.
Sorry, that's what was meant. It was also meant as an opening to Christian bashing. Your statement about that " no one agrees on what "is" means" shows exactly the dishonesty of many of the evolutionists. They know what the words mean, they just do not wish to honor their promises so they look at semantic excuses to their actions.
Everything is a non-issue to you if it is done by an evolutionist. Spare us the Clintonian hypocrisy.
This is not a court matter. The only thing that binds them is their honor, they have shown they have none.
No, I'm not angry. I am trying to make a point. Words such as insane, drunk and lawyer are unnecessary in these discussions and, when used, tend to inflame.
No need to do that, but thanks. That is what communication is for, to determine things, hopefully, in a polite and civil manner. Your observation was made in a perfect manner and gave me opportunity to "correct" it. The "correction" was taken graciously.
A moment ago you were citing a website that claims that it was made during the Flood. Now you're saying it's due to a breaking dam. Which is it? And which dam, when?
That little River did not carve that great big canyon.
If you knew the most basic things about the Grand Canyon (i.e., enough to have an informed opinion about how it might have formed), you'd know that "that little river" is today a trickle of what it once was, because IT WAS DAMMED UPSTREAM in 1960-62 by the building of the Glen Canyon Dam.
Prior to that, the Colorado River could reach flow volumes of 200,000 cubic feet per second.
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