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Comments: 79 +-   Museum IDs New Species of Dinosaur on Monday March 05 2007, @09:43AM

Posted by Hemos on Monday March 05 2007, @09:43AM
from the dinosuars-rock dept.
education
science
Uryugen writes "A new dinosaur species was a plant-eater with yard-long horns over its eyebrows, suggesting an evolutionary middle step between older dinosaurs with even larger horns and the small-horned creatures that followed, experts said. The dinosaur's horns, thick as a human arm, are like those of triceratops — which came 10 million years later. However, this animal belonged to a subfamily that usually had bony nubbins a few inches long above their eyes"
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  • I For One (Score:3, Funny)

    by ReidMaynard (161608) on Monday March 05 2007, @09:45AM (#18237098) Homepage
    Welcome our new Horny Dinosaur Overlords
  • by eldavojohn (898314) * <my/.username@@@gmail.com> on Monday March 05 2007, @09:48AM (#18237140) Homepage Journal

    yard-long horns over its eyebrows
    <evolutionist's response>
    Humans got the evolutionary shaft.
    Human: "Oooh, look at me! I've got an enlarged Broca's region in my frontal lobe! DE-FENSE!"
    Zuniceratops: "Oh yeah? Well how about this--BAM, the ole' horn in the eye!"
    Good thing we're separated by millions of years...
    </evolutionist's response>
    --
    <creationist's response>
    For thousands of years, lawyers have been laying the foundation for the greatest devil inspired hoax to grace God's earth ... watch the press in all it's evil glory perpetrate it even further!
    </creationist's response>
    • by Quiet_Desperation (858215) on Monday March 05 2007, @10:31AM (#18237606)
      Human: "Oooh, look at me! I've got an enlarged Broca's region in my frontal lobe! DE-FENSE!"
      Zuniceratops: "Oh yeah? Well how about this--BAM, the ole' horn in the eye!"

      Human: Oh, we have those, too. They're smaller, but they travel faster from these bow things we invented, and we can hit you from 100 feet away.
      (Arrow "thwip" sound)
      Zuniceratops: Ow! My eye!
      (Arrow "thwip" sound)
      Zuniceratops: Ow! My other eye!
      Human: Ha ha ha! We're going to eat you!
      Zuniceratops: Noooooo!
      Human: And use your balls as an aphrodesiac.
      Zuniceratops: OK, now that was unnecessary.
      Human: And *these* are spears!
      (woosh!)
      Zuniceratops: Argh!
  • New bones found! Slightly different than other bones!
  • We have a joke in the earth science biz: the number entities discovered multiplies with the number of reserachers looking to obtain PhDs or tenure.
    • ...reserachers looking to obtain PhDs

      Did you give your resesarch assisatant the day off again?

    • Yeah, just like with computer and modeling languages. Computer science hasn't actually changed in the last 20 years, it is just the nomenclature that keep changing.
  • by Ron Harwood (136613) <harwoodr.linux@ca> on Monday March 05 2007, @10:12AM (#18237396) Homepage Journal
    Sorry, anytime I see nubbin I'm going to think of Chandler from Friends.
  • Scientists have been able to produce an image of the ancient beast. [httphttp]
  • The first dinosaur categorized as "Herbivore and incidental carnivore" whenever it happened to accidentally spear something tasty hiding behind the plant it was eating.
  • by WED Fan (911325) <akahige.trashmail@net> on Monday March 05 2007, @10:31AM (#18237610) Homepage Journal

    Cool, a new source of oil!

    And you guys said it wasn't renewable. See, that's why I like science. They are always finding new species. More oil. More oil. I'm going to go buy a Hummer.

    Dino-Poop Power for the People.

    Wait...Oh, I see the flaw. Nevermind.

  • won't anybody welcome our new extinct dinosaur overlords?
  • Those were the good ol' days: huge animals with giant horns. We don't get that as much these days, outside of elephant tusks. I am surprised whales don't have horns. When killer wales attack their kids, a common problem for them, if they had spikes of some sort, parents could ward off the killer wales with a good poke or two. The best they can do is flail their tail at them, which is not very effective. I am surprised evolution didn't give them a spike. Time for a Creator to step in :-)
    • Let me introduce you to the Narwhal [wikipedia.org].
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      I am surprised whales don't have horns.

      You too, huh? I feel the same. It's one of the most surprising things I know. It's just baffling. I'm not even sure I believe it -- it just seems so far-fetched.

      Yet amazingly -- it's true! They don't have horns! Unless you glue one or more horns on! Which is very dangerous to you *and* the whale, trust me on that.

  • 'Lo and behold' (Score:3, Insightful)

    by roman_mir (125474) on Monday March 05 2007, @11:05AM (#18238016) Homepage
    "Unquestionably, it's an important find," said Peter Dodson, a University of Pennsylvania paleontologist. "It was sort of the grandfather or great-uncle of the really diverse horned dinosaurs that came after it."

    Ryan named the new dinosaur Albertaceratops nesmoi, after the region and Cecil Nesmo, a rancher near Manyberries, Alberta, who has helped fossil hunters.

    The creature was about 20 feet long and lived 78 million years ago.

    The oldest known horned dinosaur in North America is called Zuniceratops. It lived 12 million years before Ryan's find, and also had large horns.

    That makes the newly found creature an intermediate between older forms with large horns and later small-horned relatives, said State of Utah paleontologist Jim Kirkland, who with Douglas Wolfe identified Zuniceratops in New Mexico in 1998. He predicted then that something like Ryan's find would turn up.

    "Lo and behold, evolutionary theory actually works," he said.
    - Lo and behold? We knew that evolution works for a long long time now, but does anyone know whether these remains can be used for DNA sequencing so an evolution map could be setup for such creatures?
    • Please note the difference between evolution and evolutionary theory. Evolution is a process that we know happens - we can observe it in labs. Its a fact. Evolutionary Theory is our current best understanding of the what's, why's, and how's of process by which evolution (the fact) occurs. People can (and often do) dispute evolutionary theory all day long without disputing the fact that evolution itself happens - and that's fine, that's science in progress. Its the people who debate on whether or not ev
  • Given that dinosaurs (broadly speaking) died out rather a long time ago - it's very unlikely that there are any new species.

    Perhaps there's a newly identified species?

    I'll get my coat.
  • by Hanners1979 (959741) on Monday March 05 2007, @11:14AM (#18238124) Homepage
    ...it translated in my head as "Museum Intelligently Designs New Species of Dinosaur".

    I've obviously been getting involved in too many evolution-related debates.
  • Moo (Score:2, Interesting)

    Parlimentary inquiry.

    How do we know this is indicative of an entire species, and not just a single freak of nature?
  • Can we call this one a Brontosaurus and settle the whole problem?
  • New species heh? So I take it that the tales of the dinosaur extinction were much over hyped?
  • I must be tired. It took me several reads of the headline -- "Museum IDs New Species of Dinosaur" -- before I realized that the museum had apparently discovered a new species of dinosaur, and not that their identification cards had evolved into an otherwise extinct life-form...
    • Or it proves that God's a really devious bastard who likes to test our faith by leaving fake fossils to fool the unbelievers.
      • by Random BedHead Ed (602081) on Monday March 05 2007, @10:18AM (#18237460) Homepage Journal

        Not at all. The fossils are real, but the dinosaurs co-existed with humans relatively recently, probably between the time when God created the Earth and the middle ages - and some dinosaurs probably still exist today. I can prove all of this because it's written in an old book. It's also written plainly in the Dinosaur article on Conservapedia [conservapedia.com].

        (I'm thinking of signing up as a Conservapedia editor purely to expand on articles like these.)

        • by the_womble (580291) on Monday March 05 2007, @10:51AM (#18237852) Homepage Journal
          Conservapedia have done it, they have beaten wikipedia!

          Yes, Wikipedia are no-longer the least authoritative source of information on the internet.
        • That article is both funny and bad. It's funny because they continue to spout creationist nonsense, even though everything that is said has been refuted at least a million times, and bad because it continues the propogation of junk science. Specifically, the part about humans and dinosaurs co-existing.

          As if to reinforce the continuing spread of misinformation, there is a christian theater not too far from me which is running a production showing men and dinosaurs living side-by-side. Sadly, they're not s
          • You know, the Spiderman movies aren't advertised as works of fiction either.
            • Actually, they are. It is usually in the opening credits that a blurb the the effect that all events depicted in the movie are based on works of fiction. In the Spiderman movies case, viewers are told that the events are based on comics created by Stan Lee and Marvel Comics.

              Then again, if one needs to be told that a person who is bit by a radioactive spider can't then spin webs from their wrists or climb walls, that person has other problems.
            • If something has been refuted, it has been shown to be false based on the evidence. In the case of the continued, wrongheaded stance by the American Taliban that dinosaurs and humans lived together, it has been conclusively shown that the two did not coexist at any time in the past. Every supposed example that has been usedt to show that this event did happen has been shown to be false.

              The biggest reason for the refutation is that the majority of these claims are based on the false stance that the Earth i
              • And no, it is not easier to believe in christianity when one considers it is based the idea that a woman got pregant without being touched by a man when we know for an absolute fact the only way for a woman to get pregnat is to be impregnated by a man.

                If that's all that's holding you back then I suggest you look up parthenogenesis [wikipedia.org] some time.

                • Read what I said again. I never said it was 100 billion years old. I said it was shown to be billions of years old. The 100% means it has been absolutely, positively, without contradiction, shown to be billions of years old.

                  The only real debate about the age of the Earth is the exact age. It's been creeping upwards for decades as new findings come to light but there is no doubt it is billions of years old.
        • (I'm thinking of signing up as a Conservapedia editor purely to expand on articles like these.)
          Then you can post evidence of the population of living dinosaurs tripling in the past six months.
          • post evidence of the population of living dinosaurs tripling in the past six months

            Ironically, going from a population of X living dinosaurs six months ago to 3*X living dinosaurs today would be one of the few literally true facts on Conservapedia.

            -
        • "Conservapedia is an online resource and meeting place where we favor Christianity and America. Conservapedia has easy-to-use indexes to facilitate review of topics. You will much prefer using Conservapedia compared to Wikipedia if you want concise answers free of "political correctness"."

          This site is an absolute comedy gold mine! Either that, or it's a huge troll.
          • I really enjoyed the talk page for the dinosaur article, where the conservative Americans flame the conservative Brit for being British, and the complaints that right wing Catholic nutjob dogma is being censored in favor of Southern Baptist nutjob dogma.

            Their article on Stephen Colbert makes me doubt the site's a huge troll; if it was it would surely be full of glowing praise for the leading conservative thinker of our time. As it is, I'm pretty sure they don't get his criticism of Wikipedia; it's practi
            • complaints that right wing Catholic nutjob dogma is being censored in favor of Southern Baptist nutjob dogma.

              You know what that site needs? A few good Conservative Muslim Creationist contributors.

              -
          • This site is an absolute comedy gold mine! Either that, or it's a huge troll.

            The site is legit. It was founded by some fundie nut and his 37 homeschool victims.... errr I mean homeschool students. On the other hand, yes, many of the pages are troll. The site has been hugely vandalized. They have reverted the most blatant vandalism, however some of the vandals added Colbert style satire and the fundies are too crazy and stupid to be able to recognize the satire and they have accepted and "improved upon" many
          • And calling God a deciever is a herasy.

            I'm not entirely sure this is true. Didn't God ask Abraham to set his son on fire? And didn't God play the situation entirely seriously right up until the last second, when he said something to the tune of, 'No, I was actually just testing you. A lamb would be fine.' Endless evidence for evolution and the extreme age of the Earth could be construed as a test of our faith in a literal interpretation of the Bible, just as 'Burn your son' was a test of Abraham in th

    • Its gratifying every time one of these "missing links" is found. My favorite is probably the lobe-finned fishes:

      http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/04 05_060405_fish_2.htm/ [nationalgeographic.com] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/ph otogalleries/tetrapod/index.html/ [nationalgeographic.com]

      Of course the creationists will just deny these anyway, but then again, they would never argued about this for so long if they were rational to begin with.

The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again. -- George Miller