New Dinosaur Species Found in India

JennyP, thanks for the invitaiton to join the "Agreement of the Willing." I thankfully will not be taking part in these nonsence debates - I promise.

Jurassic Park, right here in Gujarat!
RAJA BOSE

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2003 01:12:39 AM ]

AHMEDABAD: What was life like in Rahioli, 60 km from here, 67 million years ago, when a 30-ft-long dinosaur ruled the Narmada basin? Get set to find out in Kheda district's Balasinore. Only, the beast stages a return as a robot and in an artificial setting.

With paleontologists revealing the existence of Rajasaurus Narmadensis in the Cretaceous period by assembling a dinosaur skull from fossilised pieces found preserved in volcanic rocks in Rahioli village near Balasinore, the state is looking at the find as a gigantic opportunity to package as an international theme park and attract foreign tourists.

While an interpretation centre and other basic tourist amenities will be ready by the time Navratri celebrations begin on September 25, major plans are afoot for a theme park that will recreate the period, complete with an automated dinosaur that will move, roar and hunt amidst a prehistoric setting.

Balasinore was also one of the tourism hotspots the state government had projected to industrialists during a recent meet to hardsell investment destinations in Gujarat.

“Work on the initial tourist facilities will begin in a week’s time and will include setting up an interpretation centre that will present features like evolution of the dinosaur. The route leading to Rahioli will be widened and a cafeteria will be set up for tourists coming in during Navratri,” said Tourism Corporation of Gujarat Limited managing director DK Rao.

The “discovery” has already fuelled aspirations in the region, with people looking to the prehistoric predator to help usher in tourists and prosperity. “Gujarat is fortunate to have a site like this. There is a need to build on this finding to turn the area into a major tourism destination. But, a lot of infrastructure needs to be developed.

We do not even have signages leading up to the site right now,” says erstwhile Nawab of Balasinore Salabat Khan Babi, who has worked for over a decade to create awareness about the need to protect the site.

The theme park, to be built on a 50-60-acre plot, will not only “relive” the period, but also have an enclosure for wild animals like lions and leopards. Visitors will have the opportunity to pose with fossilised dinosaur eggs and bones for photographs. Log huts will be put up for those seeking a first-hand experience of a pre-historic night under the shadow of the dinosaur.

“The theme park needs to be marketed now. Though no budget has been drawn up yet, we are looking at private participation and have also written to international agencies and universities. While the Ahmedabad-Vadodara Expressway will provide road connectivity, we have requested the Western Railway to run a weekend train to the closest station to the site,” adds Rao.

They're in far worse shape than the Evo-atheists.

Jesus addressed this very issue when He said,

"Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven..." (Luke 6:37)

How can you, a mere human, sit in judgement of what is in another's heart...much less what has transpired between a devout person and God? Even I, an "Evo-atheist", refuse to judge, mock or disbelieve a person who claims to be Born-Again. And if such a person also happens to believe that evolution was God's plan and choice, who are you to dishonor their faith or beliefs? I suggest you rethink your position, for you are not God and were not there at the inception of the Universe.

Hugs back, A-G...(and I do not give those out very freely).

I'll be good, promise!!;)

You'd better be good, else I will unleash one of my unholy minions on you...the Lab Ferret From Hell! ;^)

Knocking it off is much worse than picking at it.

Not if you only have to do it once.

Because they are also running from God, but are unwilling to admit it to themselves.

Out of curiousity, why would they be running away from God?

[AndrewC wrote:] I have asked you several times to keep me out of your discussion.

First, let me say that I'm sorry AndrewC has chosen to involve the moderators and Alamo-Girl by pinging them in his posts #991 and #487. You folks have better things to do than be called by him to fight his feuds for him. I hoped it would blow over after his first ping, but when he repeated it I realized that he's not going to stop. So please bear with me while I describe the full nature of the disagreement, since he has given you his version twice now, and most likely will again -- and it's not the whole story.

Second, I apologize to the participants of this thread, who have had to witness this food fight. Not that there aren't several others going on at the same time, but still...

I'm even sorrier that AndrewC did not accept my offer for us to let bygones be bygones and start fresh:

[My post #482:] "But I'll make you a deal -- unless I've used any other words you'd like to claim I don't understand, let's both sleep on it tonight and then start with a clean slate tomorrow."

Unfortunately, his response was to describe my suggestion of reconciliation as "intolerable", repeat his demand that I "not address him", and ping the moderators.

Incredibly, even though AndrewC had demanded that I "leave him out of my discussions" and obviously expected me to obey (both then and now), did he leave me out of his own discussions? No, he did not. Even while I was gone most of the next day and was not posting, he continued to include me in *his* discussions:

[AndrewC wrote in his post #506:] I'm not stooping to anything. I'm trying to get him to leave me out of his abusive discussions.

And:

[AndrewC wrote in his post #507:] Outmaneuvered me where? He began the same tack he did on the cubic circuit thread. As you can see he again became abusive.
The reason the discussion went down that road, was due to his gratuitous statement --->"If you're going to make an analogy, make sure it's a valid comparison."
That was unnecessary. Left out, the answer would have been---> Of course the erosion process has those three things. The wind never is constant in speed, direction, or the material it contains. The sandstone varies in hardness, composition and age. Selection is done by the cohesiveness of the sandstone when compared to the force of the wind. And there are many, many places that have various configurations of sandstone that are eventually exposed to the wind. Even now some are being built.

Note that not only was he continuing to make accusations against me (while demanding that I in no way respond) he even continued to carry on the conversation I had been having with him, by responding to a point I had made to him earlier in post #468 -- but only after he had tried to shut down my ability to respond to it. When he had the original opportunity to provide a substantive response, he instead chose to ignore the point and simply made an empty inflammatory insult. More on that below.

Here's the third instance of him continuing to "include me in his discussion" after he had demanded that I not include him in mine:

[AndrewC wrote in his post #514:] I said the original line was gratuitous. I find that post 474 was abusive. The fact that you do not understand that 474 is abusive reflects on you, not me. The original gratuitous line "If you're going to make an analogy, make sure it's a valid comparison.", had his word in it, not mine. He chose the word "comparison" and not "inference". He chose the words in post 474, after I wrote "your turn".

Horrors, I wrote "comparison" where AndrewC thought I should have written "inference". Well string me up, boys. Actually, when I wrote "comparison", I very well meant "comparison" and not "inference", but rebutting AndrewC's compulsion to quibble about words is a very minor issue at this point -- albeit a strangely large issue to him, apparently.

Getting back to the main issue, I find it astounding that he could think that it's proper to demand silence from me about him, and then continue to discuss me on the thread himself. The term "double standard" seems wildly inadequate for that sort of mindset.

Even so, I did not rise to the bait -- and there's a strong possibility it *was* bait, placed in order to try to get me to respond so he could ping the moderators (again) over my "noncompliance" with his "request" that I shut up while he continued to post and to denigrate me. I did not respond to those posts.

So what set him off? Heck if I know, but according to AndrewC himself it was this post #468 of mine (quoted in its entirety):

Wind and a little time turns sandstone into arches that resemble flying buttresses. It does not follow, to many people, that more time using the same process will result in the formation of Notre Dame Cathedral.
That's because "many people" fail to take into account why a process which includes variation, reproduction, and selection is very different from erosion, and is capable of much more.
If you're going to make an analogy, make sure it's a valid comparison.

AndrewC has since complained (multiple times) that this was "gratuitous", apparently some sort of grave transgression in his mind, since he makes a major issue of it here, and about two other posts on this thread alone (not mine) in: #93 and #96. But I don't see how it's gratuitous to point out that conclusions based on analogies are only valid if the things being compared are appropriately similar. Poor analogies lead to erroneous conclusions.

Nonetheless, this apparently infuriated him, because instead of responding to the actual point, or defending his example, he decided to make a juvenile sniping attack in his post #469:

If you're going to make an analogy, make sure it's a valid comparison.
If you're going to make a comment, make sure you understand the English language.
a·nal·o·gy ( P ) Pronunciation Key (-nl-j)
n. pl. a·nal·o·gies

Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.
A comparison based on such similarity. See Synonyms at likeness.

As childish and insulting as this was (since I had used the word quite appropriately, and I certainly "understand the English language", *and* AndrewC had *left off* the definition entry which best matched the manner in which I was using the word), I nonetheless thought it only right to give AndrewC an opportunity to rethink the direction he had gone and try again. My post #470:

If you're going to make a comment, make sure you understand the English language.
You've retracted two of your hasty smartass remarks in this thread already, would you like to make it three?
Or shall I demonstrate that you have dishonestly left off the dictionary definition which encompasses the word as I was using it, and that I have hardly failed to understand the English language?
Your move.

(Earlier in the thread AndrewC had stated, concerning an agreement among Freepers: "I think that the agreement is insane and appears to have been fashioned by drunks", and asked another poster, "That is allowed here, or do you wish to silence others?" He later retracted both.)

Rather than take advantage of the invitation to retract his childish and abusively false claim that I did not "understand the English language", AndrewC decided that he'd rather have something to fight about and issued his post #472:

You've retracted two of your hasty smartass remarks in this thread already, would you like to make it three?
No, your move.

Sigh.

At that point I wrote my lengthy post #474, which explained in detail why AndrewC's snipe was baseless, juvenile, and dishonest. It concluded with:

So rather than deal with the substance of my post, you chose to go off on a classicly childish and completely unfounded "dictionary flame" (2), one of the lowest forms of cheap shots.
I even gave you an opportunity to reconsider and retract it, and you refused. This is, I must say, typical of you.
Now -- would you care to retract your trollish implication that *I'm* the one who needs to "make sure [they] understand the English language"? Or are you going to continue to act like an ass?

This is the post which AndrewC piously declares to be my sin of being "abusive". But note a) who threw the first flame, b) I believe I made a pretty good case in that post that he was, indeed, acting like an ass by doing a "dictionary flame" in a dishonest manner.

Now personally I think the foregoing is pretty small potatoes on the Abuse-O-Meter (on both sides). I think AndrewC is being foolish for trying to escalate it to something so heinous that I Must Be Silenced Forevermore or turn it into a Let's Have The Moderators Decide This.

But he has chosen to, and thus here we are.

So what to do? One option, of course, would be for me to just obey his commands and never again post anything about anything he writes. But I don't see that as a workable option. Over the past few months, we have debated a number of topics on opposing sides, and this latest seems primarily a ploy to try to silence me from continuing to point out when he is in error, being inconsistent, employing a double-standard, making unfair accusations, or behaving badly.

That is further supported by the post he actually replied to in order to first declare that I must never speak to him again. It was *not* the "are you going to stop behaving like an ass" post. No, to that one he merely replied "Your abusive language has been noted" (without, unfortunately, addressing the point I was making about how he should stop flaming).

What's quite illuminating is that he finally declared that I should never speak to him again in response to a *later* post of mine, #478. This one was too long to include here, but it was on another topic entirely -- it asked him several pointed questions about why he spent many, many posts accusing certain posters in the thread (his philosophical opponents) of "abuse" over mild perceived transgressions, and had appointed himself "behavior monitor" of the thread (most of AndrewC's posts on the thread dealt with accusations of alleged "uncivil" behavior), and yet had failed to utter a single disapproving word about truly abusive posts from his philosophical friends, such as calling people on the thread, "fanatics", "raving lunatics", "the retarded - infantile", "crippled minds", and telling a Freeper, "He was doing the devil's work so that is why you approve of his actions", etc.

Rather than answer questions about the blatant inconsistency of his targets, *that* is when AndrewC suddenly decided it was time to tell me to shut up and stop talking to him. Interesting, is it not?

The final irony/hypocrisy is that earlier, discussing something else with another person, AndrewC had declared that everyone has a right to speak here:

[AndrewC wrote in his #287:] And my pointing that out to others does not require me to be anything but a member of this forum. You do not own this place nor do your words in anyway possess the imagined force you seem to think are behind them. You are the hypocrite.

Also:

[AndrewC wrote in his #785:] I'm not enforcing anything. I'm using my God-given right to express myself.

And most ironically:

[AndrewC wrote in his #156:] I suggest you go elsewhere than a conservative site to discuss something non-conservative when you desire to squelch input from others.

Now he seeks to squelch input from me. Should he go elsewhere, by his own advice?

Furthermore, it is simply intolerable for one Freeper to be able to declare that another "must not" speak to him or address his posts. The public forums are just that -- public. Anyone member can comment, and any other member can remark upon those comments if he wishes. To allow AndrewC's "hands off me" policy just because he declares it and threatens to invoke the moderators to enforce it would have a hugely chaotic effect on this forum. How many people would begin to invoke it in order to silence their critics or those with opposing views or simply those they don't like? It's a weapon, it's a cheap trick, it's censorship -- it's not a reasonable request.

If I'm ever truly abusive, anyone -- including AndrewC -- can press the Abuse button on the offending post. He doesn't have to read my posts and he doesn't have to respond to them. But it's an attempt to stifle Freedom of Speech for him to try to bar me from ever commenting on his posts, and to try to get the moderators to enforce his protective shell for him.

That's my view, anyway. If I'm wrong, let me know or suspend me or whatever, because otherwise I'm not going to stop commenting on AndrewC's posts if I see something I'd like to reply to. But if I'm right, could the moderators please ask him to knock it off and stop bothering them (and complaining on the thread) every time his sensibilities are offended by a reminder that I still exist and often don't agree with him?

Thank you.

I was away for amost 200 posts, and I just came back in to find yours. Excellent as always.

You seem like a person for this question that has plagued me for a while....Was the Dodo a dinosaur?

Well in a sense *all* birds are dinosaurs, just highly modified ones...

But no, the dodo wasn't more closely related to dinosaurs than any other bird, and it *was* a bird.

It went extinct in the mid 1600's, but that's still very modern times compared to the age of the dinosaurs.

The question, of course, is how do we know it was a true bird? The answer is pretty interesting.

You'd think that we'd have all sorts of dodo artifacts gathering dust in museums around the world, but in fact is that since the dodo went extinct so long ago, we actually have very few remains of it left. In all the world, that we know of, there exists just one preserved dodo head, one preserved foot, one complete skeleton, and a hundred or so miscellaneous bones in various condition.

Note that that's a classic "bird" breastbone on that skeleton, it's not dinosaurian. And so on.

However, using bits from these items, researchers (Dr Alan Cooper and Dr Beth Shapiro from Oxford's Henry Wellcome Ancient Biomolecules Centre, Dr Dean Sibthorpe, Andrew Rambaut, Dr Graham Wragg, Dr Olaf Bininda-Emonds and Dr Patricia Lee from the Department of Zoology, and Dr Jeremy Austin from the Natural History Museum, London) extracted and amplified dodo DNA, and compared it with the DNA from the Rodrigues Island Solitaire, a nearby (also extinct) dodo-like bird, as well as 35 species of pigeons, doves, and other bird species. Why pigeons? Because earlier analysis of the dodo skeleton showed that it was most similar to that of the pigeon family. This isn't as odd as it might sound if you're only familiar with small American pigeons...

The DNA analysis showed that as expected, the dodo was most closely related to the Solitaire, but beyond that its nearest relative was the Nicobar pigeon from southeast Asia:

Next nearest was the crowned pigeon of New Guinea:

And the tooth-billed pigeon of Samoa:

The similarity to the dodo's beak should be obvious.

Interestingly, all three birds are ground-feeders, with strong hooked bills for cracking hard nuts. The dodo's extreme bill was used for feeding on the nuts of the Calvaria tree, which were very hard.

The researchers wrote:

'The genetic differences suggest that the ancestor of the Dodo and Solitaire separated from the Southeast Asian relatives around 40 million years ago, and sometime after this point flew across the Indian Ocean to the Mascarene Islands. The data suggest that the Dodo and Solitaire speciated from each other around 26 million years ago, about the same time that geologists think the first (now submerged) Mascarene Islands emerged. However, Mauritius and Rodrigues islands are much younger (8 and 1.5 million years respectively), implying that the Dodo and Solitaire used the now sunken island chain as stepping-stones. Furthermore, the isolation of Rodrigues Island suggests that the Solitaire, at least, may have still been able to fly as recently as 1.5 million years ago.'

There is actually a project underway to try to "bring back" the dodo in a manner very similar to "Jurassic Park", by extracting as much DNA as possible from remaining dodo parts and then merging them with pigeon DNA to fill the gaps and then cloning. It's a longshot, of course, but it's an interesting attempt, and it's got a better chance than bringing back dinosaurs, since 1600's DNA is a lot "fresher" than 65+ million-year-old dinosaur DNA.

Another interesting fact about the dodo is that although most people think of them as very fat, they may have been much slimmer in the wild. They were large birds, about the size of a large tom turkey, but the "fat" drawings of them were all from specimens brought to Europe, while drawings of dodos in their native Mauritius were much slimmer. The thought is that the captive dodos had been overfed during their captivity, leading to the "fat look" in many drawings:

(Having gone extinct in the 1600's, of course, there are no photographs of living dodos.)

But bone structure calculations, reconstructions from skeletons, and sketches from indigenous dodos has led to a slimmer view of the dodo:

They still might have gotten plumper at certain times of the year, though. Sketches from different seasons seem to show the dodo at different weights, and it has been hypothesized that since the dodo's nut foods were seasonal, they may have packed on weight in times of plenty to get them through the scarcer months of the year. This may also explain why they fattened up so easily when overfed in captivity.

It further might explain why they lost the power of flight. Given a) their island had no natural predators, b) the plumper, heavier birds may have survived the winter better, and c) a bigger bird has a bigger stronger beak for cracking hard nuts, it may well be that the dodos had more evolutionary incentive to get large and therefor flightless than they did to retain the not-so-useful-to-them ability to fly.

The threads would be a far poorer place if you left them. I learn a great deal from your posts.

Thank you

¡Paricutín!

Jim, Please. I have asked this individual not to post to me. I have written why. He has been abusive and I do not wish to be involved in a flame war. He can post whatever he likes, but he does not have the decency to leave me out of it. Is there anything you can write to him to make him understand that it is polite to leave people alone when they request to be left alone?

The universe is 13.7 billion years old, and the Earth is 4.6 billion years old.... It is hard data that you are arguing against, very hard data.

Which is why I wouldn't argue against it. These ages would appear to put a serious crimp in creationist theory; but intelligent design theory remains unaffected.

Our eyes are made for our environment.

No they are not. The "TrueOrigins" wishful thinking aside, it's simply impossible to fathom that our eyes were "made" for the urbanized world most of us live in. And by "urbanized" I mean:
a) shopping for meat at the deli, not the savanna.
b) watching tv, not the distant sky for clouds.
c) reading books, not the patterns of the wildebeest migration.
d) having a life span of ~ 75 yrs, not 40.

That said, I'm not about to "cut mine out" as you suggested. I will admit though, your (I'm sure tongue in cheek) suggestion certainly does have an Old Testament ring to it. I'm quite lucky in that I still have 20/20 vision and I'm 30. This is rare and I know it.

Degeneration is a result of the fall.

I'm very interested to know the evidences for this claim. I want to be fully prepared next time I have my eyes tested to sound well educated to the Ophthalmologist. "Gee, doc, see... Adam ate an apple 6000 years ago and then his mutated rib named Eve ate an apple and the snake laughed at them and now I can't see so well at night."

And you're "incredulous" when it comes to evolution??

Gentlemen -

I have been observing this interchange with some interest, and while I think you both have raised valid points, I can report that, in my experience, requests from one poster to another to stop posting to them are generally expected to be honored by the moderators - whether right or wrong, I make no judgement here, but I have seen this happen before, albeit not in the crevo context, and most probably in the interest of keeping the peace more than anything else. Therefore, Andrew's request is not unprecedented, and will probably also be expected to be honored.

I do not think that Andrew would claim, though, that such a request should or will function to shield him if he should comment upon Ichneumon's posts or his person or so forth, and so I STRONGLY urge both of you to PRIVATELY contact the moderators, and lay out your cases to them directly, such that you may both obtain a fuller understanding of the boundaries of discourse between the two of you from this point forward - for example, whether Ichneumon can reasonably expect to comment in a general way about Andrew's posts without actually addressing him directly, or whether the contents of his posts are to be considered entirely off-limits. I do not know the answer to this, and nobody but the moderators can provide you with one.

Again, I make no comment upon whether this policy of honoring such requests is right or wrong, nor do I have any idea about the exact details of such things - I merely report that this is the way I have observed it to be. Nothing is likely to be resolved in the current fashion, however, so I again repeat my suggestion that you contact the moderators in private in order to obtain a better idea about their expectations in such cases.

thanks,
g_r

These ages would appear to put a serious crimp in creationist theory; but intelligent design theory remains unaffected.

Indeed, at this point it appears to be impossible by construction for there to be any sort of evidence against intelligent design.

For example, normally one just uses, the coordinates (x,y,z,it) with i^2=-1. This works fine with one time coordinate. Using two corrdinates one may suggest (x,y,z,it,jw) where j^2=-1 too. Using iw would make the time coordinated indistinguishable. Now there is an algebraic problem; what is i*j? Hamilton (mid 1800s) discovered that there must be another term (k) where k^2=-1 and to be consistent, ij=k.

Why did I read this far? I don't know. My eyes had already glazed over.

If i and j are equal to the same thing (sqrt -1), why are they not equal to each other? Why / how can ij = k (which is also sqrt -1) if ij = i^2 = -1?

Am I misreading the * operator?

It's the kind of thing that happens in vectors. In ordinary (Gibbs) vector analysis, the three spatial coordinates get unit vectors i,j,k attached. Hamilton used 4 coordinates for the quaternions. (There isn't a 3-dimensional division algebra.) with a basis (1,i,j,k). One gets that i^2=j^2=k^2=-1 but ij=k. Using this rule, the product of two quaternions (0,iy,jz,kw)*(0,ib,jc,kd) would have the first term as the negative of the dot product and the last three terms as the cross product as if the (y,z,w) and (b,c,d) were ordinary 3-vectors. It's kind of weird. If one trys to expand the complex numbers to 3-space analogously to expanding the reals to complex, then one finds that 4-coordinates are needed. (Algebra is full of surprises.)

I'm just speculating here. If one has two time-like dimensions, it seems that one then really needs three such.

Maybe if we could draw up all of the water from the inside of the earth to the surface, and see what billions of tons of water could do to our meringue pie, which is the crust of our earth.

But we can't draw up all the underground water, can we? Even if we did, I suspect that pumping all the so-far known aquifers put together into the ocean probably wouldn't raise global water levels even 50 feet, much less 20,000 or whatever.