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.

I have never heard the theory discussed in full without the big bang also being discussed; but, hey, if you want to discard it as unimportant, I'm willing to stick to what we see here on earth.

Sorry to but in, but I couldn't let this pass.

This is why scientists don't like to talk to creationists or ID'ers. Evolutionary theory applies to biology. When you say you've heard it discussed with the big bang theory, you're telling us that you haven't been exposed to scientific discussion, just interested laymen or creation/ID websites.

From some of your posts it's clear to me that your ideas about science come from these websites (or media reports - I think the media reports might be worse). So you're bringing a creationist/ID'er strawman to the table that we've all seen before. You really want to talk theology and find that folks are slightly hostile because they can't quite make the connection to where you're coming from because you say "evolution".

Sorry to interrupt.

Creationism is accepted by most biblical scholars as a morality tale. Nothing more.

As a matter of fact, there were NO creationists until the early 1600's, because all Christians understood that creationism and a number of other stories were indeed morality tales and NOT literal truth.

Literalism is a fairly new phenonemon.

Most biblical scholars, I would say all, but that would be pushing it, because there are probably one or 2 that do, do NOT take the OT in any way shape or form as literal, except where it is obvious that it has an historical basis.

The jews out of egypt, although it is accepted that most likely that story has been added to changed a bit etc. The basis of the story is true, but most likely some of the miracles have been added etc to the story to make it more interesting.

Anyway, no, YOU could NEVER convince me that genesis is literal truth, why? Because the history of the bible tells me that it is NOT literal truth. Biblical scholars agree that it cannot be taken as literal truth, creation stories around tha world that closely match it, tell me that it is NOT literal truth.

The flood story is indeed an historical event, babylonian myth tells about a great flood, and geology shows that indeed around that time frame there was a flood in the region that would have seemed that the WHOLE world had flooded, when in fact it was just a very small area, but huge to ancient man. Because the "whole" world at that time was MUCH smaller to them.

Historically the bible, and especially genesis was not taken literally, again, literalism is a fairly recent phenomenon.

The morals that these stories gave were what was important, not their literal happening.

So no, the ONLY way to convince me that the bible is literal, and the creation story is literal, would be for god himself to come down and tell me so, because literalism is fairly new, and literalists are actually very few in number.

A VAST majority of OT believers are NOT literalists, a VAST majority of Christians and New Testament believers are NOT literalists.

Literalists are a very small minority, and always will be, literalism is a fringe movement, and will over time slowly die out.

Please do not take offense at this, but I call literalism the nonthinking persons religion. Because if you take it literally, the morals etc that you are supposed to get from the stories are ignored and the literalism of the story is concentrated on instead.

You are supposed to be concentrating on the moral of the stories, not on how can we prove this is literal, because they were NEVER meant to be taken literally.

The moral is lost, because you are trying to prove the literal truth of them, and the historical veracity. Guess what? You can't, not without trying to tear down the sciences at the same time.

So what do you get, you get literal creationists, trying to prove something happened that never happened, and by doing so, attacking science and it's well layed tenets.

This is another reason why I find literalists so amusing, because you will IGNORE ALL scientific evidence that disputes you, yet leap on ANY scientific evidence, even UPROVEN and without evidence, that will help you.

To be a literalist is a sad lot in life as far as I am concerned, not only are you a very small minority, but you yell and scream and whine because science does not show your literalism to be true. Then attempt to change or to ignore science in order for it to fit your narrow worldview.

Now, onto the big bang. evolution does NOT care about the big bang, it had absolutely NO effect whatsoever on evolution. The only thing the big bang gives us is a time frame, the age of the earth is well layed out, the age of the universe is well layed out. It has been figured from a number of different angles and ways, and the answers are always within a few percentage points, about 13.7 billion years, and the age of the earth around 4 billion. Pretty easy stuff, and PLENTY of time for evolution to have occurred. But you don't like the fact that there is enough time for evolution to have occurred, so you argue the age of the universe and the earth, you IGNORE the science in order to come to the answer that you already have.

Yes, creationists are amusing, you have an answer, that you should not be concentrating on, because it IS NOT literal truth, then search for the evidence to make it true, and ignore ALL evidence that makes it false.

Yes, it is amusing, and yes, god would have to come down on high and tell me himself. It won't happen, so I will just keep on, keeping on.

This is just arrogance, but it is typical of evolutionists. When it comes to "the theory" claims are made that so much advance has occurred due to evolution while creationists are just dunces who haven't contributed squat. Garbage! This view suffers from two faulty assumptions. 1) that evolutionary theory is the reason that experiments on animals have proved beneficial. An evolutionist wouldn't even consider the possibility that it could just be that experiments on animals are helpful and that evolution has nothing to do with it. 2) it suffers from the view that if a scientist comes at a project with a creationist worldview that his work is somehow inferior. Historically speaking, most of the greatest scientists of all time have approached the world with a creationist point of view. Many of their experiments were pursued because of direct observation of how God's creation works. Many adamantly opposed evolution as well.

Here are a few in the medical field who had strong creationist worldviews and some of whom without their work modern medicine would still be in the dark ages:

James Simpson (1811-1879) discovered chloroform and laid the foundation for anesthesiology. He said his motivation to perform the research leading to this discovery was a fascination in the book of Genesis with Adam's deep sleep during the time in which Eve was fashioned from his side. He said his biggest discovery was finding Jesus Christ as Savior.

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was the father of bacteriology. He established the germ theory of disease. His persistent objections to the theory of spontaneous generation and to Darwinism made him unpopular with the scientific establishment of his day. He was a Christian with extremely strong religious convictions.Also involved with Biochemistry; Sterilization; Immunization

Joseph Lister (1827-1912) founded antiseptic surgical methods. Lister's contributions have probably led to more lives being saved through modern medicine than the contributions of any one else except Pasteur. Like Pasteur, Lister was also a Christian and wrote, "I am a believer in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity."

Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) was the founder of the science of comparative anatomy and one of the chief architects of paleontology as a separate scientific discipline. He was a firm creationist, participating in some of the important creation/evolution debates of his time.

Gregory Mendel (1822-1884) was the father of genetics. He had strong religious convictions and chose the life of a monk. He was a creationist and rejected Darwins's ideas, even though he was familiar with them.

Dr. Verna Wright was a rhematologist who espoused creationism in his writing.

James Simpson (1811–1870) made headway in the fields of Gynecology and Anesthesiology

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.