Creationism Refuted - The 'American Cheetah' Was Not A Cheetah - Convergent Evolution

An artistic rendering of two Miracinonyx, one in Beringia preying mainly on fish and one in the Lower 48 feeding on pronghorn antelope.

Credit: Julius Csotonyi (CC-BY SA)

The feline Miracinonyx trumani got its nickname, the “American cheetah,” from its slender, long-limbed body, reminiscent of an African cheetah. While the extinct Pleistocene predator did hunt down speedy prey, such as saiga antelope (illustrated), a new study shows some animals ate a diet of mostly fish, suggesting the species was more adaptable than previously thought.

Velizar Simeonovski

The extinct American ‘cheetah’ was not a cheetah after all | EurekAlert!

A cat can look rather like a cheetah without being a cheetah, and a predator with long legs need not spend its life chasing antelopes. That is the lesson from new research into the extinct “American cheetah”, Miracinonyx trumani, whose ancient DNA and dietary chemistry reveal a more complicated animal than its nickname suggests. It is also another example of why evolutionary relationships have to be investigated through evidence, rather than decided by resemblance and fitted into preconceived categories.

The study, led by Molly Cassatt-Johnstone of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and published in Current Biology, analysed ancient DNA from four specimens. It strengthens earlier evidence that Miracinonyx was more closely related to living pumas than to true cheetahs, with the puma and Miracinonyx lineages estimated to have separated approximately 2.6 million years ago. Its cheetah-like anatomy therefore reflects convergent evolution: the independent evolution of similar features in different lineages.

There is an immediate difficulty here for young-Earth creationism. The evolutionary separation of these cats occurred millions of years before the supposed “Creation Week”, while the three Yukon specimens themselves are approximately 31,000 years old. These were animals living, feeding and dying in an established ecosystem long before the entire universe supposedly existed according to a literal reading of Genesis. Their identification also extends the animal’s known distribution far into northern Canada. Science News.

Creationism Refuted - Recovering DNA from Extinct Galápagos Giant Tortoises

The Pinzón saddleback tortoise, a small giant tortoise species native to Pinzón Island in the Galápagos characterized by a saddle-like curve in its shell.

Credit: Evelyn Jensen

Dome-shelled Galápagos giant tortoise, Chelonoidis nigra

By Mfield, Matthew Field, http://www.photography.mattfield.com - Own work,
CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Reading the giant tortoise DNA that time forgot | Yale News

Few places are more closely associated with evolutionary biology than the Galápagos Islands. Their isolation has repeatedly divided colonising populations into smaller groups, allowing mutation, genetic drift and natural selection to produce distinct island lineages. Yet their subsequent history has not always resembled a neatly branching tree. Occasional migration—and, more recently, the deliberate movement of animals by humans—has brought formerly isolated populations back into contact, permitting them to interbreed and exchange genes.

The evolutionary radiation of the Galápagos giant tortoises is a particularly striking example. Thirteen living and four extinct lineages are currently recognised within the Chelonoidis complex, each descended from the same ancestral colonisation but subsequently differentiated by geographical isolation. Unfortunately, centuries of exploitation by sailors and settlers devastated many populations, leaving some lineages represented only by bones preserved in museums.

Those remains retain a record of their evolutionary history, but reading it is difficult. DNA begins to fragment and chemically deteriorate after death, while contamination from microorganisms and people can overwhelm the surviving genetic material. In some of the museum specimens examined in a new study, researchers could read less than one per cent of the original genome—far too little for many conventional methods of genomic comparison.

However, a team led by researchers at Yale University has now developed a computational approach capable of extracting reliable evolutionary information from such exceptionally incomplete genomes. As described in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the researchers analysed dried bones from five historical specimens and placed their surviving DNA fragments upon a reference phylogeny constructed from high-quality genomes belonging to living and other historical tortoises.

Importantly, the researchers did not manufacture plausible sequences to fill the gaps. Their analytical pipeline was designed to recover the phylogenetic and population-genetic signal present in ultra-low-coverage genomes without imputing the missing genotypes. Even at sequencing depths as low as 0.008 times the genome, the surviving fragments contained enough mutually consistent information to reveal where the specimens belonged.

The results confirmed that the bones represented two evolutionarily distinct, now-extinct lineages: the former tortoises of Santa Fe and an extinct San Cristóbal lineage different from the population still living on that island. These were not merely unusual individuals belonging to surviving populations but genetically distinguishable branches of the wider Galápagos tortoise radiation.

Refuting Creationism - How Flightless Beetles Evolved On Japanese Islands

Carabus blaptoides

By Adan - Photo taken by Adan at Sendai Miyagi, Japan., CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Reach in or crush the shell? A flightless snail-hunting beetle evolved different body shapes even without a sea barrier | EurekAlert!

Montage created by AI (ChatGPT 5.6 Sol)

Phylogenetic relationships and geographic distribution of Carabus blaptoides

Junji Konuma

Islands have repeatedly provided some of the clearest demonstrations of evolution in action. The most famous example is, of course, Darwin’s finches, whose differently shaped beaks reflect adaptation to different foods in the Galápagos. More recently, as I described in an earlier article about “Darwin’s daisies”, the Galápagos plant genus Scalesia has diversified from a common ancestor into forms with different growth habits and leaf shapes suited to different island environments.

Now scientists studying the Japanese Archipelago have uncovered another striking example of the same fundamental evolutionary process—this time involving flightless beetles and the land snails they eat.

In a paper published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, Junji Konuma of Toho University, Nobuaki Nagata of Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science, and Teiji Sota of Kyoto University describe the evolutionary diversification of the snail-eating ground beetle Carabus blaptoides. The species is distributed across the Japanese islands and has diversified into eight recognised subspecies.

Because the beetles’ hindwings are reduced, they cannot fly and must disperse on foot. Seas therefore isolate populations on different islands, while sheer distance, topography and environmental variation can restrict movement even between populations on the same large island. This reduced gene flow allows populations to respond independently to local ecological conditions—the familiar starting point for adaptive divergence and, eventually, speciation.

The principal selective pressure appears to be sitting on the beetles’ dinner plate—or, more accurately, retreating into its shell. Different regions of Japan contain different assemblages and sizes of land snails, particularly species of Euhadra and Satsuma. Beetles living where large snails predominate tend to have long, narrow heads and thoraxes. This slender form allows a beetle to push its head deeply into a large shell and reach the animal inside.

Refuting Creationism - Observed Evolution In A South African Leopard Population

The elusive Cape leopard.

Jana Ohrner/iNaturalist, CC BY-NC

Leopards adapted to South Africa’s Cape so successfully that they’re genetically unique – study

This paper will have creationists hurriedly trying to redefine evolution so that it no longer means what biologists mean by it — change in allele frequencies in a population over time — but instead becomes some childish parody of the idea, carefully constructed to exclude the scientific definition and so safely miss the point. The paper, published last January (2026) in Heredity, shows that a small, isolated population of leopards (Panthera pardus) in South Africa’s Cape Floristic Region is a striking example of incipient allopatric divergence, and possibly early speciation, in progress. The population, estimated at fewer than 1,000 individuals, has developed a distinctive genome and includes small leopards, some with only about half the body mass of leopards elsewhere in Africa.

In what will also disappoint those creationists who are still eagerly awaiting the abandonment of “Darwinism” by mainstream biologists and its replacement by magic-based creationism, the authors — an international group of leopard conservationists and evolutionary biologists — interpret their findings wholly within the framework of evolutionary theory. By comparing whole-genome data from 43 leopards, including 10 from the Western Cape province (WCP), the team found that the WCP leopards diverged from those of northern South Africa about 20,000–24,000 years ago — in other words, many thousands of years before creationists’ mythical “Creation Week”. They found no obvious evidence that genetic drift alone was responsible for this divergence, and concluded instead that it is more likely to reflect the population’s demographic history, long-term isolation and adaptation to the Cape’s distinctive environmental conditions, including low prey availability.

Their conclusion is that the leopards of the Western Cape can be regarded as an evolutionarily significant unit (ESU): a genetically distinctive population representing a unique component of the species’ evolutionary history and therefore one that should be managed and conserved as such.

One of the team, and first author of the paper, Assistant Professor Laura Tensen of the University of Greifswald, has written an article in The Conversation describing the research and its findings. Her article is reproduced here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Refuting Creationism - New Deep Ocean Species Discovered

Collage of the 24 new Amphipod species identified in Clarion-Clipperton Zone

Credit: National Oceanography Centre, Southampton

(A) Generalized body plan of a gammaridean amphipod, (B) Caprella equilibra, (C) family Corophiidae, and (D) Gammarus tigrinus.

Ritter, Carmen J.; Bourne, David G. (2024)[2]

Biodiversity Boost: 24 new deep-sea species discovered in major Pacific research | EurekAlert!

Among the Bible’s more obviously false claims is the one found in the second creation account, where God first creates Adam, then creates all the animals as “help meets” [sic] for him. In the earlier account, all the animals are created before Adam and Eve. In the revised version, however, none of the animals proves suitable for Adam, so God then creates Eve to be his “help meet”.

In virtually every depiction of Adam and Eve, however, both are shown with navels, implying placental reproduction rather than magical creation. Adam was also supposedly created with genitalia, although it is unclear what purpose these served before God created Eve, after his first attempt to provide Adam with companions had failed through, presumably, a lack of foresight.

Leaving aside the implausibility of that story, there is another major problem that creationists never address: if God created all the animals for the benefit of Adam and his descendants, over whom they were supposedly given dominion, why were so many of them hidden away in inaccessible places such as the deep ocean floor, where we are only now becoming aware of them?

For example, a team of 16 experts led by Dr Anna Jażdżewska of the University of Lodz (UL) and Tammy Horton of the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) have just announced the identification of 24 new species of amphipods found in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a 6 million square kilometre region of the Pacific Ocean between Hawai'i and Mexico.

These new species comprise ten new families of predators and scavengers, including a new family (Mirabestiidae), a new superfamily (Mirabestioidea), and two new genera of predators and scavengers, Mirabestia and Pseudolepechinella.

These findings form part of the International Seabed Authority’s Sustainable Seabed Knowledge Initiative (SSKI), which aims to describe 1,000 new species by the end of the decade.

None of these species was known to humans until now, nor do they appear to provide us with any obvious benefit of the kind implied by the Bible’s claim that animals were created for human use. It is almost as though creationism’s creator god forgot what these species were supposedly for and slipped instead into a purposeless, automatic process of generating biodiversity for its own sake — much as biologists understand the undirected natural process of evolution to do.

Refuting Creationism - Earth - A Planet Fine Tuned For Nematodes

Michael Werner collects water and soil samples while hunting nematodes on Great Salt Lake’s east shore between Fremont and Antelope islands.

Photo credit: Julie Jung.

Great Salt Lake roundworm gets Shoshone name – @theU

Representative microbialite mounds at Site 6 from which nematodes were extracted.

News recently published in the Journal of Nematology should give pause for thought to any creationist who imagines that a magical creator made Earth perfectly suited for human life. The report describes the discovery of a new species of nematode — a group of roundworms, some of which are little more than a millimetre long — living under the extreme conditions found in the Great Salt Lake in northern Utah, USA. The species is believed to be endemic to that lake.

Nematodes are the most abundant animal phylum on Earth in both aquatic and terrestrial environments, with around 250,000 described species. It is estimated that roughly 80% of all animal life in terrestrial soils, and about 90% of that on the ocean floor, consists of nematodes. They occur in virtually every environment, from polar ice to deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and, as this newly discovered species demonstrates, in conditions of extreme salinity.

If Earth can be said to be ideally suited for any group of organisms, nematodes would be strong contenders. Humans, by contrast, require a very narrow range of terrestrial conditions in order to survive without specialised technology; consequently, much of the planet is unsuitable for — and often actively hostile to — human life.

Genetic analysis indicates that there may be two distinct populations of this nematode within the lake, raising intriguing questions for biologists: how did they arrive there, and what role do they play in the lake’s ecosystem? This species represents only the third metazoan known to inhabit the lake, the other two being brine shrimp and brine flies. Together, these organisms support vast populations of migratory birds, making the Great Salt Lake a vital feeding ground during migration.

Refuting Creationism - Why Would a Creator Create Life Around Hydrothermal Vents?

Discovery in the Deep Sea: Unique Habitat at Hydrothermal Vents

Here is something for creationists to run away from: why would a creator god who supposedly made the entire universe as a place for humans – especially American humans – to live, and arranged everything else for their benefit, create creatures in an environment so hostile that no human could survive there without specialised modern equipment? And how exactly did Noah collect two of each of the countless species that live there in great profusion, only to place them on the Ark and somehow maintain the extreme conditions they require?

The simple answer, as underscored by these discoveries, is that the whole tale is a childish fairy story. The organisms inhabiting the extreme conditions of deep-ocean trenches evolved to live there over millions of years, entirely independent of any usefulness to humans, whose existence is of supreme indifference to them.

The conditions described come from an open-access paper in Scientific Reports by an international team of oceanographers and marine biologists led by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany. They detail a unique environment 1,300 metres below the surface on a flank of Conical Seamount in the western Pacific, off Lihir Island in Papua New Guinea. What makes it unique is not simply that it is a hydrothermal vent, but that it is coupled with a cold methane seep from deep sediment layers. Hot, mineral-rich water and cold, hydrocarbon-rich methane gas rise along the same pathways, producing vent fluids filled with bubbles of cold methane.

The result is a unique ecosystem comprising dense fields of the mussel Bathymodiolus, along with tube worms, shrimp, amphipods, and striking purple sea cucumbers coating the rocks so completely that the underlying surfaces are entirely concealed.

Before methane-producing sediments accumulated, the hydrothermal fluids were even hotter, leaving behind tell-tale deposits of gold and silver, as well as antimony, mercury, and arsenic. The various lifeforms have adapted to thrive amid these chemicals, some of which are highly toxic.

Hydrothermal vents are among the most extraordinary environments on Earth — geochemical oases on the seafloor where life thrives without sunlight, fuelled instead by chemical energy. They overturn several once-assumed “rules” of biology and offer important clues about evolution, extremophiles, and possibly even the origins of life.~

Refuting Evolution - Allopatric Evolution, Just as The Theory of Evolution Predicts

(a) Chamaecyparis obtusa in Japan

(b) C. obtusa var. formosana in Taiwan

Map of the South China Sea showing the Ryuku Arc between Taiwan and Kyushu

Google Maps

Natural Japanese and Taiwanese Hinoki Cypresses Genetically Differentiated 1 Million Years Ago | Research News - University of Tsukuba

Japanese plant geneticists, led by scientists from University of Tsukuba, have shown that the Japanese and Taiwanese Hinoki cypresses began to diverge around one million years ago, following the destruction of a land bridge that once connected Taiwan to the Japanese archipelago.

This is a textbook example of allopatric speciation, in which an isolated population diverges from its parent population through a combination of founder effects, genetic drift, and natural selection in response to different environmental pressures.

The now-vanished land bridge once linked Taiwan to the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. Its remnants form the Ryukyu Arc — a chain of small islands marking the south-eastern boundary of the South China Sea.

Faced with such clear evidence of speciation, creationists typically resort to a familiar tactic: redefining evolution into a straw man. They insist that “evolution” means one species turning in a single event into something utterly unrelated — for instance, that these cypresses should transform into daisies, cabbages, mammals, or birds. If such an absurd event ever occurred, it would in fact falsify evolutionary theory and throw the entire fields of biology and taxonomy into chaos. This is the standard creationist tactic on social media: misrepresent science, then demand that science defend the misrepresentation, and claim victory when it doesn’t.

The reality remains, however, that the divergence of these related species of cypress — and the fact that this divergence can be correlated precisely with geological change — stands as powerful evidence for Darwinian evolution. Charles Darwin knew nothing of genes, alleles, or genetic drift, yet his description of descent with modification through inherited traits is elegantly confirmed here by modern genetics and biogeography. The genus Chamaecyparis — commonly known as the false cypresses — is an evolutionarily interesting group of conifers in the cypress family Cupressaceae. Their distribution and divergence provide a good illustration of how geological change, climate oscillations, and geographic isolation have shaped the evolution of temperate conifers.

Creationism In Crisis - How Fungi Created The Conditions For Land Plants - A Billion Years Before 'Creation Week'

Top L. Chicken of the woods (Laetiporus sulphureus)

Top R. Sulphur tufts (Hypholoma fasciculare)

Bottom L. Common mould (Penicillium)

Bottom R. Mucor (microscopic view)

Fungi set the stage for life on land hundreds of millions of years earlier than thought | Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology OIST

In that vast expanse of pre-‘Creation Week’ history, when 99.9975% of Earth’s story had already unfolded, a pivotal event occurred that would set the planet on a path towards the astonishing diversity of life we see today. According to researchers led by scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, that turning point was the evolution of multicellular fungi.

Unlike animals and plants, in which multicellularity appears to have arisen only once, fungi seem to have achieved it independently on at least five separate occasions, between 1.4 and 0.9 billion years ago.

This innovation allowed fungi to colonise land and begin transforming bare rock and rock debris into soil. That process, in turn, created the conditions that later enabled plants to establish themselves on land.

In addition to shedding light on how multicellularity evolved in fungi — a process that involved horizontal gene transfer — this research significantly extends the known timeline of fungal evolution, pushing it back by hundreds of millions of years.

Of course, the authors of Genesis, unaware of the distinction between plants and fungi and apparently thinking all plants were angiosperms, made no mention of fungi at all. Their myth betrays no understanding that plants are living organisms or that green plants depend on sunlight for photosynthesis, since it describes them as being created the day before the sun (Genesis 1:15-17). It names only angiosperms while ignoring ferns, mosses, and algae (Genesis 1:11-12), and later claims that “every living substance” outside the Ark was destroyed (Genesis 7:4), as though plants, like rocks, would somehow have survived unscathed, to provide food for the animals afterwards, despite no mention of their preservation during the flood genocide.

Science, as ever, tells a very different story — one based not on gap-filling tales but on evidence written in fungal DNA and preserved in the fossil record. It is a story of awe and wonder, not at the supposed magical powers of an imagined creator, but at the relentless processes of evolution: variation, natural selection, and the exploitation of opportunity, producing the extraordinary biodiversity we see today.

Refuting Creationism - How Rodent Thumbnails Allowed Them to Be So Successful.

Thumbnail of the kangaroo rat.

Rafaela V. Missagia et al. (2025)

Most rodents have thumbnails instead of claws. It might help explain how they took over the world. | EurekAlert!

The discovery that ancient rodents evolved a thumbnail in place of a claw helps explain why they are the most successful mammalian order on the planet. That small anatomical change opened up a whole new range of ecological niches, triggering an explosive radiation of new rodent species.

This fact alone should worry creationists who cling to a child-like understanding of science. Their favourite avoidance tactic—when pressed for an example of evolution—is to retreat hastily down their rabbit hole with the familiar cry: “Ah! But that’s not real, ‘macro’-evolution. That’s just variation within a ‘kind’.”

Of course, creationists are consistently reticent about defining what they mean by “macro-evolution,” or explaining how the processes that supposedly produce it differ from those of normal evolution. In scientific terms, evolution is simply a change in allele frequencies in a population over time. There is no separate mechanism for “macro” versus “micro.”

So here’s the awkward question for them: was the evolution of the thumbnail from a claw a case of “macro-evolution” or not?

According to the new research, led by Rafaela Missagi of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, with collaborators from the Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago, USA), Northwestern University (Chicago, USA), and the Natural History Museum (London, UK), this change was pivotal. It allowed rodents to diversify into countless species—just as the elongation of bat fingers into wings enabled bats to radiate into hundreds of species. Crucially, in both cases no “new structures” were created from nothing; existing ones were repurposed.

This sort of question usually sends creationists scurrying for cover, chanting Bible verses as they go.

Unlike creationist dogma, which collapses under this kind of scrutiny, the new findings provide yet another vindication of evolutionary theory. Evolution predicts that when a new function arises, it can open up new ecological opportunities, leading to rapid diversification. Not because there is a plan, but because natural selection now has something new to work on.

Refuting Creationism - Evolutionary Divergence and Hybridization in Mediterranean Shearwaters

Critically endangered Balearic shearwater,
Puffinus mauritanicus

Credit: Kirk Zufelt

The Balearic shearwater (Puffinus mauretanicus, above) and the Mediterranean shearwater (Puffinus yelkouan, below) are two shearwater taxa that are genetically similar despite displaying morphological and migratory differences. The new study shows that these two taxa have undergone recurrent episodes of divergence and hybridization during the Pleistocene glacial and interglacial cycles, respectively. This serves as a key example of how hybridization can help preserve genetic diversity and evolutionary potential in threatened taxa.

Credit: Victor Paris

Hybridization between species has been crucial to the survival of Europe’s most threatened seabird - Current events - University of Barcelona

Like the story of human evolution, that of two seabirds in the shearwater family living in the Mediterranean shows a history of divergence, followed by episodes of hybridization and genetic remixing. Normally, from a conservation perspective, hybridization is considered a problem because it can erode the distinctiveness of threatened species, diluting unique traits.

However, in the case of the Mediterranean shearwater (Puffinus yelkouan) and the critically endangered Balearic shearwater (Puffinus mauretanicus), hybridization has had the opposite effect. By introducing genetic diversity into the Balearic shearwater, it may have improved the species’ chances of survival, potentially making the difference between persistence and extinction.

This evolutionary story sits uneasily with the worldview of Bible-literalist creationists. The very fact of species interbreeding undermines the notion of fixed, separately created “kinds.” It also contradicts the idea that a few thousand years ago all life was destroyed in a global flood, followed by a period of hyper-rapid diversification into the species we see today—a process which, according to creationist claims, left no trace in the fossil record. If hybridization had occurred during that supposed burst of post-Flood diversification, it would simply have blurred the lines between “kinds,” creating variation within species rather than producing the multitude of distinct species we observe today. In other words, the evidence shows that life’s history is one of gradual divergence, occasional genetic exchange, and long-term adaptation—not sudden, discrete acts of “special creation.”

A recent study led by Professors Julio Rozas, Marta Riutort, and Jacob González-Solís of the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute of the University of Barcelona (IRBio), together with Joan Ferrer Obiol of the University of Milan, has revealed how this evolutionary pattern unfolded. Using genomic analysis, they showed that the two shearwater species have gone through repeated cycles of divergence and hybridization, largely driven by the glacial–interglacial rhythms of the Pleistocene. Each cycle of isolation and secondary contact left genetic signatures that are still visible today.

The researchers found a clear gradient of genetic differentiation across the Mediterranean, with hybrid populations becoming increasingly common as one moves westwards, culminating in the Balearic Islands of Ibiza and Formentera. Intriguingly, the shearwater population on Menorca is genetically closer to P. yelkouan than to P. mauretanicus, reflecting its history of admixture. Far from being detrimental, this interbreeding has enriched the Balearic shearwater’s genome, reducing inbreeding risks and helping to preserve adaptive traits that may otherwise have been lost.

Creationism Refuted - Rappid Diversification Linked To Rapid Environmental Changes

Most known species evolved during 'explosions' of diversity, shows first analysis across 'tree of life'

The Tree of Life

Gustav Klimt, 1909

A new study in Frontiers in Ecology & Evolution delivers a striking confirmation of evolutionary theory while dealing another blow to creationist claims. Researchers John J. Wiens (University of Arizona) and Daniel S. Moen (University of California, Riverside) show that the vast majority of Earth’s species richness stems from a handful of lineages that underwent explosive bursts of diversification — precisely what evolutionary theory predicts.

Analysing enormous datasets covering more than 2 million described species across multiple taxonomic levels, the team found that "over 80% of all known biodiversity is packed into the clades with the fastest diversification rates". This pattern holds true for animals, plants, insects, vertebrates, and even across kingdoms, showing that biodiversity is not spread evenly but arises overwhelmingly from rapid radiations and occurs at all taxonomic levels. The message is clear: most of life’s diversity comes from bursts of speciation linked to ecological opportunity and innovation, not from slow, uniform accumulation over time. The results reveal a universal pattern across the tree of life, confirming that natural selection acting on changing environments and new niches drives the extraordinary richness we see today. For creationists, this is more bad news. Their model of static “kinds” appearing fully formed cannot explain why biodiversity clusters so strongly in rapidly radiating groups, or why it forms the nested hierarchies that evolution predicts. The evidence instead shows life as a continuous, dynamic process of descent with modification from common ancestors—exactly as Darwin envisaged, and the exact opposite of “special creation.”

Refuting Creationism - Oldest-Known Evolutionary Arms Race in the Cambrian

Lapworthella fasciculata shells (under scanning electron microscope) from the Mernmerna Formation, Flinders Ranges, South Australia

R. Bicknell, et al (2025)

Oldest-Known Evolutionary “Arms Race” in the Cambrian | AMNH

Examples of Lapworthella fasciculata shells (under scanning electron microscope) from the Mernmerna Formation, Flinders Ranges, South Australia showing holes made by a perforating predator. Scale bars represent 200 micrometers.

R. Bicknell, et al (2025)

Perhaps Creationism's designer god is just a slow learner.

Anyone with an intellect greater than that of a plank should be capable of understanding the utter futility and waste in an arms race in which the strategy is to keep running faster just to stay in the same place. Arms races only make sense as the result of a game plan in which you can't communicate with your opponent and have no way of telling what he or she is thinking and if they gain the upper-hand, you lose. The only safe choice is to up the stakes - and that goes for your opponent too.

It becomes even more incomprehensible if the person you're having the arms race with is yourself, unless you're an amnesic with multiple personality disorder, and yet, if we believe creationists, that's exactly what their putative designer god is doing constantly.

Everywhere we look in nature, organisms are competing with one another for resources, or because one is trying to exploit the other as a food source in a predator-prey relationship or as a parasite trying to live in or on another organism and even killing it or making it weak and sickly as a byproduct of its parasitism. And yet creationists insist there is only one designer designing both sides in these arms races.

For some unfathomable reason, creationists like to imagine the idea of a celestial idiot having arms races with itself in millions of relationships in nature is a much better explanation than these arms races being the inevitable result of mindless evolutionary processes where a slight improvement increases the chances of leaving descendants while reducing the chance of the opponent doing the same, so creating a selection pressure for the next twist in the spiral.

Refuting Creationism - Another Gap Closed - No God Found

A mating pair of wild-type (left) and mir-193 mutant (right) Bicyclus anynana butterflies.

Photo credit: Shen TIAN

A mating pair of peppered moths, Biston betularia, showing the melanistic and pale forms.

A microRNA solves an evolutionary mystery of butterfly and moth wing colouration - NUS Faculty of Science | NUS Faculty of Science

A regularly-cited example of observed Darwinian evolution is that of the peppered moth which occurs in two forms, the white, speckled form and a melanistic, almost black form. During the industrial revolution, as English northern towns grew and became polluted by smoke from coal-burning factories, so the melanistic form became more common.

Experiments showed that the lighter form became easier for predators to see when the moths were roosting on tree trunks that had become coated in soot, while the melanistic form became harder for predators to see.

Following the decline of the northern towns, the light form again increased back to the former ratio, showing the importance of environmental change in evolution.

This tendency to have melanistic forms is common in the lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) and this tendency was believed to be under th control of as single genomic region surrounding the protein-coding gene “cortex“, common across many species, showing their descent from a common ancestor.

However, new research by international researchers from Singapore, Japan, and the United States of America, led by Professor Antónia MONTEIRO and Dr Shen TIAN from the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore (NUS), has shown that 'cortex' is not directly involved in producing melanism, instead, this is controlled by a microRNA from within the 'cortex' genomic region, as another example of how microRNA's control many functions within cells, particular gene expression.

Refuting Creationism - How Daisies Speciated On Isolated Islands

Top: Pleurophyllum speciosum
Bottom: Pulicaria canariensis

Top: Bidens mooreensis
Bottom: Argyroxiphium sandwicense

Pleurophyllum speciosum - Campbell Island.

Credit Phil Garnock-Jones.

Isolated daisies have the greatest diversity | Naturalis

Creationists try to get round the absurdity of the Bible myth which has two (or seven) of every species being packed into a wooden boat small enough to survive turbulent seas for a year, by introducing a new element to the myth that their god forgot to include - that there were just two (or seven) of each 'kind' and all of them underwent a period of warp-speed evolution (that non-one seemed to have noted) with several new species popping into existence each generation to give the many millions of known terrestrial species we have today.

Understandably, creationists are reticent to put any numbers on their claim. They won't say how many different 'kinds' there were on the boat, how many new species arose at each generation and for how long this period of fantastical speciation lasted. Nor will they define 'kind' in any meaningful way that matches any recognisable taxon. I have even been told it can mean 'animal kind' and 'plant kind'. It seems to vary according to the needs of the argument.

And they won't say why some 'kinds' have just one or two species while others have hundreds, or in the case of the Asteraceae family of plants, some 34,000 distinct species, so some must have been speciating much faster then other while some hardly bothered if at all.

In the later case, we now have a substantial database compiled by a team at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, The Netherlands which catalogues all 34,000 different species with their geographical distribution, showing how they radiated and diversified into new species, colonising isolated islands and, like Darwin's finches, radiating into different species on each island in an archipelago.

Refuting Creationism - Arctic Sled Dogs Had Already Diversified Into Two Types At Least 1,700 Years Before 'Creation Week'

A predicted phenotypic reconstruction of the ancient Zhokhov sled dog

Smith, T.A; Srikanth, K; Huson, H.J. (2024)

A team of Siberian huskies races in the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous in 2013 in Alaska.

Britt Coon

Genomics reveals sled dogs’ Siberian lineage | Cornell Chronicle

The History of dogs and their co-evolution with humans as they diverged from their wolf ancestors is a fascinating and complex story, most of which, like 99.9975% of all of the history of life on Earth occurred before creationist's legendary 'Creation Week'.

'Creation Week' is when creationists believe a magic god made of nothing magicked a small universe consisting of a single flat planet with a dome over it, centred on the Middle East, all out of nothing, in just 6 days about 10,000 years ago, (although why an omnipotent god couldn't have done it all in an instant and needed 6 full days, with a day to recover from the effort, is never explained).

Refuting Creationism - Earliest Ancestors of the Tasmanian Tiger Were Alive 23-25 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artist’s reconstruction of Badjcinus timfaulkneri scavenging on the carcass of Silvabestius michaelbirti, a wombat-like marsupial also from Hiatus Site.

Illustration by
Peter Schouten.

Tasmanian tiger, Thylacinus cynocephalus

AI generated image.

Earliest known ancestors of the extinct Tasmanian Tiger discovered – and some could even eat the bones and teeth of their prey - Taylor & Francis Newsroom

88 years ago today, the last Tasmanian tiger died in Beaumaris Zoo, Hobart, Tasmania.

It was the last in a line of carnivorous marsupial going back at least 23-25 million years ago, in the extended period of Earth's pre-'Creation Week' history when creationists believe there was nothing out of which a magic man made of nothing made everything in 6 days, just 10,000 years ago. According to creationist mythology, the Tasmanian tiger would have had no ancestors, being magically made from dirt just like every other living species.

This makes it hard for creation to explain the evidence of all those fossils known to be far older than 10,000 years and showing evidence of the evolution of extant species from ancient ancestors as species diversified from a single common ancestor which lived hundreds of millions of years ago, but then facts were never a problem for counter-factual creationism.

What information do you have on the extinct Tasmanian tiger? The Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), was a carnivorous marsupial native to Tasmania, mainland Australia, and New Guinea. The thylacine looked somewhat like a medium-to-large dog with a slender body, a head resembling that of a wolf or dog, and distinctive dark stripes across its back and tail, giving it the nickname "Tasmanian tiger." However, it was more closely related to kangaroos and other marsupials.

Key Information about the Tasmanian Tiger:

1. Physical Description:
   • The thylacine was about the size of a large dog, with a length of up to 1.8 to 2 meters (including the tail) and a height at the shoulder of about 60 cm.
   • Its fur was short and coarse, typically tan or yellow-brown, with 13 to 20 dark stripes across its back and tail.
   • It had a long, stiff tail, similar to a kangaroo's, and could open its jaws incredibly wide, up to 120 degrees.
   
   
2. Habitat and Behavior:
   • The thylacine was a nocturnal and solitary animal, hunting at night and resting during the day in a den or hollow log.
   • It primarily fed on small to medium-sized animals, such as kangaroos, birds, and small mammals. Its diet may have also included carrion.
   
   
3. Extinction:
   • The thylacine was driven to extinction on the Australian mainland thousands of years ago, likely due to competition with humans and the dingo, a wild dog introduced to Australia.
   • In Tasmania, the species persisted until the 20th century. The last known wild thylacine was killed in 1930, and the last known individual in captivity died in 1936 at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania.
   • Its extinction was primarily due to human activities, including hunting (encouraged by a bounty system), habitat destruction, and the introduction of diseases.
   
   
4. Conservation Efforts and "Rediscovery" Claims:
   • Despite being declared extinct, there have been numerous unconfirmed sightings and efforts to find surviving thylacines, but none have been scientifically verified.
   • Some scientific projects have explored the possibility of "de-extinction" using preserved DNA from museum specimens, but these efforts remain largely theoretical.
   
   
5. Cultural Significance:
   • The thylacine holds a unique place in Tasmanian culture and Australian folklore, often seen as a symbol of the tragedy of extinction and the need for wildlife conservation.
   • It appears on Tasmania's coat of arms and has been the subject of various books, documentaries, and studies.

Would you like to know more about any specific aspect of the Tasmanian tiger?

How the oldest ancestors of the Tasmanian tiger were discovered by palaeontologists from the University of New South Wales, Australia, is the subject of a Taylor & Francis news release:

Earliest known ancestors of the extinct Tasmanian Tiger discovered – and some could even eat the bones and teeth of their prey

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A marsupial which had an “extremely thick” jawbone, enabling it to consume even the bones and teeth of its prey is among a discovery of three, new ancient species of the modern Thylacines – otherwise known as the Tasmanian tiger, which went extinct 88 years ago.

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These new species each roamed Australia around 23-to-25 million years ago, during the late Oligocene, making them the “undoubted oldest members of this family ever discovered”.

Today – Australia’s National Threatened Species Day, which marks the death of the last Tasmanian Tiger in Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo on the 7th of September 1936 – scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Vertebrate Palaeontology Lab publish their findings in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The once suggested idea that Australia was dominated by reptilian carnivores during these 25 million-year-long intervals is steadily being dismantled as the fossil record of marsupial carnivores, such as these new thylacinids, increases with each new discovery. The diversity of mammalian carnivores at Riversleigh during this period rivals that seen in any other ecosystem, including the great mammalian carnivore radiation that developed in South America.

Timothy Churchill, lead author
University of New South Wales
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

The three new species were each found in the fossil-rich deposits in Riversleigh World Heritage Area.

The largest of these new species, Badjcinus timfaulkneri, weighed somewhere between 7-11 kilograms, about the same size as a large Tasmanian Devil. Alike the Tasmanian Devil, timfaulkneri possessed an extremely thick jawbone enabling it to consume the bones and teeth of its prey. This species is related to the much smaller, previously discovered B. turnbulli (2.7 kg) – which until now was the only other undoubted thylacinid known from the late Oligocene.

The dentary and isolated first molar of B. timfaulkneri were recovered from Hiatus Site which is even older than Riversleigh’s White Hunter Site where B. turnbulli was previously found, making B. timfaulkneri the oldest undoubted thylacine discovered so far.

Badjcinus timfaulkneri is named after Tim Faulkner, the director and co-owner of the Australian Reptile Park and managing director of Aussie Ark. Tim has dedicated his life to the conservation of Australia’s wildlife including the largest still-living marsupial carnivore, the Tasmanian Devil.

The second new species is Nimbacinus peterbridgei. This was about the size of a Maltese Terrier (~3.7 kg). This species is represented by a near-complete dentary from White Hunter Site. Nimbacinus peterbridgei was a predator that probably focused on small mammals and other diverse prey species that lived with it in the ancient forests. Species of Nimbacinus appear to be more closely related to the Tasmanian Tiger than other thylacinids of similar age. This means Nimbacinus peterbridgei is probably the oldest direct ancestor of the Tasmanian Tiger yet known.

Nimbacinus peterbridgei was named after Australian geologist, speleologist and bibliophile Peter Bridge. He has devoted his life to helping uncover Australia’s ancient past, particularly in the caves of Western Australia.

The last species, Ngamalacinus nigelmarveni was a ~5.1kg thylacinid – approximately the size of a Red fox. It was also from White Hunter Site at Riversleigh. The blades on the lower molars of species of Ngamalacinus are elongated with deep V-shaped carnassial (‘meat-cutting’) notches, suggesting they were highly carnivorous – more so than any of the other thylacinids of similar size.

Ngamalacinus nigelmarveni is named after Nigel Marven, a renowned British television documentary presenter famous for paleontology-inspired series like Prehistoric Park and Sea Monsters.

The presence of three distinct lineages of specialised thylacinids during the late Oligocene highlights how quickly they diversified after first appearing in the fossil record. These thylacinids exhibits very different dental adaptations, suggesting there were several unique carnivorous niches available during this period. All but one of these lineages, the one that led to the modern Thylacine, became extinct around 8 million years ago.

That lineage of these creatures that survived for more than 25 million years ended with the death of Benjamin, the last Tasmanian Tiger in Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo on the 7th of September 1936.

Professor Michael Archer, co-author
University of New South Wales
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

ABSTRACT
New thylacinid species of Badjcinus, Nimbacinus, and Ngamalacinus are described from upper Oligocene deposits of the Riversleigh World Heritage Area, northwestern Queensland. Badjcinus timfaulkneri, Nimbacinus peterbridgei, and Ngamalacinus nigelmarveni are among the oldest thylacinids yet known and indicate an earlier diversification of the family than previously understood. Maximum parsimony analysis supports a sister group relationship between Ng. nigelmarveni and Ng. timmulvaneyi, but the relationships of the two other new taxa are unresolved. Bayesian dated total evidence analysis using morphological and molecular data supports the generic assignment of B. timfaulkneri and Ng. nigelmarveni but not that of Ni. peterbridgei. Both phylogenies herein support a taxonomic reassignment of Thylacinus macknessi to the genus Wabulacinus, a conclusion also supported by the results of previous studies. Body mass estimates based on molar size regressions indicate body sizes ranging from 3.7 kg to 11.4 kg for the new thylacinid species. Badjcinus timfaulkneri exhibits an extremely deep jaw compared with other thylacinids, with mandibular bending strength analysis suggesting that it was a highly durophagous carnivore much like the modern dasyurid Sarcophilus harrisii. This analysis also suggests Ni. peterbridgei had a dentary more similar in shape to that of plesiomorphic thylacinid faunivores such as Ni. dicksoni and T. cynocephalus suggesting that it had a relatively more generalist faunivorous diet. The molars of Ng. nigelmarveni suggest they were better suited for longitudinal slicing than the molars of B. timfaulkneri and Ni. peterbridgei, indicating a more hypercarnivorous diet compared with that of those species.

INTRODUCTION
There are 12 extinct species in the dasyuromorphian family Thylacinidae, 10 of which are from the Oligo-Miocene (26–5.3 Ma) (Rovinsky et al., 2019). Unlike during the Plio-Pleistocene (5.3–0.12 Ma), which is dominated by large hypercarnivorous species of Thylacinus (15–55 kg), the Oligo-Miocene radiation exhibits considerably higher generic diversity, with seven monospecific clades known from the Riversleigh World Heritage Area in northwestern Queensland, all of which were between 3–10 kg in body mass. This restriction in size suggests thylacinids occupied most of the small- to medium-sized faunivorous niches at Riversleigh (1–10 kg). Contemporary peramelemorphians (∼50 g–1.5 kg) (Gurovich et al., 2014; Travouillon et al., 2013; Travouillon et al., 2010, 2014.1) and thylacoleonids (∼10–50 kg) (Gillespie, 2023; Gillespie et al., 2016, 2019.1a, 2019.2b) occupied relatively smaller and larger carnivore niches.

The oldest undoubted thylacinid, Badjcinus turnbulli Muirhead & Wroe, 1998, is known only from White Hunter Site in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area. This and other late Oligocene sites at Riversleigh have not yet been radiometrically dated. White Hunter Site is interpreted to be late Oligocene in age because of the presence of the ilariid Kuterintja ngama, otherwise only known from the Ngama Local Fauna from the Etadunna Formation, which is magnetostratigraphically dated to 24.8–25 Ma (Myers & Archer, 1997; Woodburne et al., 1994). Riversleigh’s Faunal Zone A (FZA) deposits contain taxa that support a late Oligocene age (Arena et al., 2016.1; Travouillon et al., 2006). The relatively plesiomorphic dentition of B. turnbulli has led to difficulty in taxonomic assignment, with phylogenetic analyses placing it either as a basally branching member of Thylacinidae (Kealy & Beck, 2017; Muirhead & Wroe, 1998; Murray & Megirian, 2006.1a; Wroe & Musser, 2001), as a stem dasyurid (Wroe et al., 2000), or as a sister group to Dasyuromorphia as a whole (Kealy & Beck, 2017).

Only two other thylacinid fossils are known from upper Oligocene deposits. Originally assigned to Nimbacinus dicksoni but later reassigned to Thylacinidae incertae sedis, an isolated m2 (QM F16809) from D-Site at Riversleigh is the only other thylacinid known from Riversleigh’s upper Oligocene deposits (Muirhead & Archer, 1989; Murray & Megirian, 2000.1; Wroe & Musser, 2001). An isolated, broken M2 (NTM P2815–10) of a thylacinid is also known from the Pwerte Marnte Marnte Local Fauna (LF) in the Northern Territory, a deposit assumed to be upper Oligocene on the basis of biocorrelation (Murray & Megirian, 2006.2b; Woodburne et al., 1994). Although this upper molar, which is similar in size to the putative thylacinid Mutpuracinus archibaldi, was suggested by Murray and Megirian (2006.2b) to be the oldest thylacinid in the fossil record, there are doubts about its identification as a thylacinid (see Discussion).

Nimbacinus dicksoni Muirhead & Archer, 1989, is the best preserved and researched Miocene thylacinid (Attard et al., 2014.2; Murray & Megirian, 2000.1; Wroe & Musser, 2001). Multiple specimens including a near complete skull and skeleton are known from Middle Miocene deposits at Riversleigh and from the Bullock Creek LF in the Northern Territory. The dentition of Ni. dicksoni is relatively more plesiomorphic than that of other thylacinids (except possibly Muribacinus gadiyuli) in retaining slightly reduced metaconids on m2–4 and unreduced stylar cusps on M1–3. Previous morphofunctional analyses of the skull of Ni. dicksoni suggest it was a voracious predator capable of hunting prey larger than itself, with biting capabilities most similar to extant species of Dasyurus, rather than to the larger Thylacinus cynocephalus (Attard et al., 2014.2).

In addition to Nimbacinus dicksoni, four monotypic thylacinid genera are known from upper and lower dentitions recovered from Early and Middle Miocene Riversleigh deposits. These include the medium-sized (∼5–7 kg) Wabulacinus ridei and Ngamalacinus timmulvaneyi Muirhead, 1997.1, as well as the diminutive (∼1–2 kg) Muribacinus gadiyuli Wroe, 1996, and the large (∼18 kg) Maximucinus muirheadae Wroe, 2001.1a (Myers, 2001.2). The dentition of Ng. timmulvaneyi, W. ridei, and Ma. muirheadae have been considered to be relatively plesiomorphic in comparison with species of Thylacinus, but more derived than Ni. dicksoni (Muirhead, 1997.1). The diminutive Mur. gadiyuli is dentally the most plesiomorphic thylacinid known (Wroe, 1996).

Thylacinus macknessi Muirhead, 1992, from Riversleigh’s Early Miocene Neville’s Garden Site, is tentatively regarded as the earliest known member of the genus Thylacinus (Muirhead & Gillespie, 1995). This taxon possesses unique dental adaptations associated with a shift within the Thylacinus lineage towards hypercarnivory, including near complete loss of metaconids on m2–4, loss of entoconids, reduction of the lingual portion of the talonid margin in m2–4 and a lingual shift of the hypoconid so that the cristid obliqua forms a continuous longitudinal blade with the paracristid.

The powerful thylacine, T. potens Woodburne, 1967, from the Alcoota Local Fauna in the Northern Territory, has been interpreted on the basis of biocorrelation to be Late Miocene between 8.5 and 5.5 Ma (Megirian et al., 1996.1, 2010.1). It is the largest and most hypercarnivorous thylacinid known. It has been estimated to be between 30–56 kg in adult body mass (Myers, 2001.2; Wroe, 2001.1a), with some estimates exceeding 120 kg (Yates, 2014.3). Two additional species of Thylacinus with dental adaptations for increased carnivory, T. yorkellus and T. megiriani, are known from Upper Miocene to Lower Pliocene deposits (Murray, 1997.2; Yates, 2015).

Tyarrpecinus rothi Murray & Megirian, 2000.1, is a small thylacinid from the Late Miocene Alcoota Local Fauna of the Northern Territory. It is known from a broken maxilla that retains P2 and an isolated M2. The phylogenetic relationships and paleobiology of this taxon cannot be confidently determined until more complete craniodental material is found.

The quoll-sized Mutpuracinus archibaldi Murray & Megirian, 2000.1, known from a near complete skull with an incomplete upper and lower dentition from the Middle Miocene Bullock Creek LF in the Northern Territory (Murray & Megirian, 2006.1a), was initially considered to be an early thylacinid because of craniodental and basicranial similarities to plesiomorphic thylacinids such as Ni. dicksoni. However, more recent phylogenetic analyses suggest it should be regarded as Dasyuromorphia incertae sedis because of its lack of craniodental synapomorphies uniting it with undoubted thylacinids (Churchill et al., 2023.1; Kealy & Beck, 2017; Rovinsky et al., 2019).

Two further medium-sized (1–10 kg) incertae sedis dasyuromorphians are known from Miocene deposits; Whollydooleya tomnpatrichorum Archer, Christmas et al., 2016.2, from Miocene deposits in New Riversleigh (an area approximately 10 km southwest of the Riversleigh World Heritage Area) and Apoktesis cuspis Campbell, 1976, from upper Oligocene deposits at Lake Ngapakaldi in the Tirari Desert of South Australia. Either may be related to thylacinids or dasyurids (Archer, Christmas et al., 2016.2; Campbell, 1976). However, the lack of adequate fossil material to critically assess the relationships of these two enigmatic taxa precludes a more precise assignment beyond Dasyuromorphia incertae sedis. Whollydooleya tomnpatrichorum is only known from a single lower molar while the location of the skull and dentaries attributed to A. cuspis is currently unknown.

In this study, we describe three new species of thylacinid from Riversleigh’s oldest deposits: the upper Oligocene Hiatus and White Hunter Sites. The fossil specimens herein are all dentaries retaining near complete or partial lower dentitions.

Of course, it would be stupid to assume the Bronze Age pastoralists who wrote the Bible knew anything about Australia, or even a southern hemisphere. Since they believe Earth was a small flat place with a dome over it, they wouldn't even have considered hemispheres, northern of southern. Their view of the world was so narrow and restricted they thought all they had to explain was the small area within a day or two's walk of the Canaanite Hills, so nothing outside that small area was included; not an animals, mountain, continent or people; nothing.

So, the idea that they would have believed the Tasmanian tiger was magically created without ancestors 10,000 years ago or less is utterly preposterous and could only be believed by someone at least as blind to the evidence as were the authors of Genesis.

Refuting Creationism - How Mediterranean Biodiversity Evolved - 5.5 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Marine sediments hosting abundant fossils dated in the Late Miocene, from about 8 to 7 million years ago.

Credit: Konstantina Agiadi

Fig. 2: Reconstruction of a marine landscape of the Early Pliocene (5.1-4.5 million years ago)

Art © Alberto Gennari.

How a salt giant radically reshaped Mediterranean marine biodiversity

Because they were so ignorant of the history of their part of the world, the origin myths made up by the Bronze Age authors of Genesis, told us nothing about the rich history of the sea that was almost on their doorstep, and the one in which they set daft tales like that of Jonah - the Mediterranean.

The Mediterranean Sea (the sea in the Middle of the Earth to the Romans) was central to history of the Middle East, Western Europe and North Africa but few people then could have been aware that the sea itself is a mere (on a geological timescale) 5.5 million years old in its present form.

It was formed firstly by the African plate pushing north towards Eurasia causing a water-filled depression to form that was originally connected to the Atlantic Ocean, but, as Africa pushed further north, causing mountains in modern-day Morocco and Spain to rise up, the Mediterranean became isolated and, with low inflow and high temperatures, what had been the Mediterranean Sea became a salt-filled depression, known to geologists as the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC) when the sea dried up leaving a thick deposit of salt and gypsum and of course exterminating just about all marine life.

Recreation of one of the proposed models for how the Mediterranean was isolated by the sinking of a lithospheric plate into the Earth’s mantle (approx. 6 million years ago) and how dry climate then lead to the desiccation of that sea during the Messinian Salinity Crisis (approx. 5.5 million years ago), until 5.33 million years ago, the level of the Atlantic exceeded that of the Gibraltar land bridge and triggered a fast refill.

© CSIC - Daniel García-Castellanos.

This was ended abruptly when the Atlantic Ocean broke through at the Western end in what is now the Straits of Gibraltar when the Mediterranean basin refilled extremely quickly, possible in a few months to two years.

Refuting Creationism - How a Mass Extinction 66 Million Year Before Creation Week Triggered The Rappid Evolution Of Birds

The Broad-billed Tody, Todus subulatus, is a member of the bird group Coraciimorphae.

Image credit: Daniel Field,
University of Cambridge

The Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus, is a member of the bird group Coraciimorphae. Berv and co-authors identify this group of birds and others as having close ties to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction that occurred in the wake of the Chicxulub asteroid impact approximately 66 million years ago.

Image credit: Daniel Field, University of Cambridge

Mass extinction 66 million years ago triggered rapid evolution of bird genomes | University of Michigan News

Another major milestone in the history of life on Earth happened, like almost everything else, in that long pre-Creation Week history that creationists need to ignore. It was the mass extinction about 66 million years ago that killed the non-avian dinosaurs and most megafauna, leaving vacant niches that could be exploited by the descendants of survivors. It's no surprise to anyone who understands how evolution works, that this led to a proliferation of new species as existing species diversified to fill those niches.

That much was known already from the fossil record, but now a University of Michigan study has found how this maps onto changes in the genome of the major bird families, as a kind of DNA fossil, just as the TOE predicts.

The major difference between the different taxons is how developed the chicks are on hatching and how dependent they are on their parents. In ducks, geese, the ratites and ground-nesting birds such as the plovers, chickens and turkeys, the chicks are mobile and able to feed themselves (precocial) almost as soon as they've hatched. At the other end of the scale, many passerines are helpless on hatching and are entirely dependent on their parents for food and shelter (altricial) for several weeks.

As the birds evolved and diversified, they tended to become smaller and also more altricial. This reduction in body size and increased altriciality are reflected in the genomes. It was these transitional changed that the researchers detected.

These major changes were occurring within 3-5 million years after the mass extinction.