Come Blow Your Horn

I''ve been a little lax keeping up with paleontology these days, despite my daughter''s frequent reminder that I''ve yet to make the hadrosaur T-shirts she''s been asking for. Last month A Hadrosuarian dinosaur was found in the Coahuila desert of Mexico:

You can learn more about theVelafrons coahuilensis HERE and HERE.

Now this month they''ve uncovered another skull in that same area, this of a creature similar to triceratops. The expectation is that several other new species may be found.

I think a lot of us in who aren''t in the sciences tend to loose track of the rich diversity of life in prior ages. It''s fairly easy for us to see some degree of diversity today, but our imagination can hardly embrace the richness and variety of life on earth, often not even considering life in the oceans or microscopic life when we think about that variety. How much more difficult it is to imagine the past. We tend to believe that dinosaurs came in a few dozen "flavors" and that everything is just a variation of that, yet the discovery of these new species and the characteristics they share with other animals of their age as well as the characteristics that distinguish them from similar animals only serves to remind us what a rich spectrum life has evolved in.

How beautiful and marvelous that nature has selected and molded each creature over time to fit in it''s changing niche, How awesome the diversity in how these animals moved, fought off predators, attracted mates, and found food! With each new fossil comes more understanding and more wonder. and it only makes me sad for the creationists who believe in a young, little world with so little diversity and wonder. Posted by: Dorid    Source