The Wakayama Soryu was about the size of a great white shark and lived more than 72 million years ago during the age of Tyrannosaurus rex and other late-Cretaceous dinosaurs.
Illustration/Takumi
The Wakayama Soryu was about the size of a great white shark and lived more than 72 million years ago during the age of Tyrannosaurus rex and other late-Cretaceous dinosaurs.
Today's scientific refutation of the childish creationists superstition that even some otherwise normal adults still believe in, comes from a paper published in Journal of Systematic Palaeontology by Associate Professor Takuya Konishi of Cincinnati University and an international team of co-authors.
It describes a giant mosasaur the size of a great white shark that hunted in the Pacific seas, 72 million years before creationist dogma says Earth was created. And this is no ordinary mosasaur but displays a number of features that show how a similar environment and lifestyle can lead to parallel evolution, just as the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection predicts.
These mosasaurs have a dorsal fin, just like the only very distantly-related bony fish, sharks (cartilaginous fish), and whales and dolphins. This gives them greater control and mobility in water.
This species of mosasaur was named after the place where it was found (Wakayama Prefecture, Japan) and a mythical creature from Japanese folklore, Soryu (blue dragon).
According to the press release from Cincinnati University:
Present-day annelid worms, like earthworms and this bearded fireworm, have retained a gene to make some types of lipids that most animals have lost.
Credit: Johnandersonphoto via Getty Images
Fig. 6: Summary of smt gene loss in the animals. A simplified animal phylogeny, with the hypothesized presence of smt visualized with blue lines. This tree provides a conservative estimate of the number of smt losses, as it excludes many understudied animal phyla that may also lack the protein.
Early organisms, particularly from before animals with hard body parts like teeth, bones and hard exoskeletons had evolved, leave few traces in the fossil record, but that's not to say they leave no trace whatsoever. What they leave is a chemical signature in the rocks that can last for hundreds of millions, even billions of years.
Sterol lipids, for example are highly stable chemicals that come from cell membranes and can be found in rocks dated to 1.6 billion years old. Since they can only be produced by living organisms, they are compelling evidence for the existence of life when those rocks were laid down.
In the present day, most animals use cholesterol — sterols with 27 carbon atoms (C27) — in their cell membranes. In contrast, fungi typically use C28 sterols, while plants and green algae produce C29 sterols. The C28 and C29 sterols are also known as phytosterols.
C27 sterols have been found in rocks 850 million years old, while C28 and C29 traces appear about 200 million years later. This is thought to reflect the increasing diversity of life at this time and the evolution of the first fungi and green algae.
Early organisms needed to synthesise their own sterols and did so using a gene called smt, but, as more sources of sterols became available by eating fungi and algae, so this gene became redundant and was eventually lost from many evolutionary lines. When this gene disappeared from these lines shows when they began consuming these new sources of sterols.
By constructing a family tree for this gene using data from first annelids then across animal life in general, the UCDavid team were able to map when this gene was lost onto changes in the sterol record in rocks - and they mapped closely to the chemical record in the rocks.
According to a news release from the University of California Davis (UCDavis), where David Gold, associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary works in this new field of molecular paleontology, using the tools of both geology and biology to study the evolution of life:
You know, this is so much like shooting fish in a barrel, that I would feel sorry for creationists. If only they were so smugly certain and lacking in self-doubt, but here's another of those so predictable scientific papers that refute creationism without even trying.
Previously, it was thought that Middle Pleistocene humans in Europe hunted large game such as bovids and rhinoceros for food, but this may be because the bones of large animals are better preserved than the bones of smaller mammals.
Now, a new study by a team from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA), also in Mainz, and Leiden University in the Netherlands, shows that Middle Pleistocene humans hunted beavers as a food resource and possibly also for their pelts, 400,000 years before creationists think Earth was created.
The beavers they hunted were the now extinct Eurasian giant beaver, Trogontherium cuvieri, and the still living European beaver, Castor fiber.
The team have published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.
The publication is accompanied by a brief press release from Johannes Gutenberg University:
About a million years ago hominin children were wading in the Awash River, near what is now Melka Kunture, Ethiopia. Shortly afterwards there was an eruption of a nearby volcano and their tracks in the river mud got covered in volcanic ask, or tuff, preserving a record of their passing, along with the tracks of several other species and freshwater molluscs. These are now the oldest child footprints known.
Like 99.97% of history this was taking place before creationists believe the universe was magicked out of nothing by a magic man made of nothing who said some magic words in a language that no-one spoke because it hadn't made anyone yet, and using as a basis of time, the rotation period of a planet that didn't exist. Creationists, even some adult ones, believe this magic man had earlier self-assembled out of nothing using a design it made before it existed.
Creationists believe this explains reality better than anything science can discover.
These weren't the children of modern humans but the children of an earlier species that walked upright on legs and feet that were almost indistinguishable from those of modern humans, possible Homo erectus, Home ergaster or maybe even Homo heidelbergensis, but until we have more than just footprints there is no way to be sure. All we know is that they were not Homo sapiens, which wasn't around a million years ago.
The volcanic ash buried more than just the footprints; it buried the remains of butchered animals showing the cutmarks of the obsidian tools used to butcher them, the obsidian tools and the flakes made from knapping them to shape the blades.
How these footprints were discovered by a team led by archaeologists from Sapienza University, Rome, is explained in a press release:
Children footprints.
Animal tracks
Mollusc traces
Melka Kunture, 50 km south of Addis Ababa, is an important complex of Pleistocene archaeological sites located along the upper basin of the Awash River, on the Ethiopian plateau. In this area, archaeological research began more than 50 years ago, and since 2011 has been carried out by the Italian mission led by Margherita Mussi and her team of the Department of Ancient World Studies of Sapienza University of Rome.
Dozens of archaeological levels have been identified over the years, found mainly along the gullies cut by the streams of the area. In 2018, in one of these incisions called the Gombore Gully, the Sapienza team had already found numerous human footprints of adults and children, tools made from volcanic stones (such as obsidian and basalt) and remains of hippos butchered by the hominins. These discoveries, sealed by a 700,000-year-old tuff, helped the researchers to reconstruct a scenario in which children assisted adults engaged in knapping stone and butchering large animals, proving that in the prehistoric environment the acquisition of skills and techniques useful for survival began at an early age.
Today, a new study on the archaeological layers of the Gombore Gully, dating back to the end of the Early Pleistocene, offers another rare image of childhood in the most ancient periods of prehistory. The research, coordinated by Flavio Altamura and Margherita Mussi of Sapienza University in collaboration with researchers from the University of Cagliari, Bournemouth University (UK) and the Urweltmuseum GEOSKOP (Germany), focused on another site of the gully, even more ancient, called Gombore II Open Air Museum where new footprints of children were found on the edge of what was a prehistoric river. The results, which shed further light on the behaviours and habits of our distant ancestors, have been published in the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews.
The excavations have documented a sequence of archaeological layers about 3 meters thick, which, according to the researchers, probably formed along a river and in marshy environments, cyclically invested by ashes erupted from volcanoes several tens of kilometers away. The volcanic tuffs allowed to date the layers between 1.2 million and 850,000 years ago using the method called Argon/Argon.
The excavations notably brought to light 18 fossil surfaces with footprints left by hippos, hyenas, some herbivores similar to today's wildebeests, gazelles and birds. Three of the levels have also revealed human footprints, almost all attributable to children and adolescents of the prehistoric human species Homo erectus/ergaster or possibly already to an archaic Homo heidelbergensis.
"These footprints - says Margherita Mussi, director of the Archaeological Mission to Melka Kunture - are among the oldest in the world and the earliest ever discovered made by children. Further proof of human presence near the river are the numerous stone tools: some obsidian flakes were probably trampled by hippos, which made them sink into the mud at the bottom of their footprints, indicating the coexistence of man and these dangerous animals."
In many levels, there are also prints formed by curvilinear trails with small almond-shaped hollows, the traces left by bivalve freshwater mussels, which live anchored at the bottom of rivers and lakes with clean and well-oxygenated running waters. This is an excellent indicator to reconstruct the paleo-environment and also allows to indirectly confirm the existence of fish, on which the molluscs depend during their reproductive cycle.
The children's footprints close to the prints of herbivores and molluscs show that the little hominins entered shallow and clean waters, as did the other animals. "Probably, even a million years ago" - says Flavio Altamura, who carried out the excavations - "the Pleistocene children entered the water for reasons very similar to those of modern children: to drink, to wash themselves or to try to catch fish and molluscs with their bare hands. Or more simply to play."
"This research, – Mussi concludes – carried out thanks to funding by Sapienza University and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, provides a snapshot of Pleistocene childhood and confirms that the children's attraction to watery environments and ponds - puddles included! – is deeply rooted in human behaviour. This is, in a way, the first scientific evidence of "bathing" children."
The age of the volcanic tuff was determined by the argon/argon method:
What is the Argon/Argon method for dating volcanic tuff and what are possible sources of error?
The Argon-Argon (Ar-Ar) dating method is a radiometric dating technique used to determine the age of rocks, especially volcanic rocks and minerals. It is a refinement of the more widely known potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating method. Both methods are based on the radioactive decay of potassium-40 (40K) to argon-40 (40Ar) in minerals.
Here's a brief overview of the Ar-Ar dating method and some potential sources of error:
Principle of the Method:
The Ar-Ar dating method involves irradiating a sample of the mineral or rock with neutrons in a nuclear reactor.
This irradiation converts a portion of the stable isotope potassium-39 (39K) into 39Ar.
After irradiation, the sample is heated, releasing argon isotopes, including 40Ar, from the mineral lattice.
The released argon is then measured using a mass spectrometer to determine the ratio of 40Ar to 39Ar, which allows the calculation of the age of the sample.
Calculation of Age:
The age is calculated using the equation derived from the principles of radioactive decay and isochron plots.
The presence of 39Ar in the sample is crucial for the precision of the method, as it helps correct for any argon loss during the heating process.
Sources of Error:
Argon Loss: If the rock or mineral has experienced partial argon loss due to metamorphism or other processes, the calculated age may be too young.
Excess Argon: Presence of excess argon, which was not produced by in situ decay, can lead to an overestimation of the age.
Inherited Argon: Some minerals may contain argon inherited from their formation, which can affect age calculations.
K-Ar System Resetting: If the rock has undergone significant thermal events, the K-Ar system may have been reset, leading to inaccurate age determinations.
Neutron Fluence: The accuracy of the method depends on the precise knowledge of the neutron fluence during irradiation.
Advantages:
Ar-Ar dating can provide more accurate and precise age determinations compared to the conventional K-Ar method.
It is particularly useful for dating volcanic rocks and minerals with complex thermal histories.
Applications:
Ar-Ar dating is widely used in geochronology, especially for dating volcanic tuffs, lavas, and other igneous rocks.
It's important to note that careful sample selection and analysis are critical to obtaining reliable results. Researchers must consider potential sources of contamination and thoroughly understand the geological history of the samples being dated. Additionally, advances in analytical techniques and calibration methods continue to improve the accuracy of Ar-Ar dating.
The team's findings are published in Quaternary Science Reviews:
Abstract
New ichnological data are available at the prehistoric site of Melka Kunture, Upper Awash Valley in Ethiopia. Excavation of new test pits enabled us to explore the volcanic and fluvio-lacustrine sequence at the Gombore II Open Air Museum archaeological site (ca. 0.85 Ma). This has allowed a detailed reconstruction of the palaeoenvironment and of the fauna present in the time interval between 1.2 and 0.85 Ma. Various-sized mammals, birds, molluscs as well as hominins left tracks throughout the sequence, and document a varied fauna and associated behaviours. Most of the hominin tracks were made by young individuals on the basis of size and are some of the earlier child tracks to be reported. The mollusc traces document the presence and orientation of water streams which, according to the associated vertebrate traces, were visited by hominins, mammals and birds. Most of these traces were found within levels traditionally considered barren for archaeology, yet they all document life activity and are always in situ. This confirms the potential of the ichnological research as an important complementary tool for archaeological investigations.
Graphical Abstract
And so, the casual refutation of the childish fairytale of magic creation by science continues on its inevitable course, showing with every pertinent discovery that the vast majority of Earth's history and the slow evolution of species such as Homo sapiens all happened in that vast expanse of time before 'Creation Week'.
It's shaping up to be another of those terrible weeks for the creation cult, as yet more scientific papers are published that show just how much of Earth's history happened in that vast period of time before 'Creation Week' - the 7 days about 10,000 years ago that creationists believe the Universe, Earth, and all living things were created by magic out of nothing.
The first of these is a mere 40,000 years before 'Creation Week' when hominins - probably Neanderthals - were making marks on a cave wall in La Roche-Cotard in the Loire Valley, France, in what may be some of the earliest examples of human art.
The La Roche-Cotard cave remained sealed by mud and soil sediments from the Loire for over 50,000 years (i.e., about 10,000 years before Homo sapiens appeared in Europe) until rediscovered in 1974 by French archaeologist Jean-Claude Marquet.
The markings have now been dated by an international team from France, Denmark Switzerland, Portugal and Hungary, which included Jean-Claude Marquet of Université de Tours, Tours, France and archaeologist Dorota Wojtczak from University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
They have published their findings open access in PLOS ONE. Its significance is explained in a University of Basle news release by Christian Heuss:
On of the great strengths of science, apart from its rigorous fact-checking and peer-review process, is the way scientists constantly reassesses what they thought they knew and change their mind when the facts demand it.
Unlike creationism, there are no sacred truths or dogmas that must never be questioned in science, and the best way to make a name for yourself in science is to overthrow an established consensus, just as Einstein overthrew Newtonian physics and Darwin overthrew the teleological thinking that had dominated biological science.
Creationism, by contrast, have a form of 'Morton's Demon' that filters all information and only allows information that supports and reinforces creationism to enter their world view.
An example of science reassessing the evidence is this paper by an international group of scientists led by Dr. Martin D. Brazeau of the Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Ascot, UK, and the Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK. It reassesses the evidence for the origin of sharks, which were assumed to have evolved from the cartilaginous fish that preceded the boney fish, and suggests that they may in fact originate in the bony fish and have since reverted to a cartilaginous skeleton.
The problems for the creation cult continue to pile up, no-doubt behind the backs of creationists who habitually look the other way when science produces more evidence refuting their dogmas.
This time, it's yet more evidence of the origins of terrestrial tetrapods, including mammals, as air-breathing fish. The evidence is that the basic structures of the mammalian shoulder joint were already present in a fossil fish, and it closes another of creationism beloved gaps in which they force-fit their ever-shrinking little god.
The shoulder girdle – the configuration of bones and muscles that in humans support the movement of the arms – was a classic example of an evolutionary ‘novelty’. This is where a new anatomical feature appears without any obvious precursors; where there is no smoking gun of which feature clearly led to another.
The new study uses fossils, developmental biology, and comparative anatomy, to investigate the 'mystery' and in so doing suggests a new approach to investigating the evolution of major anatomical structures, like the shoulder girdle.
The fossil studied was of the late Devonian placoderm fish, Kolymaspis sibirica:
Distribution of anthropogenic manufacturing traces, use-wear and residues on the Leang Bulu’ Sipong 1 (a) and Leang Panninge (b) tiger shark-tooth artefacts.
Figure 5. Use-related features of the Leang Panninge shark tooth: a) ground facet (indicated by red arrowhead) and striations on the lingual surface; b) grooves between the perforation and tooth shoulder from ligatures; c) plant fibre associated with hafting; d) cut notches along the base and grooves from ligatures (both indicated by red arrowheads) on the labial surface. White scale bars = 1mm (image c by B. Stephenson; all other images by M. Langley).
It's a fundamental requirement of the creation cult to believe that about 4000 years ago, their putative perfect creator god had a human-like fit of temper because its intelligently [sic] designed creation wasn't working as intended and inflicted a genocidal flood on the planet, killing everything apart from a few survivors who lived in a floating box for a year. They then disembarked onto a sterile planet somewhere in the Middle-east and somehow survived to create the biodiversity we see today.
From there, apparently, the surviving humans repopulated Earth, invented new cultures and languages as they did so, forgetting all about the flood and the god who inflicted it on their recent ancestors, and invented new gods and religions, with only one small tribe remembering it all in word-perfect detail.
Apart from the ludicrously narrow genetic bottleneck this would have cause, meaning almost all the surviving species would be extinct within a few generations, there is the little problem of so much archaeology being around that would not have survived such a flood, and evidence of cultures that existed before, during and after it apparently without noticing it at all.
An example is the 7,000-year-old fighting knife made from shark teeth discovered on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, which should not have been there if the Bronze Age tales made up by people who thought Earth was small and flat with a dome over it and ran on magic, that creationists think were true history and real science, actually were true history and real science.
This discovery by a team of archaeologists from Australian and Indonesian universities led by Associate Professor of Archaeology, Michelle Langley of Griffith University, is the subject of an open access paper published recently in Antiquity. Five of the authors have also written about this discovery in The Conversation. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:
Bringing a shark to a knife fight: 7,000-year-old shark-tooth knives discovered in Indonesia
Excavations on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have uncovered two unique and deadly artefacts dating back some 7,000 years – tiger shark teeth that were used as blades.
These finds, reported in the journal Antiquity, are some of the earliest archaeological evidence globally for the use of shark teeth in composite weapons – weapons made with multiple parts. Until now, the oldest such shark-tooth blades found were less than 5,000 years old.
Modified tiger shark teeth found in 7,000-year-old layers of Leang Panninge (top) and Leang Bulu’ Sipong 1 (bottom) on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Credit: M.C. Langley
Our international team used a combination of scientific analysis, experimental reproduction and observations of recent human communities to determine that the two modified shark teeth had once been attached to handles as blades. They were most likely used in ritual or warfare.
7,000-year-old teeth
The two shark teeth were recovered during excavations as part of a joint Indonesian-Australian archaeological research program. Both specimens were found in archaeological contexts attributed to the Toalean culture – an enigmatic foraging society that lived in southwestern Sulawesi from around 8,000 years ago until an unknown period in the recent past.
The shark teeth are of a similar size and came from tiger sharks (Galeocerda cuvier) that were approximately two metres long. Both teeth are perforated.
A complete tooth, found at the cave site of Leang Panninge, has two holes drilled through the root. The other – found at a cave called Leang Bulu’ Sipong 1 – has one hole, though is broken and likely originally also had two holes.
Microscopic examination of the teeth found they had once been tightly fixed to a handle using plant-based threads and a glue-like substance. The adhesive used was a combination of mineral, plant and animal materials.
The same method of attachment is seen on modern shark-tooth blades used by cultures throughout the Pacific.
Scratches and a ground section on the tip of the Leang Panninge shark tooth indicate its use by people 7,000 years ago.
Credit: M.C. Langley
Examination of the edges of each tooth found they had been used to pierce, cut and scrape flesh and bone. However, far more damage was present than a shark would naturally accrue during feeding.
While these residues superficially suggest Toalean people were using shark-tooth knives as everyday cutting implements, ethnographic (observations of recent communities), archaeological and experimental data suggest otherwise.
Grooves and traces of red resin along the base of the Leang Panninge tooth show how the teeth were attached using threads.
Credit: M.C. Langley
Why use shark teeth?
Not surprisingly, our experiments found tiger shark-tooth knives were equally effective in creating long, deep gashes in the skin when used to strike (as in fighting) as when butchering a leg of fresh pork.
Indeed, the only negative aspect is that the teeth blunt relatively quickly – too quickly to make their use as an everyday knife practical.
This fact, as well as the fact shark teeth can inflict deep lacerations, probably explains why shark-tooth blades were restricted to weapons for conflict and ritual activities in the present and recent past.
Numerous societies across the globe have integrated shark teeth into their material culture. In particular, peoples living on coastlines (and actively fishing for sharks) are more likely to incorporate greater numbers of teeth into a wider range of tools.
Shark teeth are widely used to edge deadly combat weapons or powerful ritual blades in the Pacific. Left: a knife from Kiribati; centre and right: weapons from Hawai'i.
Observations of present-day communities indicate that, when not used to adorn the human body, shark teeth were almost universally used to create blades for conflict or ritual – including ritualised combat.
For example, a fighting knife found throughout north Queensland has a single long blade made from approximately 15 shark teeth placed one after the other down a hardwood shaft shaped like an oval, and is used to strike the flank or buttocks of an adversary.
Weapons, including lances, knives and clubs armed with shark teeth are known from mainland New Guinea and Micronesia, while lances form part of the mourning costume in Tahiti.
Farther east, the peoples of Kiribati are renowned for their shark-tooth daggers, swords, spears and lances, which are recorded as having been used in highly ritualised and often fatal conflicts.
Shark teeth found in Maya and Mexican archaeological contexts are widely thought to have been used for ritualised bloodletting, and shark teeth are known to have been used as tattooing blades in Tonga, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Kiribati.
In Hawai‘i, so-called “shark-tooth cutters” were used as concealed weapons and for “cutting up dead chiefs and cleaning their bones preparatory to the customary burials”.
A shark-tooth knife from Aua Island, Papua New Guinea. Red arrows highlight wear and damage caused by fighting.
Credit: M. Langley and The University of Queensland Anthropology Museum
Other shark tooth archaeological finds
Almost all shark-tooth artefacts recovered globally have been identified as adornments, or interpreted as such.
Indeed, modified shark teeth have been recovered from older contexts. A solitary tiger shark tooth with a single perforation from Buang Merabak (New Ireland, Papua New Guinea) is dated to around 39,500–28,000 years ago. Eleven teeth with single perforations from Kilu (Buka Island, Papua New Guinea) are dated to around 9,000–5,000 years ago. And an unspecified number of teeth from Garivaldino (Brazil) is dated to around 9,400–7,200 years ago.
However, in each of these cases the teeth were likely personal ornaments, not weapons.
Our newly described Indonesian shark tooth artefacts, with their combination of modifications and microscopic traces, instead indicate they were not only attached to knives, but very likely linked to ritual or conflict.
Published by The Conversation. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)
The authors give more technical details in their paper in Antiquity:
Abstract
Although first identified 120 years ago, knowledge of the Toalean technoculture of Middle Holocene Sulawesi, Indonesia, remains limited. Previous research has emphasised the exploitation of largely terrestrial resources by hunter-gatherers on the island. The recent recovery of two modified tiger shark teeth from the Maros-Pangkep karsts of South Sulawesi, however, offers new insights. The authors combine use-wear and residue analyses with ethnographic and experimental data to indicate the use of these artefacts as hafted blades within conflict and ritual contexts, revealing hitherto undocumented technological and social practices among Toalean hunter-gatherers. The results suggest these artefacts constitute some of the earliest archaeological evidence for the use of shark teeth in composite weapons.
Figure 1. Map with (inset) the location of Leang Panninge and Leang Bulu’ Sipong 1
image by K. Newman.
Figure 2. Archaeological contexts of the perforated shark teeth: a) Leang Panninge cave; b) cave entrance at Leang Bulu’ Sipong 1, at the foot of the isolated limestone karst tower; c) stratigraphic profile, Leang Panninge (2019); d–e) stratigraphic profiles, Leang Bulu’ Sipong 1 (2018); f) Maros point excavated from Leang Bulu’ Sipong 1 (Square T9S1) above the Toalean-associated layer that yielded the shark tooth (scale bar is 10mm)
Photographs and image compilation by Y. Perston.
Figure 8. Comparison of the Toalean shark-tooth artefacts with examples of Maros points found at Leang Panninge (bottom left) and Leang Pajae (top and bottom right)
Photographs of Maros points by Y. Perston; figure by M. Langley.
Other than lying about science or blatantly misrepresenting it, I've yet to see a coherent explanation for why so much of Earth's history pre-dates the creation cult's 'Creation Week'.
We know, for instance that the scientists are using the correct decay rates when they use radiometric dating to determine the age of objects like these shark teeth because creationists assure us that if the basic parameters of the Universe were even slightly different, life would be impossible, yet decay rates depend on two of the four fundamental forces - the weak and strong nuclear forces, so, if they were very different 10,000 years ago by an amount that would make 10,000 years look like 3.8 billion, or 14 billion, or whatever is needed to explain the discrepancy between belief and observable reality, then life would have been impossible when it was supposedly created because quite simply, atoms larger than hydrogen would not have existed because their nuclei would have been unstable.
Creationism must be about the only cult that requires its followers to believe that the vast majority of history occurred when there was no place and no time for it to occur in.
But then these are people who can be made to believe that all life on Earth is descended from a tiny number of ancestors that lived in an unventilated box and got out of it onto a sterile planet on which every living substance had been destroyed (Genesis 7:23), including, presumably, the plants the herbivores needed, the insects the insectivores needed and where most of them would have promptly been exterminated by the carnivores.
In the third of this week's scientific papers that casually refute creationism by reporting on 'pre-creation' events of which Earth's history is 99.97% composed, we learn that Neanderthals in Europe were hunting cave lions for food and their pelts, 50,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic Age - which came to an end when, bizarrely, creationists believe the Universe was created.
There may well be more papers yet to appear, in what is turning out to be a week of which most creationists will want to remain ignorant, if they haven't already worked out a strategy for coping with the inevitable cognitive dissonance by dismissing the unwanted evidence. To creationists, it must feel at times that science is against them. It is, of course, but that's a problem for creationists, not science. It’s not compulsory to adopt counter-factual beliefs.
The scientific paper is published open access in Scientific Reports and is accompanied by a news release from Reading University. The discovery was made by lead author, PHD student, Gabriele Russo, of Universität Tübingen in Germany, together with a team of colleagues which included archaeologist Dr Annemieke Milks, of the University of Reading.
The skeleton of the cave lion dates to around 50,000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic, at a time when anatomically-modern Homo sapiens were just beginning to appear in Eurasia, and Neanderthals had western Eurasia pretty much to themselves.
The incidental refutation of basic creationist superstitions continues unabated this week.
Following the news that animal and human tracks carved in rocks in what is now Namibia in Southwest Africa, are twice as old as the Universe, according to creationists, comes news that scientists have reconstructed the head and face of an archaic hominin, Homo heidelbergensis, who lived between 700,000 and 200,000 years ago in Eurasia, and news that Neanderthals were hunting cave lions in Europe, 48,000 years ago (to be the subject of my next blog post).
But, given that 99.99% of the known history of the Universe occurred before it was created by magic out of nothing by a magic man made of nothing that popped up from nowhere, if we believe creationists, this is not in the least surprising. Almost all geology and palaeontology, and much of archaeology is concerned with this 'pre-creation' history.
The team who forensically reconstructed the face and head was led by Christina Papageorgopoulou of the Laboratory of Physical Anthropology, Department of History and Ethnology, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece, and included researchers from the Institute for Bio-Economy and Agri-Technology, Centre for Research & Technology Hellas, Greece and the Ephorate of Palaeoanthropology-Speleology, Ministry of Culture, Greece.
First a little about H. heidelbergensis and how the Petralona Skull, used in the reconstruction, was dated to between 200,000 and 700,000 years old:
Hunter-gatherer people were carving human and other animal tracks in rocks in Namibia during the Later Stone Age (LSA) that began in Southern Africa about 20,000 years ago.
Unlike the Paluxy hoax in America, when crudely forged human tracks were carved by local people on top of dinosaur tracks, to provide souvenirs for gullible tourists during the Great Depression, these carvings are believed to have had cultural significance for the people who carved them.
They depict detailed human footprints interspersed with tracks of hooved animals which are so accurate that experts are able to determine detailed information on the species, age, sex, limbs, side of the body, trackway and relative direction of the tracks.
The carvings are on six rockfaces in the Doro !nawas mountains in Namibia.
The three species of the family Thylacosmilidae on the South American continent: Anachlysictis gracilis (left, above), Thylacosmilus atrox (right) and Patagosmilus goini (left, below)
Credit: Jorge Blanco.
Anachlysictis gracilis stalking its prey in the La Venta area of Colombia, 13 million years ago. (artists impression)
Scientists have unearthed the fossilised remains of a predatory sabre-toothed marsupial that lived in what is now Columbia in northwestern South America, 13 million years ago, during the Cenozoic, the period which followed the extinction of the dinosaurs, which cleared the way for a rapid diversification of mammals.
The fossil is of Anachlysictis gracilis, one of the family of predatory marsupial known as the Thylacosmilidae.
It's probably unkind to laugh at creationists, who probably genuinely don't know any better and are too dim to learn any science. But they leave us little choice when they wave aside all the evidence of a 14 billion-year-old Universe and a 3.8 billion-year-old Earth as 'wrong' or 'scientists lying' or 'planted by Satan to mislead us', or even 'faked by God the liar almighty as a test of faith', in favour of an evidence free-superstition they were taught by their parents and which they are too terrified to let go off in case they get a zap from an invisible, magic mind-reading sky thug, stories about which they were terrorized by as children, or worst of all, they don't feel important enough?
Their infantile superstition is, of course, that Earth is 8-10,000 years old and was created by magic pretty much as we find it today, just because a bunch of Bronze Age pastoralists thought so.
And then along comes an international team of those pesky scientists who only go and produce evidence that a tree was alive on Earth 4,300 years before the Universe supposedly existed and recorded in its annual tree rings a massive solar storm from a sun that supposedly hadn't yet been magicked into existence, and which is allegedly hanging like a lamp from a dome over Earth so we can tell it's not night! (Remember! It's unkind to laugh! LOL!)
10,000 years ago, according to the Bronze Age Canaanite creation myths in the Bible, a magic man in the sky created humans without ancestors, and either before or afterwards, according to the two different versions, he created all the animals too. And animals and humans went forth and multiplied to populate Earth.
A few thousand years later, in a fit of pique, because his 'perfect' design hadn't turned out the way he intended, he murdered almost everything in a genocidal flood and Earth had to be repopulated from just eight humans and either two or six of the other animal species (again depending on the version) after the humans had sacrificed one of every species as a thank you for the genocide, Earth was again repopulated from these impossibly narrow genetic bottlenecks.
Creationists also insist that all sedimentary rocks were deposited in their mythical genocidal flood.
Some people still believe that myth to be accurate history, despite all the evidence against it and the fact that there is no evidence for it, save only for the origin myths in a book which, as science discovers more, is becoming increasingly 'allegorical/metaphorical' in order to avoid admitting it's just plain wrong.
One piece of evidence was revealed in 2021, by researchers from Bournemouth University, UK, the US National Park Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Cornell University, USA and the University of Arizona, USA., which showed that humans were leaving footprints in mud at the edge of a lake in what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico, North America, 10-13,000 years before Earth was created according to the ancient origin myths.
Fig. 1. Map showing archaeological, paleoclimatological, and paleoenvironmental records from the Levant and Arabia mentioned in the text.
(A) The arrows indicate the suggested routes of human dispersals out of Africa [see (9, 17)]. The blue squares show sites with human fossils and footprints in northern Arabia, including those at Al Wusta paleolake (4) and Alathar paleolake (16), respectively. The green circles refer to paleolake/wetland sediments in the western desert of Egypt and Arabia, namely: Bir Tirfawi and Bir Sahara (52), Khall Amayshan (21), Mundafan (22), Khujaymah (22), and Saiwan (60). The green triangles show speleothem deposition in caves in the eastern desert of Egypt, including Saqia cave (43), Wadi Sannur (45), and in southern Arabia including Hoti cave in Oman and Mukkala cave in Yemen (23, 59). The main dated archaeological site in southeastern Arabia is Jebel Faya in the UAE (blue rhombus) (24, 58).
(B) Digital elevation model map of the Levant showing the location of the study areas (yellow stars) along the Jordan Rift Valley (Wadi Gharandal and Gregra) and in the Jordanian Plateau (Wadi Hasa), and the paleolakes and speleothem records in the region. Paleolakes are represented by green circles, namely: Qa'a Azraq (53), Jurf Ed Darawish (26, 32), Lake Elji (54), Qa'a Jafr (27, 55), and Qa'a Mudawwara (28). Speleothem records in the Levant include Soreq cave (green triangle) (44, 46), and the blue squares show sites with human fossils including Skhul and Qafzeh caves (5). The source of digital elevation model data is derived from www.gscloud.cn.
According to creationist cult dogma, humans were created by magic 8-10,000 years ago. 70,000 years before that, modern humans were migrating out of Africa, having evolved there during the previous tens of millions of years, according to palaeontological, archaeological and genetic evidence.
There are several possible routes by which they could have migrated into Eurasia and from there into the rest of the world, and archaeologists have just reported finding just one such route up the East African coast, across the Sinai Peninsula, down the Red Sea coast of Arabia, through what is now Yemen and Oman and from there to Coastal South Asia.
An alternative route could have been to cross the narrow sea crossing at the southern end of the Red Sea, to southern Arabia and then go north to the Jordan Valley or along the southern coast of Arabia to Oman.
This conclusion comes from the fact that at that time, the Jordan Valley was a “well-watered corridor” which funneled hunter-gatherers through The Levant towards western Asia and northern Arabia via Jordan. Wandering tribes of hunter-gatherer have no particular destination in mind and would have migrated through where the environment provided food and water, so a watered corridor would naturally provide such a route.
This discovery was made by researchers from the University of Southampton (UK) and Shantou University (China), together with colleagues in Jordan, Australia and the Czech Republic. It is published open access in Science Advances and is explained in a press release from Southampton University:
