New Dinosaur Species Found in India

AP ^ | August 13, 2003 | RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM

[nwrep]

New Dinosaur Species Found in India

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.

[jennyp]

Black men all over the world should be angered by that one. It does seem very racial to me.

Black men should be angered by being shown as having black skin?

[Right Wing Professor]

Therefore, Genesis 2 and 3 speak of events which are concurrently transpiring in eternity – culminating with Adam and Eve being banished to mortality. That's when I see Adamic man entering the physical realm in the form of a human being. That constitutes the Fall, when death entered the physical realm, i.e. spiritual Adamic man must now die. What made the difference between Adamic man and all the other men who were on earth was the neshama – the breath of God.

AG, have you read any of the gnostic gospels? There seems to be a strong similarity between what you wrote above and the beliefs of some of the gnostic sects, in particular the idea of the Fall as bondage to the physical realm. The gnostics were on the fringes of early Christianity; they had some influence on its development, while at the same time the more extreme gnostics were anathematized.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your post! As far as I know, I haven't read the gnostic gospels unless they were part of the Pseudepigrapha. But since you have made me curious, I'll go looking.

[bondserv]

Of course it'll be awhile before the genes are identified and we're going to have to wait it out.

I agree.

[Alamo-Girl]

I just checked and found the list of gnostic writings. They are not part of the Pseudepigraphas (which are essentially Jewish) - thus I have not read them.

Based on these two summaries of the theology, they would run counter to my faith:

Gnostics, Gnostic Gospels, & Gnosticism

A one-sentence description of Gnosticism: a religion that differentiates the evil god of this world (who is identified with the god of the Old Testament) from a higher more abstract God revealed by Jesus Christ, a religion that regards this world as the creation of a series of evil archons/powers who wish to keep the human soul trapped in an evil physical body, a religion that preaches a hidden wisdom or knowledge only to a select group as necessary for salvation or escape from this world.

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Gnosticism

A collective name for a large number of greatly-varying and pantheistic-idealistic sects, which flourished from some time before the Christian Era down to the fifth century, and which, while borrowing the phraseology and some of the tenets of the chief religions of the day, and especially of Christianity, held matter to be a deterioration of spirit, and the whole universe a depravation of the Deity, and taught the ultimate end of all being to be the overcoming of the grossness of matter and the return to the Parent-Spirit, which return they held to be inaugurated and facilitated by the appearance of some God-sent Saviour.

I should explain my point about the Fall a little further.

When Genesis speaks of Adam being specially made, the word neshama is used to describe the breath of God which made Adam a living soul. The soul of the animals in Genesis 1 (including homo sapiens on earth in my view) was called the nephesh. We have both of these and also the ruach which I think of as the pivot, deciding whether to be God-centered (neshamah) or carnally-centered (nephesh.) The differences are more thoroughly discussed on this thread.

So when Adam, in the Garden of Eden paradise in eternity, disobeyed - he was banished to the physical realm so that he would die. (Genesis 3:22-24)

The essence of Adam was his neshamah, and thus death entered the world through Adam. And so creation anxiously waits for the manifestation of the sons of God (Romans 8:19-22)

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

(For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. – Romans 5:12-14

[general_re]

AG, have you read any of the gnostic gospels?

I've only ever read the Gospel of Thomas in translation, but it does have a way of turning a neat phrase. Very beautiful language, IMO.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the endorsement! It appears I need to "catch up" with y'all so we can discuss the gnostic gospels.

[Right Wing Professor]

I wasn't suggesting they were consistent with orthodox Christianity; on the other hand, it would be unwise to go on what's said in the Catholic Encyclopedia, for example. It was written in 1912, and we knew nothing about the gnostics, except what their enemies wrote about them, until 1947, when a library of their writings was found at Nag Hammadi. The theology is obviously un-Christian; but the pre-fall human as spiritual, locked into a physical body by the fall, struck me as a very Gnostic idea. The Gnostics took it a step further by making the godhead itself dualist.

There is still a living gnostic sect, curiously enough - the Mandaeans of southern Iran. They've been heavily persecuted by the Islamic government, with little attention from the rest of the world.

[general_re]

There's not too much catching up to do with Thomas - it's a collection of about 100 or so sayings that are attributed to Jesus, rather than being a narrative account of the life of Jesus as the canonical gospels are. There's a short FAQ about Thomas, including the issue of its gnosticism, and then you can read the text itself, which is really not all that long.

[general_re]

Thomas is a good way to get your feet wet, as it's a sort of "gnostic-lite" approach to things. There's a good online collection of the rest of the Nag Hammadi texts here, if you want to get into the rest of it. I keep meaning to really sit down and go through it all one of these days, but something always manages to come up ;)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your endorsement!

general_re has loaded me up with links, so I'll get to reading them this evening. At the moment, I have to go offline and cook, etc.

See you later!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the links and endorsements! I've gotta go offline for several hours, but I'll try to read them before posting back this evening. Thank you so much!

[AndrewC]

That one is hysterical, LOL. I like the furry one best.

Yes, it is pretty humorous in light of this picture of DNA data.

[general_re]

My pleasure. There's a lot there, though, so don't be surprised if it takes you a bit longer than a few hours ;)

[Condorman]

I promise you that the unit known as a light-year is a measure of distance.

I find it astonishing that discussions of this type, to correct such obscene knowledge gaps as these, are still necessary.

[goodseedhomeschool (returned)]

Nice try. Black men should be angered for being portrayed is such a likeness as SO CALLED missing links. You have to admit, the imagined similarity between the artists imagined rendition is very telling of the mindset of the artist in question.

[Junior]

Dead thread placemarker.

[DittoJed2]

I can understand your misunderstanding from the post which you quoted. I know evolutionists believe that the changes occurred gradually. My point was at some point man was fully man. Unless every single creature gained that full manness at the same time, he was mating with something that would have been less (even if it only slightly less) human than he was. That was my point.

[DittoJed2]

Every picture of man-ape evolution I have seen, including the one in the link that was sent to me.

[js1138]

All groups of people who have lived for a long time near the equator have dark skin. I imagine you will find exceptions, but that is the rule.