New Dinosaur Species Found in India

AP ^ | August 13, 2003 | RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM

[nwrep]

New Dinosaur Species Found in India

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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.

[Nataku X]

LOL. I'd pay good money to see RWP to stand up in a NOW meeting and tell that "what do you tell a woman with 2 black eyes" joke!!

[Nataku X]

The original complaint was that religious beliefs were hurt in calling God drunk/belittling. But, reviewing the history, it is clear that the "small d" designer was referred to in the ID context.

It harms the ID side far more to take that joke to mean that the Christian God is a drunk. After all, nearly every adherent of ID makes it clear that the designer can be any god or aliens, and does not deal with the identity of the designer. I've concluded that the complaint, that religious beliefs were insulted, is not valid.

What I thought to be a "boulder" is now a pebble. I believe A-G said something to the effect that "Dumbski" and "Darwood" weren't considered belittling since they didn't refer to the poster--I took that to mean that the belittling cause is more of a personal attack on the poster. Since no one's religious beliefs were violated, and no one was personally attacked, I judge this to be a "gray" area within the agreement.

This is why we needed all the nitpicking & all those provisions and all that--because no one agrees on what "is" means. So, we need to define what belittling means and in what circumstances it applies to, and what personal attacks mean.

[PatrickHenry]

Yer a poophead. And so's yer pussycat.

[Virginia-American]

When I'm using the defective vitamin C gene as an example of shared errors implying shared ancestry, I've often posted that the hypothesized designer must have had lousy quality control, and I've never been accused of religion-bashing.

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.

[Nataku X]

Do not take this to mean that I believe that RWP & Aric2000 were justified... only that the charge is now different and may not (operative word: may) be covered under the agreement.

[PatrickHenry]

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!

[Aric2000]

What is amazing to me, is that they consider ID a scientific theory, but when the designer is made fun of, they tell us that we are religion bashing.

Just amazing, it's either a scientific theory or it's a religious belief, it CANNOT be both, so which is it?

Anyway, yes, the design is rather sloppy, the back is not exactly well suited to standing on 2 legs, we can't manufacture Vitamin C, We have a tailbone that is not much good for anything, etc, etc.

So either the designer was sloppy, drunk or was playing around in the lab, or evolution, which in fact, this is what it looks like, actually took place.

So, we have 2 choices, the designer was a crappy designer, or evolution did excellent with what it had to work with.

[Nataku X]

Right. If one said that God/Big-D Designer was drunk, then he would be in definite violation of the agreement.

But, if you take "belief" to mean every little belief on the planet, including the fact that I believe that my grocery's generic pepperoni tastes better than the brand name pepperoni, then there is potentially nothing that we can post without being belittling to someone's beliefs.

From the context of the draft thread by what A-G was judging on what was allowed and what wasn't (Darwood, being permitted, etc.), I take that the only "absolute" about section 5 is to mean (1) personal attacks are not allowed, and (2) attacks on religious beliefs definitely are a no-no too.

My apologies if I am wrong.

[PatrickHenry]

... the design is rather sloppy ...

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.

[AndrewC]

It is therefore allowed to use the words drunk and insane in these discussions as long as they are not directed at the person you are addressing? To virginia-american lousy quality control is not an insult it is a subjective assessment that may be right or wrong. Drunk or insane is an insult when not describing someone who is in either of those conditions.

[Nataku X]

It's not right, nor is it tactful.

The question is whether it's covered by the agreement. It would be on the same level as "Dumbski" and I believe A-G said it was allowed.

[AndrewC]

The question is whether it's covered by the agreement. It would be on the same level as "Dumbski" and I believe A-G said it was allowed.

I think that means, yes. I think that the agreement is insane and appears to have been fashioned by drunks.

[PatrickHenry]

The question is whether it's covered by the agreement.

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.

[headsonpikes]

I don't think I've ever learned less science in my life than on this thread placemarker.

[AndrewC]

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.

[Ichneumon]

Have you ever bothered to look at any other evidence other than what your evolution buddies present you?

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.

[AndrewC]

Upon further reflection and I the interest of calming the situation, I will withdraw my last comment. I apologize for the response I made.

[Nataku X]

You are obviously angry, A-C, and I don't blame you. I had no involvement in the agreement drafting, and I already said that what RWP & Aric2000 did not do the right thing. What they said was not in the spirit of the agreement.

But, judgement in courts are never decided in the "spirit of the law", but instead on strictly technical terms of what the law says instead of what the law is intended by its makers to prevent. What can we do, except to define the law more clearly?

[Ichneumon]

But there are several regulars in our threads who haven't bothered themselves with the agreement at all, who were absent from the drafting thread, who avoided all the quibbles and petty disputes, but who nevertheless conduct themselves as if they were complying posters. That is, their posts are always respectful, never provocative, never spamming, never involved in nit-picking irrelevant trivia, etc. We might consider them "virtuous non-signers."

I agree, and I have taken care to treat them as such, and will continue to do so.

[gore3000]

It harms the ID side far more to take that joke to mean that the Christian God is a drunk.

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.