Transitional Form News - Precambrian Common Ancestor of Insects, Arachnids, and Nematode Worms

3D laser scans enable the researchers to study the fossils’ shape and curvature.

Droser Lab/UCR

Researchers Scott Evans (left) and Ian Hughes examine a fossil bed at Nilpena Ediacara National Park.

Droser Lab/UCR.

Tiny worm makes for big evolutionary discovery | UCR News | UC Riverside

The refutation of creationism continues today with news of another one of those 'non-existent' transitional species that turn up with monotonous regularity only to be dismissed by creationists as 'not transitional but fully formed' with now two gaps in the record where there was originally one, or by simply dismissing the dating method as unreliable and coincidentally wrong by an order of magnitude sufficient to make 6-10,000 years look like x-million years.
Another big disappointment for creationists is the fact that this one is from before the Cambrian when their traditional disinformation claims lots of species popped into existence without ancestors by magic in a single event called the 'Cambrian explosion'. The Cambrian 'explosion' was of course a period of some 6-10 million years during which many of the basic body plans of multicellular organisms evolved.

This fossil however was before then and was clearly the ancestral stem species from which a whole range of Cambrian organism, collectively known as Ecdysozoa evolved. These are a group of organisms with an outer cuticle which is shed periodically as the organism grows. The vast group includes nematode worms and arthropods such as insects, spiders, crustaceans like crabs, shrimps, lobsters, and the horseshow crab. So, this discovery, which the palaeontologists have named Uncus dzaugisi sits at the base of this branch of the evolutionary tree. It resembled a nematode worm.

Tell me all about the Ecdysozoa, please. Ecdysozoa is a major clade of animals within the larger group known as Protostomia, distinguished by their unique mode of growth, which involves periodic moulting of an external cuticle. The term "ecdysozoa" comes from the Greek word ecdysis, meaning "to strip off" or "to shed," referring to this moulting process.

Characteristics of Ecdysozoa

1. Moulting (Ecdysis):
   • The defining feature of Ecdysozoans is the shedding of their cuticle—a tough, non-living outer layer made of proteins, polysaccharides (like chitin), or collagen. This process allows them to grow, as the rigid cuticle limits continuous size increase.
   • After moulting, a new, larger cuticle is secreted, which hardens over time.
2. Body Structure:
   • Many have a hydrostatic skeleton, relying on fluid pressure in their body cavity for movement and structure.
   • Most lack cilia or flagella in their adult form, distinguishing them from other protostomes.
3. Diversity:
   • The group includes some of the most diverse and abundant organisms on Earth, ranging from microscopic species to large, visible ones.
4. Nervous System:
   • Typically, they have a ventral nerve cord and a dorsal brain, with varied sensory adaptations.

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Major Groups Within Ecdysozoa
Ecdysozoa includes eight phyla, with two of the most well-known being Arthropoda and Nematoda:

1. Arthropoda
   • The largest and most diverse group of animals, including insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and myriapods.
   • They have segmented bodies, jointed appendages, and a hard exoskeleton.
   • Examples: Butterflies, crabs, spiders, centipedes.
2. Nematoda (Roundworms)
   • Microscopic to macroscopic worms with a cylindrical, unsegmented body.
   • Found in nearly every habitat on Earth, often as parasites in plants and animals.
   • Examples: Caenorhabditis elegans (a model organism), Ascaris (a human intestinal parasite).
3. Tardigrada (Water Bears)
   • Microscopic, water-dwelling animals known for their extreme resilience to harsh environments.
   • They can survive desiccation, radiation, and even the vacuum of space.
4. Onychophora (Velvet Worms)
   • Segmented, soft-bodied terrestrial animals with slime glands used for capturing prey.
5. Priapulida
   • Marine worms with a tubular body, often found burrowing in sediment.
6. Kinorhyncha
   • Tiny, segmented marine animals often referred to as "mud dragons."
7. Loricifera
   • Microscopic animals inhabiting marine sediment, with a complex, retractable body.
8. Nematomorpha (Horsehair Worms)
   • Parasites as larvae, often controlling the behaviour of their insect hosts.

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Evolution and Phylogeny

• Ecdysozoa was proposed as a clade in 1997, based on molecular evidence (notably studies of ribosomal RNA).
• They share a common ancestor with other protostomes but diverged early to adopt their unique moulting strategy.
• Their evolutionary success is evident in their sheer numbers and adaptability, especially in arthropods.

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Ecological and Economic Importance

1. Ecological Roles:
   • Many ecdysozoans are key components of ecosystems as decomposers, predators, prey, and parasites.
   • Insects, a subgroup of arthropods, are critical for pollination and nutrient cycling.
2. Economic Impact:
   • Beneficial: Insects (e.g., bees) aid in agriculture, while nematodes play a role in soil health.
   • Harmful: Some ecdysozoans are pests or parasites causing diseases in humans, animals, and crops.

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Fun Facts

• Tardigrades can enter a state called cryptobiosis, surviving for decades without water or food.
• Arthropods are the most successful phylum, with over a million described species, and likely many more undiscovered.
• Nematodes may account for about 80% of individual animals on Earth.

The discovery was made by a team from University of California, Riverside (UCR), led by Professor Mary Droser a distinguished professor of geology. The have explained their findings in the journal, Current Biology, and in a UCR press release:

Tiny worm makes for big evolutionary discovery

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UC Riverside scientists have described ‘Uncus,’ the oldest ecdysozoan and the first from the Precambrian period

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Everyone has a past. That includes the millions of species of insects, arachnids, and nematode worms that make up a major animal group called the Ecdysozoa. Until recently, details about this group’s most distant past have been elusive. But a UC Riverside-led team has now identified the oldest known ecdysozoan in the fossil record and the only one from the Precambrian period. Their discovery of Uncus dzaugisi, a worm-like creature rarely over a few centimeters in length, is described in a paper published today in Current Biology.

Scientists have hypothesized for decades that this group must be older than the Cambrian, but until now its origins have remained enigmatic. This discovery reconciles a major gap between predictions based on molecular data and the lack of described ecdysozoans prior to the rich Cambrian fossils record and adds to our understanding of the evolution of animal life.

Mary L. Droser, co-author Earth and Planetary Sciences University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA , USA.

The ecdysozoans are the largest and most species-rich animal group on Earth, encompassing more than half of all animals. Characterized by their cuticle — a tough external skeleton that is periodically shed — the group comprises three subgroups: nematodes, which are microscopic worms; arthropods, which include insects, spiders, and crustaceans; and scalidophora, an eclectic group of small, scaly marine creatures.

Like many modern-day animal groups, ecdysozoans were prevalent in the Cambrian fossil record and we can see evidence of all three subgroups right at the beginning of this period, about 540 million years ago. We know they didn’t just appear out of nowhere, and so the ancestors of all ecdysozoans must have been present during the preceding Ediacaran period.

Ian V. Hughes, first author
Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.

DNA-based analyses, used to predict the age of animal groups by comparing them with their closest living relatives, have corroborated this hypothesis. Yet ecdysozoan fossil animals have remained hidden among scores of animal fossils paleontologists have discovered from the Ediacaran Period.

Top: Uncus fossil from Nilpena Ediacara National Park. The numbers correspond to the coordinates of this fossil on the fossil bed surface. Bottom: 3D laser scans enable the researchers to study the fossils’ shape and curvature.

Droser Lab/UCR.

Ediacaran animals, which lived 635-538 million years ago, were ocean dwellers; their remains preserved as cast-like impressions on the seabed that later hardened to rock. Hughes said uncovering them is a labor-intensive, delicate process that involves peeling back rock layers, flipping them over, dusting them off, and piecing them back together to get “a really nice snapshot of the sea floor.”

This excavation process has only been done at Nilpena Ediacara National Park in South Australia, a site Droser and her team have been working at for 25 years that is known for its beautifully preserved Ediacaran fossils.

Nilpena is perhaps the best fossil site for understanding early animal evolution in the world because the fossils occur during a period of heightened diversity and we are able to excavate extensive layers of rock that preserve these snapshots. The layer where we found Uncus is particularly exciting because the sediment grains are so small that we really see all the details of the fossils preserved there.

Assistant Professor Scott Evans, co-author
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.

While the team didn’t set out to find an early ecdysozoan during their 2018 excavation, they were drawn to a mysterious worm-like impression that they dubbed “fishhook.”

Sometimes we make dramatic discoveries and sometimes we excavate an entire bed and say ‘hmmm, I’ve been looking at that thing, what do you think?’ That’s what happened here. We had all sort of noticed this fishhook squiggle on the rock. It was pretty prominent because it was really, really deep.

Because it was deep, we knew it wasn’t smooshed easily so it must have had a pretty rigid body. At this point we knew this was a new fossil animal and it belong to the Ecdysozoa.

Ian V. Hughes

After seeing more of the worm-like squiggles the team paid closer attention, taking note of fishhook’s characteristics. Other defining characteristics include its distinct curvature and the fact that it could move around — seen by trace fossils in the surrounding area. Paul De Ley, an associate professor of nematology at UCR, confirmed its fit as an early nematode and ruled out other worm types.

The team called the new animal Uncus, which means “hook” in Latin, noting in the paper its similarities to modern-day nematodes. Hughes said the team was excited to find evidence of what scientists had long predicted; that ecdysozoans existed in the Ediacaran Period.

It’s also really important for our understanding of what these early animal groups would have looked like and their lifestyle, especially as the ecdysozoans would really come to dominate the marine ecosystem in the Cambrian.

Ian V. Hughes

The paper is titled “An Ediacaran bilateran with an ecdysozoan affinity from South Australia.” Funding for the research came from NASA.

Highlights

• A new, motile bilaterian is described from the Ediacaran of South Australia
• Features including morphology and movement suggest an ecdysozoan affinity
• This discovery firmly places ecdysozoans in the Precambrian

Summary
Molecular clocks and Cambrian-derived metazoans strongly suggest a Neoproterozoic origin of many animal clades.^1,2,3,4 However, fossil bilaterians are rare in the Ediacaran, and no definitive ecdysozoan body fossils are known from the Precambrian. Notably, the base of the Cambrian is characterized by an abundance of trace fossils attributed to priapulid worms,^5,6 suggesting that major divisions among ecdysozoan groups occurred prior to this time. This is supported by ichnofossils from the latest Ediacaran or early Cambrian left by a plausible nematoid,^7,8,9 although definitively attributing this inferred behavior to crown-Nematoida remains contentious in the absence of body fossils.¹⁰ Given the high probability of the evolution of Ecdysozoa in the Proterozoic, the otherwise prolific fossil record of the Ecdysozoa, and the identification of more than 100 distinct Ediacaran genera, it is striking that no Ediacaran body fossils have been confidently assigned to this group. Here, we describe Uncus dzaugisi gen. et. sp. nov. from the Ediacara Member (South Australia), a smooth, vermiform organism with distinct curvature and anterior-posterior differentiation. The depth of relief of Uncus is unique among Ediacara fossils and consistent with a rigid outer cuticle. Ecological relationships and associated trace fossils demonstrate that Uncus was motile. Body morphology and the inferred style of movement are consistent with Nematoida, providing strong evidence for at least an ecdysozoan affinity. This validates the Precambrian origin of Ecdysozoa, reconciling a major gap between predicted patterns of animal evolution and the fossil record.⁴

Hughes, Ian V.; Evans, Scott D.; Droser, Mary L.
An Ediacaran bilaterian with an ecdysozoan affinity from South Australia
Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.10.030

© 2024 Elsevier.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

I think my favourite quote from one of the scientists is "We know they didn’t just appear out of nowhere, and so the ancestors of all ecdysozoans must have been present during the preceding Ediacaran period", which just about describes the difference between someone who knows the Theory of Evolution is correct because he understands the evidence for it, and a creationists who believes in fully formed living organisms made from nothing, magically popping into existence from nowhere, with magic spells cast by an unproven supernatural deity their mummy and daddy told them about.

The ancestral form, the transitional species, was in exactly for rock formation of exactly the right age which the theory of evolutionary decent with modifiction from a common ancester predicted.

And in case a creationist is tempted to try the 'radiometric dating is flawed/wrong/faked fallacy. The Ediacaran rock formation these fossils were found in was independently dated several different ways that all converged on a 98-million-year span from 635 to 538 million years ago known as the Ediacaran. The Most important being the Uranium-Lead (U-Pb) dating of zircons found in the layers of volcanic ash sandwiched within the rocks. To compress 600 million years of radioactive decay into less than 6-10,000 years would have caused Earth's rocks to melt and the seas to boil away. And the weak nuclear force would have been so weak that atoms could not have formed, let alone life, and there would have been no planet and no universe to fine tune for it either.

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Refuting Creationism - How Many Legs Had A Trilobite 250-300 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'?

Triarthrus eatoni

AI generated (ChatGPT40)

Cambrian trilobite

AI generated (ChatGPT40)

New York State Fossils Reveal Extra Set of Trilobite Legs | AMNH

In that vast amount of time before creationism's god allegedly created a small flat planet with a dome over it, containing nothing and nowhere that wasn't known to the Bronze Age Canaanite pastoralists who first wrote about it, when 99.9975% of Earth’s history happened, there were swarms of trilobites living in the seas and regularly molting to leave hard body parts to fossilise in the marine sediment.

They did this so frequently that trilobites are now amongst the commonest of fossils, but nevertheless fossils preserving the soft body parts are rare, like the soft body parts of the rest of the Cambrian biota.

However, just such a fossil has turned up in upstate New York that shows something surprising - it has an additional pair of legs to the usual trilobite complement. This discovery is the subject of a paper in the journal Palaeontology (the journal of the Palaeontological Association) by Jin-Bo Hou from Nanjing University and Professor Melanie Hopkins, curator and chair of the American Museum of Natural History’s Division of Paleontology. The discovery is described in an American Natural History Museum news article:

Refuting Creationism - A strange Sea Slug - From 500 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

Dorsal view of a complete Shishania aculeata

Image credit: G Zhang/L Parry.

Spines covering the body of Shishania aculeata

Image credit: G Zhang/L Parry

August: Mollusc discovery | News and features | University of Bristol

Palaeontology has a habit of throwing up surprises.

Sadly for creationists, these surprises never show us that science is fundamentally wrong and creationism is fundamentally right. It invariably shows us exactly the opposite.

The surprise today is that an early mollusc resembled a slug with a spiky armour, not the smooth shell we normally associate with snails which were believed to have evolved in the Early Cambrian when this species lived.

The confirmation that creationism is fundamentally wrong comes from the fact that this strange slug lived in that very long pre-'Creation' period of Earth history, 500 million years before creationists think the Universe was magicked up out of nothing by some magic words spoken in a language that no-one else spoke because, so the story goes, there was no-one else for the magician to speak to.

The mollusc, named Shishania aculeata, was probably an early evolutionary dead-end; an early response to the threat to soft-bodies creatures from the emerging predators that gave the impetus for the rapid radiation of forms that characterised the Cambrian.

Refuting Creationism - How Worms Turned - Into Insects

Fig. 1: Anatomical overview of Youti yuanshi.

Ancient worm fossil solves mystery of how insects and spiders evolved - Durham University

To anyone who has ever looked at the segmented body of an annelid worm and the segmented body of an insect, particularly in its larval stage, that the latter is really the former with legs and (usually as an adult) wings should be obvious. The same can be said for annelid worms and centipedes and, for that matter, worms with legs and arachnids (spiders, scorpions and mites). But maybe the connection between arachnids and crabs or insects and barnacles is not so obvious, until you look at how the legs work and how they both have an exoskeleton instead of an endoskeleton like the vertebrates.

But then even the primitive ancestors of the vertebrates were segmented like the annelids, as we can see in the spinal column and the way nerves arise from the spinal cord.

But, tell a creationist that a segmented worm evolved into the arthropods, and they'll immediately demand to see the 'transitional' fossil, that they've been fooled into thinking must exist because every generation of every species is obliged to leave a fossil so there is a complete, unbroken record of evolution somewhere, because the Theory of Evolution says so. In fact, a complete, unbroken fossil record of every generation of an evolving species over time would look suspiciously like something other than chance was at work in creating fossils.

So, what we have are the snapshots at random points in time that are left in the geological column, and various dating methods that tell us how old the fossil is. The rest is simple common sense and joining the dots.

And one such snapshot has just been announced by researchers working at Durham University, UK, who have identified a species that is clearly partway between a segmented worm and an early arthropod (euarthropod). The newly-named Youti yuanshi is about the size of a poppy seed and fits neatly into one of creationism's beloved gaps. And, of course, it is exactly what the TOE predicts should have lived, because, as I said, the connection between segmented worms and segmented arthropods is obvious.

Refuting Creationism - A Surfeit of Lamprey Evolution

Jawless lamprey

Image by T. Lawrence,
Great Lakes Fishery Commission

Petromyzon marinus, an invasive species in the North American Great Lakes.

Lampreys possess a ‘jaw-dropping’ evolutionary origin - Northwestern Now

It's a basic delusion of the creation cult that evolutionary biologists are turning their backs on the Theory of Evolution in favour of their childish notion of magic by a magic creator for which there is not an iota of scientific evidence. This probably tells us more about the ignorant gullibility of their target dupes and the contempt in which they are held by the cult leaders, than creationist frauds would want us to know.

The lie is designed to fool creationists into thinking that their childish superstition is ahead of science because their abysmal ignorance of the subject gives them a better understanding of biology than people who have university degrees in the subject and who use it every working day to reveal new facts and develop new medicines or more efficient agriculture, or simply to reveal the truth about the world we live in.

Creationists have also been fooled into thinking these millions of working biomedical scientists, their research assistants and staff of research institutes, together with those who publish the science journals, are all lying to mislead people because they 'hate' the imaginary, unproven creator, and none of them has ever broken ranks and blown the whistle on the 'deception'.

Meanwhile, in the grown-up world outside the creationist rabbit hole, real scientists are discovering facts that show how evolution from common ancestors involves genetic changes, just the way the Theory of Evolution predicts.

Refuting Creationism - Perfectly Preserved Trilobites From The Cambrian - 515 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

Two species of Trilobite with approaching pyroclastic flow

© Prof. A. El Albani, Univ. Poitiers

Microtomographic reconstruction of the head and anterior trunk (“body”) limbs of the trilobite Protolenus (Hupeolenus) in ventral view.

© Arnaud MAZURIER, IC2MP, Univ. Poitiers

June: Prehistoric Pompeii | News and features | University of Bristol

Paleontologists have discovered a site in Morocco where hundreds of trilobites and other Cambrian species have been preserved by a pyroclastic flow of hot volcanic ash that preserved them in exquisite details. They have nicknamed them 'Pompeii' trilobites after the town near Naples in Italy similarly preserved by volcanic ash from Vesuvius, almost as a snapshot of a living Roman town, complete with molds of the bodies of people killed as they slept.

The trilobites were quickly embedded in volcanic ash and even their digestive tracts were preserved as they filled with the ash.

This means, of course, that the fossils can be dated extremely accurately using the uranium/lead (U-Pb) ratios in zircon crystals in the volcanic ash.

Creationism in Crisis - Newly Discovered Species of Trilobite Aid in Dating Rocks - To 490 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

Ten newly discovered species of trilobites, hidden for 490 million years in a little-studied part of Thailand, could be the missing pieces in an intricate puzzle of ancient world geography.

Artist's rendering of a trilobite based on preserved soft body parts.

Nobu Tamura

Trilobites rise from the ashes to reveal ancient map | News

In my last blog post I wrote about the fact that Neanderthals were making marks, interpreted as art, on the wall of a French cave, 40,000 years before creationists believe Earth was created. This blog post is about creatures that lived much further into 'pre-Creation' history, some 490 million years 'pre-Creation' to be precise.

It's also about how the rocks in which their fossils were found were dated and how this means that fossils of these species can now be used to date other rocks, giving the lie to creationist claims that dating rock using 'index' fossils is circular reasoning. And dating those rock formations leads to a new understanding of the details of plate tectonics as the ancient continent, Gondwana, broke up.

Trilobites as a group are known to have diversified and diverged relatively quickly and became extinct relatively quickly too, so each species lived only for a few million years. This means, if we know when the species lived, we can date the rocks they are found in to within a few million years.

The fossils are of ten species of trilobite that are new to science which were found in layers of ancient volcanic ash between layers of sandstone in a little-studied area of Thailand. The ash layer forms greenish 'tuffs' which contains crystals of zircon produced during the volcanic eruption. Zircon crystals are extremely durable and remain unchanged embedded within the rocks. Trapped inside them are atoms of the radioactive isotopes of uranium, ²³⁸U and ²³⁵U, (both of which have very long half-lives and decay to stable isotopes of lead, which remains trapped within the zircon crystal lattice as a permanent record of what proportion of uranium has decayed to lead and which remain, giving a very precise date of the formation of the rock.

Creationism in Crisis - How Microscopic Organisms Were Evolving Half a Billion Years Before 'Creation Week'

Fossil plankton from half a billion years ago. These tiny algae measure much less than a millimetre in size. They evolved their colonial structure to avoid being eaten by early animals.

Credit: THP Harvey

Algae-like fossils show colonial arrangement"

Bizarre new fossils shed light on ancient plankton | News | University of Leicester

A scientist at the University of Leicester, UK, has discovered a new type of fossil, that lived half a billion years ago in the Cambrian Era. It resembles an algae but shows evidence of the beginnings of colonial existence as groups of cells joined together to form larger masses.

It was part of the Cambrian biota which evolved at a time of increasing competition between predatory and prey species, after multicellular life had evolved motility and the ability to hunt and consume other life forms, so exterminating the Ediacaran biota that preceded it.

Evolving the ability to group together into larger masses could have happened because doing so made it harder for a predator to consume the algae-like organisms.

In their obsessive search for something to discredit the Theory of Evolution, creationists often abandon one or more of their basic dogmas, confident that their target dupes won't realise they don’t have a coherent set of ideas with which to counter the vast body of science that established the TOE beyond a shadow of doubt.

This cavalier approach to truth also demonstrates the truism that there is no truth agenda in creationism; it’s all about recruiting more people into the cult in the childish belief that a fantasy becomes more and more true, as more and more people are fooled into believing it - a childish way of seeking safety in numbers.

A classic example of this is the absurd claim that the so-called 'Cambrian Explosion', which actually lasted several million years, was a literal explosion of life forms that arose overnight without ancestors. They believe this shows the work or a creator and simultaneously refutes the idea of common origins and the evolution of multicellular life from single-celled organisms.

And of course, it abandons the notion of a 10,000-year-old Earth and the mythical account in Genesis of how and when life on Earth was created, in which there is no mention of the Cambrian biota or anything resembling it.

First, a little background to the era in which these newly-discovered organisms lived:

Creationism in Crisis - 520 Million-Year-Old Common Ancestor of Crustaceans and Insects Found in the Fossil Record

Kylinxia zhangi

Professor Yu Liu
Yunnan Key Laboratory for Palaeobiology

Artists impression of Kylinxia zhangi in life

X. Wang

Three-eyed distant relative of insects and crustaceans reveals amazing detail of early animal evolution | News | University of Leicester

A team from the University of Leicester, Yunnan Key Laboratory for Palaeobiology and the Institute of Palaeontology at Yunnan University, Chengjiang Fossil Museum, and the Natural History Museum in London, have redescribed a unique fossil animal from rocks nearly 520 million years old that fills in a gap in our understanding of the evolution of animals known as arthropods.

The animal, Kylinxia zhangi, simply shouldn’t be there if creationists claims were true. It is from almost 520 million years before Earth and the life on it was created and its one of those 'transitional' species showing characteristics of not just two different species, but two entire classes of the arthropod phylum. As such, of course, they are evidence of the evolutionary common origin of those two classes within the major taxon.

They're the sort of species that would have any creationist scratching their heads and declaring, "But they're still er... insects.... er... crustaceans"! before hurriedly redefining 'kind' as a major taxonomic class that includes hundreds of thousands of disparate species with different appendages and body plans of the sort that the same creationist will assure you can't have evolved because 'macro-evolution', i.e., evolving new appendages, body plans, etc., is impossible, while 'micro-evolution, i.e., evolution within the same 'kind' is now perfectly possible. 25 years ago, it was impossible until they realised no Ark could be big enough to contain 2 (or 7)of each known and extinct species.

So, the standard knee-jerk response will be necessary: the scientists lied; the scientists got the dates wrong; the dating techniques are flawed; the scientists are part of a world-wide satanic conspiracy to turn people away from Jesus - even the Chines scientists for whom Jesus and Satan are as mythical as are the Chinese Taoist gods to an American Christian fundamentalist.

But, leaving aside the arrogant cultural chauvinism in assuming the locally popular god in America is the only real one, I wonder how many creationists can explain why the dating methods used were wrong by many orders of magnitude, returning dates in the hundreds of millions of years when the real date should have been about 4,000 years.

The find and its significance is explained in a University of Leicester news release: