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.

[f.Christian]

Big helping brother watching placemaker !

[Sam Cree]

"If evolution is true, then there is no basis for moral law."

I don't see how that necessarily follows. In fact, I think it shortchanges the human capacity for kindness, goodness, even greatness, whether that capacity be God given or otherwise.

And it doesn't really address the validity of the theory.

"How can anyone say Hitler was wrong in a world that evolved by chance?"

IMO, if Hitler and others have used the theory of evolution to justify atrocities, it is because they assigned a moral code to the theory that in actuality is not a part of it.

I personally don't have any trouble knowing that Hitler was wrong, whether or not we "evolved by chance." I know it intuitively, in my bones, because I have a conscience. If somehow I became convinced that there is no God, I would still know it. Perhaps others, if they didn't believe in God, would ignore morality, thinking that there was no higher authority around to punish them. But that wouldn't, IMO, mean that there was no difference between right and wrong.

BTW, I have no problem with the Crusades, or most of what I consider to be Christian teaching, for that matter.

[Hatteras]

"Another species that Noah forgot to put on the ark?"

A couple of weeks ago we took our Lab to a breeder where she got to "go dancing" with her new boyfriend. It took about 30 seconds for them to hook up at which point my 12 year old daughter turned away with this wide-eyed "Oh, my word!" look. We left the dog with the breeder and picked her up three days later.

As we were driving home, my daughter was lost in thought for awhile until I asked her what she was thinking. She said, "All this time and I just now realized..."

"Realized what?" I asked.

"I just realized why Noah took two of each animal..."

[DittoJed2]

I see, so since Evolution has been used for BAD things, things that it was never meant to be used for, we should get rid of it.

Even if it is the BEST scientific theory to explain the available scientific evidence?
Sorry, but it is not the best theory and I never said we should "get rid of it." I do demand that evolution be taught honestly and other alternative theories such as creationism be taught as well.

Oh, so you're for gun control as well? I mean they are dangerous, and are used for bad things too, so maybe we ought to outlaw guns? Perhaps we should also outlaw computers, I mean people use computers for immoral purposes, child porn, terrorism etc, perhaps we should get rid of computers as well?
Guns and computers are inanimate objects. They make no ideological judgment calls on anything. Evolution is a philosophy. It is also a philosophy which even in Darwin's day was full of moral implications. In spite of Darwin's protestations against slavery, he was a racist who taught that blacks were less evolved than whites. Even the title of his Origin of the Species indicates this: "Origin of the Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of the Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." With this same philosophy, he mourned taking care of the mentally ill and other weak specimens of humanity. With such a view in its beginning, it is blind at best to say that evolution is just science. It is a philosophy about life that has implications, and Hitler et al were quite consistent about how they applied that theory.

With savages, the weak in body and mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who, from a weak constitution, would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilised society propagate their kind.

No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but, excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered in the manner previously indicated more tender and more widely diffused. Nor can we check our sympathy, even without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature … We must, therefore, bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind.
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2nd Ed., pp. 133–134, 1887

Come on, evolution is NOTHING more then a scientific Theory, if someone makes use of it for some social experimentation, which of course the theory NEVER claims to have ANY answers for, then it is the person that came up with such a felacious idea, that has the responsibility.


Gee, and Roe V Wade is just a law. If someone makes use of it to murder their own child, then it is the person that murdered the child's entire responsibility. The judges have absolutely no culpability in that decision whatsoever.

Evolution is a theory, a tool, a SCIENTIFIC tool, NOTHING more, it should be and is taught in the science classroom, as it should be. Everyone should understand the theory, so that they will understand how science works.
I never said it shouldn't be taught. I said that it should be taught HONESTLY and that other theories of origins should be taught as well.

But to say that evolution somehow is to blame for Hitlers ideas, or the idea of communism etc is ridiculous and shows a very shallow mind.
No, sir. To say that evolution doesn't bear any responsibility in Hitler's thinking shows a reckless mind that refuses to think of the implications of what one is saying.

Hitler was consistent with evolution. You may not like his application of it, but as an evolutionist, you have no moral basis to say it was wrong.

Conservatives, I thought, believed in PERSONAL responsibilty, I know that I do, so if you ACTUALLY are a conservative, to say that evolution is somehow to blame for such stupidity is hypocritical in the extreme.

Did I ever say that Hitler was not responsible? No, I did not. But the facts are you can't even say that Hitler was "stupid". That is a moral judgment call for which you have no foundation. At best, you can say "I did not like what Hitler did." As a conservative Christian, I am being VERY consistent and not at all hypocritical. Christianity has a firm foundation for moral truth and the Bible, while not a science book, gives a very feasible theory regarding the origins of life on this planet (a theory which also has much evidence if the open-minded evolutionist would ever be willing to consider it).

Also, to say that the Public school system is somehow responsible for giving children their moral compass is ridiculous. It is the PARENTS responsibility to give that to their children BEFORE they even get into the public school system.
OH POPPYCOCK!!!!!! Public schools pound philosophies into the minds of kids from kindergarten forward. They have them 7 or 8 hours a day all during their formative years. What is ridiculous is to let the Public schools skate on their responsibility regarding teh children's morality. Should they teach morality? No. But they do, every day. And to give them a pass and say "the parent's should have countered all of this bull crap the schools throw at the kids in the first 5 years of life" is irresponsible at best and insane at worst.

It is the parents responsibility to give their children their moral compass, NOT the public schools, shall I say that again?

I agree here, but that isn't how it works. And, you know that. I will not send my children to public schools, but many do. Those parents are taking a horrible risk as far as I'm concerned. Not all public schools are bad, and not all teachers are. But when the NEA controls what is taught, you are playing Russian roulette if you send your kids to such institutions (which frankly should never have been under government control in the first place).

If you feel that somehow evolution is going to change the attitude of a child, change their moral compass, etc, then I believe it is the parents failure, NOT the schools.
Be realistic. Kids are not super-human and authority figures hold sway. If a kid is taught one thing in the first 5 years of life and then teacher after teacher pounds it into his head that this one thing is wrong, it is very likely to shake his beliefs if uncountered.

The schools responsibility is to TEACH children, give them knowledge that they will need in the future, NOTHING more.

Uh, yeah. But do they?

It used to be that the schools were for teaching children how to think, but that I am afraid is NO longer true.
It isn't true. And the evolution/creation debate is a perfect example. There is SCIENTIFIC evidence that supports intelligent design. But are kids taught that? No. They are told WHAT to think, not how to think. They aren't taught the laws of contradiction/non-contradiction or anything that will truly help them sort things out in the future. And, now we have a generation of kids that has no belief in absolutes whatsoever. The schools are to blame, and some parents have some responsibility (other's may have tried to counter it but werent' sufficiently developed enough to do it themselves).

Anyway, Science and scientific theories should be taught in school, evolution, astronomy, geology, etc, etc, they should get a small taste of each discipline so that they at least have an inkling of what science is about.
Agreed. And evolution should be taught as a theory, not as fact, alongside with other theories. That is a true picture of science.

But to say that Evolution will turn these moral little creatures into Amoral monsters is taking the reponsibility away from the parents and laying it at the schools and evolutions feet, when it should be EXACTLY the opposite.
Should be? What basis do you have to say how things should be? Your advocacy here may seem to be responsible to you but it is highly irresponsible. It doesn't seem to matter what the schools are teaching, because it is the parent's responsibility to make it all right. There is no accountability in what you are saying for the schools and philosophies have no implications whatsoever.

It is the PARENTS responsibility to teach their children to be moral.

Personal responsibility, a conservative tenet that you seem to have forgotten.

Part one, I agree with. Part two is asinine and I won't even bother to dignify it.

[f.Christian]

I'm starting to believe these evolutionists are inhabited - possessed by space aliens - devils !

[DittoJed2]

"If evolution is true, then there is no basis for moral law."

I don't see how that necessarily follows. In fact, I think it shortchanges the human capacity for kindness, goodness, even greatness, whether that capacity be God given or otherwise.

If there is no moral law-giver, there is no moral law. Man may claim to be that law-giver, but if that is so, morality varies from society to society and nothing is absolute. I also believe you overestimate man's inherent goodness.


And it doesn't really address the validity of the theory.

"How can anyone say Hitler was wrong in a world that evolved by chance?"

IMO, if Hitler and others have used the theory of evolution to justify atrocities, it is because they assigned a moral code to the theory that in actuality is not a part of it.

Darwin drew conclusions (What I wrote above about those with mental illness is an example) that had profound moral implications. It's only one step away from saying the weak in society are detrimental to humanity and doing away with those weak people.

I personally don't have any trouble knowing that Hitler was wrong, whether or not we "evolved by chance." I know it intuitively, in my bones, because I have a conscience. If somehow I became convinced that there is no God, I would still know it. Perhaps others, if they didn't believe in God, would ignore morality, thinking that there was no higher authority around to punish them. But that wouldn't, IMO, mean that there was no difference between right and wrong.
You have to have more than your conscious to go by though. What you are advocating is that every person decide for themselves. You are also giving no foundation for right and wrong, whatsoever. It's each person's "feeling" or "intuition" which they call "conscience."

BTW, I have no problem with the Crusades, or most of what I consider to be Christian teaching, for that matter.
Very good. Most of the time the Crusades are thrown up against Christians without understanding, as a slur. This is the same with the great flat earth conspiracy. Neither of the depictions are true of Christians through the ages.

[Sam Cree]

"You are also giving no foundation for right and wrong, whatsoever. It's each person's "feeling" or "intuition" which they call "conscience."

A good point, actually.

Although I believe that a strong moral code, combined with a guarantee of individual rights and personal liberty, such as that envisioned by our founding fathers, provide such a foundation.

Acknowledging that their moral code was based on Judaeo Christian teachings and acknowledging that individual rights and personal liberty cannot ever work unless those lucky enough to enjoy them adhere to a strong moral code.

I don't actually believe that one can be moral without having the choice of whether to be moral or not moral.

"It's only one step away from saying the weak in society are detrimental to humanity and doing away with those weak people."

True, but perhaps that is the reality that we, as humans, have been challenged (by God?) to rise above.

[DittoJed2]

True, but perhaps that is the reality that we, as humans, have been challenged (by God?) to rise above.
I believe God has given us a higher moral standard than that which is normal for us. I also believe he helps us to attain that goal.

Someone like Hitler came upon the infirm and had two roads to go according to the implications of Darwin's evolution. He could, like Charlie Darwin, see them as unfortunate individuals who are damaging to the species but do nothing about them. Or, he could take the path he took and actively rid society of what was damaging. He was not being inconsistent with the philosophy, and took a legitimate route directly springing from a system that says there is no God, just as he wouldn't have been inconsistent had he chosen to do nothing. In either case, the value of that human is lowered, and that comes directly out of Darwin's teaching.

[StolarStorm]

Yeah, I'm possessed by a space alien devil! We have come here to serve man .... for dinner.

I plan on spending my day spitting up green vomit and twisting my head 360 degrees. Latter on, I fully expect to be involved in a probing. Just my wife though. I'm a faithful alien devil.

[Sam Cree]

"He could, like Charlie Darwin, see them as unfortunate individuals who are damaging to the species but do nothing about them. Or, he could take the path he took and actively rid society of what was damaging."

Or he could have taken a moral path and helped those individuals.

I agree that his path was, to some degree, consistent with the theory of evolution, but disagree that it was a legitimate path. His path having legitimacy implies, IMO, that the theory of evolution justifies Hitler's moral code, which I don't concede any more than giving into one's basest instincts ever justifies such actions.

[f.Christian]

The heat goes on ... the corn keeps popping --- if they ain't too dry or soggy to go anywhere but charred seeds - brains on the bottom (( loops - loons )) of the pan !

[StolarStorm]

The barking chicken lays a sour egg.

[f.Christian]

Evolution ... air hair dryer poppers --- the kernels keep flying !

One time I went to kfc and told the young lady at the counter ... her corn was sticking (( not rolling )) and she told me --- I hate to tell you but it ain't real !

[StolarStorm]

I knew you were my contact.

I have the documents for you. I will use the normal drop off point, the kfc, as requested. Try not to eat the chicken though, as it may make you deranged.

[Sam Cree]

it may make you deranged

It was a free range chicken?

[StolarStorm]

de ranged and whoremoan free. I believe in healthy living.

[f.Christian]

We are about to enter the time where all these public school whacks are going to have to find designated thinkers - tutors ... in a free world they will serve no purpose - function --- their govt jobs and caretakers will be gone - over !

[DittoJed2]

In a world without God, there is not illegitimate or legitimate- just preference. One may not like what Hitler did. One may abhor it. One may make rules against it, but there is no foundation for legitimacy, just preference. One could say the preservation of human life is an overarching principle that is self evident; however, if human beings are merely one evolutionary piece of a primordial puzzle, then we really have no more value than anything else that evolved. If it is wrong to kill us, then it is wrong to cut open a watermelon and eat the contents inside. No. For humans to have value, they need to have been assigned value by something large than themselves. God created us in His image which makes us more valuable than anything else in his creation. He gave us responsibility to treat one another well, but also to care for his creation and to be good stewards of it. Even animals have value in this system and can be enjoyed as valuable. It isn't based upon preference. There is a solid standard by which to follow. Do we understand it all? No. But that's okay, because God does. And, after all, it is like my old former pastor used to say, even if Christianity was not true it would still be the best way to live. Christianity passes the livability test. It passes the observation test (in that almost everything shows that it is operating as it was designed to operate). And it provides an explanation for other things in life which evolution could never tough, such as why there is a moral law and why men transgress it. Pretty valid system if you ask me.

[DittoJed2]

That should have been touch, not tough.

[Sam Cree]

Do you think animals have souls? I happen to think yes.