South Dakota fossil yields new dinosaur species

[emad]

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A fossil found in South Dakota is that of a never before seen species of dinosaur, a horse-sized plant eater with spikes on its bony flat head, scientists said on Monday.

"When my colleagues saw a CAT scan of the new fossil, they tore up their family tree diagrams and said, 'Back to the drawing board!' ... We never suspected such a creature existed," said paleontologist Robert Bakker.

Discovery of the flat-headed member of the pachycephalosaur family changes the view of dinosaur history during the final days of the Cretaceous Period 66 million years ago, showing that family trees were still evolving even as the entire dinosaur world was about to go extinct, the Children's Museum of Indianapolis said in announcing the find.

The nearly complete pachycephalosaur skull was donated to the museum by three amateur fossil hunters from Iowa who found it in 2003 while exploring the Hell Creek Formation in central South Dakota.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=570&e=1&u=/nm/20050502/sc_nm/science_dinosaur_dc

[BR_Parkway]

1. Oh please, GAWD just put that there to test them and show them

that all this science stuff is just made up. Now throw out those textbooks, we have a nice little faith based company here that's printed new ones for everyone. We all know that there was no 66 million years ago. </sarcasm.

[GreenArrow]

3. The "Hell" Creek Formation

is where they found it, appropriately enough. Satan never tires of decieving the faithful, and in his brazeness, hides his perfidy in the open!

[emad]

5. Does that bode ill for palaeontology in NYC's Hells' Kitchen?

Wonder what could be unearthed there.....

[GreenArrow]

9. God deliver us!

.

[prodigal_green]

2. what? another Jesus horse?

and it was announced by a children's museum--cool.

[ananda]

4. fundies should..

.. simply change the way they count the years, turning 66m into 10k. That way science and religion could co exist peacefully in a fantasy world of both utopian and dystopian excess..

Oh wait.. they already are. Oops.

[MarianJack]

6. My Sister Gave a Book About Dinosaurs to Her Grand Kids...

...and my loony fundie neice took white out and changed all mention of years to "100 years ago"!

[n2doc]

7. Horns! Must be a devil...

Fundies would just say it died in Noah's flood. There is no reasoning with them.

[xchrom]

8. so cool!

i love this stuff and a new species, to boot.

[emad]

10. Maybe direct ancestor of Chimpy? The missing link himself?