New Dinosaur Species Found in India

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.

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.

Are Dinosaurs alive today?

Where Jurassic Park went wrong

By Robert Doolan
First published in: Creation Ex Nihilo 15(4):12–15 September–November 1993

WHILE movie mogul Steven Spielberg prepared for the premiere of his US $50 million blockbuster dinosaur film Jurassic Park in early 1993, equally spectacular dinosaur-type news was flowing in from around the world.

From China there were claims that more than 1,000 people had seen a dinosaur-like monster in two sightings around Sayram Lake in Xinjiang.¹

From Scotland came the latest Loch Ness monster sighting: Mrs Edna MacInnes reported on June 24 that she had seen a 15-metre-long creature with a neck like a giraffe in Loch Ness.²

From Canada, Professor P. LeBlond of the University of British Columbia told a meeting of zoologists about the many sightings of 'Caddy'—short for Cadborosaurus — around the British Columbia coast and as far south as Oregon. The remains of a three-metre juvenile 'Caddy' have actually been found in the stomach of a whale.³

It's been a big year for monsters. Russian scientists were startled to find remains of dwarf mammoths on Wrangel Island, off the Siberian coast, which they said were living only 3,700 years ago⁴ And British explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell returned from an isolated Nepalese valley in March with photos of living creatures which looked something like mammoths or extinct stegodons.⁵

Whether it's Spielberg or stegodons, 'Nessie' or 'Caddy'-dinosaurs and such creatures are on news reports and in conversations everywhere. And because most people have heard only the evolutionary viewpoint about these creatures, it is important that Christians know how to respond to the evolutionary comments.

Take Jurassic Park for instance The plot revolves around a quirky billionaire who sets out to recreate dinosaurs from DNA extracted from a blood. sucking insect which had dined on dinosaur and had then been trapped in amber (fossilized tree resin).

Dinosaurs are then genetically recreated for the tycoon's dinosaur theme park. But the dinosaurs break out of control, escape from the park, and start feasting on passing vehicles. People around the world have been asking if scientists could really resurrect these robust reptiles from DNA extracted from a preserved insect allegedly more than 100 million years old.

The answer is No!

Despite the hype, Jurassic Park is fiction. Scientists have not yet found dinosaur DNA in any amber-preserved insects. But if they did, even evolutionists admit that the DNA, a notoriously unstable molecule, would be too degraded to carry a complete dinosaur genetic blueprint.⁶

In fact, Oxford molecular biologist Bryan Sykes admitted in the journal Nature that the rate at which DNA breaks down in the laboratory is such that 'no DNA would remain intact much beyond 10,000 years.'⁷

That is enough to kill the theory. But, in addition, reconstructing the genetic blueprint of an extinct creature poses seemingly insurmountable problems. Molecular geneticist Russell Higuchi compares the task to 'finding an encyclopaedia ripped into shreds and written in a language you barely comprehend, and having to reassemble it in the dark, without using your hands.'⁸
About four million fragments would have to be linked in the correct order- without knowing what that order was!

So, despite what you hear about multi-million-year-old insects being found, DNA in them means the insect can be only thousands of years old at most. And how to bring the creature back to life is something science today has no idea how to do-a fact overlooked in Jurassic Park.

Dinosaur Sightings

But could real dinosaurs be living today? What about all the reported sightings? If dinosaurs died out more than 60 million years ago, as evolutionists propose, then there can't be any convincing evidence for their living today, or even in recent times.

Yet fresh, unfossilized dinosaur bones have been found. In 1987, a young Inuit (Canadian Eskimo), working with scientist from Memorial University, Newfoundland (Canada), on Bylot Island, found a bone which was identified as part of a lower jaw of a duckbill dinosaurs.

In 1981, scientists identified dinosaur bones which had been found in Alaska 20 years earlier. The bones had been so fresh (relatively speaking) that the geologist who had found them thought at first they must have been bison bones. They have now been identified as belonging to horned dinosaurs, duckbill dinosaurs, and small carnivorous dinosaurs.'

Bones, of course, don't stay fresh very long-certainly not for millions of years. These discoveries clearly indicate that dinosaurs were around recently.

American Indians have stories of creatures they call 'thunderbirds', the description of which resembles that of a pterosaur. It is possible that the reason they can describe and draw these creatures is because their ancestors saw them.

Less conclusive perhaps, but not necessarily to be dismissed, are modern claims of sightings of dinosaur-type creatures. Yet even among these there seem credible eyewitnesses. Some scientific attempts to verify the existence of dinosaurs today have centred around the remote jungles of the Republic of the Congo, in central western Africa.

Several scientific expeditions have taken place there, with the help and sponsorship of the Congolese Government, in an effort to verify reports of previously unidentified animals. One of these animals, known to the local natives as Mokele-mbembe, fits the description of a small plant-eating dinosaur.

Biologist Dr Roy P. Mackal, from the University of Chicago, has led some of these trips through the harsh, humid, swampy environment of the Congo. He has written a book about his excursions, which includes summaries from other researchers who have been on expeditions to the Congo's Likouala region."

New Species Identified

Mackal says that a giant turtle and a monkey-eating bird have been identified with some certainty as living in the Likouala swamps. An unknown species of large crocodile also seems to inhabit the area.

If this is where things were left, there would be general agreement that these are exciting discoveries for science, and that more research would be worthwhile. But Dr Mackal also reports sightings of other unidentified creatures, including Mokele-mbembe, which he is fairly convinced is a small sauropod dinosaur.

This is where less open-minded scientists switch off. But Mackal has support from other scientists and researchers who say they have seen evidence of Mokele-mbembe on their expeditions. Some have been on these nerve-racking dinosaur hunts several times. As Mackal says, he would 'not endure extreme hardship and danger, even risk my life, to pursue a dream with no basis in reality.'

Biologist Marcellin Agnagna is another trained scientist who officially reported seeing Mokele-mbembe. He said that on May I, 1983, he and members of his party came across a Mokele-mbembe in the Congo's remote Lake Tele.12 It had a wide back, a long neck, and a small head. The front of it was brown, and its back appeared black. It was in the shallow water of the lake, and the length visible above the waterline was about five metres (16 feet). Agnagna said, 'It can be said with certainty that the animal we saw was Mokele-mbembe, that it was quite alive, and, furthermore, that it is known to many inhabitants of the Likouala region.'

It is therefore possible that at least one type of dinosaur may be living today. If it is indisputably accepted after further investigation, it would not be the first time that creatures which evolutionists had thought had died out millions of years ago have actually been found alive.

But it is important to distinguish between fantasy, feasibility, and fact.

Jurassic Park, though seemingly based on high-tech real science, is fantasy. Tests show that DNA would not last much more than 10,000 years, certainly not millions; reconstructing the genetic blueprint of such long-gone creatures is overwhelmingly complex and is probably impossible; and getting life back into those molecules or cells is something which science today has no idea how to do.

The feasibility of the idea that some dinosaurs may still be alive has a little more support, although at this time we would have to say it is not conclusive.

The fact, however, is that creationists are in a better position than evolutionists on these matters. Whether you consider the DNA aspect or the fresh dinosaur bones aspect, the evolutionary idea of millions of years does not look credible.

And when you consider the complexity involved in the genetic code-and that the fossil record shows no dinosaur evolution-the God-honouring conviction that dinosaurs and all other life came about through supernatural creation looks very convincing indeed.

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