Refuting Creationism - Microbes That Create Life From Non-Life

Mud volcano

Fig. 9: Schematic of microbial succession and biogeochemical processes in serpentinite mud at the Mariana forearc.
This schematic depicts lipid biomarker transitions from pelagic sediment communities to extremophiles adapted to high pH and redox conditions in serpentinite mud. The Mariana forearc biosphere is fueled by alkaline serpentinization fluids enriched in H₂, CH₄, DIC, and organic acids, sustaining specialized microbial communities. Lipid and stable carbon isotope data reveal a shift from relict methanogenic archaea, likely engaged in hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis, to a later ANME-SRB community mediating anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM). Changes in substrate availability likely drove this transition. Distinct lipid signatures, including unsaturated diethers, acyclic GDGTs, and ether-based glycolipids, highlight adaptations to pH stress, phosphate limitation, and fluctuating redox conditions. The presence of in-situ branched GDGTs suggests previously uncharacterized bacterial communities persisting in these ultra-oligotrophic conditions. The Mariana forearc serpentinite biosphere, shaped by episodic fluid flow and substrate shifts, provides insights into deep-sea subsurface habitability. DIC = dissolved inorganic carbon, ANME anaerobic methanotrophic archaea, SRB sulfate-reducing bacteria, AOM anaerobic oxidation of methane, GDGT glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether.

Kumawat, P., Albers, E., Bach, W. et al. (2025).

Fats provide clues to life at its limits in the deep sea

Researchers at MARUM – Bremen University’s Centre for Marine Environmental Sciences – have made a discovery, just published open access in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, which, properly understood, should make depressing reading for creationists.

They have found living organisms both on and within the ocean floor, surviving in conditions where normal life would be impossible. These microorganisms inhabit mud volcanoes with a pH of 14, metabolising hydrogen and carbon to form methane by drawing energy from minerals in the surrounding rock. In other words, they live entirely without oxygen and with almost no organic matter, synthesising all they need from inorganic sources.

Informed creationists will recognise that these organisms directly refute their frequent assertion that life cannot arise from non-life — because producing life from non-life is precisely what these microorganisms are doing.

This also contradicts the biblical claim that all living things were created for the benefit of humans, since there is no conceivable way these organisms could serve any human purpose. Of course, to be fair, the authors of the Bible were completely ignorant of microorganisms, deep-ocean mud volcanoes, and chemosynthetic metabolism. They could only attempt to explain the larger creatures that lived in the limited region around their homes in the Canaanite hills.

And, as any informed creationist should also understand, these are exactly the sort of extreme conditions that biologists believe may have fostered the emergence of the earliest living organisms during the origin of life on Earth — once again undermining any claim that abiogenesis is impossible.

Background^ Chemosynthetic Extremophiles. Chemosynthetic extremophiles are microorganisms that survive in environments too hostile for most known life. Instead of relying on sunlight for energy (as photosynthetic organisms do), they extract energy from chemical reactions involving inorganic compounds such as hydrogen, methane, ammonia, or sulphides.

These organisms thrive in extreme conditions — high pressure, intense heat or cold, high salinity, or extreme acidity or alkalinity — where oxygen and organic nutrients are scarce or absent. They are commonly found around deep-sea hydrothermal vents, cold seeps, and mud volcanoes, as well as in acidic mines and alkaline lakes.

Chemosynthesis typically involves oxidising inorganic molecules (e.g. hydrogen sulphide, hydrogen, or iron) to obtain energy, which is then used to convert carbon dioxide or methane into organic compounds. This allows entire ecosystems — such as those around black smokers on the ocean floor — to exist entirely independent of sunlight.

These extremophiles are of major interest to biologists and astrobiologists because they demonstrate that life can originate and persist in conditions once thought uninhabitable. Their existence supports hypotheses that early life on Earth, and potentially elsewhere in the universe, may have begun in similar environments where energy was derived chemically rather than from sunlight.

The research is explained in a Universität Bremen news item.

Fats provide clues to life at its limits in the deep sea

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Researchers use lipid biomarkers to reveal survival strategies in extreme ecosystems

Diverse life forms exist on and within the ocean floor. These primarily consist of microbes, tiny organisms that can cope with extreme environmental conditions. These include high pressures and salinities, as well as extreme pH values and a limited supply of nutrients. A team of researchers has now been able to detect microbial life in two newly discovered mud volcanoes with very high pH values. Their findings have been published in the professional journal Communications Earth & Environment.

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Blue serpentinite mud from a newly discovered mud volcano in a gravity core. The samples have been studied by a team in order to decipher the survival strategies of microorganisms.

Photo: SO292/2 Expedition Science Party

In their study, first author Palash Kumawat of the Geosciences Department at the University of Bremen and his colleagues used lipid biomarker analyses to decipher the survival strategies of the microbes in this harsh ecosystem. The high pH value of 12 here is especially challenging for deep-sea life; This is one of the highest known value so far in ecosystems. In order to detect life at all, the researchers had to resort to special methods of trace analysis. In this situation, the detection of DNA can be ineffectual where there is a low number of living cells.

But we were able to detect fats. With the help of these biomarkers we were able to obtain insights into the survival strategies of methane- and sulfate-metabolizing microbes in this extreme environment.

Palash Kumawat, first author
Faculty of Geosciences
University of Bremen
Bremen, Germany.

Microbial communities metabolize carbon in the deep sea and thereby contribute to the global carbon cycle. However, the communities that the team describe in the publication draws its energy from minerals within rocks and gases such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce methane, for example, an important greenhouse gas. These processes initially take place independently of the ocean above. The lipids also provide clues to the age of the microorganisms. If the cellular biomolecules are intact, they represent a living or recently dead community. If they are not intact, they are geomolecules, which means that they are fossil communities from the past. According to Kumawat, the combination of isotopes and the lipid biomarkers indicates that multiple microbial communities now live in this inhospitable habitat and have lived there in the past.

This distinction helps us when working in areas with extremely low biomass and nutrient deficiency.

Palash Kumawat.

Dr. Florence Schubotz, organic geochemist at MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen and co-author of the study, adds:

What is fascinating about these findings is that life under these extreme conditions, such as high pH and low organic carbon concentrations is even possible. Until now, the presence of methane-producing microorganisms in this system has been presumed, but could not be directly confirmed. Furthermore, it is simply exciting to obtain insights into such a microbial habitat because we suspect that primordial life could have originated at precisely such sites.

Dr. Florence Schubotz, co-author
MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences
University of Bremen
Bremen, Germany.

The samples for the study come from a sediment core that was retrieved by the Research Vessel Sonne in 2022 during Expedition SO 292/2. Not only were the scientists able to discover the previously unknown mud volcanoes of the Mariana forearc during this cruise, but also to sample them.
The samples were obtained as part of the Cluster of Excellence “The Ocean Floor – Earth's Uncharted Interface.” Palash Kumawat and his colleagues are now planning to cultivate organisms in an incubator to find out more about their nutrient preferences in inhospitable environments.

Publication:

Kumawat, P., Albers, E., Bach, W. et al.
Biomarker evidence of a serpentinite chemosynthetic biosphere at the Mariana forearc. Commun Earth Environ 6, 659 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02667-6

Abstract
Present-day serpentinization systems, such as that at the Mariana forearc, are prominent sources of reduced volatiles, including molecular hydrogen (H₂) and methane (CH₄), and are considered analogs for chemosynthetic ecosystems on early Earth. However, seepage of serpentinization fluids through mud volcanoes at the Mariana forearc seafloor is defined by high pH, and nutrient scarcity, creating challenging conditions for microbial life. We present geochemical and lipid biomarker evidence for a subsurface biosphere shaped by episodic substrate availability, highlighting microbial persistence across steep geochemical gradients within serpentinite mud. Light stable carbon isotope compositions from diagnostic lipids reveal a temporal shift from hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis to sulfate-dependent anaerobic methane oxidation. Membrane adaptations, including unsaturated diether, acyclic and branched tetraether, and ether-based isoprenoidal and non-isoprenoidal glycosidic lipids, reflect microbial strategies for coping with this extreme environment. Our findings establish the Mariana forearc as a unique serpentinite-hosted biosphere, where life operates at the fringes of habitability.

Introduction
The subseafloor biosphere is estimated to harbor up to 15% of the global biomass¹. Recent advances in deep biosphere research have improved our understanding of the distribution and diversity of microbial life in the rocky oceanic crust, especially around hydrothermal vents^2,3. This subseafloor biosphere has to adapt to limited carbon and nutrient availability, accompanied by harsh environmental conditions such as high temperature and pressure, elevated salinity, and/or extreme pH levels⁴. Serpentinization of mantle rocks by seawater can generate high levels of H₂^5,6 that, in turn, drives the abiotic reduction of carbon to form CH₄ and other organic compounds⁷, which can be oxidized by chemosynthetic organisms^8,9,10, forming the foundation for a serpentinite biosphere¹¹. The type locality for such a serpentinite biosphere is the Lost City hydrothermal vent field near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where hydrothermal fluids fuel microbial communities in active and inactive vent structures¹². Methanogenic archaea there are found in active brucite-calcite vents, whereas older carbonate chimneys host a syntropic consortium of anaerobic methanotrophic archaea (ANME) and sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) that perform the anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM)^13,14.

The process of serpentinization takes place in a range of geotectonic settings, including rifted continental margins, mid-oceanic ridges, transform faults, and convergent margins. Among the latter, the forearc of the Mariana subduction system is of particular interest because it provides access to serpentinization products from within an active subduction zone. There, dewatering of the subducting Pacific Plate leads to serpentinization of the mantle wedge of the overriding Philippine Sea Plate. Faults reaching 10–25 km deep into the forearc allow serpentinite, together with fluids derived from the subducting slab, to buoyantly rise and form large ‘serpentinite mud volcanoes’ on the seafloor^15,16 (Fig. 1a, c). Fluids venting from the mud volcanoes are cold (<3.5 °C), hyperalkaline (pH up to 12.6), and enriched in H₂ and CH₄ (both up to ~1 mM)^17,18 and slab-derived sulfate (SO₄²⁻; up to 28 mM)¹⁹. These fluids are also enriched in short-chain organic acids like acetate (0.04 mM) and formate (0.1 mM), contributing ~20–30% of the dissolved organic carbon (DOC)²⁰, and in methanol (0.03 mM)^20,21. The δ¹³C of CH₄ (−37‰ to 2‰), acetate (−8‰), formate (4.8‰) and methanol (2.3‰) point to their abiotic formation^17,21. While these serpentinization fluids sustain chemosynthetic life at the seafloor^22,23, the functioning and extent of the chemosynthetic microbial biosphere below the seafloor remains largely unknown. Cell counts in the serpentinite mud are variable, but overall low (101 to 106 cells cm−3)^20,24, presumably because of the high pH and intermittent fluid seepage^13,16. Extremophilic archaea are believed to perform AOM as inferred from the detection of phospholipid-derived diphytanyl diethers and reduced sulfur species in the formation fluids18. Metabolic transcripts for denitrification and AOM were interpreted as evidence for nitrate-dependent AOM within the serpentinite mud volcanoes²⁴. Although AOM is considered thermodynamically favorable here^19,25, direct evidence for AOM and its associated microorganisms is still lacking. Methanogenesis is a common metabolic strategy in serpentinization systems¹³, but since CH₄ formation at the Mariana forearc is dominantly abiotic, the extent of microbial methanogenesis remains uncharacterized.

Fig. 1: Study area and geological context of serpentinite mud volcanism in the Mariana subduction system.

a Bathymetry map of the Mariana subduction system showing the incoming Pacific Plate, the overriding Philippine Sea Plate, the Mariana Trench, and a subset of the known serpentinite mud volcanoes on the forearc seafloor. Stars mark the locations of the Pacman and Subetbia mud volcanoes investigated in this study. Bathymetry from GEBCO Compilation Group¹²⁵. b Bathymetry map showing the Pacman mud volcano and the location of gravity core GeoB24917-1 retrieved during expedition SO292/2. Bathymetric data collected during expedition SO292/2²⁶. c Schematic of serpentinite mud volcano formation, following serpentinization of the mantle wedge by slab-derived fluids, formation of H₂ and CH₄, and the rise of serpentinite mud and fluids through deep-seated faults towards the seafloor.

This study documents AOM coupled to sulfate reduction as a key metabolic process in the Mariana forearc, indicating the importance of methane cycling for the indigenous microbial community. Our findings also provide evidence of relict methanogenesis in the serpentinite mud, where its temporal distribution is possibly controlled by variable substrate availability. We present a comprehensive lipid biomarker and isotopic record from the Pacman and Subetbia mud volcanoes, providing insights into the habitability and survival strategies of extremophilic chemosynthetic life in this serpentinite biosphere.

Kumawat, P., Albers, E., Bach, W. et al.
Biomarker evidence of a serpentinite chemosynthetic biosphere at the Mariana forearc. Commun Earth Environ 6, 659 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02667-6

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Creationists often insist that “life cannot come from non-life,” claiming that the origin of life through natural processes — abiogenesis — is impossible. Yet these microorganisms thriving deep beneath the ocean floor undermine that argument completely. They demonstrate that life does not require sunlight, oxygen, or organic nutrients. Instead, it can sustain itself entirely through chemical reactions involving inorganic matter, precisely the kind of chemistry that would have been available on the early Earth long before photosynthesis or complex ecosystems evolved.

These microbes survive by harnessing energy from the oxidation of minerals and gases such as hydrogen and carbon, producing methane as a by-product. In doing so, they show that biological systems can indeed emerge and persist using nothing more than inorganic chemistry and environmental energy sources. If life can continue this way today — in conditions strikingly similar to those thought to exist on the early Earth — then it is perfectly reasonable to infer that the same processes could once have given rise to life itself.

Creationists’ claim that life from non-life violates natural law is based on a false analogy with modern life, which relies on pre-existing organic systems. But these extremophiles illustrate that the boundary between “non-living” chemistry and “living” biochemistry is not a rigid wall — it is a continuum. The metabolic reactions that sustain these organisms are direct chemical extensions of the mineral and geochemical reactions occurring in their surroundings. Life in such places does not appear magically; it emerges naturally from the physical and chemical conditions of its environment.

Far from being a problem for evolutionary science, discoveries like this one strengthen the case for a natural origin of life. They show that even today, the chemistry of life and the chemistry of rocks remain intimately connected. To deny that such chemistry could, under the right conditions, cross the threshold into life is to deny the very evidence creationists claim to seek — evidence that life can, and demonstrably does, arise from the non-living world through the workings of natural law.

Sadly, the same creationists who continue to parrot the 'no life from non-life' fallacy won't have understood a word of that and will continue to make proven false claims.

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Refuting Creationism - Diverging Sloth Genomes - Just As The TOE Predicts

[left caption]

[right caption]

Deforested genomes: scientists find signs of environmental degradation in the genomes of the endangered Maned Sloths - Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research

The discovery fits seamlessly within the framework of Darwinian evolution. Two once-connected populations became isolated and exposed to different ecological conditions, followed their own evolutionary paths. Over time, their genomes accumulated distinct mutations reflecting adaptation, genetic drift, and local environmental pressures. The result is two clearly defined species whose divergence can be explained entirely by natural processes acting over generations — a textbook demonstration of evolution in action.

Yet this same process now drives both species along a far more perilous trajectory. As their habitats continue to shrink and fragment, their populations are losing genetic diversity and becoming increasingly inbred. Evolution has no foresight or purpose; it cannot plan for the future or reverse the consequences of environmental destruction. The very mechanism that once diversified life on Earth can, under relentless human pressure, just as readily lead to extinction.

There is no sign of “intelligent design” in this grim reality — only the blind, natural workings of selection, drift, and chance operating within a degraded environment. If a designer were guiding life towards some higher purpose, it would hardly produce a situation where its own creations are being driven to extinction by the ecological collapse of their habitats. The plight of the maned sloths stands as a vivid reminder that life’s diversity, beauty, and tragedy arise not from supernatural intent, but from the impersonal and unyielding logic of evolution.

As world leaders prepare for COP30 in Brazil, the message from the maned sloths’ genomes could not be clearer: conservation must be guided by evolutionary science and ecological understanding, not by comforting myths of divine oversight. Only by recognising the true, natural processes that shape life can we hope to protect what remains of it.

Refuting Creationism - Another of Those 'Living Fossils' For Creationists To Misrepresent

Adult marine shell-boring spionid polychaete.

Vasily Radishevsky/
Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Spionid traces on fossilized bivalve shells.

Javier Ortega-Hernandez/Harvard University.

Half-billion-year-old parasite still threatens shellfish | UCR News | UC Riverside

It’s Coelacanth time for creationist disinformers again.

Hilariously, I’ve known creationists claim that the 'fact' that coelacanths haven’t changed for 200 million years somehow proves the “evilutionists” are wrong and that Earth is only 6,000–10,000 years old. How they managed to examine the genome of a 200-million-year-old fossil remains a mystery, but DNA appears to play no part in a creationist’s definition of evolution.

So, for an alternative fallacious argument, here’s an even older fossil that’s still around today, apparently in much the same form as it was almost half a billion years ago. It’s a parasitic worm that attacks oysters. The details have just been published in the journal iScience by scientists led by University of California, Riverside palaeobiologist Karma Nanglu, with colleagues from Harvard.

The parasitic, soft-bodied bristle worm belongs to a group called the spionids. It’s common in today’s oceans and feeds on the shells of mussels and oysters, leaving a characteristic question mark-shaped track in their shells. Their parasitism doesn’t kill the shellfish but probably shortens their lifespan.

Refuting Creationism - 300,000 Years Of Stone Technology In Africa - Over 2 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Fig. 1: Map of Turkana Basin with the Namorotukunan Archeological Site and timeline of currently known events in the Plio-Pleistocene.

a Geographical context of the Koobi Fora Formation (red stripes), the paleontological collection area 40 (green square), and the location of the site of Namorotukunan (black dot); [map produced Natural Earth and NOAAA ETOPO 202295]; b Stratigraphic context of the Koobi Fora Formation highlighting members and key volcanic ash marker levels, yellow bars refer to the age of archeological horizons (tephrostratigraphy after McDougall et al.⁹⁶); c A chronology of key Plio-Pleistocene hominins from the East African Rift System (EARS)^11,74,97,98 d A chronology and key localities associated with hominin lithic technology^3,6,12 (images of Nyayanga provided by E. Finestone; images of Lomekwi and BD1 based on 3D models; artifact images are for representation and not to scale) and the investigations at Namorotukunan: red arrows represent the artifact levels in the archeological excavations (photos DRB), and colored circles (lettered A-G) represent geologic sections investigated to develop a synthetic stratigraphic column (presented in Figs. 2 and 3).

Braun, D.R., Palcu Rolier, D.V., Advokaat, E.L. et al (2025)

Stone Tools Through Generations: 300,000 Years of Human Technology | Media Relations | The George Washington University

The story of our origins is written in the ground of Africa. It is real, tangible, and objective — a record that doesn’t rely on belief or interpretation, but on physical evidence left behind by our ancient ancestors. A fresh chapter of that record has just been described in a new open-access paper in Nature Communications, authored by an international team of palaeoanthropologists led by Professor David R. Braun of the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology at George Washington University, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

By comparison, the origins narrative found in Genesis reflects the worldview and assumptions of people who believed the Earth was small, flat, and covered by a solid dome. It is astonishing that, even today, some treat that ancient cosmology as a more reliable account of human history than the rich and expanding fossil and archaeological record in Africa. Yet such individuals continue to seek influence over policy, law, morality, and social institutions, grounding their authority not in evidence, but in pre-scientific tradition — a worldview formed long before the wheel, let alone modern science.

Unintelligent Design - Flatworms Can Regenerate Body Parts - So Why Can't Humans?

The planarian Schmidtea mediterranea

Credit: FLI / Anna Schroll

Schmidtea mediterranea

New research shows a tiny, regenerative worm could change our understanding of healing Stowers Institute for Medical Research

Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have uncovered new details explaining how the planarian flatworm, Schmidtea mediterranea, can regenerate not just a missing body part, but an entire organism from a tiny tissue fragment. Their findings have just been published in Cell Reports and represent a major advance in our understanding of regeneration at the cellular and genetic level.

This little worm continues to surprise scientists. Remove its head? It grows a new one. Slice it into pieces? Each piece becomes a complete worm. Such astonishing powers naturally prompt two very different kinds of questions – one scientific, one theological.

If one temporarily accepts creationist premises for the sake of argument, we are forced into a series of uncomfortable and contradictory conclusions.

Why would a supposedly omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent designer grant a humble flatworm the ability to regenerate an entire body, yet deny this life-saving ability to humans and virtually all other organisms? If this designer could abolish suffering, disease, and limb loss – and knowingly chose not to – what does that imply about its nature?

Creationists are left defending a worldview in which their designer appears either: unwilling to prevent suffering; unable to create beneficial traits consistently; or deliberately designing suffering into its creation. None of these options are theologically tidy – and they certainly do not align with the claim of a universally benevolent designer. The creationist framework produces contradictions, apologetics acrobatics, and moral dilemmas rather than answers.

By contrast, when we ask the evolutionary question – “How did this ability evolve?” – the picture becomes coherent.

Planarians have followed a unique evolutionary trajectory in which extreme regeneration conferred a significant survival advantage. Natural selection acted on stem-cell behaviour, gene regulation, and patterning networks over deep time, refining a mechanism that happens to be far beyond the needs of most other species.

Other organisms have regenerative abilities too – salamanders, zebrafish, sea stars, even humans to a limited extent – but the selective pressures and biological constraints differed. Regeneration is complex, energetically costly, and evolution works from what already exists. Most lineages simply did not follow that path. To borrow Michael Behe’s favourite term, planarian regeneration may appear “irreducibly complex” – and yet, as usual, complexity proves to be a testament to gradual evolutionary refinement, not evidence for supernatural assembly.

Refuting Creationism - Dinosaurs Thrived Until Disaster Struck - 66 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Small primitive mammals live alongside a Triceratops, pre-extinction. A softshell turtle climbs up a log, unaware that its freshwater surroundings will shelter it from the asteroid.

Illustration © Henry Sharpe.

Dinosaurs were on the up before asteroid downfall | News | The University of Edinburgh

This, the second paper, published in 2022 that utterly refutes creationism on several different levels, reports evidence that particularly undermines their claim that an omnibenevolent god created a world fine-tuned for life.

This belief arises from a deeply ignorant, rose-tinted view of the world — one that conveniently ignores history and habitually attributes anything bad to something else: sin, free will, or other theological constructs that, by their own narrative, could only have applied after some supposed “fall”.

In reality, even a superficial understanding of Earth’s history — 99.9975 % of which took place before creationism’s legendary “Creation Week” — reveals that the planet is anything but fine-tuned for life. Life on Earth has repeatedly been subjected to mass extinctions triggered by geological and cosmological catastrophes that wreaked havoc on the environment, often at a pace too rapid for most species to adapt.

One of the most famous of these events was the meteor impact in what is now the Yucatán Peninsula, 66 million years ago. This strike plunged the planet into a “nuclear winter” as atmospheric dust blotted out the Sun. Within weeks, almost all large species were exterminated, leaving only the avian dinosaurs — likely shielded by insulating feathers — and early mammals, protected by their insulating fur.

But as this recent paper shows, the dinosaurs were thriving in a healthy, biodiverse environment in which they were the dominant species right up until the moment the meteor struck. Had they shared the creationists’ mindset, they might well have concluded that Earth was “fine-tuned” for them too.

The evidence for this comes from an international team of palaeontologists and ecologists, including researchers from University of Oulu (Finland), Universidade de Vigo (Spain), University of Washington (Seattle, USA), University College London (UK), New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (USA), and University of Edinburgh (UK).

How Science Works - Biologists Might Need To Rethink A Detail Of Evolutionary Biology

Details of the surface of two sheet-like colonies of the ‘Berenicea’ type: (A) In Hyporosopora dilatata, the colony surface is relatively flat, save for the slightly convex zooids and faint growth lines (Upper Callovian or Lower Oxfordian, Oxford Clay; Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire); and (B) Well-defined transverse ridges cross the colony surface in Rugosopora enstonensis (Bathonian, Hampen Marly Beds; Enstone, Oxfordshire). Scale bars are 500µm.

Source: Bryozoans in the British Jurassic

New Study Reveals Berenicea Zooid Size Reduction Over 200 Million Years Contradicts Cope's Rule----Chinese Academy of Sciences

The discovery that a group of organisms has, contrary to “Cope’s Rule,” undergone a steady reduction in body size over the past 200 million years is a useful reminder of how science works — and why religion so often falters.

A cornerstone of the scientific method is its willingness to acknowledge error. Real intellectual strength lies not in clinging to discredited beliefs as though doing so were a test of character, but in facing up to mistakes, learning from them, and changing one’s mind. That is how knowledge advances.

Religion, by contrast, remains shackled to the dogmas of its ancient founders. To alter those fundamental beliefs is, in effect, to abandon the religion itself. This is why, while science has sent probes into deep space and placed human beings on the Moon, faith — despite lofty claims of being able to “move mountains” — has yet to lift so much as a feather a millimetre off the ground.

The new finding was just reported in the journal Palaeontology by Associate Professor MA Junye of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) and collaborators. They found that Berenicea, a genus of cyclostome bryozoans, has experienced a continuous reduction in zooid size over the past 200 million years. This runs counter to “Cope’s Rule,” which describes a tendency for body size to increase during the evolution of many lineages.

Cope’s Rule was formulated by the American palaeontologist Edward Drinker Cope (1840–1897). There are, of course, well-known exceptions — such as the “island effect,” where animals isolated on small islands often evolve into miniature versions of their mainland relatives — but these are localised adaptations to particular environments. Cope’s Rule, by contrast, applies to long-term, broad-scale evolutionary trends.

Refuting Creationism - A Tiny Fossil From New Zealand Is Another Huge Problem For Creationism

A male satin bowerbird by his highly decorated avenue bower.

Photo by Daniel J. Field

Tiny fossil bone helps unlock history of the bowerbird | University of Otago
Apart from the fact that this fossil is a million years old, there is nothing in this discovery that creationists will struggle to dismiss with one of their well-worn stock phrases — “It was just a bird ‘kind’,” “It wasn’t transitional,” and so on. This is despite the fact that their Bible is remarkably vague about how many bird ‘kinds’ there were, includes bats as birds, and says absolutely nothing about anything outside a few square miles of the Middle East.

And of course, the date — like the entire fossil record — will be casually brushed aside as forged, fabricated, or “wrongly dated using proven false carbon dating” [sic].

But to anyone who actually values evidence and truth, and is not intent on proving their strength by clinging to demonstrably false beliefs in defiance of all contrary evidence, this find is genuinely fascinating. It provides strong evidence that the bowerbirds, today confined to Australia and New Guinea, were once far more widespread. This conclusion is based on the fact that the fossil was discovered in New Zealand. It is also suggested that climate change may have brought about its extinction in New Zealand and driven the bowerbirds' range back to its present distribution.

The discovery is reported in the journal Historical Biology by researchers from University of Cambridge, University of Otago, and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. A [news release from the University of Otago]() explains the significance of the find and four of the authors have also written an article about the find in The Conversation. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

Refuting Creationism - Eating Carrion Made Us Human

Factors influencing scavenging behavior in humans.

Carmen Cañizares (@canitanatura).

Eating carrion made us human | CENIEH

One of the most telling weaknesses of creationism is how heavily it depends on piling assumption upon assumption to sustain its narrative. As Stephen Hawking observed in The Grand Design, the more assumptions a theory requires, the less likely it is to be true. This is simply the reverse of Occam's razor, the principle that the simplest explanation consistent with the evidence is usually the most plausible.

Creationists take the simplistic story of human origins from the Bible and build layers of speculation upon it — not derived from scripture or evidence, but from the circular reasoning of “this must have been true, or my beliefs are wrong.”

A classic example is their claim that there could have been no death before Eve’s supposed sin, because death is ‘evil’ and evil only entered the world after the Fall. From this, they conclude that Adam and Eve — and indeed all animals — must have been vegetarian. To prop up this contrivance, they add yet another assumption: that plants aren’t really ‘alive’ in the same way as animals, so eating them doesn’t count as causing death.

This is a textbook case of a weak theory being shored up by multiplying entities and assumptions — the very opposite of sound scientific reasoning. It also collapses under biological scrutiny. There is no evidence in the Bible to support it, and human anatomy and physiology clearly reveal that we are omnivores with a long evolutionary history of meat consumption.

And now, a team of evolutionary anthropologists led by Ana Mateos of Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) has published a research paper in the Journal of Human Evolution, in which they argue that before early hominins developed the technology to hunt large game for themselves, they were probably dependent on scavenging carrion—often from the kills of apex predators.

An important advantage of scavenging is that it provides a reliable source of high-protein food with relatively low energy expenditure. Carcasses can also sustain a population through periods of drought, when prey is scarce and some animals die from natural causes. Early hominins could have used sticks and stones to drive off predators, while their highly acidic stomachs minimised the risk of disease from decaying meat. Later, cooking provided additional protection against pathogens.

After what was likely a brief evolutionary phase as scavengers, humans developed the tools and cooperative strategies to become apex predators themselves. This reliance on carrion may even have been one of the critical factors that set our lineage on a different path from the other African apes, driving both physical and physiological changes.

Unintelligent Design - How Wheat Could Have Been Designed To Give Tripple The Yield

A spike of wheat showing three grains clustered within each spikelet, where there is ordinarily just one.

Credit: Vijay Tiwary,
University of Maryland

Wheat monoculture - but it could have been better designed!

Scientists Discover a Gene that Could Triple Wheat Production | College of Agriculture & Natural Resources at UMD

News that a single mutant gene could triple wheat yields raises some uncomfortable questions for Bible-literalist creationists, and indeed for anyone who believes their god created the Earth and all life on it exclusively for humans — its supposed favoured species, for whom “all of creation” was made.

This belief has profoundly shaped Western attitudes towards the planet and its resources. One consequence of this selfish worldview has been the destruction of vast areas of the Earth, its ecosystems, and the countless species that depend on them. In the relentless search for mineral wealth, cropland, and grazing land, humans have transformed immense regions into effective monocultures which, to anything not adapted to those particular crops, might as well be deserts. Moreover, the same belief — coupled with the idea that brown and black people were inferior to whites and therefore “created” to serve Europeans — helped justify imperialism and the transatlantic slave trade.

One question that creationists, in my experience, consistently shy away from is this: if an omniscient god truly created our domestic animals for our use, why have we almost always had to modify them through selective breeding to make them more useful? It’s as though this god didn’t actually know what we would need or how we would use these animals. Which leads to the obvious follow-up question: why didn’t this supposedly omniscient being create ideal domestic plants and crops in the first place?

How Science Works - Revising Our Knowledge Of Plant Dispersal

Plants colonising volcanic tepha on Surtsey

Credit: Pawel Wasowicz (CC BY)

Plants colonising lava field on Surtsey island.

Credit: Pawel Wasowicz (CC BY)

New study overturns long-held assumptions about how plants spread to islands | EurekAlert!

Plants that successfully leave more offspring are those with traits that allow their seeds to spread widely. That usually involves two key factors: tolerance or adaptability to new environments, and an effective way of reaching them. Over time, evolution has produced a variety of dispersal strategies—seeds can float on the wind, stick to animals, or pass through birds and end up deposited somewhere new.

Crossing the sea, though, adds another layer of difficulty. Seeds must survive what amounts to a small ocean voyage. For a long time, scientists assumed birds were the main way plants made these crossings. The idea was straightforward: birds eat fruit, fly to new islands, and excrete the seeds.

But new evidence has challenged that view. A recent open-access paper in Ecology Letters examines how plants have colonised Surtsey, the volcanic island that emerged off Iceland in 1963. This unique setting has allowed researchers to watch ecological colonisation unfold in real time.

Their findings were unexpected: most of the 78 vascular plant species that established themselves on the island weren’t fruit-bearing plants spread by birds, but grasses. While birds like geese and gulls did contribute to dispersal, most of the colonising species lacked the traits typically linked with long-distance dispersal.

Creationism Refuted - How Science Works - A Fossil Fly That Challenged Evolution.

A 150-million-year-old fossil with a singular adaptation may unlock the origin of quironomids | Estación Biológica de Doñana - CSIC

In a striking example of how science, in contrast to creationism, starts from the evidence and builds understanding accordingly, a newly discovered fossil fly has led scientists to revise their view on a seemingly minor detail of insect evolution.

Creationism, by contrast, starts with the conclusion and either distorts the evidence or ignores it altogether when, as is usually the case, it contradicts what they believe. To a creationist, the belief is sacred, so facts must comply—or be disregarded.

In my last blog post, I explained how psychologists view this behaviour as a perceived test of strength: creationists see challenges to their beliefs as threats that would make them appear weak if they accepted and adapted to the evidence. They respond by setting their faces like flint against any contradiction.

Science, by contrast, sees a refusal to change one’s mind when the evidence demands it as a mark of intellectual dishonesty. A willingness to revise one’s views shows a desirable strength of character — the hallmark of a good scientist. To a scientist, facts are sacred; opinions must flow from them. In any scientific debate, facts are neutral.

The discovery in question involves a Jurassic fossil midge from Australia — Telmatomyia talbragarica, the oldest known member of the Chironomidae (non-biting midge) family in the Southern Hemisphere. The fossil shows a mechanism for attaching to rocks using suction pads on its feet. This trait was previously thought to have evolved in marine species, but this insect lived in freshwater. That detail suggests the family did not originate in Siberia, as once believed, but in Gondwana before it broke apart.

Not the most dramatic scientific breakthrough, perhaps, but this is precisely how science advances — especially evolutionary biology: one careful step at a time, with constant re-examination and revision as new evidence emerges. It’s like working on a million-piece jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box.