2 hours, 55 minutes ago
 |
Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo! |
Posted on 08/13/2003 9:02:05 PM PDT by nwrep
|
2 hours, 55 minutes ago
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
When we read the Bible with our eyes, we will only see words and there will be no significance difference to other texts.
But when the Spirit indwells, though the eyes read the Bible, the Spirit reads the Word. The Truth comes alive within us. Nakatu X and I use the term “ringing true” to the Spirit.
Moreover, that same Spirit guides us to the Biblical passages, other text, people, etc. – we need at the right time and gives us understanding we could not achieve by hard work.
That was cute. :-)
It sounds like this whale fossil doesn't include the leg bones themselves. However:
The 11-foot-long whale has well-defined hip sockets that suggest the animal had legs. But its legs were used less for walking (they were too feeble) than for propelling the beast in water, though its tail did most of the work.
The hip sockets, according to Tharp and Giesler, means the Vogtle whale is the link between two phases of the evolution of whales, porpoises and dolphins; one phase that had legs and walked on land and the other that lost its legs after taking to the water.
Georgia Southern University scientists know the Georgia specimen fills a gap in evolutionary history because its pelvis was found intact.
"It was the most important part of the specimen," said Tharp. "In many cases like this, the pelvis does not survive."
"In living whales, there's a little nub of bone that suggests whales once had legs," said Giesler.
Giesler went on to say older skeletons of a closely related species of whale have been discovered in Pakistan and India. Each whale has a pelvis connected to the backbone, which allowed it to walk on land. The Vogtle whale's hip, however, wasn't firmly joined to its spine. So it probably didn't walk on land.
"My guess is that it never left the water," Giesler said of the whale's puny hind limbs.
The difference between the Asian whales and the Georgia skeleton suggests its slow (millions of years) progression from land walker in the Asian sub-continent to ocean dweller in North America.
"Although its hind limbs were not found, we know they were there, based on its hip sockets," Geisler said. "But the hip sockets were no longer connected to the spinal cord, as they are in earlier whales that were land animals."
Don't you see, though, that Darwinism doesn't try to "give a foundation for moral beliefs and actions"?
Consider electricity: Edison pushed hard for using electricity to kill people. Does that make theories of electricity evil or dangerous? And is Benjamin Franklin culpable for the rise of evil in the world because of his groundbreaking work on this theory?
God is an authority higher than any earthy authority and His law stands as an unmoveable guide to write and wrong that has rational, spiritual, and emotional basis.
There's a name for this: Deus ex Machina. It's when the god in the Greek play drifts down to arbitrarily settle the insoluble conflicts between the main characters. Or any time a play, novel, or movie ends with a solution that comes out of left field. It's a sure sign of a writer who's painted themselves into a corner & doesn't have the courage to go back and rethink (and rewrite) the story so it makes more sense.
OK, that's my negative reaction to your argument. (Which is a very popular creationist argument, believe me.) Now for a more positive vision:
The universe is a benevolent place. By which I mean: All you have to do to thrive in this world is to understand it and act accordingly. And our world is understandable - because there are no contradictions. The Truths by which we must live aren't "self-evident", unfortunately, but we have loads of history & knowledge that we can draw upon to learn what the truth is.
Probably the most fundamental moral truth is: Cooperate honestly with everyone, except those who've proven to be untrustworthy or dishonest in the past. In other words, don't be the one to start defrauding or stealing from others. But you can "steal" your stuff back, or enact some kind of proportionate justice upon someone who harms you.
This kind of principle is the basis for just about every system of law or morality in civilized nations that I can think of. And it's no coincidence: Since humans are the rational animal, we will necessarily each have different goals & values in life. We need a moral framework that is compatible with such individuality. A simple libertarian principle of non-initiation of force or fraud, coupled with the necessity for enacting justice when infringed against, ensures a virtuous cycle of cooperation.
It's no coincidence, either, that the tribe you mentioned that holds ritual murder in high regard is a primitive tribe. There is no way you can build a civilization upon ritual murder of innocents - because no good can come out of harming someone except in retaliation for when they have done real harm to you.
Now, if you asked a member of that tribe if they like their system, they'd probably say "yes". But that's only because that's the only system they know! If you taught them about life under different systems, most of them would realize (after getting over the culture shock) that there are much better ways to live. I think the model of the free, Enlightenment western society is taking over the world because more & more people in diverse cultures are learning what the alternate ways of living are out there.
Probably the most fundamental moral truth is: Cooperate honestly with everyone, except those who've proven to be untrustworthy or dishonest in the past. In other words, don't be the one to start defrauding or stealing from others. But you can "steal" your stuff back, or enact some kind of proportionate justice upon someone who harms you.In practice, most of the time "you" don't enforce justice - government does. The various forms of democratic government are like technological innovations. They represent new & hopefully better real-world refinements of the above theoretical principle. Ironically, they have competed over time in a sort of Darwinian struggle to discover the most optimal compromise between maximum individual freedom vs. consistency, professionalism, & social stability. IOW, some combinations of governmental systems and social norms make it too easy for bad guys to take them over & descend into tyrannies. But some seem to be rather good at protecting our rights, upholding the conditions for that "virtuous cycle" of cooperation & progress to flourish, and stay stable enough to keep that virtuous cycle going for a long time.
And all of this comes from acknowledging our fundamental nature as the rational animal and what that implies. No deus ex machina needed.
To: DittoJed2What about when religion gives one answer- clearly- and science disagrees? Ultimately, it is an issue of final authority.
Yes! That is precisely the issue! I assume you agree that the answers of science are just fine -- but only scientifically. So at that point it's a question of your personal ranking of information.
2,175 posted on 08/22/2003 3:34 PM EDT by PatrickHenry
Ambulocetus has a pelvis. It was found in 1998 after an interruption in excavations at the original site as has already been explained here. What is the point of dredging up quotes from out-of-date papers if not to mislead people about the current state of the evidence?
We have nearly complete skeletons on Paki and Ambu now. Anyone reading the AiG site would still think otherwise. The proof is they show up on this forum all the time thinking otherwise and linking AiG.
So, back to the larger progression, Sarfati attacks each piece as if it were the only fossil in the world and makes no sense, ignoring that it is one bead on a chain and there's a warehouse full of chained beads. Sarfati still denies the existence of necklaces by breaking the wire and losing the beads.
Science changed its story (the reconstruction) about Pakicetus as new bones were found. Sarfati looks smug and says "Tah-dah!" One bead gone.
Sarfati waves quotes that say, "No pelvis." "Tah-Dah!" Two beads gone.
Basilosaurus is ten times longer than Ambulocetus. [But Sarfati skips the truly intermediate Kutchicetus and Dorudon.] The transition is not as smooth as presented by the evolutionists. [Not if you skip two stages.] "Tah-Dah!"
So, backing up, there is a chain of fossils with similar teeth and similar ear bones and similar other features that seem to show a true land mammal "kind" morphing into a true marine mammal "kind." Nostrils migrate back to become a blowhole. Legs disappear. For all that, the relationship remains visible and the stages appear in the right order.
Evolution predicted this before it was true. Pretty uncanny. Creation denied it after it was true. You could argue about which is harder, but the first is very hard to explain if evolution is not a theory with useful predictive power.
So, backing up futher in the discussion, we have the question of whether "common designer" makes as much sense as "common descent." And I said that God filled the sea with fish, but then, to make a thing which superficially looks very fish-like, He used mammal parts. Then he put fossils in the ground that look like land animals turning into those sea animals. Then he put molecular data in their cells to make it look like whales have suffered the same accidents of history in their DNA to which the even-toed terrestrial ungulates (pigs, camels, hippos, deer, sheep, goats) have been subject.
But we're not allowed to notice any patterns. We're not allowed to remember any other lines of evidence when considering a new one. He evidently commands some of us to look at a bead at a time, and when we look at a bead, not to notice the chain, and not to remember the warehouse full of other chains. There are no necklaces.
1996. And this is 2003.
Then he put the diagnostic ankle-bones (astralagi) of those even-toed ungulates on the Pakicetus and Ambulocetus fossils.
Modern scholars, beginning with Laurence, all date the origin of the book to the first or second century before Christ, hence it is assigned to the "pseudepigrapha," meaning it is not believed to have been written by the named author. It is dated using standard "scholarly" methods. One rule of dating used by modern scholars, is that if anything is prophesied which turns out to be correct, it must have been written after the event, because otherwise the author would really have to have been a prophet! This complete rejection of the entire concept of revelation forced Laurence to put the authorship of the Book of Enoch extremely late because he saw that it prophesied not only the existence of Parthia (250 B.C.), but even the reign of King Herod the Great, which began in 37 B.C. On the other hand, it was quoted by the Savior and his apostles so it must have been written before their time. Thus Laurence inferred that the book had been written "before the rise of Christianity; most probably at an early period of the reign of Herod."[8] More modern scholarship has concluded that the book was probably written by several authors over the period of about 180-64 B.C.[9] This extremely recent authorship date of course raises the question of how such a late forgery could have been so totally accepted as genuine in just a few decades, which has never been adequately explained.
In this article, let us consider the outrageous possibility that the work was actually originally written by the prophet Enoch long before the Great Flood and contains many genuine revelations.[10] It probably also contains some interpolations of men, and has suffered from mistakes introduced by the many hand-made transcriptions. But for the purposes of this article, when it says that an angel revealed to Enoch a divine calendar, those statements will be taken at face value. One scientific way to test a hypothesis is to assume it is true and examine the consequences. Let us now apply that method to the astronomy contained in the Book of Enoch.
I forgot Rhodocetus. OTOH, Kutchicetus is smaller than Ambulocetus and there's still a huge size gap from Dorudon to Basilosaurus.
Yeah, but ... this utterly flunks the application Ockham's Razor. If one is going to assume that a book was written so early that its contents are thus prophetic, with no reason for that assumption other than it is said to be "scientific," I have some serious doubts about the results that will be obtained. Sorry, Alamo-Girl, I just don't see any wild implications to be drawn from Enoch. Not unless someone flat-out wants that result. But by nature, I'm a "show me" kinda guy. (I know, you're not surprised.)
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.
