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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.
I do not limit myself to reading or posting only on FreeRepublic. When someone I know shows up (on another site) spewing vitriol and badmouthing otherwise good conservatives because of their stand on natural science, I notice.
My guess is that she was simply unable to reconcile her knowledge of Hovind as a seemingly smart and nice old man with other's knowledge of his being an utter crackpot.
Someone noted I miss a lot, I also seem to have missed this. How was that determined? Did she fess up?
Indeed, I don't know how the Admin Mod's ascertain that a person is here under a false identity - but evidently they do figure it out rather quickly.
It seems the big indicator that someone was posting under a false identity is that, when the identity is banned, every trace of its postings seem to disappear as well.
I myself am an activist on the drug-legalization threads, and have never had any problem. IIRC, her banning stemmed from a discussion on abortion.
like Nessie?
You and me both - when did Jedigirl try sneaking back on, and how do we know that to be the case?
Somehow or other she had created the unfamiliar account first but abandoned it for the JediGirl name. I remember her using the older account to freepmail me once after her banning.
If evos were interested in objective science, or facts they wouldn't be evos. Why argue with them? They're only running from God, and we all have done that until we learned better, haven't we?
Don't argue, pray for them.
Then why are you here?
I seem to be having trouble getting off of this topic, despite an earlier declaraton. LOL!
Probably duplications in the ISP packet info. Some sort of batch job might be scanning the data base regularly looking for such. I know that sounds CPU-intensive when you think about going through 80,000 items comparing them all to each other. The job can be low-priority so it runs in the background. Or maybe the mods only check (manually) when they get a ping or notice something themselves.
If a person uses a different computer and a different ISP in the second registration versus the first, I can't imagine how you would tell definitively.
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