Contradicting creationist claims that death entered the world when Eve's sin somehow transformed a previously perfect world into a fallen one—with the creator god apparently powerless to prevent some other magical entity interfering in its creation—we now have evidence of predation; that is, the killing and eating of one living organism by another. Needless to say, like 99.975% of the history of life on Earth, this all occurred 280 million years ago, during that long pre-“Creation Week” period before the creationist god supposedly decided to create his small flat planet with a dome over it and call it perfect.
The nonsensical idea that there were no deaths before “The Fall” has always defied logic because all living things require a supply of energy in the form of food. Even if that food is plants, plants must die in the process. But then the Bible’s mythologies were written by people who confused “living” with “breathing”, so assumed plants were not living. Presumably, Bible literalists today believe the same biologically nonsensical idea.
The evidence for the earliest large land predators comes from three palaeontologists led by Professor Robert R. Reisz of the Department of Biology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, who have just published their findings, open access, in the journal Scientific Reports. The group studied tooth marks on the fossilised skeletons of three young herbivores from the Permian of Texas. Two hundred and eighty million years ago was relatively soon after the first terrestrial tetrapods had crawled out of the sea and evolved into amphibians and the earliest proto-reptiles. The evolution of predation would have been a major driver of evolution due to the resulting arms races in which predators became more efficient hunters and prey became better at avoiding being eaten—a process that hardly fits the description “intelligent design”.
Predation in the Early Permian.The work of the Toronto palaeontologists is explained in a press release via EurekAlert!
Around 299–252 million years ago, during the Permian Period, life on land was undergoing a major evolutionary expansion. The earliest terrestrial tetrapods—descendants of fish that had colonised land during the Devonian—had diversified into a range of amphibian-like forms and the first true reptiles. These animals inhabited floodplains, river systems, and seasonally dry landscapes that covered large parts of what is now North America and Europe.The fossil sites in Texas studied by the Toronto researchers come from the “Red Beds” formations, deposits of mudstones and sandstones laid down in rivers and floodplains. These sediments have preserved a remarkable record of early land vertebrates.
Among the most common animals in these ecosystems were small herbivorous tetrapods, which fed on early seed plants, ferns, and other vegetation. They in turn became prey for the first large terrestrial predators. Evidence for this predator–prey interaction often comes not from the predators themselves but from bite marks on fossil bones, which can reveal the presence of carnivores even when their skeletons are rare.
The fossils examined in the new study show distinct tooth marks on the skeletons of young herbivorous animals, demonstrating that large predators were already hunting vertebrates on land by about 280 million years ago.
Predation is one of the most powerful drivers of evolution. Once predators evolve, prey species are subjected to intense natural selection favouring traits that improve survival—such as speed, armour, camouflage, or defensive behaviour. Predators then evolve counter-adaptations, creating an evolutionary arms race that can drive rapid evolutionary change.
This dynamic process has shaped ecosystems for hundreds of millions of years and is one of the reasons why the history of life is characterised by constant adaptation and diversification rather than the static “perfect creation” imagined in creationist mythology.
New study finds earliest evidence of big land predators hunting plant-eaters
A new study examining fossil evidence shows large land predators were already hunting big plant-eating animals more than 280 million years ago. University of Toronto Mississauga researchers Jordan M. Young, Tea Maho, and Robert Reisz studied bite marks on the skeletons of three young herbivores from the early Permian of Texas revealing feeding patterns from multiple predators and a glimpse into how animals hunted and interacted with each other.
This discovery shows predator-prey hierarchies were formed earlier than previously expected. While these interactions are well known in the ‘Age of Reptiles’ there has been little information available in the Paleozoic Era, when terrestrial vertebrates first evolved into large apex predators and herbivores.
said Professor Rober R. Reisz, co-author
Department of Biology
University of Toronto Mississauga
Mississauga, ON, Canada.
Master’s student Young, lead author of the study published in the journal Scientific Reports, highlights how the size, shape, and texturing of the tooth markings reveals who the potential predators are during this time period.
The puncturing, pitting, scoring and furrowing marks on the skeletons of these three young plant-eating animals are indicative of large predators found in this site and in nearby areas include varanopid (Varanops) and sphenacodontid (Dimetrodon) synapsids.
Jordan M. Young, first author
Department of Biology
University of Toronto Mississauga
Mississauga, ON, Canada.
He added scavengers and small arthropods also joined in on the “Paleozoic feast.” The skeletons showed arthropod borings on areas where cartilaginous bone ends would be on the carcass.
Publication:
What makes this discovery particularly awkward for creationist mythology is that it provides direct evidence that animals were killing and eating other animals hundreds of millions of years before the Biblical timeline allows for any life on Earth at all, let alone before the mythical “Fall of Man”. According to the Genesis narrative, death supposedly entered the world only after Eve’s transgression, yet the fossil record shows ecosystems structured around predation long before humans—or even mammals—had evolved.
The findings also illustrate a central principle of evolutionary biology: predator–prey arms races drive adaptation. Once predation evolved, natural selection would have favoured prey that could avoid capture and predators that could overcome those defences. Over geological time this produced the extraordinary diversity of defensive structures, behaviours, and hunting strategies seen throughout the animal kingdom today.
Far from reflecting the aftermath of a supernatural catastrophe, the fossil evidence shows that predation has been a normal and fundamental part of life’s history for hundreds of millions of years. The pattern revealed by the fossil record is exactly what evolutionary theory predicts—an ancient and dynamic biosphere shaped by ecological interactions and natural selection, not a recently created world corrupted by a mythical act of disobedience.
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