New Type of Dinosaur Unearthed

MileHighScience writes to mention that a new type of sauropod has been discovered by scientists from Utah's Brigham Young University. Dubbed Abydosaurus mcintoshi, the new addition to the long necked dinosaur family was discovered at Dinosaur National Monument. "The circumstances of its discovery were both unusual and dramatic. The researchers stumbled on four skulls in a quarry at the preserve. Two were still intact. Sauropod skulls are rarely found in the fossil record because the soft tissue from which they are constructed is unlikely to be preserved after death. 'Their heads are built lighter than mammal skulls because they sit way out at the end of very long necks,' Brooks Britt, a BYU paleontologist said in a news release. 'Instead of thick bones fused together, sauropod skulls are made of thin bones bound together by soft tissue.' Of more than 120 known species of sauropods, there have been only eight instances in which scientists have been able to recover intact skulls."

Comments

Re:Right into the trap...

[SirWinston]

>And they certainly don't advocate killing others to enforce
>what they believe.

Really? They did comparatively recently:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre

I for one would never support any religion capable of such an atrocity, much less one which would conspire at all levels to cover it up instead of seeking forgiveness and making reparations. The world would be a much better place if primitive religions were treated as the bunkum they are. Why tax fuels, carbon, tobacco, or alcohol, when the real danger is the superstition and intolerance emanating from the pulpit? We should be taxing churches instead of making them tax-exempt.

>Feel free to compare them to Islam if you like (and there's
>some interesting comparisons there)... but drawing on the
>Taliban? Come on!

Hmm, Mormons and the Taliban... They both hate gays, check. They each treat women as subordinate to men, check. They each have a history of violent intolerance of outsiders, check. They both have a bizarre fixation on facial hair, check. They both use religious schools to indoctrinate the young, check. They both dictate special clothing (burqas, sacred underwear), check.

Yep, Mormons (and other intolerant fundamentalist sects) are the American Taliban.