No 12935, Thursday 14 May 2020, Skulldugger

Day 51 of 54 Stay safe at home

Solution to 11A has been deliberately left unsolved and is to be answered only by a non-regular/novice commenter, with proper annotation. Those who have answered earlier in the week, please give others a chance.

ACROSS
1   Epic flare blazed here (9) FIREPLACE* Semi&lit
6   Defeat with sword (4) FOIL [DD]
8   Vehicles for stretch of land or seafront (8) TRACTORS {TRACT}{OR}{Sea}
9   Showing strength, English replacing top midfielders, score four times (6) EIGHTY (-m+e)EIGHTY
10 Blow your top? On the contrary, retain your garment (4,4,5,2) KEEP YOUR SHIRT ON (opposite of LOSE YOUR SHIRT)
11 Knockout for upper class society fiend (5) ?E?S? (Addendum - BEAST BEA(-u+s)ST - See comments)
13 Old fogey in Sun Radio broadcast (8) DINOSAUR*
15 Upstanding vicar let off (8) VERTICAL*
18 Essentially leased foyers, patio until now (2,3) AS YET {leASed}{foYErs}{paTio}
20 A pleasing tool to deploy for someone who brings up the past! (15) PALAEONTOLOGIST*
23 Revolutionary game nicely captured; pictures shown here (6) CINEMA [T<=]
24 Superficial kiss in unchanging environment (8) EXTERNAL {E{X}TERNAL}
25 Goals in finals (4) ENDS [DD]
26 Cheeky send-ups senior newspaperman put on ice (9) SUSPENDED {SEND+UPS}*{ED}

DOWN
1   Army’s strength (5) FORCE [DD]
2   Directions for research taking impressive turn (7) RECIPES {RE{EPIC<=}S}
3   Still a bit of light? Not quite (5) PHOTO PHOTOn
4   Confident after the first crusade’s devastation (7) ASSURED cRUSADES*
5   Hen leapt around with toothsome creature! (8) ELEPHANT*
6   Shapes in mathematics (7) FIGURES [CD]
7   Put forward ingenious reduction (9) INTRODUCE*
12 Initially rejected exhibition, with very liberal trading, achieves promotion (9) ELEVATION rE(-v+l)LE(-l+v)VATION
14 Ascot Bar’s rum tumblers (8) ACROBATS*
16 Eliot incorporated enthusiastic long passages (7) TRAVELS {T{RAVE}{L}S}
17 Landlords’ correspondence (7) LETTERS [DD]
19 Sweetened, spiked drugs with apple skin (7) SUGARED {DRUGS+ApplE}*
21 Bit of water, say, in fertile region from the South (5) LITRE [T<=]
22 Be on your feet or stomach (5) STAND [DD]

Reference List
English = E, Upper class = U, Society = S, Kiss = X, Very = V, Liberal = L, Long = L

Dr RKE's 100th TalePiece

Sometime in the EIGHTIES (1980s),  the workers of a cement company who were digging up with TRACTORS for limestone near Balasinor, Gujarat, turned up some peculiar objects. These were passed on to the Geological Survey of India and a discerning geologist there identified them as fossil DINOSAUR eggs. The geologist teamed up with a PALAEONTOLOGIST and carried out more lateral and VERTICAL explorations of the area and along the ELEVATIONs on the banks of the Narmada. Their efforts were FOILed by the monsoon and the mission was temporarily SUSPENDED. They returned 3 years later and were able to get some PHOTOs of fossilized footprints much larger than an ELEPHANT's. What they needed was the find of fossil bones to identify the BEAST. A series of LETTERS were exchanged between the Indian team and the famous Dino Digger, Prof. Jeffrey A Wilson of Michigan around the turn of the CENTURY. 

The American professor, appropriately nicknamed JAW, TRAVELled down to the exploration area in 2002. He INTRODUCED advanced technique and equipment, AS YET unavailable here. His experience and the diligence of the Indian scientists was a RECIPE for ASSURED success. They unearthed the world's largest dino nesting site and some eggs were said to have held 2.5 LITREs of yolk! They chanced upon skull, vertebral, leg and jaw bone fossils to be able to identify the first Indian dinosaur. They were able to reconstruct FIGURES of the giant predator, that showed it to be 2-3 metres tall while STANDing on all fours and 6-11 metres long from head END to the tail tip. Its EXTERNAL features could only be guessed but were thought to be close  to dinos from Madagascar and South America, as all these were probably a single land mass in the mesozoic era. Their jaw bones indicated that they would have crushed thier prey with an enormous FORCE. They gave the Indian dinosaur a nice Indian sounding name- Rajasaurus narmadensis.The place where they were found near Balasinor, Gujarat is called the Jurassic Park of India, after the Spielberg movie that ran to packed houses in Indian CINEMAs in the 90's.