Rosa Rubicondior

Sunday, 11 October 2026

Refuting Creationism - The Earliest Aquatic Mammal Complete With Transitional Features - 120 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Reconstruction of the semi-aquatic life of Dongoconodon platycauda

Drawn by Chen Yu.

A joint study by Professor Bi Shundong of the School of Life Sciences at Yunnan University has discovered the earliest known swimming mammal to date.

Some 120 million years before anyone imagined a six-day creation, a small mammal in what is now northeastern China was combining features that refuse to fit the tidy categories creationists would like nature to obey. Dongoconodon platycauda had adaptations for swimming, an unusual pattern of tooth replacement, and an ear apparatus that retained a connection to its lower jaw. Here was a functioning animal with a mosaic of characteristics, illustrating how evolution modifies inherited structures without waiting for an entire collection of supposedly “mammalian” features to arrive together.

The nearly complete skeleton, from the Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation of Liaoning Province, is described by Shundong Bi and colleagues in Nature Communications. The research is also explained in institutional reports from Nanjing University and Yunnan University, both in Chinese.

Its broad hands and feet probably supported webbing, while its flattened, tapering tail appears to have helped with steering and stability. Comparisons with the skeletons of 124 living mammal species supported a semiaquatic lifestyle. This adds to the evidence that mammals living alongside dinosaurs occupied a much wider range of ecological niches than the familiar image of small, uniformly shrew-like creatures might suggest.

Creationism Refuted - A Previously Unknown Extinct Yak - Evolved 400,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Map showing the locations and sample sizes of sites from which yak X genomes were generated. Extant wild yak distribution is in light orange.¹⁶ Elevation is shown. Map not to scale.

From Oppenheimer, Jonas; et al (2026)

Previously unknown extinct bovine species discovered in Siberia - Stockholms universitet

For young-Earth creationists, the problem with ancient DNA is that it keeps revealing histories which their preferred chronology cannot accommodate. The latest example is an extinct relative of the yak whose evolutionary separation from living yaks began at least 400,000 years ago — long before the supposed “Creation Week” of a literal reading of Genesis. Its existence has emerged from fragments of Siberian bone too incomplete to identify by their shape, but which retained something much more informative: genetic evidence of a lost branch of the bovine family tree.

In a study published in Current Biology, Jonas Oppenheimer, Alexandre Gilardet and colleagues report 20 ancient nuclear genomes from Denisova Cave and other sites in southern Siberia, spanning more than 200,000 years. The lineage, provisionally known as “yak X”, had previously been recognised from mitochondrial DNA. The new analysis provides much broader genetic evidence that it represented a distinct species that effectively separated from the lineage leading to living yaks by about 250,000 years ago.

This was no static population inhabiting an unchanging world. The genomes reveal a demographic decline and suggest population turnover, accompanied by reduced genetic diversity, around the last interglacial, approximately 130,000–115,000 years ago. Warming may have disrupted the distribution of these cold-adapted animals; an earlier warm interval may also have helped isolate populations during their initial divergence. Those climatic explanations remain hypotheses, but the genetic evidence provides a record against which they can be tested. The youngest specimen analysed is about 27,000 years old; precisely when, and why, the lineage subsequently disappeared remains unknown.

There is an equally instructive lesson in the researchers’ caution. Although they interpret the genomic evidence as identifying a separate species, they have not simply attached a new formal species name to these fragmentary remains. Comparisons with previously described yak-like fossils are needed to establish whether the genetic lineage corresponds to an animal already recognised from its anatomy. Discovering a previously unrecognised genetic history and resolving its taxonomic identity are related but distinct tasks. Scientific confidence in one does not require pretending that the other has already been settled.

For creationism, meanwhile, calling the animal “just another member of the cattle kind” does nothing to resolve the chronological problem. The evidence concerns a branching history of populations, divergence and eventual extinction extending across hundreds of thousands of years. Evolutionary biology supplies the framework for reconstructing that history and asking further questions about it. Compressing everything into a few thousand years would require an alternative explanation for the genetic relationships, the ages of the remains and the succession of populations — not merely a biblical label applied after the evidence has been collected.

Malevolent Design - How Ancient Viral DNA Gave Humans An Advantage But Can Be Co-Opted By Lung Cancer - Malevolent Design, Incompetence or Evolution?

Post-gastrulation amnioids - models with mimic the development of the amniotic sac forming as expected (top panel). Amnioids without a key calcium-buffering gene and its accompanying switch don't form as expected (bottom two panels).

Credit: Borzo Gharibi, Science Advances (2026).

An ancient advantage, hijacked by cancer | Crick

Some 13 million years before anyone could have written a creation myth, a retrovirus inserted its genetic material into the genome of an ancestral ape. Today, part of that viral legacy helps regulate early human development. This presents creationists with several difficulties at once: a history vastly older than their biblical chronology permits, genetic material acquired from a virus, and an evolutionary innovation produced by putting an existing sequence to a new use. There is also an uncomfortable sting in the tail for advocates of a benevolent intelligent designer: cancer cells can exploit the same biological machinery.

The research, reported in Science Advances, concerns a remnant of an ancient retrovirus known as HERVH. This sequence acts as a switch controlling a form of calbindin, a protein involved in buffering calcium inside cells. Removing the switch or calbindin disrupted the growth and developmental behaviour of human embryonic stem cells and the organisation of models of early embryonic structures.

The evolutionary distinction matters. The original acquisition of viral DNA represents horizontal genetic transfer: genetic material crossed from a virus into its host, rather than arriving through ordinary inheritance from a parent. Once incorporated into the germ line, however, that material could pass vertically through successive generations. Its recruitment to regulate a host gene is an example of exaptation — the co-option of an existing feature for a different function. The virus did not need to invent calbindin, nor did evolution need to create an entirely new protein from scratch. A new regulatory relationship could arise by combining material with different evolutionary histories.

This is precisely the sort of process obscured by the creationist slogan that new genetic “information” requires an intelligent author. Biologically useful novelty can involve changes in when, where and how an existing gene is expressed. Imported DNA can supply a regulatory element; subsequent evolution can preserve and modify its contribution. Calling the result “information” does not erase the natural processes that produced it, still less establish that someone intended the outcome.

The chronology is equally inconvenient. Comparative primate evidence places this insertion roughly 13 million years ago, after the lineage leading to humans and the African great apes had separated from the orangutan lineage. Orangutans are themselves great apes; the relevant event occurred within the broader great-ape family tree. Either way, this is inherited molecular history extending far beyond the few thousand years allowed by a literal young-Earth reading of Genesis.

Yet a mechanism useful during development need not remain beneficial in every context. Earlier research showed that lung squamous cell carcinoma can activate this viral switch, helping cancer cells avoid senescence — a state in which cells stop dividing. The cancer biology is complex, but the central evolutionary point is clear: machinery that supports normal development can also become available for malignant cells to exploit.

That is consistent with an evolutionary cost-benefit trade-off. Natural selection can preserve a developmental advantage despite a vulnerability elsewhere in life; it has no foresight with which to guarantee lifelong protection from every possible consequence. But if intelligent-design advocates insist that useful genetic arrangements demonstrate deliberate engineering, they must apply that reasoning consistently. A designer credited with the developmental benefit cannot simply be excused responsibility for the exploitable weakness. On their own premises, the result raises questions about competence, benevolence, or even malevolent design. Evolution requires no such theological contortions: an ancient infection, inherited variation and the opportunistic reuse of existing material are sufficient ingredients for the story.

Hawai'ian outrigger (Holopuni) canoe

Polynesian Wayfinding Is Written in the Genomes of Island Populations

Human history is written in more than ancient texts. It is also preserved in the genetic material passed from generation to generation, where migrations and changes in population size leave patterns that scientists can investigate. For creationists who would compress humanity’s ancestry into the descendants of a single family emerging from a mythical global flood, this presents a demanding test: their story must explain the actual distribution of genetic variation, rather than merely assert that people dispersed.

A new study published in Science on 8 October 2026 examines whole-genome sequences from 1,050 Polynesian people. It reveals successive founder effects associated with the settlement of Pacific islands: small founding groups carried only part of their source population’s genetic diversity, and subsequent departures repeated that sampling process.

The result is a nested pattern of inheritance. Particularly striking is the close genetic relationship between the populations of Hawaiʻi and Rapa Nui, despite their separation by roughly 7,000 kilometres. The researchers interpret this as evidence that both populations have deeper ancestral roots in Mangareva. Their reconstruction also involves repeated movement between islands, rather than a simple procession of isolated, one-way journeys.

These demographic events have medical consequences too. Variants that were rare in an ancestral population can become relatively common among descendants of a small founding group. The study identifies several disease-associated variants at elevated frequencies, showing how the legacy of settlement can remain relevant to health today.

This is also an accessible example of why evolution cannot be reduced to natural selection alone. Genetic drift — chance changes in the frequencies of genetic variants — can shape populations without making them better adapted. A variant does not have to be beneficial to become more common; sometimes its frequency reflects who happened to found a community and which descendants subsequently reproduced. The voyages were purposeful human achievements, but their genetic consequences required neither foresight nor a designer.

The challenge for biblical literalism is therefore more substantial than finding room for Polynesian voyagers somewhere after Noah. A scientific explanation must account for which populations share particular variants, how those variants are distributed, and which demographic history best explains the pattern. These findings do not, by themselves, constitute a test of every claim about a global flood. They do demonstrate what an evidence-based account of human dispersal looks like: a reconstruction open to scrutiny and revision, with consequences that can be checked against independent evidence. Simply invoking Genesis supplies none of that explanatory detail.

Refuting Creationism - Stone Tool-Making In The Tennessee River Valley - 3,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Map showing the location of the Tennessee River Valley and the distribution of Clovis and Cumberland points with known provenience data. Hatching indicates geologic deposits containing chert-bearing deposits. Inset indicates the location of study area.

Tune, J.W., Miller, D.S. (2027).

Ancient Tools Reveal How Ice Age Humans Learned the Land | Ole Miss

Some 13,000 years ago, people in what is now the Tennessee River Valley were making stone spear points, maintaining their equipment and adapting to the demands of their surroundings. For young-Earth creationism, this presents a rather fundamental difficulty: these human societies were living in North America thousands of years before the supposed ‘Creation Week’. They were getting on with the practical business of survival before a literal reading of Genesis permits either them or their continent to have existed.

These inconvenient people are the subject of a study published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory by Jesse W. Tune and D. Shane Miller. The researchers examined approximately 500 projectile points from the region, comparing the earlier Clovis tradition with the later Cumberland tradition. Their question was how the treatment of these tools might reveal changes in people’s knowledge of the landscape.

The contrast was revealing. Clovis toolmakers tended to resharpen their points more extensively, extracting more use from the stone before discarding it. Cumberland toolmakers more often discarded points with useful life remaining. The authors interpret this as evidence that growing familiarity with local stone sources changed the economics of keeping or replacing a tool. People uncertain where their next suitable supply would come from had stronger reasons to conserve what they already carried; later communities could draw on knowledge accumulated and transmitted across generations.

That explanation is an inference tested against patterns in the artefacts, not a direct observation of prehistoric intentions. The distinction matters: archaeology can compare explanations of ancient behaviour without pretending that discarded tools tell us everything about the people who made them. What is not dependent on accepting this particular explanation is the broader chronological problem for creationists. These toolmaking traditions belong to the closing stages of the last Ice Age, well before the 6,000–10,000-year timescale commonly assigned to the entire universe by young-Earth believers.

Nor does the wider evidence support a recent arrival from the Mesopotamian world of biblical mythology. This particular study does not investigate ancestry, but ancient DNA research places Indigenous American origins within a much older population history involving northeast Asia and Beringia, the region that once connected Siberia and Alaska. There is no evidential basis here for replacing that history with a recent dispersal from Babel or a repopulation of the Americas by Noah’s descendants. The biblical account supplies the assertion; the archaeological and genetic records supply a different history.

What emerges is a recognisably human story of ingenuity, experience and cultural inheritance. Long before the supposed beginning of the world, people were already making decisions about resources, refining their technologies and passing useful knowledge to the next generation. Science asks how those societies lived and learned. Young-Earth creationism must first explain how they managed to exist before its creation date.

Refuting Creationism - More Problems for Creationists As Science Reveals Yet More Evidence Falsifying The Bible Creation Myth

Ediacaran sea floor, Namibia, Southwest Africa, 543 million years ago.

Credit: Museum of Natural History, University of Oxford / Mighty Fossils.

New study suggests animals may have evolved vastly earlier than fossil evidence suggests | Oxford University

One of the strengths of science is that its conclusions remain open to revision. An assumption that once appeared reasonable can be tested against new evidence, found wanting, and replaced with something better. For creationists, who frequently portray such revisions as evidence that science cannot be trusted, this must seem a peculiar way of acquiring knowledge. Yet it is precisely how science improves its understanding: by allowing the evidence to correct the explanation, rather than requiring the evidence to conform to a predetermined answer.

A new study published in Science Advances provides another example. Researchers have challenged an assumption used in some recent estimates of when animals originated. Their analyses support an origin approximately 700–800 million years ago, potentially extending animal evolutionary history by around 200 million years beyond estimates based on a younger maximum-age constraint.

The issue is a deceptively simple one: if a fossil deposit preserves microscopic organisms in exquisite detail, but contains no definite animals, does that mean animals had not yet evolved? Some researchers have used the approximately 590-million-year-old Weng’an Biota of China in this way, reasoning that animals would have been preserved there had they existed. Its lack of unequivocal animal fossils has therefore helped set a proposed upper age limit for animal origins.

The new research exposes a difficulty with that reasoning. The younger Kheseen Biota of Mongolia also preserves exceptionally detailed microfossils, yet none can confidently be identified as animals. In this case, however, animals are known from other deposits of comparable age. Their absence from Kheseen therefore cannot demonstrate their absence from the world. Particular environments and conditions of fossilisation can leave animals out of the record, even when other organisms are beautifully preserved.

This matters because molecular clocks — methods that use genetic differences between living organisms to estimate when their ancestors diverged — require calibration against geological and fossil evidence. Change an unjustified age constraint, and the resulting estimates can change substantially. Using alternative constraints from older deposits, the researchers recovered a much earlier possible origin for animals. They have not discovered an 800-million-year-old animal, nor established a final date for the animal kingdom’s beginnings. They have shown why one argument for restricting those beginnings to a much later interval is unreliable.

For young-Earth creationism, neither chronology offers any comfort. The debate concerns events hundreds of millions of years ago, not whether animal history can be squeezed into the few thousand years allowed by a literal reading of Genesis. Uncertainty over precisely when animals originated does not make every proposed date equally credible, any more than uncertainty over a mountain’s exact height makes it plausibly a molehill.

Creationism Refuted - Earth Fine-Tuned For Regular Mass Extinctions - Even In The American Bible-Belt

Meteor hit Oklahoma 100 Million Years Later Than Previously Thought | Jackson School of Geosciences | The University of Texas at Austin

A geological map noting the types of rock that make up the Ames impact structure. The locations of oil and gas wells are noted with arrows.

Credit: Catlos et al.

For a planet supposedly created as a perfect home for humans, Earth has a remarkable history of catastrophes, environmental upheavals and mass extinctions — almost all of it unfolding before humans and, according to a literal reading of Genesis, before even Earth itself existed. Beneath Ames, Oklahoma, lies a buried impact crater that adds another uncomfortable detail to that history. New research suggests that the collision responsible occurred about 100 million years later than previously thought. Unfortunately for young-Earth creationists, that still places it approximately 370 million years before their imagined ‘Creation Week’.

The study, led by Elizabeth Catlos of the University of Texas at Austin and published in Meteoritics & Planetary Science, challenges the long-standing assignment of the Ames impact to the Ordovician Period. The previous age estimate relied on conodont fossils — tiny tooth-like elements from extinct marine animals. These may have been inherited from older rocks disturbed and redeposited during the impact, rather than recording when the collision happened.

Uranium–lead dating of zircon crystals from the impacted rocks now points towards a much younger, Late Devonian event. The youngest dated zircons yielded an age of 369.7 ± 5.9 million years. That range overlaps the approximately 372-million-year-old Frasnian–Famennian extinction crisis, raising the possibility that Ames belongs in discussions of impacts associated with that episode of ecological devastation.

There is an essential distinction here: an overlap in estimated ages does not establish cause and effect. The study does not demonstrate that the Ames impact caused the Frasnian–Famennian extinction, or even that it made a substantial contribution. Further work is needed to strengthen the connection between the zircon dates and the impact itself, let alone establish a causal connection with the extinction. That uncertainty is part of the scientific account, not something to hide for the sake of a more dramatic headline.

Nevertheless, the difficulty for creationism does not depend on proving that particular connection. Whether the collision happened in the Ordovician or the Devonian, neither interpretation can be accommodated within the few thousand years allowed by a literalist reading of Genesis. Revising an event’s age by roughly 100 million years does not bring it within reach of biblical chronology. Even the size of the correction dwarfs the entire history young-Earth creationists allow the universe.

Nor does a world exposed to devastating collisions suggest that human safety was its overriding design specification. Humans were absent when Ames formed, but that is precisely the point: Earth’s history was not a brief preparation of a finished home awaiting its intended occupants. It was an immense succession of changing environments in which life survived, diversified and sometimes suffered catastrophic losses. Habitability is not a guarantee of protection, and our existence today does not turn every feature of the planet’s past into evidence of benevolent planning.

Norellraptor barsboldi 130108-MHGU-F4281, appendicular elements.

a Right hand. b Pubis. c Feet. am, acetabular margin; ap, apron; cs, claw soft tissue; gi, gastral impression; mcI-III, metacarpals I to III; mtI-V, metatarsals I to V; p, phalanx; pf, pubic foot; r, radius; sc, semilunate carpal; t, tibiotarsus; u, ulna; uI-III, unguals 1 to 3. Scale bar = 10 mm.

Revolutionary Feathered Dinosaur Discovery in China Suggests Flight Evolved Multiple Times : ScienceAlert

For creationists who insist that complex adaptations could only have appeared as complete, purpose-built packages, another feathered dinosaur has provided an awkward piece of evidence. Evolution does not require a finished flight apparatus to materialise in a single miraculous leap. It can modify inherited structures, combine them in new ways, and produce similar adaptations along different branches of the family tree. A newly described dinosaur from China adds evidence that even among the close relatives of birds, there was more than one evolutionary route towards an aerial lifestyle.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, Xuri Wang and colleagues describe Norellraptor barsboldi, a small microraptorine dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation of Liaoning, north-eastern China. Its remarkably complete, 57-centimetre skeleton preserves traces of plumage, including on its forelimbs and hindlimbs. It belonged to the group of feathered dinosaurs famous for their four-winged forms: evolutionary relatives of birds, rather than evidence that modern birds appeared fully formed and unrelated to other dinosaurs.

The crucial finding concerns the sequence in which adaptations arose. The researchers’ evolutionary analysis indicates that approximately 30 per cent of the derived anatomical features identified in microraptorine evolution also evolved independently in the bird lineage. However, they appeared in different orders. This supports the gradual assembly of flight-associated anatomy under different selective pressures, rather than the inheritance of an already completed flight apparatus from a common ancestor.

Refuting Creationism - A 'Jumping Gene' Jumps All Over Creationist Dogmas

AI-generated conceptual illustration of BC200’s transfer from human DNA into a poxvirus, with background neurons representing its association with neuronal regulation.

ChatGPT-6 Astra

New type of human jumping gene found in a poxvirus | Cornell Chronicle

Creationists who insist that functional genetic information requires an intelligent designer have another evolutionary history to explain. A genetic element associated with neuronal regulation in primates began as a “jumping gene”, acquired a cellular function, and nevertheless retained its ability to generate copies elsewhere in the genome. Copies even escaped into a human virus. Far from resembling a collection of sealed, immutable designs, genomes reveal a history of copying, repurposing and exchange.

The element is BC200, the subject of a paper in Science by Pu Gao and colleagues, published on 24 September 2026. Its ancestor was a transposable element recruited into a cellular role approximately 40 million years ago. BC200 produces a non-coding RNA: its product is an RNA molecule, rather than a protein. Abundant in neurons, it is thought to help regulate protein production, although its precise physiological role remains incompletely understood.

This is an example of evolutionary exaptation: existing biological material acquires a new use. A sequence whose ancestral significance lay in its capacity to propagate could become useful to its host. No foresight is required. Variants arise without anticipating future needs, and natural selection can preserve those that improve reproductive success. The new function need not have been the reason the original sequence existed.

The unusual feature here is that recruitment did not end BC200’s mobility. Genes derived from transposable elements typically lose that ancestral capacity; BC200 retained it. The researchers identified two independent transfers into molluscum contagiosum virus during the history of modern humans. Whether the acquired sequence benefits the virus remains an open question.

There are two distinct difficulties here for creationism. For young-Earth creationists, the roughly 40-million-year history already places these events far outside their biblical chronology. For intelligent-design advocates, the difficulty is mechanistic: biological function can emerge through the modification and recruitment of material that already exists. Calling the resulting function “designed” adds no explanation of the evidence.

Nor does transfer into a virus mean that a human became a virus, or that every transferred sequence must be adaptive. It demonstrates something more precise: genetic material can cross the boundary between a host genome and a viral genome. BC200’s history combines inherited ancestry, evolutionary repurposing and continuing mobility — exactly the sort of untidy, contingent history that evolutionary biology allows researchers to investigate.

Refuting Creationism - Californian Creationists May Be In For A Catastrophic Shock

Earthquake model reveals: Stress in California at record level

Californian creationists who imagine that Earth was fine-tuned for human life — and perhaps arranged with their own comfort and security particularly in mind — might want to consider what is happening beneath their feet. A planet supposedly designed as our ideal home has an unfortunate habit of accumulating stresses capable of turning homes, roads and other essential infrastructure into wreckage. Southern California provides a particularly awkward example of this discrepancy between reassuring theology and indifferent geology.

A study published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth examines stress accumulation along the southern San Andreas and San Jacinto fault systems. Led by Liliane Burkhard, the researchers combined a reconstructed earthquake history with a computer model that follows changes in three-dimensional space and through time. Their results indicate that some fault segments have reached or exceeded the highest stress levels in the modelled thousand-year history.

Of particular interest is Cajon Pass, northeast of Los Angeles, where the two fault systems approach one another. This junction can behave as an “earthquake gate”: under some conditions, a rupture stops there; under others, it can propagate between fault systems. The research suggests that the relative stresses on neighbouring segments help determine whether this gate remains closed or allows a more extensive rupture. Understanding those interactions matters because the surrounding region contains densely populated communities and major transport and energy routes.

The underlying mechanism requires neither supernatural intervention nor concern for the people living above it. Continuing tectonic movement loads faults whose shallow portions remain locked, allowing stress to accumulate between earthquakes. A long quiet interval is therefore no guarantee of safety. The apparent tranquillity of the landscape can conceal the continuing development of conditions that favour another major rupture.

This is not a prediction that a catastrophic earthquake will happen tomorrow, nor does “record stress” mean that scientists have been measuring these faults continuously for a millennium. These are estimates produced by a model constrained by geological and historical evidence. The researchers explicitly distinguish their assessment from a prediction of when the next earthquake will occur. Its value lies in improving our understanding of possible rupture scenarios and informing preparedness.

Refuting Creationist - The Case For Science Keeps Getting Stronger - Science Works While Creationism Fails

a. DNH 8 occlusal view; b. DNH 8 left lateral view; c. DNH 8 inferior view; d. DNH 8 right lateral view.

Martin, J. M., et al (2026).

Fossils confirm human ancestors first appearance, News, La Trobe University

Two million years ago, southern Africa was home to different human relatives sharing the same landscape and following different evolutionary trajectories. That is the picture strengthened by newly described fossils from Drimolen Main Quarry in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind. For creationists, the difficulties begin with the date: these hominins lived almost two million years before the supposed magical creation of the Universe out of nothing in a literal reading of Genesis. But the evidence also challenges the familiar caricature of human evolution as a single procession of increasingly human creatures, marching towards a predetermined destination.

In a paper published in Annals of Human Biology, Jesse M. Martin and colleagues describe 18 previously undescribed cranial and mandibular specimens from Drimolen. Among them is DNH 127, an adult skull fragment attributed to Homo erectus. This provides valuable support for the earlier identification of DNH 134, a young child’s partial skull from the same site. Identifying a species from an immature individual can be difficult because some diagnostic features develop during growth; an adult specimen provides an additional test of that interpretation.

The significance is therefore corroboration: DNH 127 strengthens the case that Homo erectus was present in South Africa approximately 2.04–1.95 million years ago. It does not, by itself, establish that the species originated there. The earliest fossil yet recognised is evidence of a species’ presence at a particular place and time, rather than a birth certificate identifying its evolutionary birthplace.

Refuting Creationism - Self-Correcting Science Finds Another Transitional Fossil

A reconstruction of Westlothiana based on x-ray scans of the fossil.

Famous "First Reptile" Fossil Wasn’t a Reptile After All | AMNH

One of the supposed earliest reptiles has lost its place in the reptile family tree — and, in doing so, has provided a revealing example of how evolution works and how science improves its understanding of it. For creationists hoping that a revised classification means evolutionary biology is collapsing, the disappointment is twofold: the fossil remains approximately 345 million years old, and its newly revealed anatomy makes the transition towards life on land more interesting, not less evident.

The animal is Westlothiana lizziae, affectionately known as “Lizzie”, a small, superficially lizard-like vertebrate discovered in Scotland in 1984. Its limbs and apparently clawed digits helped establish its reputation as an early representative of the evolutionary transition towards amniotes — the group encompassing mammals and reptiles, including birds. However, interpreting a crushed fossil from its exposed surfaces has limitations. Structures hidden inside the rock can tell a different story, as researchers have now demonstrated using powerful X-ray scans at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France.

The two slabs of NSM G.1990.72.1, the Westlothiana fossil studied by this new research.

Photo by Roger Benson.

The research, published on 30 September in Nature reveals an unexpected combination: a skull retaining ancient anatomical features, bony supports for internal gills, and a mouth bearing thousands of tiny teeth. These are indications of an aquatic or amphibious animal. The researchers place Westlothiana among stem tetrapods, on an evolutionary branch outside the group comprising living amphibians and amniotes and their last common ancestor.

Yet Lizzie also possessed five-digit feet and superficially claw-like finger and toe bones. That combination is the significant point. Features associated with terrestrial vertebrates were already appearing in animals that retained substantial adaptations to life in water. This is an example of mosaic evolution: different parts of the body change at different rates, producing combinations that do not fit the tidy categories we recognise among living animals. It also means that claw-like impressions in ancient trackways cannot, by themselves, establish that the animals making them were early amniotes.

Kenneth Loi shows how VIPR RNA (in pink) snakes around the double helix of DNA (yellow and green) to form a unique triplex structure.

Photo: Glenn Ramit.

VIPR Systems Break the Rules of the Genetic Code to Target and Twist Around DNA

One of the recurring mistakes in creationist arguments is to assume that a complex biological system must always have performed its present function. If its components now work together, the argument goes, they must have been created together for that purpose. Evolution, however, can recruit existing machinery for new roles. Two papers in *Science* now provide evidence that this process may help explain the origin of an important form of microbial immunity—with the intriguing possibility that bacteria acquired the precursors of their antiviral weapons from viruses themselves.

To appreciate the discovery, it helps to understand what CRISPR immunity actually is. Although CRISPR is familiar as a tool for editing genes, its natural role is defence. Many bacteria and archaea possess CRISPR–Cas systems that retain molecular records of past invaders. Short pieces of foreign DNA are incorporated into the cell’s genome, between repeated sequences. These stored fragments provide templates for small RNA molecules, which guide CRISPR-associated—or Cas—proteins to matching genetic material during subsequent infections. Depending on the system, the resulting response can destroy invading DNA or RNA. This is adaptive immunity: protection directed against particular threats, with a genetic memory that can pass to descendants.

CRISPR stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”, a description of the DNA arrangement in which those memories are stored. The best-known gene-editing protein, Cas9, belongs to class 2, whose targeting machinery centres on one large protein. Class-1 systems instead use assemblies of several proteins to recognise their targets. It is the evolutionary origin of this latter machinery that the new research addresses.

The studies, published on 17 September 2026 investigate a compact system called VIPR, short for viral interference programmable repeat. Found in viruses and bacteria, it combines a small protein with a guide RNA. The researchers propose that an ancestral VIPR-like system involved in competition between viruses was recruited into bacterial defence, eventually contributing to the evolution of class-1 CRISPR. This would be evolutionary co-option: machinery favoured in one context becoming useful in another.

Malevolent Design - A Newly-Identified Tick-Borne Virus That Teams Up With Another Virus And Kills People - Malevolent Intelligence Or Evolution?

Engorged Tick"

Timothy Takemoto / Flickr cc

Scientists in China discover new tick-borne virus that causes flu-like illness | CIDRAP

One of the problems with claiming that biological complexity proves intelligent design is that the argument cannot stop conveniently at butterflies, flowers and the human eye. If complex biological machinery requires a designer, then the same reasoning must apply to parasites and pathogens. A virus’s ability to infect us cannot become an unfortunate accident merely because crediting the supposed designer would now be embarrassing. Nor can the animal that carries it from host to host be excluded from the reckoning.

A newly identified tick-borne virus in China provides another uncomfortable example. Described in a correspondence in The New England Journal of Medicine, Asian longhorned tick nairovirus, or ALTNV, is associated with fever, fatigue, gastrointestinal symptoms and, in some patients, reduced platelet counts. Its vector is the already familiar Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis; experiments demonstrated transmission to mice. “New” here means newly recognised by science, not shown to have come into existence recently.

The clinical findings deserve care. All 56 patients reported with ALTNV alone recovered without lasting effects. However, seven of 38 patients infected with both ALTNV and Dabie bandavirus died. These deaths do not establish that ALTNV alone is lethal, or determine its contribution to the fatalities. They do place the discovery within a system of tick-borne infections capable of causing serious illness and death.

Now apply the creationist rule that functional complexity and genetic information require an intelligent author. On that premise, the designer must take responsibility for the infectious agent and its means of delivery. Here is a blood-feeding animal whose activities provide a route for viruses to enter other animals, including humans. If every relevant adaptation was knowingly intended by an all-knowing creator, then the resulting suffering cannot be dismissed as an unforeseen side-effect. The alleged designer knew what its creations would do.

That is the force of the malevolent-designer argument. It does not require us to believe that a supernatural intelligence actually makes viruses. It asks why features that serve pathogens should count as evidence of loving craftsmanship when equivalent features serving their victims are routinely presented as precisely that. If the designer receives credit for our defences, it must also answer for the threats those defences sometimes fail to overcome. Deliberately creating the means of making people ill is hardly an obvious expression of benevolence.

Creationism Refuted - A Stem Amphibian from 309 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

Photo and illustration of the fossil of Jeanerpeton mazonensis.

Credit: Allison Sefcovic. © Field Museum.

Mother of amphibians: New species of proto-amphibian described by two student scientists, named in honor of their moms - Field Museum

One of the recurring problems for young-Earth creationism is that Earth’s history contains so much life before the supposed beginning of Earth’s history. A newly recognised fossil species from Illinois adds another example: a small, amphibian-like animal that lived approximately 309 million years ago, when the area around modern Chicago was a swampy river delta. That places it more than 300 million years before the creation event that biblical literalists insist accounts for all life on Earth. Explaining away a discrepancy of that magnitude requires rather more than pointing to an uncertainty in a scientific paper.

The animal is Jeanerpeton mazonensis, described by Allison J. Sefcovic, Payton J. Kohlberg and colleagues in a new paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Its recognition resulted from a fresh examination of a fossil already held in a museum collection. Previously assigned to Amphibamus grandiceps, the specimen proved sufficiently different in its skull and skeleton to warrant a genus and species of its own. The authors also suggest that other known specimens conceal more diversity among these early amphibamiforms than has previously been recognised.

The fossil comes from the exceptionally productive Mazon Creek deposits. Its preservation includes a body outline, scales, tiny abdominal skeletal elements called gastralia, and even impressions of the eyes. The genus honours the two student lead authors’ mothers, both named Jean. This is a reminder that important discoveries can begin with someone taking a closer look at a specimen collected long ago.

Left: Allison Sefcovic and Payton Kohlberg hold epoxy sculptures of their new species, Jeanerpeton mazonensis.

Photo credit: Arjan Mann. © Field Museum.

Of particular interest are structures previously interpreted as toe pads resembling those of living amphibians. Alongside the skeletal anatomy, such features help researchers investigate the combinations of characteristics present in these ancient animals. That does not establish Jeanerpeton as the direct ancestor of modern frogs or salamanders: resemblance and evolutionary relationship are not proof of direct ancestry. Its significance lies in adding another anatomically distinctive animal to the record against which explanations of amphibian evolution must be tested.

Field photos of the Khugenetsavkhlant badlands in the Eastern Gobi Desert of Mongolia today, where Tamirkhan balcarceli was discovered.

Gobi Fossil Reshapes the Mammal Family Tree | AMNH

One of the most revealing differences between science and creationism is what happens when new evidence challenges an established explanation. In science, that is an opportunity to improve our understanding. In creationism, where the conclusion has already been declared unquestionable, it becomes a problem to explain away. A remarkable fossil from Mongolia’s Gobi Desert provides a particularly instructive example: a small mammal whose combination of teeth, skull and limb bones has prompted scientists to reconsider an enduring hypothesis about mammalian evolution. Predictably, there is no comfort here for anyone hoping that revising an evolutionary family tree means abandoning evolution.

The animal, Tamirkhan balcarceli, is described in a paper in Nature by Andres Giallombardo and colleagues. Discovered in 2004, the exceptionally informative specimen preserves a skull and part of a hind limb. This provides something researchers had previously lacked for the enigmatic mammals known as zhelestids: teeth and substantial skeletal remains belonging to the same individual.

Until now, zhelestids were known principally from teeth and fragmentary jaws. Their relatively low, rounded molar cusps resembled those of plant-eating hoofed placental mammals, encouraging suggestions that they represented an early radiation of placentals during the Cretaceous. The new fossil tests that interpretation against a much broader sample of anatomy. Its zhelestid-like molars occur alongside distinctive incisors, skull structures and hindlimb features characteristic of another ancient mammalian group, the zalambdalestoids. The researchers conclude that zhelestids belong within that group. Their apparently revealing resemblance to later herbivorous placentals arose through convergent evolution.

The significance extends beyond moving a name from one branch of a family tree to another. Identifying which ancient mammals belong within the placental radiation helps establish when that radiation began and how its early members diversified. An animal can possess teeth resembling those of a later group without belonging to that group: similar feeding demands can favour similar dental adaptations in separate evolutionary lineages. More complete fossils allow researchers to distinguish those similarities from the wider anatomical evidence of ancestry. This discovery therefore changes how an important set of Cretaceous fossils contributes to the history of placental origins; it does not, by itself, settle every question about their timing.

For young-Earth creationists, the chronological problem remains as severe as ever. This is a Late Cretaceous mammal, part of a world that existed tens of millions of years before the few thousand years into which they attempt to compress the history of Earth and its inhabitants. Revising its evolutionary relationships does nothing to bring that world within the biblical timetable. Nor does a previously mistaken interpretation of its teeth supply evidence for separately created “kinds”. To establish that claim would require positive evidence of separate creation, not merely the discovery that one proposed relationship needs correction.

Refuting Creationism - Fossils of Complex Cells In Australian Mudstone - From 1.7 Billion Years Before 'Creation Week'

Large brown rocks rising from a grassy plain.

Fossils of single-celled eukaryotic organisms with complex surface features such as extensions and plates.

Leigh Anne Riedman

Tiny fossils found in 1.7 billion-year-old mud yield clues to the evolution of complex life

For young-Earth creationists, some of the most troublesome evidence comes in the smallest packages. Microscopic fossils preserved in ancient Australian mudstones record organisms living approximately 1.75–1.4 billion years ago — an antiquity impossible to reconcile with the few thousand years allowed by a literal reading of the biblical genealogies. These organisms were already part of aLayers of 1.7 billion-year-old sedimentary rocks, Kakadu National Park, Northern Territoryn evolving biosphere more than a billion years before the supposed “Creation Week”. Their existence presents a chronological problem that no amount of argument about the meaning of “kind” can resolve.

These fossils are the subject of a paper in Nature, by Maxwell A. Lechte and colleagues, investigating the environments inhabited by some of the earliest known eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are organisms with structurally complex cells, typically containing a nucleus and specialised internal compartments; they include animals, plants, fungi and numerous microscopic organisms. Here, “complex life” refers to cellular organisation, not to miniature animals swimming through those ancient seas. Understanding these early cells helps explain the evolutionary foundations upon which much later forms of life depended.

Spot The Differences

Readers will have noticed that I have been using ChatGPT to generate illustrations for my articles. Generally, the results are very good, but earlier versions had a habit of introducing anachronisms: Neanderthals accompanied by dogs and other livestock, for example, or Stone Age hunters carrying what appeared to be metal-tipped spears. Correcting these could become an amusing — and sometimes frustrating — exercise. Removing one error would introduce another, and the next attempt might restore the original mistake.

This time, however, something rather encouraging happened. For my previous article, about a Neolithic village in Serbia that archaeologists have re-examined, I asked ChatGPT to produce an impression of everyday life in the settlement. It generated an image, then identified an anachronism in its own output and produced a corrected version without my having to point out the problem. That does not mean historical inaccuracies are now a thing of the past, but it was a welcome example of checking and correction.

Naturally, this also presented an opportunity for a little fun. Below are the two images, side by side. Can you spot what does not belong in the image on the left? If you would like a helping hand — or simply want to cheat — click the button to reveal a nifty tool for comparing them.

AI-generated impression of life in a Neolithic Serbian village.

A minimally invasive look into the late Neolithic

One recurring difficulty for young-Earth creationism is that people were apparently building communities before the Earth on which they built them had been created. At Opovo Ugar-Bajbuk, in present-day Serbia, archaeologists place the principal occupation of a substantial Neolithic settlement around 4850–4725 BCE. That is more than seven centuries before Archbishop Ussher’s famous creation date of 4004 BCE, and long before the supposed global Flood of conventional young-Earth chronologies. These people were inconveniently getting on with their lives before that particular biblical timetable allowed them to exist.

The settlement covered more than nine hectares, with up to 220 identified house structures across its development and an estimated peak population exceeding 700. This was a substantial community whose inhabitants could organise the labour needed to construct extensive enclosing ditches. The findings are reported by Fynn Wilkes and an international team in Archaeologia Austriaca.

There is another lesson here that creationist polemics routinely misrepresent: scientists revise their conclusions. Earlier investigations, based on a much more limited excavated area, had produced a picture of a smaller settlement, estimated at about five hectares. The new researchers returned with geomagnetic surveying, coring, systematic surface collection and targeted excavation, combining their findings with radiocarbon evidence. The resulting reconstruction changes our understanding of the settlement’s scale and development. Indeed, Ruth Tringham, who led the research project in the 1980s, is herself a co-author of the reassessment.

That is how scientific knowledge improves. Earlier interpretations remain open to testing, and better evidence produced by improved techniques and better technology, can require them to change. A revision does not make every alternative explanation equally credible, nor does it give an ancient religious narrative a free pass. In this case, the revised chronology still places the community centuries before Ussher’s proposed Creation Week. Changing the reconstructed size and history of a Neolithic settlement does nothing to rescue a timetable that places the creation of the entire planet after its inhabitants had already lived there.

The researchers also distinguish evidence from interpretation. House sizes suggest relatively limited differences in material wealth, while the enclosing ditches indicate an ability to coordinate substantial communal work. Those observations are consistent with a comparatively egalitarian community, but they cannot establish that everyone enjoyed equal status or that coercion was absent. Such qualifications express the limits of the evidence — precisely the limits that responsible scholarship should acknowledge.

Opovo therefore presents two related difficulties for biblical literalism: a human history that refuses to fit its preferred chronology, and a demonstration of how knowledge advances when conclusions remain accountable to evidence. Archaeologists can reconsider what they thought they knew about the settlement because their task is to discover what happened. The evidence is allowed to change the story. Creationism by contrast refuses to change the story and attempts to change the inconvenient evidence.

Creationism Refuted - Bats Evolved In Europe - 65 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

New study reveals bats originated in Europe and rewrites the bat family tree | University of St Andrews news

Corynorhinus townsendii.

Credit: Elizabeth Clare.

Bats present creationists with a multitude of problems: firstly, there is the fact that they have a vastly more effective immune system than humans, so creationists need to explain why an omnibenevolent creator god would not give his favourite special creation, humans, the best available immune system. Secondly, there is the famous Bible blunder where, in most English language translations, bats appear to have been classified as birds (Leviticus 11:13-19) by the ignorant people who wrote it.

Now the facts have become even more difficult in the form of an awkward combination: remarkable adaptations that invite declarations of “design”, and an evolutionary history that researchers can investigate using evidence. Calling a bat a specially created “kind” explains neither its relationships with other bats nor when and where those relationships arose. Those are questions that require fossils, genomes and testable hypotheses.

Now, a major international study, published in Nature, has brought these questions into sharper focus. Researchers working within the Bat1K consortium assembled genomic data from 103 species, representing all 21 recognised living bat families, and combined this resource with anatomical evidence from 44 fossil bats. The university summarises their findings as pointing to a European origin for bats and mammalian powered flight around 65 million years ago — tens of millions of years before the supposed “Creation Week” of young-Earth creationism.

The research reconstructs a branching history of ancestry, migration and diversification. Its geographical model favours Europe as the ancestral region, followed by dispersal into Africa and subsequent expansion into other continents. These are historical inferences that can be tested and revised as further evidence becomes available.

The study also sheds light on echolocation: the ability to use returning echoes to detect surroundings and prey. The inferred position of the extinct bat Vielasia supports the conclusion that laryngeal echolocation — using calls generated in the voice box — arose before the diversification of the group containing all living bats. This places another celebrated bat adaptation deep within their evolutionary history.

New Study Pinpoints When Early Earth May Have Become Ready for Life’s Chemistry - Planetary Science Institute

For creationists who depend on gaps in scientific knowledge, research into the origin of life presents a recurring difficulty: scientists keep finding ways to investigate those gaps. One question is when the early Earth became sufficiently stable for the chemistry preceding life to persist. Producing potentially useful molecules would have achieved little if repeated impacts then destroyed them. Before life could gain a foothold, its chemical ingredients needed somewhere they could survive.

A new study by Oleg Abramov and colleagues, published in Nature Communications investigates that problem using a three-dimensional model of impact heating. The researchers identify approximately 4.33 billion years ago as a particularly favourable time for persistent prebiotic chemistry. That places the proposed opportunity billions of years before the entire universe supposedly appeared in the chronology of Young-Earth creationism.

The emerging picture scarcely resembles a world prepared as a comfortable home for living things. Early Earth endured bombardment by asteroids, comets and leftover planetary building blocks. As that bombardment declined, regions of the shallow crust could remain cool enough for fragile molecules to persist. Around 4.4 billion years ago, the simulations begin to show environments that escaped subsequent reheating above the study’s specified threshold.

There is an interesting complication: impacts could also help create opportunities for life’s chemistry. Water circulating through heated, fractured rock can produce hydrothermal environments with sources of chemical energy. The researchers therefore sought an overlap between enduring cooler regions and continuing hydrothermal activity. Their proposed favourable window represents a changing balance between destructive heating and potentially useful geological activity, with no foresight required.

The distinction between opportunity and occurrence matters. This study does not demonstrate that life began 4.33 billion years ago, nor establish that an “RNA world” actually existed then. It constrains the thermal conditions under which such a proposed stage could have persisted. The date also depends on assumptions about bombardment: a lower estimate of the incoming mass moves the favourable window earlier, towards 4.4 billion years ago.

For creationism, the difficulty extends beyond the enormous timescale. An unanswered question about life’s beginnings is being broken down into physical conditions that researchers can calculate, compare and challenge. Uncertainty remains, but uncertainty supplies questions for further investigation; it supplies no evidence for a supernatural designer. Here, another part of the origin-of-life problem becomes a tractable question about the history of a changing planet.

Creationism Refuted - 'Jumping Genes' Create New Functional Genetic Information - No Magic needed.

Ants look back on an evolutionary story of success. The photo shows workers of the Asian weaver ant.

“Jumping genes” helped ants in their evolutionary triumph after the extinction of the dinosaurs

One of creationism’s favourite assertions is that evolution cannot produce “new genetic information” without an intelligent designer. What usually goes missing is a clear definition of information, an explanation of why known genetic mechanisms cannot generate novelty, or any evidence of the supposed designer doing anything. Meanwhile, evolutionary biologists continue to investigate the natural processes by which genomes change and organisms acquire new capabilities. A new study of ants provides another example of how productive that scientific approach can be.

As reported in Science Advances, an international team led by Dr Lukas Schrader has investigated the contribution of transposable elements, commonly called “jumping genes”, to ant evolution. These mobile DNA sequences can move or copy themselves within genomes. Their activity can be disruptive, but it can also supply material for evolutionary innovation. The research links their activity to the expansion of gene families, including those encoding the odour receptors so important to ants’ chemical communication.

The researchers compared genomes from 163 ant species, representing twelve of the sixteen living subfamilies. They identified independent bursts of transposable-element activity in the ancestors of major ant groups, preceding their rapid diversification following the Cretaceous–Palaeogene, or K–Pg, mass extinction approximately 66 million years ago. The findings support a connection between changes within genomes and the evolutionary opportunities created by a profoundly altered world.

The evolutionary significance is straightforward. A mass extinction changes the conditions under which survivors live: ecological relationships are disrupted, resources become available in different ways, and opportunities arise as ecosystems recover. A genetic variant that previously offered little advantage may become useful under these new conditions. Natural selection can then favour organisms carrying it. Neither the mutation nor the environmental upheaval needs to anticipate the outcome.

Nor does genetic novelty require a complete, finished gene to appear from nowhere. Duplication supplies additional copies of existing sequences, which can subsequently diverge; changes to the regulation and arrangement of DNA can also alter what an organism does. Calling the starting material “existing information” does nothing to prevent its descendants from acquiring new functions. The relevant questions concern what changed, how it changed, and what consequences followed—not whether creationists are willing to call the result “information”.

Here, the specific finding is an association between mobile DNA, expanding gene families and subsequent diversification. It should not be inflated into a claim that every extra receptor acquired a demonstrated new function, or that the asteroid impact directly produced particular beneficial mutations. Nevertheless, the study supplies evidence for a natural route connecting genomic change with evolutionary diversification, precisely where the creationist argument substitutes an assertion of impossibility.

For young-Earth creationists, there is the additional inconvenience of the timescale. This diversification followed an extinction event some 66 million years ago—thousands of times further into the past than their entire supposed history of the Universe allows. Ant evolution was already unfolding in a world unimaginably ancient by biblical standards. What emerges is a history of genetic change, environmental catastrophe and opportunities exploited by surviving lineages, without foresight or a predetermined destination.

Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )

Please note:

The "Rosa Rubicondior" Blog by Bill Hounslow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. All commission earned from Amazon for the sale of books, etc. advertised here, will be donated to Oxfam.

Hopefully, religious and other offensive advertising content has now been blocked from this site. Please let me know if you see any.

Note: This is my only blog. Others purporting to be by me or bearing my ident will contain plagiarised and deliberately altered material from this site or material presented as being by me. They will usually be run and maintained by a well-know unemployable Internet abuser, fraud and expelled Catholic seminarian who appears to have developed an obsessive fascination with me, bordering on the psychotic. You can read about him and what caused his psychosis here.

Sunday, 11 October 2026

Saturday, 10 October 2026

Friday, 9 October 2026

Thursday, 8 October 2026

Wednesday, 7 October 2026

Tuesday, 6 October 2026

Monday, 5 October 2026

Sunday, 4 October 2026

This article is best read on a laptop, desktop, or tablet

Saturday, 3 October 2026

Friday, 2 October 2026

Wednesday, 30 September 2026

Tuesday, 29 September 2026

Monday, 28 September 2026

Sunday, 27 September 2026

This article is best read on a laptop, desktop computer

Saturday, 26 September 2026

Thursday, 24 September 2026