Creationism in Crisis - Extinct Australian Species Continue to Haunt Creationists

Creationism in Crisis

Extinct Australian Species Continue to Haunt Creationists

Reconstruction of an Australian pterosaur

Peter Trusler

Study finds 107-million-year-old pterosaur bones are oldest in Australia - News at Curtin | Curtin University, Perth, Australia

The subject of my previous blog post was from 3.5 million years ago (a mere 875 times longer than creationists believe Earth has existed). The next article stretches that to 26,750 times longer, with the discovery of the oldest pterosaur ever found in Australia from 107 million years ago - before even the common ancestor of the marsupials and other mammals had evolved.

The discovery was made by a team of palaeontologists from Curtin University's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, led by PhD student Adele Pentland. Her team's work is described in a Curtain University press release by Lauren Sydoruk:

A team of researchers have confirmed that 107-million-year-old pterosaur bones discovered more than 30 years ago are the oldest of their kind ever found in Australia, providing a rare glimpse into the life of these powerful, flying reptiles that lived among the dinosaurs.

Published in the journal Historical Biology and completed in collaboration with Museums Victoria, the research analysed a partial pelvis bone and a small wing bone discovered by a team led by Museums Victoria Research Institute’s Senior Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology Dr Tom Rich and Professor Pat Vickers-Rich at Dinosaur Cove in Victoria, Australia in the late 1980s.

The team found the bones belonged to two different pterosaur individuals. The partial pelvis bone belonged to a pterosaur with a wingspan exceeding two metres, and the small wing bone belonged to a juvenile pterosaur — the first ever reported in Australia.

Lead researcher and PhD student Adele Pentland, from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said pterosaurs — which were close cousins of the dinosaurs — were winged reptiles that soared through the skies during the Mesozoic Era.

During the Cretaceous Period (145–66 million years ago), Australia was further south than it is today, and the state of Victoria was within the polar circle — covered in darkness for weeks on end during the winter. Despite these seasonally harsh conditions, it is clear that pterosaurs found a way to survive and thrive. Pterosaurs are rare worldwide, and only a few remains have been discovered at what were high palaeolatitude locations, such as Victoria, so these bones give us a better idea as to where pterosaurs lived and how big they were.

By analysing these bones, we have also been able to confirm the existence of the first ever Australian juvenile pterosaur, which resided in the Victorian forests around 107 million years ago.

Adele H Pentland, lead author
Western Australian Organic & Isotope Geochemistry Centre
School of Earth and Planetary Science
Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.

Ms Pentland said that although the bones provide important insights about pterosaurs, little is known about whether they bred in these harsh polar conditions.

It will only be a matter of time until we are able to determine whether pterosaurs migrated north during the harsh winters to breed, or whether they adapted to polar conditions. Finding the answer to this question will help researchers better understand these mysterious flying reptiles.

Adele H Pentland.

Dr Tom Rich, from Museums Victoria Research Institute, said it was wonderful to see the fruits of research coming out of the hard work of Dinosaur Cove which was completed decades ago.

These two fossils were the outcome of a labour-intensive effort by more than 100 volunteers over a decade. That effort involved excavating more than 60 metres of tunnel where the two fossils were found in a seaside cliff at Dinosaur Cove.

Dr. Thomas H. Rich, co-author
School of Earth
Atmosphere and Environment
Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia.

The research was co-authored by researchers from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History, Monash University, and Museums Victoria Research Institute. The full paper is titled, ‘Oldest pterosaur remains from Australia: evidence from the Lower Cretaceous (lower Albian) Eumeralla Formation of Victoria,’ and can be found online here.

More technical detail is given in the team's abstract to their free access paper in Historical Biology:

ABSTRACT

Herein, we describe the first pterosaur material from the Lower Cretaceous of Victoria and the geologically oldest pterosaur material from Australia. The isolated material comprises a partial synsacrum and a left metacarpal IV from the lower Albian portion of the Eumeralla Formation at Dinosaur Cove, Cape Otway, Victoria. The vestiges of a supraneural plate in the synsacrum precludes assignment to the Azhdarchidae. Moreover, presence of a supraneural plate indicates that the synsacrum likely belongs to individual late in ontogeny, perhaps attaining osteological maturity. The synsacrum does not preserve any diagnostic features, and is regarded here as an indeterminate member of either the Archaeopterodactyloidea or Pteranodontia. Similarly, the metacarpal IV cannot be identified more precisely than Pterosauria indet. Positive identification of the fourth metacarpal is supported by the presence of a ginglymoid distal articular surface and proximodistal length. The metacarpal IV is distinct from others previously reported from Australia, in that it is substantially smaller; it is therefore interpreted to derive from a juvenile specimen. Despite the isolated nature of these remains, they extend the temporal and geographic range of pterosaurs in Australia, and in tandem with remains described elsewhere, indicate that the Pterosauria prevailed and potentially reproduced at high latitudes.

Adele H. Pentland, Patricia Vickers-Rich, Thomas H. Rich, Samantha L. Rigby & Stephen F. Poropat (2023)
Oldest pterosaur remains from Australia: evidence from the Lower Cretaceous (lower Albian) Eumeralla Formation of Victoria
Historical Biology, DOI: 10.1080/08912963.2023.2201827

Copyright: © 2023] The authors.
Published by Taylor & Francis. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

So, if creationists are going to try to explain this finding away by casting doubt on radiometric dating methods, they need to explain why the scientists got it wrong by a factor of 26,750. It would be fun to see one try, if any of them have the courage and intellectual integrity to deal with this discovery.

I won't hold my breath.

---

Thank you for sharing!

Tweet Link