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Museum IDs New Species of Dinosaur

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"

6 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"Nubbins" by hansamurai · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I would suggest tagging the article nubbins for just that reason.

  2. Nubbin == third nipple by Ron+Harwood · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sorry, anytime I see nubbin I'm going to think of Chandler from Friends.

  3. Re:Oh no he didn't by LGV · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh, the creationists won't deny them. You see, instead of one gap, they can now point to two! They've set rules by which they can't lose.

  4. Re:Oh no he didn't by smooth+wombat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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 saying it's a work of fiction.

    *sigh* I guess it's easier to believe in a fairy tale than in reality.

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    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  5. 'Lo and behold' by roman_mir · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "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?

    1. Re:'Lo and behold' by Apocalypse111 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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 evolution itself actually happens that frighten me.

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