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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.
That doesn't mean he disbelieves in evolution. Crick has been quoted in 1984 as saying Orgel's Second Law is "evolution in cleverer than you are" He has advised people 'for the sake of their soul' to read Dawkins' 'The Blind Watchmaker'. The page is misrepresenting Crick's development of a speculative hypothesis about panspermia as a rejection of evolution.
He's also a committed atheist, who resigned from his college in Oxford to protest their building a chapel.
No fair, old chap - touchdown dances are for after you actually score ;)
Interesting, too, that success for a creationst, in the view of this FReeper, is managing to get one thing right. That's below even the broken-clock criterion.
Archaeopteryx was a bird certainly, one of those birds with clawed hands, a bony tail, and teeth.
Know of any other birds like that?
Yeah, isn't that the island where the ET's go for R&R with Earth women who um, have an open-minded attitude about precious bodily fluids?
Then I don't know what definition of information you use.
Meaning is dependent on perception but then it is not quantifiable as is the case with information.
...but it does not change the fundamental nature of the pie. It is still a pie.
And orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and humans are still hominoids.
"Quickly" still refers to several thousand or tens of thousands of generations, though.
As far as the feathers not being feathers (per that AiG claim), that's pretty debatable.
A clue to what's going on: this is probably the second Sinornithosaurus ever found. Much or all of the literature AiG and some others quote refers to the first fossil, a less clear and pretty (but fully adult) specimen shown below. There's more room for claiming the feathers might be something else on the first one.
Above, the first one.
Above, the probable second one (if it isn't a related new species).
Feather detail, first find.
Feather detail, second find.
Under the feathers, Archy looks so much like an ordinary dromaeosaur that sometimes anti-E's claim it's just an ordinary dromaeosaur fossil with feather impressions faked about it.
(This claim too has been thoroughly debunked.)
So thanks again for posting it and saving me some work ;)
That's an arguable point. Compared to a squid, dogs and cats are nearly identical. Is a grizzly bear "a bit of a black bear"?
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