Rosa Rubicondior: Refuting Creationism - How A Crocodile's Bite Could Have Caused Creationism

Photo credit: Tyler Stone, University of Iowa.

Researchers name, describe new crocodile that hunted iconic Lucy’s species - Taylor & Francis Newsroom

How does the discovery of an ancient crocodile in the Afar Region of Ethiopia help us to understand why creationists cling so tenaciously to their patently wrong beliefs? The discovery has just been reported by a team led by Professor Christopher A. Brochu of the University of Iowa, in the Taylor & Francis Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

It is often said that you cannot reason someone out of a belief they were not reasoned into. This is especially true of religions and, as is becoming increasingly clear, of fundamentalist creationism, in which rejecting evidence and reason is often treated as a badge of ideological commitment. So how did creationists, almost without exception, acquire their fundamental beliefs?

One of the causes of religion is memetic inheritance from parents and authority figures during early childhood. As Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Catholic order, is reputed to have said, “Give me the boy until he is seven and I will give you the man.” As can readily be seen from any map showing the global distribution of religions, if a creationist had been born in India, they would probably have been a Hindu; if born in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey or Afghanistan they would most likely have been a Muslim; and in Japan perhaps a Shintoist or Buddhist. The probability is, however, that those encountered online were born into a Christian family, most probably somewhere in the American Bible Belt.

The puzzle is why children accept, without evidence, the opinions of their parents as established fact beyond questioning and not requiring proof.

The answer lies in the psychological process of childhood naïvety, which raises a deeper question: how and why did this trait evolve? What advantage could there be in accepting what parents and authority figures say without independently verifying it?

Discussing this problem some years ago on the now-defunct CompuServe SciMath Forum, I suggested that the explanation lies in a “safety-first” strategy. For example, a child who accepts the warning not to go alone to the waterhole because their parents say it is dangerous will survive with no loss or detriment. A child who decides to check for themselves might instead end up eaten by a crocodile. Over time, natural selection would favour children inclined to trust parental warnings. This mechanism allowed the accumulated knowledge of previous generations to be passed quickly and efficiently to the next generation with little resistance — a classic example of memetic evolution.

However, the same mechanism that helps transmit practical survival knowledge also makes children vulnerable to religious beliefs and other superstitions, just as the need to breathe makes us vulnerable to airborne viruses.

So it is interesting to see that researchers led by Professor Christopher A. Brochu from the University of Iowa’s School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability, working with colleagues from several American universities, the Ethiopian Heritage Authority in Addis Ababa, and the University of Cambridge, UK, have discovered the fossil of an ancient crocodile that lived in the Afar Region of Ethiopia at roughly the same time as “Lucy” (Australopithecus afarensis), who, if not a direct ancestor of the genus Homo, was at least a close relative.

The crocodile, which the team have named Crocodylus lucivenator (“Lucy’s hunter”), would have been the apex predator in the area and would certainly have preyed on any hominins who came too close to its waterhole without exercising great caution.

Crocodiles and Early Hominins in the Afar Region. The Afar Region of Ethiopia is one of the most important places in the world for understanding human evolution. Sediments exposed in the Afar Depression preserve a long record of environments dating back several million years, including the landscapes inhabited by early hominins such as Australopithecus afarensis — the species to which the famous fossil “Lucy” belongs.

During the time Lucy lived, about 3.2 million years ago, the region looked very different from the arid landscape seen today. Geological evidence shows that it contained rivers, floodplains, wetlands, and lakes bordered by woodland and patches of open savannah. These water sources supported a rich ecosystem that included fish, turtles, hippos, antelope, birds, and numerous predators.

Among the most dangerous of these predators were crocodiles. Modern crocodilians are ambush hunters that typically lie motionless in water, lunging at animals that approach the water’s edge to drink. Once they seize prey with their powerful jaws, they often drag it into the water to drown it.

The newly described fossil species Crocodylus lucivenator lived in this environment and may have been one of the apex predators of Lucy’s ecosystem. Fossil evidence from many parts of the world shows that crocodiles have preyed on mammals, birds, and even other predators. Large individuals are easily capable of killing animals the size of early hominins.

This discovery highlights an often overlooked aspect of early human evolution: our ancestors did not evolve in a safe environment. They lived in landscapes filled with predators, where approaching a river or lake to drink carried real risks. Fossils of crocodiles from the same time and region help reconstruct the ecological pressures that shaped early hominin behaviour, including caution around water sources and the need for group vigilance.

Such discoveries remind us that human evolution unfolded within complex ecosystems, where survival depended on navigating a world full of both opportunities and dangers and why the ability of children to quickly acquire the accumulated survival skills of previous generation was essential for their own survival.

More details of the research team’s discovery are given in a Taylor & Francis news release.

Researchers name, describe new crocodile that hunted iconic Lucy’s species
More than 3 million years ago, when our ancient ancestors embodied by the iconic Lucy were roaming the African landscape, they would have feared a big, bad crocodile with a prominent lump on its head, patiently lurking in rivers and lakes to attack them.
That crocodile is a new species, a research team led by the University of Iowa has determined. In a new study, the researchers describe the species and give it a name: Crocodylus lucivenator, or Lucy’s hunter.

The name seems quite appropriate. The ancient reptile lived between 3.4 million to 3 million years ago, overlapping the time period and the region in Ethiopia with Lucy and her hominin species, Australopithecus afarensis. Lucy’s skeleton, discovered in 1974, is noteworthy because it was the oldest and most complete early human ancestor or relative ever found. It also provided further evidence that, in human evolution, walking on two legs, or bipedalism, preceded increased brain size.

The newly named crocodile ranged from 12 to 15 feet in length and adults weighed between 600 and 1,300 pounds. It was a dominant creature and the only crocodile on the landscape — an expanse of shrubland and wetlands pocked with rivers lined with trees. It was an ambush predator, the researchers say, silently submerged in the water, poised to spring on those who came around for a drink.

It was the largest predator in that ecosystem, more so than lions and hyenas, and the biggest threat to our ancestors who lived there during that time. It’s a near certainty this crocodile would have hunted Lucy’s species. Whether a particular crocodile tried to grab Lucy, we’ll never know, but it would have seen Lucy’s kind and thought, ‘Dinner.’

Professor Christopher A. Brochu, corresponding author
School of Earth, Environment, and Sustainability
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA, USA.

Brochu has been studying ancient crocodiles for the past 35 years. He first looked at the Crocodylus lucivenator specimens when he visited a museum in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa in 2016.

I was just blown away because it had this really weird combination of character states.

Professor Christopher A. Brochu.
Notable among the crocodile’s peculiar physical traits was the large hump in the middle of its snout, similar to what is found on the American crocodile but not seen with the Nile crocodile in Africa. The researchers think the hump was used by the male crocodiles to attract a mate.

You see this in some modern crocodiles. The male will lower his head down a little bit to a female to show it off.

Professor Christopher A. Brochu.

Lucy’s hunter also had a snout that extended further from its nostrils than other crocodiles at that time, and that more closely resembles the lengthened snout in modern crocodiles, the researchers report.

The researchers examined 121 cataloged remains — primarily skulls, teeth, and parts of jaws — representing dozens of individuals. The fossils were excavated from the Hadar site in the Afar region of Ethiopia. The region for decades has produced bountiful finds linking humanity’s ancestral past, including Lucy and her ilk, and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1980.

While most fossils were fragments requiring the researchers to extrapolate the full skeleton, one specimen had several partially healed injuries on its jaw that suggested it had tussled with one of its peers, according to Stephanie Drumheller, teaching associate professor at the University of Tennessee who earned a doctorate at Iowa.

The fossil record preserves similar injuries in extinct groups as well, so this kind of face-biting behavior can be found throughout the crocodile family tree. We can’t know which combatant came out on top of that fight, but the healing tells us that, winner or loser, this animal survived the encounter.

Associate Professor Stephanie K. Drumhelle, co-author
Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN, USA.

While there were at least three other crocodile species just south in the region, known as the Eastern Rift Valley, the Lucy’s hunter crocodile appeared to have its territory in Hadar to itself.

During the Pliocene, Hadar was composed of a variety of habitats alongside its lake and river systems over space and time, including open and closed woodlands, gallery forests, wet grasslands, and shrublands. Interestingly, this crocodile was one of only a few species that was able to persist throughout.

Associate Professor Christopher Campisano, co-author
Institute of Human Origins
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ, USA.

Publication:
Christopher A. Brochua; Stephanie K. Drumhellerb; Christopher Campisanoc; Getahun Tekled; Tomas Getachewd; Jason J. Heade; Nathan C. Platta and Daniel Leapharta.
Lucy’s peril: A Pliocene crocodile from the Hadar Formation, north-eastern Ethiopia Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, 2026, 24(1); 2614954. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14772019.2026.2614954

We herein describe a new crocodile, Crocodylus lucivenator sp. nov., from palaeoanthropological sites in the Pliocene Hadar Formation in north-eastern Ethiopia. It shares derived features and plesiomorphic states with two Pleistocene species of Crocodylus from East Africa. Conversely, C. lucivenator bears a midline boss on the dorsal surface of the rostrum similar to those of modern Neotropical crocodiles and late Miocene crocodiles from Libya and Kenya. A boss is also present on Pliocene specimens from Kanapoi in Kenya previously referred to C. thorbjarnarsoni. Some C. lucivenator also have a more substantial prenarial rostrum than other Palaeoafrican Crocodylus, though not to the same extent as in extant Crocodylus, and its expression is variable. Phylogenetic analysis supports a close relationship between C. lucivenator, Kanapoi Crocodylus, C. anthropophagus, C. thorbjarnarsoni, and fossils from the Turkana Basin previously misreferred to C. checchiai. A close relationship with Neoafrican Crocodylus is rejected, reinforcing a comparatively recent arrival for Neoafrican Crocodylus in East Africa. Crocodylus lucivenator and the Kanapoi form are very similar, but an exclusive relationship is not unambiguously supported in our analysis. The phylogenetic placement of the Palaeoafrican clade depends on how one regards the prenarial rostrum, and positions outside crown Crocodylus or close to the Neotropical clade can be equally optimal. One mandible preserves pathological structures consistent with injuries sustained during intraspecific combat. Crocodylus lucivenator appears to have been the only crocodylian in the Hadar Formation, while coeval deposits in the Turkana Basin preserve as many as four species. The reason for this disparity is unclear.

https://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:27E5A2F8-E240-44F3-B4DF-8CF35EA5F6B6

Christopher A. Brochua; Stephanie K. Drumhellerb; Christopher Campisanoc; Getahun Tekled; Tomas Getachewd; Jason J. Heade; Nathan C. Platta and Daniel Leapharta.
Lucy’s peril: A Pliocene crocodile from the Hadar Formation, north-eastern Ethiopia Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, 2026, 24(1); 2614954. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14772019.2026.2614954

Fossils such as Crocodylus lucivenator remind us that the world in which our ancestors evolved was not a safe or forgiving place. It was a landscape where a moment’s carelessness at a waterhole could mean death. In such environments, the ability of young individuals to learn quickly from the experience and warnings of older members of the group would have been a powerful survival advantage. Natural selection would therefore favour children inclined to trust what their parents and elders told them, especially about dangers they might not yet understand for themselves.

That instinctive trust in authority is one of the mechanisms by which human culture — the accumulated knowledge of previous generations — can be transmitted efficiently. But like many evolutionary adaptations, it comes with a cost. The same tendency that allows practical survival knowledge to be passed down also allows unfounded beliefs, myths and superstitions to spread from generation to generation with equal ease.

Creationism is a striking example of this process in action. It persists not because it is supported by evidence, but because it is culturally inherited and emotionally reinforced within communities where questioning it is discouraged. Scientific discoveries, such as this newly described crocodile from the Afar Region, continue to add detail to our understanding of the deep past and the real evolutionary history of our species — a history written in fossils, geology and genetics, rather than in ancient myths.

Ironically, the very evolutionary processes that helped our ancestors survive in a dangerous world may also explain why some people find it so difficult to abandon beliefs that were instilled in childhood, even when overwhelming evidence shows them to be wrong.

Advertisement

Amazon