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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.
If you put a herd of 100 stallions and 100 female donkeys on an island, and came back in 100 years, there wouldn't be any equidae at all there. Sounds like different speicies to me, by any reasonable definition.
You acknowledge they have a common ancestor. But now they can't produce fertile offspring.
If they're really the same 'kind', what did Noah save? Donkeys, horses, zebras, what? If they're different 'kinds', how can they have a common ancestor?
Oh, nooooo - not that thing. I despised that movie, I have to say - stories about the eeeevil Catholic church suppressing some revelatory theological truth get really old after a while. Fortunately, my wife restrained me from pulling an Elvis and shooting out the picture tube on the TV ;)
Generally, it did not "ring true" in my Spirit as I read through it - as the Gospels of John, Matthew, Mark and Luke do.
That doesn't surprise me. As the Thomas FAQ suggests, the perspective of the text is a sort of lite-beer version of gnosticism - basically, that the Kingdom of Heaven is all around us, if only we can open our eyes to it, and not in some otherworldly place. An interesting perspective, to be sure, but not exactly orthodox.
I just finished the Apocalype of Adam. I recognized it, as I did the gospel of Thomas. So I went to the Pseudepigrapha texts, and sure enough, that is where I first read it!
I'm not familiar with that collection. Sigh - I really need more reading time, but there's very little chance of that in the near future ;)
Nice! You put a lot of work into your posts
Couldn't agree more!
Ichy, I am amazed by your patience, hard work, and erudition. I also learn a lot from your posts. Thanks
The same question applies to other isolated groups like Australian natives, Amazonian tribes, and highlanders in remote Indonesian areas.
An interesting case is the Basque people. they have the highest rate of Rh- blood in the world. If the parents have different Rh types, (I forget the details), if the first child and the mother have different types the mother can build up antibodies, so that if a second child differs from the mother there is (often) a miscarriage.
I don't know if this has added to the isolation of the Basques or not, but if it were just a bit more extreme (no babies survive) then we'd have human speciation.
Yours is an example. As I mentioned at 2177, I see the firmament as the separation between the spiritual realm and physical realm and not a geometric boundary (space/time.) Hence, I find myself largely in agreement with that statement as Spiritual truth, that the spiritual realm is co-existent.
I do not however see the Kingdom of God as arrived - the Lord's Prayer and the book of Revelation, etc. indicate that all that is not the name of God (person, character, etc.) must be culled before His Kingdom comes.
I do hope you get a chance to read the Pseudepigrapha. It’s in two volumes, edited by Charlesworth. With each ancient text, they go through language, history, provenance, theological importance, relationship to canonical books and apocryphal books and so much more.
How about the occasional whale that's born with legs? reference
Hugs!!!
Based on what evidence? I thought he was a Whig, into free trade, against slavery, and so forth.
I could give you a long list as long as your arm as to how he lacked integrity, but you would not understand even one of my reasons I have no doubt whatsoever.
If you say so.
Because some of the evidence of the hieirarchy is things like fossil viruses, which were certainly not put there by God (but I guess they could have been by some less-concientious designer).
From Talk Origns
In fact, there are many cases where whales have been found with rudimentary atavistic hindlimbs in the wild (see Figure 2.2.1; for reviews see Berzin 1972, pp. 65-67 and Hall 1984, pp. 90-93). Hindlimbs have been found in baleen whales (Sleptsov 1939), humpback whales (Andrews 1921) and in many specimens of sperm whales (Abel 1908; Berzin 1972, p. 66; Nemoto 1963; Ogawa and Kamiya 1957; Zembskii and Berzin 1961). Most of these examples are of whales with femurs, tibia, and fibulae; however, some even include feet with complete digits.
Poorly-documented? Rare, but well-documented
Your source (AiG) said
Ignoring for the moment the purely anecdotal nature of the evidence, what is it that is being claimed? Sperm whales are massive — up to about 19m (62 feet) long. A 14 cm (5.5 inch) ‘bump’ on its side would look like an almost unnoticeable pimple. Inside the bump is a piece of bone, some 12.5 cm (5 inches) ‘long’. There is no evidence given of anything which could reasonably be called a ‘leg’.
Whereas TO said
These bones [referring to a photo] are the remnants of one of two symmetrical hind-limbs found protruding from the ventral side of a female humpback whale, captured by a whaling ship from the Kyuquot Station near the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in July 1919.
...The museum's director, Francis Kermode, presented the bones to Roy Chapman Andrews from the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York. Andrews reported the findings, along with photographs of the whale from the whaling crew, in American Museum Novitates, the journal of the AMNH. Andrews identified in the remains a shrunken cartiliginous femur, tibia, tarsus, and metatarsal. Both legs initially were over four feet long and covered in normal blubber and skin
So, who to believe? The AMNH journal is not online, and I don't have access to a university library. But the fact is, the AiG article doesn't even address this particular claim, simply calling them all anecdotal. Personally, I don't consider things published in museum journals anecdotes.
Propaganda?
Is there an intent to deceive? Are they lying? Be specific.
This statement leads me to believe you have very little knowledge of the real world. Nearly all species place an innate value on their members which exceeds that placed on members outside that species. When dogs (or blue jays, or elk) fight, it is never intentionally to the death. Why should humans be any different? Even pre-Christian and non-Christian people had to be taught to kill other humans to make them effective soldiers. Of course, you always have the occasional person who loves to kill (humans appear to be the only critters thus encumbered -- which makes certain arguments about "made in the image of God"), so he'll find any convenient excuse to ply his hobby without being removed by his fellow man.
In another attempt to "come to grips with the creationists' continuing research program at Grand Canyon", I consulted another of the references cited in Vail (2003, p. 103). Dr. Vardiman (1999) offers an even more startling insight into creationists' geological thinking. He discusses the problem of the occurrence of animal tracks in the Coconino Sandstone, just below the rim of the Canyon, as follows:
"Another fascinating mystery is why there were animals leaving footprints so late in the flood. … Dinosaur tracks which are often found in the Morrison formation are located at even higher levels in the geologic strata. It would appear that some animals were able to escape the water until later in the flood. Many were strong swimmers but they may have migrated to higher ground or clung to floating vegetation and were killed later as the waters finally reached them. Dr. John Baumgardner, a research scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has suggested that circulating water inundating the continents may have formed giant whirlpools with dry floors near the center until late in the flood. This may have allowed animals near the center of the continents to initially escape the flood waters but were then overwhelmed when the events of the flood reached their zenith." (Vardiman, 1999, p.17).
The Morrison Formation occurs approximately 10,000 ft above the crystalline basement rocks. A simple calculation of the centrifugal force necessary to sustain a whirlpool 10, 000 ft deep and with a radius of 5, 000 ft requires its base to rotate at approximately 4,000 ft/sec (27,000 mph)! We see footprints of dinosaurs, but where are the footprints of these supersonic whirlpools?
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