Refuting Creationism - How Dogs Spread Across The Americas - Then Survived The Legendary Biblical Global Flood

Chihuahua dog in Mexico.

Credit: Urvashi9, Getty Images

Figure 1. Distribution of archaeological samples analysed in this study.

Manin, Aurélie, et al (2025)

Ancient DNA reveals new clues about the incredible journey of dogs in the Americas | University of Oxford

According to the Bible, all living things outside Noah’s Ark were destroyed once Noah, his family, and his chosen animals were safely sealed inside (Genesis 7:4). This supposedly happened around 4,000 years ago, according to the biblical narrative — which creationists firmly believe to be inerrant history.

The snag is, the evidence simply doesn’t support that timeline—or a global flood involving mass extinction by drowning. Not only would such a flood have left a distinctive global deposit of sediment, containing a chaotic mix of ancient and modern animal and plant species from disconnected continents, but it would also have erased all archaeological traces of earlier civilisations and palaeontological evidence of past life. In effect, it would have reset the clocks of both archaeology and palaeontology to start around 4,000 years ago.

Unfortunately for biblical literalists, that’s not what we see. The predicted tell-tale layer of silt is conspicuously absent. Instead, both archaeology and palaeontology reveal a pattern of uninterrupted occupation of the planet by animals and humans stretching back tens of thousands—and, in the case of animal and plant species, hundreds of millions—of years. For anatomically modern humans, there is a consistent archaeological record documenting their spread across all land masses (except Antarctica), during which they domesticated animals such as dogs, which migrated alongside them.

One example of this pattern — the migration of domestic dogs with humans into the Americas between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago — has just been published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, by an international team of scientists led by Dr Aurélie Manin from the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. They have shown that all South American dogs prior to the arrival of Europeans, trace their ancestry back to a single female. One strain — the Mexican Chihuahua - still shows evidence of that ancestry.

Refuting Creationism - How We Know The Bible Was Made Up By Scientifically-Illiterate People

A new study broadens the horizon of knowledge about how matter behaves under extreme conditions and helps to solve some great unknowns about the origin of the universe.

Deciphering the behaviour of heavy particles in the hottest matter in the universe - Current events - University of Barcelona

The Bible contains no scientific insights or understanding beyond what would have been known to Bronze Age pastoralists—what Christopher Hitchens aptly described as the "fearful infancy of our species." Their knowledge was naturally constrained by the absence of scientific instruments, a lack of understanding of the planet's history, and a worldview shaped by tribal dogma and magical thinking.

Had the Bible truly been written or inspired by the deity it describes — as a vital message to humanity from the creator of the universe — one might reasonably expect it to contain some revelations unknown to its time. Yet it offers nothing by way of evidence to support such a claim. There is no mention of germ theory, no understanding of cells or cellular life, no grasp of atoms, electricity, or metabolic processes like photosynthesis and respiration. All living things are described as strictly male or female, with no recognition of genetics, hermaphroditism or parthenogenesis — except for a single, supposedly miraculous human birth of a genetically impossible male child. In short, the text contains nothing that was not already known or assumed until the development of tools like the microscope and telescope, and much of it was clearly and demonstrably wrong.

The Bible’s authors were storytellers, not scientists. Their goal was not to challenge the cultural assumptions of their time but to frame them within a compelling narrative.

Because religions are not founded on tested hypotheses or objective facts but rather on the best guesses of uninformed people, any alignment with modern scientific understanding is coincidental, not predictive. For example, the biblical phrase *"Let there be light"* is sometimes interpreted as metaphorically reflecting the early high-energy state of the universe following the Big Bang. But there is no indication that the authors understood photons, particle physics, or the quantum nature of space-time. Nor did they suggest that the universe originated nearly 14 billion years ago in a quantum fluctuation of a non-zero energy field.

Recent discoveries illustrate just how far modern science has advanced beyond anything conceivable to ancient authors. For instance, an international team of scientists has recently found evidence suggesting the existence of heavy particles during the universe's first microseconds—particles that influenced the behaviour of other matter. This discovery, utterly incomprehensible to a Bronze Age worldview, is detailed in a peer-reviewed article published in Physics Reports.

Refuting Creationism - A 600-Million-Year-Old Common Ancestor of Cnidarians and Bilaterians.

Adult polyp of the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis.

Grigory Genikhovich

Bodybuilding in Ancient Times: How the Sea Anemone Got Its Back

Childish creationist claims of a young Earth, the spontaneous magical generation of all living organisms without ancestry, and the supposed absence of evidence for the evolution of life from a common ancestor have taken another blow with the publication of compelling new research that refutes these basic creationist dogmas.

An open access paper published in Science Advances describes a candidate ancestral mechanism for establishing bilaterality — symmetry along a central axis — in both bilaterians (animals with bilateral symmetry) and the sea anemone Nematostella. The study, conducted by four researchers from the Department of Neurosciences and Developmental Biology at the University of Vienna, provides crucial insights into the deep evolutionary origins of body plan organisation.

It is also clear from both the paper and the researchers' explanation in a University of Vienna press release that they regard the Theory of Evolution as essential to interpreting their findings. Their discovery fits squarely within the evolutionary framework and aligns with the established timeline for the diversification of animal life from a common ancestor.

What Is Bilateral Symmetry? Bilateral symmetry is a body plan in which an organism can be divided into roughly mirror-image halves along a single plane—from head to tail. Most animals, including humans, insects, and vertebrates, display this type of symmetry.

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Why Is It Evolutionarily Significant?

• Directional Movement: Bilateral symmetry enables streamlined, forward-facing movement—ideal for seeking food, mates, and avoiding danger.
• Cephalisation: This symmetry is often associated with the development of a head region where sensory organs and the brain concentrate—an evolutionary advantage for processing information efficiently.
• Complexity and Specialisation: It allowed for greater internal organisation and the evolution of specialised body systems (e.g., digestive, nervous, and circulatory).

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Evolutionary Milestone

Bilateral symmetry is thought to have evolved over 600 million years ago in a common ancestor of all bilaterians. This innovation marked a major turning point in the history of life, leading to the vast diversity of animal forms we see today.

Bodybuilding in Ancient Times: How the Sea Anemone Got Its Back

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New insights into the evolution of the back-belly-axis.

A new study from the University of Vienna reveals that sea anemones use a molecular mechanism known from bilaterian animals to form their back-to-belly body axis. This mechanism ("BMP shuttling") enables cells to organize themselves during development by interpreting signaling gradients. The findings, published in Science Advances, suggest that this system evolved much earlier than previously assumed and was already present in the common ancestor of cnidarians and bilaterians.

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Most animals exhibit bilateral symmetry—a body plan with a head and tail, a back and belly, and left and right sides. This body organization characterizes the vast group known as Bilateria, which includes animals as diverse as vertebrates, insects, molluscs and worms. In contrast, cnidarians, such as jellyfish and sea anemones, are traditionally described as radially symmetric, and indeed jellyfish are. However, the situation is different is the sea anemones: despite superficial radiality, they are bilaterally symmetric – first at the level of gene expression in the embryo and later also anatomically as adults. This raises a fundamental evolutionary question: did bilateral symmetry arise in the common ancestor of Bilateria and Cnidaria, or did it evolve independently in multiple animal lineages? Researchers at the University of Vienna have addressed this question by investigating whether a key developmental mechanism called BMP shuttling is already present in cnidarians.

Shuttling for development

In bilaterian animals, the back-to-belly axis is patterned by a signaling system involving Bone Morphogenetic Proteins (BMPs) and their inhibitor Chordin. BMPs act as molecular messengers, telling embryonic cells where they are and what kind of tissue they should become. In bilaterian embryos, Chordin binds BMPs and blocks their activity in a process called "local Inhibition". At the same time, in some but not all bilaterian embryonic models, Chordin can also transport bound BMPs to other regions in the embryo, where they are released again – a mechanism known as "BMP shuttling". Animals as evolutionary distant as sea urchins, flies and frogs use BMP shuttling, however, until now it was unclear whether they all evolved shuttling independently or inherited it from their last common ancestor some 600 million years ago. Both, local inhibition and BMP shuttling, create a gradient of BMP activity across the embryo. Cells in the early embryo detect this gradient and adopt different fates depending on BMP levels. For example, in vertebrates, the central nervous system forms where BMP signaling is lowest, kidneys will develop at intermediate BMP signaling levels, and the skin of the belly will form in the area of maximum BMP signaling. This way, the body's layout from back to belly is established. To find out whether BMP shuttling by Chordin represents an ancestral mechanism for patterning the back to belly axis, the researchers had to look at bilaterally symmetric animals outside Bilateria – the sea anemones.

An Ancient Blueprint

To test whether sea anemones use Chordin as a local inhibitor or as a shuttle, the researchers first blocked Chordin production in the embryos of the model sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. In Nematostella, unlike in Bilateria, BMP signaling requires the presence of Chordin, so, without Chordin, BMP signaling ceased and the formation of the second body axis failed. Chordin was then reintroduced into a small part of the embryo to see if it could restore axis formation. BMP signaling resumed—but it was unclear whether this was because Chordin simply blocked BMPs locally, allowing a gradient to form from existing BMP sources, or because it actively transported BMPs to distant parts of the embryo, shaping the gradient more directly. To answer this, two versions of Chordin were tested—one membrane-bound and immobile, the other diffusible. If Chordin acted as a local inhibitor, both, the immobile and the diffusible Chordin would restore BMP signaling on the side of the embryo opposite to the Chordin producing cells. However, only diffusible Chordin can act as a BMP shuttle. The results were clear: Only the diffusible form was able to restore BMP signaling at a distance from its source, demonstrating that Chordin acts as a BMP shuttle in sea anemones—just as it does in flies and frogs.

A shared strategy across over 600 million years of evolution?

The presence of BMP shuttling in both cnidarians and bilaterians suggests that this molecular mechanism predates their evolutionary divergence some 600-700 million years ago.

Not all Bilateria use Chordin-mediated BMP shuttling, for example, frogs do, but fish don't, however, shuttling seems to pop up over and over again in very distantly related animals making it a good candidate for an ancestral patterning mechanism. The fact that not only bilaterians but also sea anemones use shuttling to shape their body axes, tells us that this mechanism is incredibly ancient. It opens up exciting possibilities for rethinking how body plans evolved in early animals.

Dr. David Mörsdorf, first author
Department of Neurosciences and Developmental Biology
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.

We might never be able to exclude the possibility that bilaterians and bilaterally symmetric cnidarians evolved their bilateral body plans independently. However, if the last common ancestor of Cnidaria and Bilateria was a bilaterally symmetric animal, chances are that it used Chordin to shuttle BMPs to make its back-to-belly axis. Our new study showed that.

Grigory Genikhovich, senior author.
Department of Neurosciences and Developmental Biology
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

Publication:

David Mörsdorf, Maria Mandela Prünster, Paul Knabl, Grigory Genikhovich.
Chordin-mediated BMP shuttling patterns the secondary body axis in a cnidarian.
Science Advances (2025) 11(24). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adu6347

Abstract Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling patterns secondary body axes throughout Bilateria and in the bilaterally symmetric corals and sea anemones. Chordin-mediated “shuttling” of BMP ligands is responsible for the BMP signaling gradient formation in many bilaterians and, possibly, also in the sea anemone Nematostella, making BMP shuttling a candidate ancestral mechanism for generating bilaterality. However, Nematostella Chordin might be a local inhibitor of BMP rather than a shuttle. To choose between these options, we tested whether extracellular mobility of Chordin, a hallmark of shuttling but dispensable for local inhibition, is required for patterning in Nematostella. By generating localized Chordin sources in the Chordin morphant background, we showed that mobile Chordin is necessary and sufficient to establish a peak of BMP signaling opposite to Chordin source. These results provide evidence for BMP shuttling in a bilaterally symmetric cnidarian and suggest that BMP shuttling may have been functional in the potentially bilaterally symmetric cnidarian-bilaterian ancestor.

INTRODUCTION
Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling acts in secondary body axis patterning across Bilateria, and its functions as morphogen have been studied in diverse animal species (1, 2). The mechanisms of the BMP-dependent axial patterning are similar between arthropods and vertebrates, indicative of the shared origin of the secondary, dorsoventral axis in protostome and deuterostome Bilateria, a notion strengthened once broader phylogenetic sampling became available (2–7). Intriguingly, the same mechanisms appear to regulate the secondary axis patterning in the bilaterally symmetric cnidarian Nematostella vectensis, indicating that a BMP-dependent secondary body axis may have evolved before the evolutionary split of Cnidaria and Bilateria [(8, 9), reviewed in (1, 10)]. However, a scenario in which BMP-mediated secondary axes evolved convergently in Bilateria and bilaterally symmetric Cnidaria is also possible (2).

BMPs are secreted signaling proteins of the transforming growth factor–β superfamily frequently acting as heterodimers (11–13). Signaling through the BMP receptor complex (Fig. 1A) results in phosphorylation and nuclear accumulation of the transcriptional effector SMAD1/5, which regulates the expression of many crucial developmental transcription factors and signaling pathway components [(14–18), reviewed in (19, 20)]. BMP signaling is tightly controlled by a plethora of intracellular (14, 21) and extracellular regulators (22–29) of which Chordin (= short gastrulation in insects) is, arguably, the most famous one. Like many other secreted BMP antagonists, Chordin binds BMP ligands, blocks the interaction with their receptor, and thereby inhibits BMP signaling (30). However, Chordin can also have pro-BMP effects and promotes long-range activation of BMP signaling in Drosophila, Xenopus, sea urchins, and in the sea anemone Nematostella (7, 31–34). The phylogenetic distribution of Chordin and two central BMP ligands, BMP2/4 and BMP5-8, and their importance for the secondary axis patterning across phyla suggests that, during early animal evolution, these molecules may have represented the minimum requirement for the formation of the bilaterally symmetric body plan (2, 10). However, to evaluate such a possibility, we need to understand the “mode of action” of BMPs and Chordin outside Bilateria, and our model, the sea anemone Nematostella, allows exactly that.

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Fig. 1. Possible modes of action of BMP signaling during axial patterning in Nematostella.

(A) BMP signaling pathway. BMP dimers bind the heterotetrameric receptor complex, resulting in the phosphorylation of SMAD1/5. pSMAD1/5 forms a complex with the Co-Smad SMAD4, which regulates transcription in the nucleus. Chordin binds BMPs preventing them from activating the receptor complex. Metalloproteases like Tolloid and BMP-1 cleave Chordin and release BMP ligands from the inhibitory complex in Bilateria. (B) Expression domains of BMPs and BMP antagonists in an early Nematostella larva. Oral view corresponds to the optical section indicated with grey dashed line on the lateral view. Pink circles show the nuclear pSMAD1/5 gradient. (C) The shuttling model suggests that in Nematostella, a mobile BMP-Chordin complex transports BMPs through the embryo. Receptor binding is inhibited in cells close to the Chordin source due to high concentrations of Chordin. On the opposite side of the directive axis, BMPs bind their receptors and activate signaling upon release from Chordin. Tolloid might be involved in the cleavage of Chordin and release of BMPs from the complex with Chordin also in Nematostella. (D) In the local inhibition model, Nematostella Chordin acts locally to inhibit BMP signaling and promote the production of BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 mRNA. Chordin mobility is not required for asymmetric BMP signaling.

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BMP signaling in Nematostella becomes detectable during early gastrula stage in a radially symmetric domain: The phosphorylated form of the BMP signaling effector SMAD1/5 (pSMAD1/5) is detected in the nuclei around the blastopore (14, 35). Shortly after the onset of BMP activity, the radial symmetry of the embryo breaks, establishing the secondary, “directive” body axis with minimum BMP signaling intensity detectable on the side of BMP2/4, BMP5-8, and Chordin expression and maximum BMP signaling on the side opposite to it (Fig. 1B) (14, 34, 35). The symmetry break occurs despite the fact that mRNAs of the type I BMP receptors Alk2 and Alk3/6 and the type II receptor BMPRII are maternally deposited (36) and remain weakly and ubiquitously expressed in the embryo (fig. S1) gradually developing a slight bias toward the “high pSMAD1/5” side of the directive axis by early planula stage (14). BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 are co-expressed in the late gastrula/early planula, and both these ligands are crucial for BMP signaling and directive axis patterning because knockdown of either ligand abolishes pSMAD1/5 immunoreactivity and completely radializes the embryo (34). Individual knockdowns of either BMP2/4 or BMP5-8 result in a strong up-regulation of transcription of both BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 in a radially symmetric domain showing that both these genes are negatively controlled by BMP signaling. Despite transcriptional up-regulation of BMP2/4 in BMP5-8 morphants and BMP5-8 in the BMP2/4 morphants, no nuclear pSMAD1/5 is observed in such embryos (9, 34, 35), suggesting that BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 signal as an obligate heterodimer during axial patterning in Nematostella.

The “core” BMPs, BMP2/4 and BMP5-8, are not the only BMP ligands present in the embryo at this stage. GDF5-like (GDF5L) is a BMP ligand expressed on the side of strong BMP signaling (Fig. 1B). GDF5L expression is abolished in the absence of BMP2/4 and BMP5-8, and the role of GDF5L appears to be in steepening the pSMAD1/5 gradient making it a “modulator” BMP (14, 34, 37). The BMP signaling gradient is stable over many (>24) hours during which it patterns the directive axis (9, 14, 34, 35, 37). Considering the short half-life of phosphorylated SMAD1/5 reported in other systems (15, 21), this indicates that long-range transport (~100 μm) of BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 and constant receptor complex activation is necessary to maintain BMP signaling. How it exactly happens that the core BMP ligands, BMP2/4 and BMP5-8, are expressed on one side of the embryo and the peak of BMP signaling activity is on the opposite side is currently unknown.

One possible explanation involves Chordin-mediated shuttling of BMP ligands, described in the dorsoventral patterning in Drosophila and Xenopus (7, 34, 38). In this model, Chordin inhibits BMP function locally, close to the Chordin source cells, but promotes long-range BMP signaling by forming a mobile complex with the BMP dimer, which is released once Chordin is cleaved by the metalloprotease Tolloid. The probability that this BMP dimer will bind its receptors rather than another, yet uncleaved Chordin increases with the distance to the Chordin source (Fig. 1C). In Nematostella, the shuttling model was proposed when we found that, unlike in all bilaterian models studied thus far, depletion of Chordin results in the loss of BMP signaling rather than in its enhancement (34). However, given that, in Nematostella, BMP signaling indirectly represses the transcription of the core BMPs, BMP2/4 and BMP5-8, and activates the transcription of the modulator BMP, GDF5-like (14), an alternative explanation is also possible: In this “local inhibition” scenario, Chordin locally represses BMP signaling enabling BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 production. BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 diffuse into the area of low or no Chordin (i.e., to the GDF5-like side of the directive axis) and bind the receptors there. In this scenario, Chordin knockdown results in a transient de-repression of the BMP2/4/BMP5-8–mediated signaling, which, in turn, leads to the repression of the BMP2/4 and BMP5-8 transcription. Because, in the absence of BMP2/4 and BMP5-8, GDF5-like expression is also lost (9), we may end in a situation when no BMP ligands are produced and no BMP signaling takes place, as it is the case in the Chordin morphant (9, 34). This local inhibition model, in which Chordin acts exclusively as a local repressor of BMP signaling (Fig. 1D), is similar to the situation in zebrafish, where extracellular mobility of Chordin is not required (39–41). Here, we address the role of Chordin in the BMP-dependent axial patterning in the sea anemone Nematostella and test these two alternative models.

David Mörsdorf, Maria Mandela Prünster, Paul Knabl, Grigory Genikhovich.
Chordin-mediated BMP shuttling patterns the secondary body axis in a cnidarian.
Science Advances (2025) 11(24). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adu6347

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

This discovery poses a significant problem for creationist claims because it provides clear molecular and developmental evidence for a shared evolutionary origin between animals with bilateral symmetry and simpler organisms like sea anemones, which lack such symmetry as adults. The fact that the genetic and developmental mechanisms for establishing a "back" or body axis predate the emergence of bilaterally symmetrical animals suggests that these features evolved gradually through modification of existing biological systems—not through sudden, miraculous creation.

Creationism relies on the assertion that complex body plans appeared abruptly, fully formed, and without evolutionary precursors. However, the findings in this study directly contradict that idea. They show that the genetic toolkit required for bilateral body structures was already present in the common ancestor of cnidarians (like sea anemones) and bilaterians and was likely repurposed and elaborated upon over millions of years. This is exactly what evolutionary theory predicts.

Moreover, the study aligns neatly with the established evolutionary timeline based on genetics, developmental biology, and the fossil record. There is no need to invoke supernatural causes or to assume that animals were created independently and without shared ancestry. Instead, the evidence points to deep continuity in the genetic architecture of life—a hallmark of common descent and a major blow to the isolated, one-off acts of creation claimed by young-Earth and Intelligent Design creationists alike.

Unintelligent Designer News - Designed a Cure For COVID-19; Gave It To LLamas - Or Is It Malevolence?

How the single domain antibody locks onto the spike protein’s base

Researchers identify new antibodies against current and future coronaviruses | VIB.BE - Home

Hot on the heels of the news that the putative intelligent designer behind creationism apparently devised a method to prevent the spread of cancer cells through the body—then handed it to the sea cucumber, a group of species not especially prone to cancer—comes another remarkable revelation.

It now appears that this same designer, if we accept the claims of ID creationists, has also developed a highly effective mechanism for disabling the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. And once again, rather than bestowing this gift upon humans, the species most affected by the virus, the designer gave it to llamas — creatures not exactly known for their vulnerability to coronaviruses.

The mechanism in question involves relatively simple molecules known as single-domain antibodies, or VHHs—also referred to as nanobodies. These are much smaller than the conventional antibodies produced by most animals, including humans. They work by binding tightly to the virus’s spike proteins, effectively neutralising it by preventing it from prising open host cells and initiating infection. Even more impressively, these nanobodies appear to be broadly effective against a wide range of SARS-related coronaviruses.

While creationists might marvel at the ingenuity of such a designer, they would be hard-pressed to explain — or more likely, would simply ignore — why this supposedly anthropophilic intelligence chose not to equip humans with such a defence. Instead, it stood idly by as millions suffered and economies collapsed, despite having the ‘cure’ readily available.

This unique llama-specific mechanism was discovered by a team of researchers led by Prof. Xavier Saelens and Dr. Bert Schepens at the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie) – University of Ghent (VIB-UGent) Center for Medical Biotechnology.

Refuting Creationism - Co-Evolution of Trees And Mastodons In South America

The extinct proboscidean species Notiomastodon platensis is observed feeding on Chilean palm fruit in La Campana National Park.

Author: Mauricio Álvarez

The disappearance of mastodons still threatens the native forests of South America - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona - UAB Barcelona

Reconstruction of the paleoenvironments in which Chilean mastodons lived, from the semi-arid north to the cold rainforests of Patagonia.

Credit: Mauricio Álvarez

Just ten millennia ago, the mighty mastodons of South America played a crucial role in sustaining vast forests by spreading the seeds of large‑fruited trees—and now, new fossil evidence confirms that without these giants, entire ecosystems are crumbling [1, 2]. This groundbreaking research, published recently in Nature Ecology & Evolution, conclusively demonstrates that Notiomastodon platensis was an active frugivore based on detailed wear patterns and starch residues found in fossilised teeth [3].

For creationists who claim that life existed in its present form from the very beginning, this revelation is deeply unsettling. The discovery undermines the belief that forest ecosystems were always fully functional without the need for extinct megafauna—those massive mammals were not mere background actors but ecological engineers whose disappearance left communities of fruit‑bearing plants stranded, fragmented, and genetically impoverished.

Most strikingly, nearly 40 % of plant species once reliant on these now‑vanished seed spreaders are currently classified as threatened—up to four times the rate seen in regions still served by extant dispersers like tapirs or monkeys [2]. For creationists, this means that the natural world was far more dynamic—and far more dependent on evolutionary processes over deep time—than their models allow. If entire forests trebled on species interactions across thousands of years, then the simplistic view that everything was created perfectly, all at once, is seriously called into question.

A new study led by the University of O’Higgins, Chile, with key contributions from Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social, Centres de Recerca de Catalunya (IPHES-CERCA), demonstrates for the first time—based on direct fossil evidence—that these extinct elephant relatives regularly consumed fruit and were essential allies of many tree species. The researchers have just published their findings in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Creationism Refuted - How The Survivors of a Mass Extinction Evolved Into Dinosaurs

Euparkeria capensis, a small, 60 cm long reptile from the early Triassic period (245 - 237 million years ago).

Credit: Taenadoman, 2011
via Wikimedia Commons
CC A-SA 3.0

Triassic reptiles took 10,000 mile trips through “hellish” conditions, study suggests - University of Birmingham

Contrary to the child-like naivety and carefully cultivated ignorance of creationists, Earth is not — and never has been — a paradise perfectly designed for life, let alone tailor-made for humans. In reality, the vast majority of Earth's history — around 99.9975% of it — took place long before creationists believe the planet even existed, during which time the environment has frequently become so hostile that mass extinctions wiped out the majority of living species. Life as we know it today descends from the lucky few that managed to survive and adapt to radically altered conditions.

One of the most devastating of these extinction events was the end-Permian climate catastrophe, during which one group of reptiles — the archosauromorphs — managed to endure. From this resilient lineage emerged the dinosaurs, who would go on to dominate the planet until they too were annihilated by a cataclysmic meteor impact 66 million years ago.

While palaeontologists have long known about the survival and evolutionary significance of archosauromorphs, a lingering mystery remained: how did they manage to disperse across vast "dead zones" of the tropics, where temperatures were thought to be lethally high? A new study by researchers from the University of Birmingham and the University of Bristol has now shed light on this question. Their findings have been published, open access, in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Malevolent Designer - Creationism's Putative Desiger Designed A Way to Prevent Cancer Spreading - And Gave It To Sea Cucumbers!

A sugar compound found in sea cucumbers could hold the key to stopping the spread of cancer, according to a recent UM-led study published in Glycobiology.

Graphic by Stefanie Goodwiller
University Marketing and Communications

Sea Cucumbers Could Hold Key to Stopping Cancer Spread | Ole Miss

Imagine you're a designer, and you've created a species — humans — for whom you have a particular fondness. Only, something keeps going dreadfully wrong with your blueprint. A large number of them keep dying because their cells become cancerous when they fail to replicate properly, and these cancers then spread to other organs, which ultimately give up the ghost.

Now, you can’t quite work out why these cancers start. For some reason, you've included substances called glycans on the surfaces of cells, and — just to complicate things — you’ve made cancer cells produce an enzyme called Sulf-2, which alters these glycans to help the cancer spread. Your solution? A stroke of genius: create another enzyme that inhibits Sulf-2. And lo! It works.

So, who do you give this life-saving enzyme to?

If you're creationism’s supposedly super-intelligent designer, you don’t give it to your favourite species — the one made in your own image, no less. No, instead you bestow this miracle molecule upon… sea cucumbers. A species that, incidentally, doesn’t even have a problem with cancer.

This, if they actually understood the subject properly, is what Intelligent Design creationists consider compelling evidence of a supremely intelligent designer.

The discovery that sea cucumbers possess this enzyme was made by researchers at the University of Mississippi and Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Their findings are published in the journal Glycobiology and can be read here.

It’s also neatly summarised in a University of Mississippi news article:

Refuting Creationism - How One Of Our Ancestral Species Travelled Across Eurasia

Simulations show Neanderthals likely traveled over 2,000 miles in just 2,000 years using natural corridors like rivers.

Credit: Shutterstock

Computer simulated paths of Neanderthal dispersals demonstrate they could have reached the Altai Mountains in Siberia within 2,000 years during warm climatic conditions in one of two ancient time periods—MIS 5e (approximately 125,000 years ago) or MIS 3 (approximately 60,000 years ago)—as demonstrated by the three different possible paths shown here. These paths follow a northern route through the Ural Mountains and southern Siberia, often intersecting with known archaeological sites from the same time periods.

Image: Emily Coco and Radu Iovita.

Anthropologists Map Neanderthals’ Long and Winding Roads Across Europe and Eurasia

One of the ancestral species of all non-African Homo sapiens, the Neanderthals, migrated across Eurasia from Central Europe to Central Asia between 120,000 and 60,000 years ago. In the Altai Mountains of Siberia, they encountered the Denisovans and interbred with them—just as they would later interbreed with Homo sapiens migrating northwards out of Africa some 20,000 years later.

This is the fascinating history of our cousin species, now being brought to light by researchers at New York University’s Centre for the Study of Human Origins.

It almost goes without saying that this, along with the very existence of Neanderthals and their interbreeding with Eurasian Homo sapiens, is entirely incompatible with basic creationist beliefs and a literal reading of the Bible. Like all scientific discoveries, however, it fits seamlessly with what we already know and further enriches our understanding of both Neanderthal life and our own evolutionary history.

The discovery also addresses one of the long-standing mysteries surrounding Neanderthal dispersal during the Ice Age—namely, how they migrated from their central European ‘homelands’ to the Altai Mountains in Central Asia, where they interbred with Denisovans in what was likely the northern limit of the Denisovans’ range. Until now, their migration route had remained unclear due to a lack of archaeological evidence.

The breakthrough comes from computer simulations, which reveal a network of habitable valleys that connected Central Europe to Central Asia during a warmer period lasting some 2,000 years—long enough for Neanderthals to have reached within 600 kilometres of the Altai Mountains. The New York anthropologists have recently published their findings in the journal PLOS One.

Refuting Creationism - Yes, It's Another Of Those 'Non-Exitent' Transitional Fossils!

Reconstruction of the Burgess Shale concilitergan Helmetia expansa.

Artwork by Marianne Collins.

Holotype of Helmetia expansa USNM 83952, dorsal view. Cross polarized light.

Losso, S. R., Caron, J. B., & Ortega-Hernández, J. (2025).

Ancient fossil sheds big light on evolution mystery: solving a 100-year arthropod mystery | Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

A fundamental problem with creationism is that it depends on wilfully ignoring the vast and ever-growing body of contrary evidence. The intellectual dishonesty required to sustain this belief system makes its adherents the subject of ridicule—not just among scientists, but even among many fellow theists. Its prominent proponents, often elevated to near-prophetic status by their followers, are notorious for misrepresenting or outright lying about scientific findings. Unsurprisingly, they are treated with contempt by the scientific community.

One of the more blatantly counterfactual claims in the creationist repertoire is the assertion that there are no transitional fossils, and no evidence supporting the evolution of species from common ancestors. This denialism is essential to preserve belief in the spontaneous, magical creation of all species a few thousand years ago, without any ancestral lineage.

Accordingly, the creationist industry will need to deploy its usual strategies of misdirection and denial in response to a fascinating Cambrian stem arthropod, first discovered in 1918 in the Burgess Shale of Canada. Initially described from a single specimen, this enigmatic fossil has now been thoroughly reclassified thanks to the work of a team of Harvard researchers led by Dr Sarah Losso, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. Their analysis, based on 36 newly examined specimens, sheds significant light on early arthropod evolution.

Their findings are detailed in an open-access paper published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, and summarised in a Harvard University news article.

Creationism Refuted - Something From Nothing - Let There Be Light!

Normalised ellipticity across the transverse plane for the Gaussian scenario.

Illustration of photon-photon scattering in the laboratory. Two green petawatt lasers beams collide at the focus with a third red beam to polarise the quantum vacuum. This allows a fourth blue laser beam to be generated, with a unique direction and colour, which conserves momentum and energy.

Credit: Zixin (Lily) Zhang

Oxford physicists recreate extreme quantum vacuum effects | University of Oxford Department of Physics

As Sam Harris once remarked, “When religions are right, they are right by accident.” His point highlights the lack of empirical grounding in religious claims, which are typically non-falsifiable and therefore beyond the scope of scientific validation.

Ironically, this may mean that the authors of Genesis were accidentally correct in one of their most iconic assertions: that the universe began with the creation of light (Genesis 1:3). While the biblical writers lacked any scientific understanding, modern physics now suggests that under extreme quantum conditions, something akin to this could indeed occur — light arising from an apparent vacuum.

This is an area where creationists normally tie themselves up in knots, claiming on the one hand that you can't get something out of nothing because it contravenes the laws of thermodynamics and on the other hand that a god made of nothing created the universe out of nothing with some magic words.

The truth, of course, is rather more rational and subject to scientific analysis and testing.

Researchers at the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford have successfully simulated a remarkable prediction of quantum electrodynamics: the spontaneous emergence of photons from empty space. Their work, published in Communications Physics, demonstrates how light can be generated from the quantum vacuum — a phenomenon that, until now, had only existed as a theoretical possibility.

Refuting Creationism - A Technologically Advanced Civilisation in the Philippines - 25,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

A map of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) and the Sunda region as it appeared roughly 25,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age, with locations of archaeological sites surveyed by the Mindoro Archaeology Project.

Base Map: www.gebco.net, 2014

A map of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) and the Sunda region as it appeared roughly 25,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age, with locations of archaeological sites surveyed by the Mindoro Archaeology Project. The sites yielded artifacts with remarkably similar characteristics despite separation by thousands of kilometers and deep waters that are almost impossible to cross without sufficiently advanced seafaring knowledge and technology.

Base Map: www.gebco.net, 2014.

Philippine islands had technologically advanced maritime culture 35,000 years ago | News | Ateneo de Manila University

It’s shaping up to be another difficult week for creationists. Hot on the heels of news that humans were fighting and killing in northern Italy 7,000 years before the alleged ‘Creation Week’ and ‘The Fall’—events which biblical literalists claim introduced death into the world—comes fresh evidence of a sophisticated maritime culture flourishing in what is now the Philippines 18,000 years before that.

Another significant challenge for the creationist narrative is that, like the skeletal remains found in Italy, this archaeological evidence in the Philippines was not obliterated by the supposed global flood—an essential element of young Earth creationism for which there is no credible supporting evidence.

The discoveries in the Philippines were made by scientists from Ateneo de Manila University, in collaboration with international experts and institutions. Their research reveals early human migration, technological innovation, and long-distance intercultural connections dating back more than 35,000 years. The findings have been published in Archaeological Research in Asia, and are also explained in a news release from Ateneo de Manila University.

Refuting Creationism - Human Conflict And Death - 7,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Illustration depicting intergroup violence and conflict during the Stone Age.
Shanxi Provincial Museum, Taiyuan.

Gary Todd/Public domain

Three projectile impact marks found on Tagliente 1’s left femur.

Credit: Sparacello VS et al., Scientific Reports (2025)

17,000-year-old skeleton reveals earliest evidence of Stone Age ambush and human conflict | Archaeology News Online Magazine

Towards the end of that immensely long pre-Creation Week period of Earth’s history — when 99.9975% of everything had already happened before creationists believe their god made a small, flat Earth with a dome over it in the Middle East, as described in the Bible — humans were already fighting battles in what is now northern Italy. To be precise, this occurred around 7,000 years before 'Creation Week'.

This conclusion comes from the analysis of a 17,000-year-old skeleton belonging to a man aged between 22 and 30, bearing unmistakable injuries caused by flint-tipped projectiles—likely arrows or spears. The skeleton, discovered in 1973 at the Riparo Tagliente rock shelter in the Lessini Mountains of northeastern Italy, only recently revealed its violent past thanks to modern forensic techniques.

The findings, led by bioarchaeologist Vitale Sparacello of the University of Cagliari, were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

I Hate To Say It But - I Told You So!

Why the Musk and Trump relationship is breaking down – a psychologist explains

I'm not a psychologist, but over the past couple of years I've written several articles such as this one, examining how Donald J. Trump exhibits all the hallmarks of narcissistic personality disorder — a serious psychological condition that arguably should have disqualified him from holding public office. This, in addition to his recent felony conviction, raises profound concerns about his suitability for leadership. In fact, it may well have been his personality disorder that led him to commit that felony in the first place, in a desperate attempt to preserve his laughably absurd image as a moral exemplar.

I warned then that Trump’s obsession with self-aggrandisement and his pathological need for uncritical adoration would ultimately define his presidency. The interests of the United States—and indeed the wider world—were always going to be reduced to mere stage props in the theatre of his ego, should they register with him at all.

Now he finds himself in conflict with another figure who exhibits strikingly similar traits: Elon Musk. The result is as predictable as it is absurd. Neither man can tolerate the faintest dissent or the slightest deviation from sycophantic admiration. Any such lapse is interpreted as disloyalty and is met with unrestrained vitriol in a bid to rally others to their cause—and reaffirm their sense of dominance and adoration.

This dynamic has now been compellingly unpacked in an article published in The Conversation by Professor Geoff Beattie, a psychologist at Edge Hill University in Lancashire, UK. His expert analysis of the psychological forces driving the Trump–Musk feud adds academic weight to what many of us have already observed. It’s a thoroughly entertaining spectacle — unless, of course, you’re concerned about the damage it’s doing to America’s already battered global image.

Refuting Creationism - Co-Evolution of Humans and Influenza Viruses - Just as the TOE Predicts

AI-generated image (ChatGPT4o)

H3N2 virus is a respiratory viral infection of the influenza A virus.

Large-scale immunity profiling grants insights into flu virus evolution | For the press | eLife

In a striking confirmation of evolutionary theory—and a clear rebuttal of several fundamental creationist claims—scientists have demonstrated a close correlation between population-level immunity and the evolution of influenza viruses to evade that immunity. The findings, reported in eLife, align perfectly with predictions made by evolutionary biology: as the immune landscape of a population shifts, so too does the genetic makeup of viruses in an ongoing evolutionary arms race.

Disappointingly for creationists hoping for signs that biomedical science is abandoning evolution in favour of supernatural explanations, there is no such evidence. Nowhere in the study is there a hint that scientists are retreating from evolutionary principles or embracing a non-falsifiable belief system involving mysterious, unexplained entities. On the contrary, the researchers are clear and unequivocal: their results reinforce the view that viral evolution is a dynamic, adaptive process shaped by natural selection in response to host immunity.

Even more troubling for proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) is the unavoidable implication that the viral mutations observed in this study constitute what William A. Dembski calls "complex specified information"—which he argues can only arise through the intervention of an intelligent designer. If one follows that line of reasoning, the logical (if deeply uncomfortable) conclusion is that this designer is actively modifying viruses to undermine the very immune systems it supposedly created to protect us. Such behaviour can hardly be described as intelligent and is incompatible with the benevolent deity so often associated with the Intelligent Design movement.

Refuting Creationism - More Than the Bible's Authors Could Ever Have Imagined

The Milky Way hovers in the clear skies over the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, with graduate student Nicole Firestone in silhouette. Astrophysicist Eric Gawiser and his group conduct many studies using its facilities.

Nicole Firestone

Looking Deeply Into the Universe’s Past, Scientists Detect Bursts of New Stars | Rutgers University

Back in the Bronze Age — a period Christopher Hitchens once described as "the fearful infancy of our species" — people gazed up at the sky and imagined a dome over a small, flat Earth. In the absence of scientific knowledge, they filled the gaps in their understanding with stories that reflected their assumptions about how the world worked: a small, teleological world governed by invisible agents or spirits who made things happen. These stories were eventually written down in ancient texts and, over time, compiled into a book that was later declared to be the holy word of an omnipotent, omniscient god.

One such story recounts how this god spoke magic words that caused the entire universe — including that small, flat planet with a dome overhead — to spring forth out of nothing just a few thousand years ago. This same god then populated the Earth with a handful of species and two fully formed humans, all without ancestry, who supposedly gave rise to the entire diversity of life and the global human population within the last 6,000 to 10,000 years.

Curiously, despite how wildly this tale diverges from what we now know about the formation of the universe and the evolutionary history of life on Earth — from a common ancestor through divergence and speciation — some people continue to insist that the version crafted by scientifically illiterate Bronze Age storytellers is correct, and that the evidence painstakingly uncovered by generations of scientists must somehow be mistaken, or even the false claims of sinister conspirators.

They dismiss even the most robust, verifiable evidence — such as recent findings on the formation of galaxies like the Milky Way, home to our own planet, which formed roughly 3–4 billion years after the Big Bang. That event, the beginning of space and time, is thought to have arisen from a quantum fluctuation in a non-zero energy field.

This evidence of how galaxies formed in the 'Cosmic Noon' was recently published in an open-access paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters, authored by a team of astrophysicists led by Professor Eric Gawiser of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA.

Malevolent Design - The Sneaky Way TB Keeps On Making Us Sick

Credit: Md Ariful Islam

Study discovers DNA switch that controls TB growth – and could help unlock its antibiotic resistance secrets | University of Surrey

If you're an omniscient, omnipotent, malevolent designer of parasites — such as the bacterium that causes tuberculosis in humans — then you're hardly going to let a little thing like the immune system (which you supposedly also designed to protect them) or even the development of medical science and antibiotics spoil your fun in causing random suffering, are you? Naturally, you'd equip your creation with mechanisms to overcome these obstacles.

Within the framework of Intelligent Design creationism, that's precisely what this recent discovery should look like — at least to those creationists who don't simply ignore the obvious and pretend it isn't there. Scientists from the Universities of Surrey and Oxford have discovered that Mycobacterium tuberculosis uses a reversible process known as ADP-ribosylation to modify its DNA, controlling both replication and gene expression. This allows the bacterium to remain dormant for extended periods and reactivate when environmental threats, such as immune responses or antibiotics, have passed.

This presents a problem for creationists who insist on believing in a benevolent creator deity and simultaneously hold that features such as irreducible complexity and complex specified information are sure signs of intelligent design—claims promoted by Discovery Institute fellows Michael J. Behe and William A. Dembski. Since Mycobacterium tuberculosis displays these very characteristics, so either it was designed specifically to cause suffering, or those characteristics are not the reliable indicators of divine design that Behe and Dembski claim, and their entire argument collapses.

This discovery was recently published open access in The EMBO Journal, and further details are available in the University of Surrey press release:

How Evolution Works - Co-opting Old Genes For New Functions

Liverworts lacking a gene called RLF have severe deformations in various organs (three plants pictured right and bottom), demonstrating that RLF is involved in organ development in these basic land plants as well.

© FUKAKI Hidehiro (CC BY)

Molecular phylogenetic tree of the REDUCED LATERAL ROOT FORMATION (RLF) protein family. The unrooted molecular phylogenetic tree was constructed based on amino acid sequences of RLF and CB5A, B, C, D, E, and LP from various plant species.

Iwata, K.P., Shimizu, T., Sakai, Y.,et al(2025)

A root development gene that’s older than root development | Kobe University News site

One common way creationist apologists attempt to mislead the scientifically uninformed is by claiming that the Laws of Thermodynamics are somehow relevant to the evolution of information within a species' genome. They argue that any increase in genetic information would violate both the Second and Third Laws of Thermodynamics—asserting that increased biological complexity equates to a decrease in entropy (disorder), and that new information is akin to energy and thus cannot increase due to the Law of Conservation.

This argument is fundamentally flawed on several levels but continues to be repeated despite being repeatedly refuted by both biologists and physicists. First, it completely ignores the fact that Earth is not a closed system. The input of energy from the Sun, for example, allows local decreases in entropy (such as in the formation of complex biological structures) while the total entropy of the universe still increases, fully complying with the Second Law. The Third Law, which relates to the entropy of systems at absolute zero, is entirely irrelevant to biological evolution.

Second, the idea that genetic information is conserved like energy is a misrepresentation. Genetic information can and does change in multiple ways through mutation. A mutation can involve the loss of information (e.g. deletion of a DNA segment), a change in information (e.g. substitution of one or more nucleotides), or an increase in information (e.g. insertion of additional sequences, or the movement of transposable elements—“jumping genes”—to new locations in the genome). None of these processes require a change in the total amount of matter or energy; they simply involve the rearrangement of existing molecular components. Any local increase in biological order is offset by energy expenditure elsewhere, typically via the hydrolysis of ATP to ADP and phosphate within metabolic pathways.

Moreover, these objections rest on the false assumption that evolution is about the quantity of information. In reality, it is the function and meaning of genetic information that drives evolutionary change. A sequence of DNA that once encoded a protein with one function can, through mutation and natural selection, take on a new function entirely—a process known as exaptation.

A well-known example is the evolution of the mammalian middle ear bones. In ancestral fish, certain jawbones played a structural role in the jaw joint. Over time, in early synapsids, these bones were repurposed and miniaturised to become part of the auditory system, transmitting sound vibrations from the eardrum to the cochlea.

Malevolent Design - How Creationism's Divine Malevolence is Helping Cholera Win An Arms Race Against A Virus

How cholera bacteria outsmart viruses - EPFL

Time-course microscopy snapshots comparing cell morphology and cellular DNA content, as monitored using HU–mNeonGreen fusion (mNG), in WT and ΔWASA-1 backgrounds, following infection with ICP1-2006 at MOI 5.

Adams, D.W., Jaskólska, M., Lemopoulos, A. et al. (2025).

Biological arms races represent one of those problematic areas in biology that Intelligent Design (ID) creationists tend to avoid — precisely because they undermine the notion of a single, supreme intelligence orchestrating the design of all living organisms. These arms races typically occur in predator–prey or parasite–host relationships, where the survival of one party depends on improving its ability to evade, resist, or defend against the other — while the other evolves countermeasures to overcome those defences. From the standpoint of a single, omniscient designer, this results in a paradox: today’s ‘solution’ to a problem becomes tomorrow’s new problem to be solved. Where, exactly, is the intelligence in that?

A striking example of such an evolutionary arms race has just been uncovered by a team from École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), who found that a notorious strain of cholera possesses a suite of sophisticated immune systems to fend off viral attack. According to ID proponents like William A. Dembski, both this cholera strain and the viruses that infect it should qualify as products of ‘complex, specified information’. Likewise, under Michael J. Behe’s definition, both would be considered ‘irreducibly complex’. By their logic, this makes them the result of intelligent design by a supernatural creator.

In other words, creationism’s designer god has supposedly created viruses that infect the cholera bacterium—then equipped the bacterium with complex machinery to defend itself.

To make matters worse for creationists, this virus-resistant cholera strain was behind a devastating epidemic across Latin America. That is, the designer god not only enabled the bacterium to resist viruses, but in doing so gave it a better chance of surviving to infect and harm humans—using its ‘intelligently designed’, ‘irreducibly complex’ viral defences.

The research is published open access in Nature Microbiology.

Refuting Creationism - That Ever-Shrinking Little Creationist God Just Got Even Smaller

Liquid brine veins, where RNA molecules can replicate, surround solid ice crystals in water ice, as seen with an electron microscope.

Credit: Philipp Holliger, MRC LMB

Chemists recreate how RNA might have reproduced for first time | UCL News - UCL – University College London

The problem with having a god who exists merely to fill gaps in human knowledge and understanding — as the god of creationism does — is that science has been steadily shrinking those gaps ever since the scientific method emerged and the Church lost its power to persecute scientists for discovering inconvenient truths. Today, only a few small gaps remain, scattered throughout the body of scientific knowledge —particularly in biology, which holds special interest for creationists.

Creationism persists because there are still people with such a poor understanding of science that they believe the authors of ancient religious texts — written during the Bronze Age, when humanity's knowledge gaps encompassed nearly everything in their small world — had access to some deeper, divine insight. Although what they wrote is often naively simplistic and demonstrably wrong in almost every respect, creationists insist that it somehow surpasses anything modern science has produced in terms of accuracy and reliability.

One of the few remaining gaps where creationists attempt to place their god — the abiogenesis gap — has just shrunk further. Predictably, this will be ignored, dismissed, or misrepresented by creationist frauds who exploit carefully maintained ignorance to preserve their cult followings and income streams.

This discovery by chemists at University College London and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology reveals how a simple RNA molecule can self-replicate under conditions thought to have existed on prebiotic Earth. Many scientists believe this marks the origin of RNA-based life, which eventually gave rise to the more complex protein- and DNA-based life we see today. A self-replicating RNA molecule, competing for limited resources, will naturally evolve to become more efficient — leaving more copies of itself than rival variants. This is classic Darwinian evolution, operating in a context Darwin himself could scarcely have imagined, knowing nothing of RNA or DNA.

The new research is published open access in Nature Chemistry.