Creationism in Crisis - Saharan Rock Art From 8,000 Years Ago 'Missed' By the Biblical Genocidal Flood

Acacia forests in the Atbai Desert, near Bir al-Ajjami

Atbai Survey Project, Yale University

Ring tombs of likely Late Antique age (c. 1st Millennium CE) at Di’irabab

Atbai Survey Project, Yale University

New rock art discoveries in Eastern Sudan tell a tale of ancient cattle, the ‘green Sahara’ and climate catastrophe

From my own experience, the Sahara Dessert, at least the Tunisian part of it, is cold and wet!

At least that was what we experience a few years ago when we went there in early June, to avoid the heat of summer. That was a mistake, as Tunisia was experiencing one of the coldest Springs in living memory, when, at times, it felt like it was about to snow. We shivered at the Roman amphitheater at Al Jem where we were back on the coach within 20 minutes, asking for the heating to be turned on, and a trip to the Bardot Mosaic Museum in Tunis was spoilt by the rain.

But it was in the desert near Tozeur, dressed only in summer clothes, that we experienced a cold, wet Sahara, much as it may have been between 15,000 and 5,000 years ago when cattle herders were painting images of their cattle on the rocks at Atbai, east of Wado Halfa in Eastern Sudan. This period of Saharan 'greening' was when the West African subspecies of Rock dove (Columba livia lividor) managed to interbreed with a hybrid between C. rupestris and an Asian subspecies of C. livia, probably somewhere in the Sahara. And from that, probably all domestic and feral (town) pigeons are descended, as I described recently.

It was also where humans herded the cattle they had obtained from North African pastoralists, as described in the following article by Julien Cooper, Honorary Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University, Australia, reprinted here from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. His article has been reformatted for stylistic consistency, but the text is unaltered:

How Science Works - Tracking How Great Tits In An Oxfordshire Wood Are Responding To Climate Change

Wytham Wood, Oxfordshire, UK

Early morning, Wytham Wood

The great tits in this Oxford wood are adapting their breeding times as climate changes – here’s how

This article caught my eye because it concerns the birds in a wood which is local to me - Wytham Wood, near Oxford, to which I have licensed access. This is reputedly the most intensively studied area of woodland in the world, belonging, as it does, to Oxford University.

Wytham Woods form an iconic location that has been the subject of continuous ecological research programmes, many dating back to the 1940s. The estate has been owned and maintained by the University of Oxford since 1942. The Woods are often quoted as being one of the most researched pieces of woodland in the world, and their 1000 acres are designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

The wooded parts of the Wytham Estate comprise ancient semi-natural woodland (dating to the last Ice Age), secondary woodland (dating to the seventeenth century), and modern plantations (1950s and 60s). The fourth key habitat is the limestone grassland found at the top of the hill. Other smaller habitats include a valley-side mire and a series of ponds.

The site is exceptionally rich in flora and fauna, with over 500 species of plants, a wealth of woodland habitats, and 800 species of butterflies and moths.

https://www.wythamwoods.ox.ac.uk/

Through intensive observation over successive years, researchers are able to measure changes in behaviour of species such as the Great Tit, Parus major with some of the best examples of observational biology in the form of research papers. For example, a few years ago a team of researchers showed that the British race of Great tits were diverging from their European relatives with changes in the beaks probably reflecting the fact that we in Britain provide feeding stations for birds to sustain them through the winter much more frequently than other Europeans, so the British Great tits are evolving so they can get the food in the bird feeders in British gardens.

In the following article, ecologist, David López Idiáquez, a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Behavioural and Evolutionary Ecology, University of Oxford, explains how their research is measuring how Great tits are responding to climate change. His article is reprinted here from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency, with photographs from Internet sources:

Creationism in Crisis - Sudden Climate Change Recorded In Marine Mollusc Shells - From 8,400 Years Before Creationism's Global Genocide

Cantabrian Coast, Spain, where prehistoric people collected marine molluscs for food

Marine mollusc shells reveal how prehistoric humans adapted to intense climate change - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona - UAB Barcelona
In an event known to geologists as the '8.2 Ka event', i.e. 8.2 Kilo anum (thousand years) event, a sudden flow of cold water melt-water from the North American lakes into the North Atlantic stopped the 'Atlantic Conveyer' from bringing warm water from the Gulf of Mexico up to the coast of Western Europe and with it warm, moist air. This even significantly and quite suddenly changed the climate to a colder, drier weather pattern which affected marine wildlife.

That event was subsequently recorded in the shells of the marine molluscs the people living along the Cantabrian Coast of Northern Spain gathered for food, disposing of the shells in midden tips, such as in the El Mazo cave in Asturias, Spain. The 8.2 Ka event also had a profound effect on the human societies as their food disappeared or migrated to more equitable areas.

If the creationists story of a global genocidal flood were true, then this record would have been swept away and destroyed, or at least buried under the predicted layer of silt and dead animal and plant remains that such a flood would have made inevitable. But there it is, looking for all the world like there never was a global flood and not so much as a centimeter of silt covering it.

The midden in the El Mazo cave was in use for about 1500 years, producing a continuous stratigraphic record with a very high chronological resolution, which is now the subject of a paper in Scientific Reports by a team of archaeologists led by Asier García Escárzaga, current researcher from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) and the Department of Prehistory of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, together with Igor Gutiérrez Zugasti, from the Universidad de Cantabria (UC). The study was coordinated from the Universidad de La Rioja (UR) and the Max Planck Institute (Germany) alongside members of other academic centres (Max Planck Institute, University of Burgos, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and University of Faro).

The study applies a multidisciplinary toolkit of archaeomalacological studies and stable oxygen isotope analyses to shell remains recovered from the shell midden site.

Creationism in Crisis - Revealing The Mysteries of Earth's Fourth Mass Extinction - 200 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

Reconstruction of a Late Triassic ecosystem from Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Published specimens and species preserved at Ghost Ranch were incorporated into the research team’s global ecological dataset.

Illustration: Victor O. Leshyk.

Skeleton of the early dinosaur Coelophysis bauri from the Late Triassic. The protracted restructuring of Early Jurassic terrestrial ecosystems coincided with the diversification of dinosaurs.

Image: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Mysteries of Earth’s ancient mass extinction event revealed

In that multi-billion year history of planet Earth, long before creationism's little god allegedly created a small, flat planet with a dome over it, and put living things on it, the real Earth had already had several mass extinctions when the ecosystem changed so radically and quickly that most species couldn't evolve fast enough to survive.

This give the lie to creationist claims that Earth is finely-tuned for life because, quite frankly, very few of the species that have evolved on it last more than a few million years before being killed off by one catastrophe or another that any omniscient deity worthy of the description could and should have foreseen and planned for.

The fourth of those mass extinctions occurred at the end of the Triassic period when a dramatic rise in greenhouse gasses due to volcanic activity led to rapid global warming and a significant shift in the planet’s biosphere, ending the Triassic period and launching the Jurassic.

The parallel with today when a rise in greenhouse gasses has been caused by industrial pollution and burning fossil fuels is striking.

Now a new insight into this mass extinction has been revealed by researchers from the University of Southern California's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, using a novel "ecospace framework" method that categorizes animals beyond just their species. It accounts for ecological roles and behaviors — from flying or swimming predators to grazing herbivores and from ocean seafloor invertebrates to soil-dwelling animals on land.

As the press release from UCSDornsife explains:

Creationism in Crisis - How Mindless Evolution Took A Giant Ape To Extinction

A reconstruction of Gigantopithecus blacki.

Image: Garcia / Joannes-Boyau

The Extinction of the Giant Ape--A Long-standing Mystery Solved--Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology

Gigantopithecus blacki, the largest hominoid that ever lived.

Limestone karst landscape in Chongzuo, southern China. The Gigantopithecus sites are located in caves in the steep-sided walls of the mountains. The mountain in the center of the picture is Mulan Mountain. The entrance of Hejiang Cave (#16 in Figure 2) is about three-quarters down from the main peak.

Zhang Y and Harrison T.(2017)

Gigantopithecus blacki was the largest known member of the Hominidae. It lived in what is now southern China but went extinct between 295,000 and 215,000 years ago, leaving only around 2000 fossilised teeth and four jawbones as evidence of its existence. Creationists will need to ignore that fact that this means the entire species lived and went extinct some 250,000 years before 'Creation Week' when they believe the Universe, Earth and all living things were magicked out of nothing.

The reason for its extinction remained a mystery until now, when a team of researchers from Chinese, Australian and American universities have shown that extinction was almost certainly caused by climate change which deprived it of its highly specialised food - tree bark.

The story of its evolution and eventual extinction illustrates the unplanned and mindless nature of evolution by Natural Selection which has no mechanism for anticipating, let alone planning for a major event like climate change causing forest to become grasslands. There is no Plan B because there is not even a Plan A. The large size of Gigantopithecus was probably related to its diet of tree bark, which can be deduced from its teeth and jaw. A large gut being needed to digest, with the aid of bacteria and other microorganisms, a high-cellulose diet. And a large body needs a lot of food to sustain it. Compare the size of the wholly vegetarian gorilla with that of the more omnivorous chimpanzees.

The researchers have published their findings, open access, in the journal Nature and explain it in a news release from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences:

Creationism in Crisis - The Periodic Greening Of The Sahara In That Vast Expanse of 'Pre-Creation' History.

Sahara Desert At the present time

Tassili N’Ajjer plateau, Algeria.
A once fertile savannah with lakes and rivers.

The Sahara Desert used to be a green savannah – new research explains why

Having visited the Sahara Desert in April about 10 years ago, I can assure readers that it is not the hot, dry place of repute but can be cold and wet, at least in the Tunisian part. It was so cold with a fine drizzle, that, shivering in a t-shirt, I offered to buy the thick, hooded duffle coat a local troglodyte guide was wearing, but he quoted me 5000 dinars (about £400) with a knowing twinkle in his eye. I elected to shiver until I got back on the coach and the driver turned the heating on. Yes, there are troglodytes in Tunisia!

There have been times in the past when rain in the Sahara was not just freak weather in Spring to annoy tourists, but the norm in much of the year, so much so that the Sahara was mixed savannah and scrub with lakes and rivers, especially the western part.

Readers may recall how I mentioned the periodic greening of the Sahara in my article about the evolution of rock doves and feral pigeons. Briefly, a species of dove resident in West Africa crossed the Sahara during one such period when there was forest, grassland and water in place of sand. Then when the Sahara became desert the two populations diverged and the one which had made it as far as the Middle East hybridized with a resident related dove. This hybrid quickly became the normal form of the rock dove north and east of the Sahara and diversified further into several subspecies, one of which was domesticated and selectively bred to produce lots of different varieties. Some of these eventually reverted to a feral existence and became the ubiquitous town pigeon with a very different lifestyle and habitat to the original rock dove.

This process of African species moving into and across the Sahara during these periods of greening, and then becoming isolated from the African population, is known as the Saharah Pump and accounts for some of the sub-Saharan African species having a closely related counterpart in North Africa and Eurasia.

And this process has been going on since about 8 million years before creationists think Earth was created and may account for the migration of humans out of Africa some 40-50,000 years ago. More recently, however, there was certainly a population of humans living in a green and fertile Sahara up to at least 11,000 years ago (i.e., at least 1,000 years before 'Creation Week'. We know this because they left a record in rock carvings at Tassili N’Ajjer plateau in present-day Algeria, which show us some of the animals that lived there too.

These periods of greening have occurred approximately every 21,000 years and now two geoscientists from Helsinki University, Finland together with colleagues at Birmingham and Bristol universities, UK., have developed a climate model that explains how the climate changed so regularly and so radically. They have published their findings, open access, in Nature Communications. One of them, Edward Armstrong of Helsinki University, has also written an article about their research in The Conversation. His article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism in Crisis - How Elephants Got Their Trunks and Tusks 20 Million Years Before 'Creation Week' - No Magic Required

Artist's impression of Platybelodon grangeri

Credit: Tim Bertelink via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Platybelodon grangeri (artist's impression)

How shifting climates may have shaped early elephants’ trunks | For the press | eLife

As expected of scientific research papers, this one deals with events that occurred in that vast expanse of time before creationists think Earth was created, when 99.97% of Earth's history occurred.

This one, published open access in eLife, explains how the ancestors of modern elephants and their recently extinct relatives, the mammoths, got their long flexible trunks and used them for their unique feeding method.

The paper by lead author, Chunxiao Li, and colleagues from the Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, and including Burt Wolff of the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA and Fajun Sun of the Department Environmental Science & Technology, University of Maryland, MD, USA, "combines multiple analyses to reconstruct feeding behaviours in the extinct longirostrine elephantiforms - elephant-like mammals characterised by elongated lower jaws and tusks."

It seems that, as they grew larger, for reasons not yet fully understood, but possibly to give a larger 'vat' in which to ferment their high-cellulose diet, these early ancestors of the elephants had to evolve a longer jaw to reach the grasses and shrubs on which they grazed. The trunk extended as part of this process of facial elongation. This in turn created the opportunity for the end of the truck to play a part in holding the plants as they were cut off by the incisor teeth at the end of the lower jaw. This was more of an advantage in the open grasslands that Platybelodon inhabited, so, when climate change meant loss of habitat and eventual extinction for the two related gomphotheres, Platybelodon's prehensile trunk gave it enough advantage to survive.

A press release by eLife explains the research and its significance for understanding how elephants got their trunks:

Creationism in Crisis - The Diverse Landscape Of 'Pre-Creation' Europe

Illustrations by Brennan Stokkerman

Fig. 4.
Palaeoartistic reconstructions of Last Interglacial landscapes in the European temperate forest biome, consistent with our pollen-based estimates of vegetation structure.

Typical Last Interglacial fauna are shown, such as the extinct straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), an extinct rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis), and aurochs (Bos primigenius, the extinct wild form of contemporary domestic and feral cattle), alongside common extant species: fallow deer (Dama dama), a great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major), a European robin (Erithacus rubecula), and greylag geese (Anser anser). (Top left) Early-temperate period: Light woodland, including a mix of taller trees and the shrub hazel (Corylus avellana), and grass-dominated open vegetation. (Top right) Early-temperate period: Open, grassy vegetation interspersed with light woodland and bordering closed forest with shade-tolerant trees. (Bottom left) Late-temperate period: Light woodland, denser forest with frequent hornbeam (Carpinus betulus), and some open vegetation (front). (Bottom right) Late-temperate period: Open grass- and sedge-dominated vegetation with free-standing deciduous oaks (Quercus robur), with more closed tree stands in the background.

Illustrator: Brennan Stokkermans.
Pearce, E. A.; Mazier, F.; Normand, S., et al. (2023) (CC BY 4.0)

Europe was not covered by dense forest before the arrival of modern humans

Researchers led by Elena A. Pearce of the Department of Biology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, have looked again at the evidence for the flora and fauna of Europe during the last interglacial period (130,000 -150,000 years ago) and believe they have shown that the previous assumption that Europe was covered in dense woodland prior to the arrival of modern human, may be wrong. Europe was, instead, "full of variation. Importantly, the landscapes harboured large amounts of open and semi-open vegetation with shrubs, light-demanding trees and herbs alongside stands of tall-growing shade trees."

When was the last interglacial period in Europe and what caused it? The last interglacial period in Europe occurred during the Pleistocene epoch, specifically the Eemian interglacial. The Eemian interglacial is estimated to have occurred roughly between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago. It was a relatively warm period when temperatures were higher than during the subsequent Last Glacial Maximum.

The primary cause of glacial-interglacial cycles, including the Eemian interglacial, is believed to be variations in Earth's orbit and axial tilt, collectively known as Milankovitch cycles. These variations influence the amount and distribution of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface. The interplay of these orbital parameters results in periodic changes in climate, leading to alternating glacial and interglacial periods.

During interglacial periods, such as the Eemian, temperatures were warmer, and ice sheets and glaciers retreated. This warmer climate allowed for the expansion of forests and the development of different ecosystems compared to the colder glacial periods. It's important to note that natural climate variability, driven by factors like Milankovitch cycles, played a significant role in past climate changes, but contemporary climate change is also influenced by human activities, particularly the emission of greenhouse gases.

The team arrived at their conclusion after examining pollen grains from soil samples taken from large parts of Europe.

Creationism in Crisis - Disastrous Sea Level And Climate Changes - 385 Million Years Ago.

The Malvinoxhosan biota were a group of marine animals that thrived in cooler waters

2023-10 - Ancient sea level and climate changes led to major extinctions around South Africa - Wits University

A planet designed by a loving, omniscient designer would be stable and not subject to periodic bouts of mass extinction because the life on it couldn't cope with a massive environmental change.

And yet new research by Dr Cameron Penn-Clarke from the University of the Witwatersrand and Professor David Harper from Durham University has shown that a catastrophic environmental change in the Early Devonian caused the mass extinction of the Malvinoxhosan biota. This was in the 99.97% of Earth's history that occurred before the Universe was created out of nothing by magic, according to creationists.

The term 'Malvinoxhosan biota' foxed ChatGPT3.5:

Creationism in Crisis - Why Earth is Fine Tuned for Extinction

An arid and uninhabitable planet awaits us - in 250 million years.

September: Nature Geoscience extreme heat | News and features | University of Bristol

Creationists like to imagine that Earth is fine-tuned for life. This belief depends on the parochial ignorance of the creationist of course, because they will be oblivious of the fact that, cozy though their small bit of the planet might be, most of it is uninhabitable by humans without specialist equipment, and even cloths and houses are required in the temperate areas. Human life would be impossible without modern technology in the oceans, deserts, arctic waste, the tops of high mountains or just a few thousand feet above the surface of the planet (this is why modern aircraft that fly at 30-60,000 feet need to be pressurised).

But a planet that is fine-tuned for life would also have an infinite life-span, not a time-limited one where the life-time is limited by entirely natural processes, such as plate tectonics and the solar cycle. In fact, the life span of Earth is a mere blink on a cosmic time-scale that is measured by the life of suns.

Long before the sun becomes a red giant and swallows up the inner planets at the end of its life, shortly before becoming a super nova and blowing away the outer planets, Earth's continents will have coalesced into another single super-continent, reminiscent of Pangea, and the climate will have made life untenable for most species of mammal, according to researcher at Bristol University.

The resulting increase in volcanic rifting and out-gassing, combined with 'continentality' and an increase in solar energy output, will result in a 'wet-bulb' temperature of >35^oC and a 'dry bulb' temperature of >40^oC - temperatures at which mammalian thermoregulation fails, leading to death in about 6 hours.

The team's findings are published open access in Nature Geoscience and explained in a Bristol University press release:

Climate Change News - As Earth's Temperature Rises, Humanity is Slowly Grasping the Fact That There is No Planet B

Increasingly dangerous wildfires are just one consequence of climate change. Here, a man watches in 2013 as the Springs fire in California approaches.

Credit: David McNew Getty Images

6 reasons why global temperatures are spiking right now

A Pharmacy shop sign displays the outside temperature of 46 Celsius degrees (114.8 F) in downtown Rome, July 18, 2023.

AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis

As I have commented before, probably the most dangerous delusion fostered by the Abrahamic religions, is that Earth was given to humankind for our exclusive use and that we are being watched over by a benevolent magic guardian in the sky who will ensure that no long-term harm will come to us and our planet. This delusion could well result in us making this planet, our life-support system in the cosmos, uninhabitable by all but a small number of species such as bacteria and cockroaches.

Fundamentalist 'loving' Christians jibber excitedly about the 'end times', looking forward to the day when their imaginary friend comes to Earth and kills everyone who disagrees with them so they can have everything for themselves, but the only end times we face are the end times for all of us, just assuredly as a space man systematically destroying his own spaceship.

So, what is causing the record temperatures we are experiencing this year, where records are not only being broken almost every day, but being broken by record margins? In the following article, reprinted from The Conversation, Andrew King, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, The University of Melbourne gives six reasons for these record temperatures. His article is reprinted under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic purposes:

Extinction News - How Britain is Exterminating its Wildlife - And What is to be Done

Kentish Plover, Charadrius alexandrinus. Once a resident breeder in Southern England, now a rare vagrant visitor

Credit: Hobbyfotowiki via Wikimedia (CC0)

Norfolk damsel fly, Now extinct in UK.

© Paul Cools (CC BY-NC 4.0 DEED)

One in six UK species threatened with extinction – here's what we could lose (plus how to save them)

One of the great crimes of the Abrahamic religions is the allegedly 'God-given' dominion over the entire planet Earth, its wildlife, its mineral wealth and its land and sea to humankind, to be treated as free and there for the sole benefit of humankind with no other purpose.

In the British Isles this has resulted in a landscape dominated by towns and cities, agriculture and monoclonal forestry, and coastal waters where anything edible is hoovered up and consumed, leaving, in many cases, stocks too small and immature, or too scarce to maintain a stable population, let alone recover.

And our waste in the form of single-use plastics, sewerage, industrial waste such as CO₂ and heavy metals, agricultural run-off containing artificial fertilisers, have polluted and destroyed many waterways. Agricultural monocultures have produced virtual deserts, so far as many species are concerned and destroyed soil structure with over-use of pesticides and artificial fertilisers has led, in a few years, to loss of precious topsoil that took hundreds of thousands of years to create and ploughed-up water-meadows have gone, taking their biodiversity with them.

Consequently, our wild bird, wild mammal, insect and wild plant populations have been in steep and accelerating decline for most of the last two centuries.

According to the following report, we are now faced with the extinction of 1,500 of our 10,000 species. The report, "State of Nature" is the result of a collaboration between a large number of British and Irish conservation and wildlife charities. It can be read here:
The State of Nature report referred to in the article may be read here:

Creationism in Crisis - Now It's an 800,000 Year History of the Sahara Desert With Periods of Greening

There is widespread evidence that the Sahara was periodically vegetated in the past, with the proliferation of rivers, lakes and water-dependent animals such as hippos.

Changes of vegetation between humid and arid phases in North Africa. Vegetation zones are based on the minimum precipitation requirements of each vegetation type.

Image: Jani Närhi / University of Helsinki

September: Sahara Desert greening | News and features | University of Bristol

Scientists led by Dr Edward Armstrong, a climate scientist with Bristol University, UK, have successfully modelled the climate history of North Africa and shown that the Sahara Desert had periods of greening, with rivers, lakes and savannah-like grasslands.

These periods of greening explain the evidence of water-dependent species such as hippos. Their research is published open access in the journal Nature Communications.
This evidence adds support to the 'Sahara Pump' hypothesis:

Creationism in Crisis - An Acute Bottleneck in Early Hominin Ancestral History - Almost a Million Years Ago

The core formula of the new inference method is shown. The image depicts a cliff painting, illustrating the population of human ancestor pull together to survive the unknown danger in the darkness during the ancient severe bottleneck.

Image by Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, CAS

Early Ancestral Bottleneck Could’ve Spelled the End for Modern Humans----Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences

African savannah in the Middle Pleistocene (Artist's Impression)

Credit: Peter Schouten

Creationists claim, without any understanding of the biological absurdity of the claim, that the human population on Earth went through a genetic bottleneck of 8 related individuals about 4,000 years ago following a genocidal flood inflicted on Earth by an angry god, annoyed that his design wasn't working as intended.

The one thing right about that claim is the bottleneck, although it wasn't so narrow that it would have almost guaranteed extinction within a few generations because of accumulated deleterious genes and a lack of genetic diversity, it was about 1,280 individuals and it happened about 900,000 years before creationists believe the universe was created, before anatomically-modern humans had evolved.

This is the findings of Chinese researchers led by Haipeng Li, of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) Key Laboratory of Computational Biology, Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, and Yi-Hsuan Pan of the Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.

First, a little about evolutionary bottlenecks and the consequences for humanity had the mythical genocidal flood actually occurred as creationists believe:

Creationism in Crisis - A Mass Extinction in Southern California, 7000 Years Before Creationists Think Earth Was Created!

A mural in the Page Museum depicts hundreds of species whose fossils have been found in the La Brea Tar Pits.

Credit: Mark Hallett.

Illustration depicting the hunting behavior of La Brea carnivores, including saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, and coyotes.

Credit: Mauricio Antón

Scientists Zero In On Timing, Causes Of Ice Age Mammal Extinctions In Southern California - Texas A&M Today

It’s hardly surprising anymore because all but the most recent history of Earth took place millions, even billions of years before Earth was created, according to Creationists’ literal reading of the Bronze Age creation myth recorded in the Bible, but here we have evidence of a sudden mass extinction in Southern California, not by a genocidal global flood, but by rapid climate change, human activity and devastating regional fires.

This is the conclusion of a detailed study by a team of scientists that included Texas A&M University archaeologist, Dr. Michael Waters. The team focused on the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits.

First a little AI information about the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits:

The Rancho La Brea Tar Pits

The Rancho La Brea Tar Pits, also known as the La Brea Tar Pits, is a famous fossil excavation site located in the Miracle Mile district of Los Angeles, California, USA. It is one of the most significant paleontological sites in the world and has provided an incredible wealth of information about the prehistoric life that existed in the region during the Pleistocene epoch. Here are some key points about the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits:

1. Formation: The tar pits were formed as a result of crude oil seeping to the surface from underground deposits. The oil would bubble up to the surface, forming pools of sticky asphalt or tar. These pools were often covered by water, leaves, and other debris, which attracted animals that became trapped in the tar.
2. Fossil Preservation: The unique conditions of the tar pits resulted in excellent preservation of the trapped animals. The tar's stickiness trapped animals, and the lack of oxygen and bacteria in the tar slowed down decomposition. Over time, bones and other remains of animals accumulated in the pits.
3. Prehistoric Fauna: The tar pits contain a wide variety of fossils, including those of mammals, birds, reptiles, and plants. Some of the most common animals found in the pits include dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, and various species of birds.
4. Research and Discoveries: Excavations at the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits began in the early 20th century. The first scientific excavations took place in the early 1900s, and since then, thousands of fossils have been recovered. These fossils have provided invaluable insights into the animals that lived in the Los Angeles area during the Pleistocene epoch, which occurred approximately 10,000 to 40,000 years ago.
5. Page Museum: The George C. Page Museum, now known as the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum, was established in 1977 near the tar pits. It houses a vast collection of fossils and artifacts recovered from the site. The museum also includes exhibits that provide information about the history of the tar pits, the animals that were trapped there, and the science of paleontology.
6. Active Excavations: Despite decades of research and excavation, the tar pits are still actively studied and excavated. New discoveries continue to shed light on the ancient ecosystem of the region.
7. Public Engagement: The La Brea Tar Pits and Museum offers educational programs, guided tours, and interactive exhibits for visitors of all ages. It's a popular destination for tourists, students, and researchers interested in paleontology and natural history.

The Rancho La Brea Tar Pits are a unique and invaluable resource for understanding the ancient history of Southern California and the diverse range of life that once inhabited the region. The site's ongoing excavations and research contribute to our understanding of prehistoric ecosystems and the interactions between humans and the environment during that time.

ChatGPT3.5 "Tell me all about the Rancho La Brea tarpit" [Response to user request]
Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com/

The work of the scientists is explained in a news release from Texas A&M:

Creationism in Crisis - A Mass Extinction in Europe A Million Years Before Earth Existed - According to Creationists.

New research reveals that an extreme glacial cooling around 1.1 million years ago in southern Europe likely led to the extinction of early humans on the continent. This discovery challenges the previously held belief of continuous human occupation in Europe during that period.

Artist’s concept

Extreme cooling ended the first human occupation of Europe | UCL News - UCL – University College London

A sudden cold snap, 1.1 million years ago, caused by changes in the Atlantic currents, could have made life impossible for archaic humans who had populated Western Europe, including what is now the British Isles. Their extinction cleared the way for later colonisation, first by Neanderthals about 250,000 years ago, followed by anatomically modern Homo sapiens, about 40,000 years ago.

Evidence of this extreme climate change and subsequent mass extinction was found by paleoclimate scientists from UCL, University of Cambridge and CSIC Barcelona who analysed the chemical composition of marine micro-organisms and examined the pollen content in a deep-sea sediment core recovered from off the coast of Portugal. This showed evidence of a sudden cooling with ocean surface temperatures falling to 6^oC off Lisbon and semi-desertification of the surrounding area. Parts of the Mediterranean coast would have resembled the Asian steppe.

During the cold snap 1.1 million years ago, the Mediterranean might have looked similar to the Asian steppe.

Image © Panikhin Sergey/Shutterstock.

The research is published in the journal Nature. The press release from UCL explains its significance:

Creationism in Crisis - How Trees Evolved Over the Last 21,000 years

Creationism in Crisis

How Trees Evolved Over the Last 21,000 years

The composition of tree species, as here in southern Germany, is linked to climate changes over the past 21,000 years.

The diversity of present tree species is shaped by climate change in the last 21,000 years

Mixed Woodland, Wales

Woodland Trust/Credit: Jordan Mansfield / WTML

In yet another rebuttal of the Creationist claim that the Theory of Evolution is being discarded by mainstream biologists as an explanation for observable evidence, an international team of researchers led by scientists from Aarhus University, Denmark have investigated the beta diversity of woodlands worldwide to assess the effects of climate change since the last ice age, 21,000 years ago.

Incidentally, 21,000 years is more than twice as long ago as creationists believe Earth was magicked into existence by a magic man using magic words. Also, there was no sign of a global flood a few thousand years ago.

Beta diversity is a measure of how diversity differs between locations.

Beta diversity is a term used in ecology to describe the variation in species composition among different habitats or ecosystems. It refers to the differences in species richness (the number of species) and species composition (the identity of the species present) among different communities or sites.

Beta diversity can be measured in different ways, including using indices such as the Jaccard index, the Simpson index, or the Bray-Curtis index. These indices provide a measure of the degree of dissimilarity between communities based on their species composition.

Beta diversity is important in ecology because it provides insights into the distribution of species and the factors that influence their distribution. For example, if beta diversity is high between two habitats, it suggests that the environmental conditions in those habitats are different and may support different sets of species. Conversely, if beta diversity is low, it suggests that the environmental conditions are similar and may support similar sets of species.

Beta diversity can also be used to assess the effects of human activities on biodiversity. For example, if beta diversity is lower in an area that has been impacted by human activities, it suggests that those activities have homogenized the habitat and reduced the diversity of species that can survive there.

In summary, beta diversity is a key concept in ecology that helps us understand the variation in species composition among different habitats or ecosystems, and can provide insights into the factors that influence species distribution and the impacts of human activities on biodiversity.

References:

1. Baselga, A. (2010). Partitioning the turnover and nestedness components of beta diversity. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19(1), 134-143.
2. Ferrier, S., & Guisan, A. (2006). Spatial modelling of biodiversity at the community level. Journal of Applied Ecology, 43(3), 393-404.
3. Jost, L. (2007). Partitioning diversity into independent alpha and beta components. Ecology, 88(10), 2427-2439.
4. Legendre, P., & De Cáceres, M. (2013). Beta diversity as the variance of community data: dissimilarity coefficients and partitioning. Ecology Letters, 16(8), 951-963.
5. Vellend, M. (2016). The conceptual foundations of ecological diversity revisited. Ecology Letters, 19(8), 912-923.

ChatGPT. (20 Apr 2023). Tell me about beta diversity in the science of ecology. [Response to a user question].
Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com/

The team found a close link between the global pattern of tree biodiversity and global temperature changes since the peak of the last ice age.

The Aarhus University News release explains the study:

Climate Emergency News - Large-Scale Failure of Entire Bird Population to Breed

Climate Emergency News
Large-Scale Failure of Entire Bird Population to Breed

Dronning Maud Land (Queen Maud Land), Antarctica

Extreme snowstorms lead to large-scale seabird breeding failures in Antarctica: Current Biology

Map of Antarctica showing Dronning Maud Land

South Polar skua, Stercorarius maccormicki, with nest

According to a survey published, open access, yesterday in the Cell Press journal, Current Biology almost the entire breeding population of three seabirds failed to breed on important breeding grounds in Antarctica, due to unseasonably high snowfall in the Antarctic 'Summer' (December 2020-January 2022) when breeding normally takes place. The unusual weather is almost certainly due to man-made climate change.

The researchers found not a single nest of the South Polar skua, and only a handful of the nests of the Antarctic petrel, Thalassoica antarctica, and Snow petrel, Pagodroma nivea, on the main breeding ground of Dronning Maud Land (Queen Maud Land) in the Norwegian-administered sector of Antarctica.

According to information from Cell Press:

Biodiversity News - How Man-Made Climate Change is Damaging German Beech Forests.

Press release: Climate change in the forests of northern Germany - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Typical beech forest in northern Germany: the scientists took samples of wood from dominant trees at 30 locations.

Photo: Banzragch Bat-Enerel

Scientists from Germany have shown the negative effects of man-made climate change on the health of beech trees in German forests. These forests are important wild-life refuges with a rich and complex ecosystem, so any damage to the health of the trees will have a major impact of the biodiversity of Central Europe.

The scientists took samples of wood from major trees in 30 different locations so that comparisons could be made between areas with different average rainfall levels. They then analysed the tree rings to obtain a retrospective measure of tree growth.

The news release from Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, describes the study and its significant findings:

Creationism in Crisis - How Asia's Mammals Evolved

The evolution of Asia’s mammals was dictated by ancient climate change and rising mountains | Field Museum

Lead author Anderson Feijó holding a plateau pika in Tibet.
Photograph: Danping Mu.

Carrying traps in the Hengduan Mountains.
Photograph:Anderson Feijó.

No doubt to the consternation of any Creationist fraud trying to sell the idea that the Theory of Evolution (TOE) is about to be overthrown and replaced by their favourite Bronze Age fairy tale, researchers from Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History and the Chinese Academy of Science, used their knowledge of evolution to hypothesise that the main evolutionary changes in Asian mammals was directly related to major geoclimatic changes. To test their hypothesis, they mapped the known evolutionary changes in Asian mammals onto the known geoclimatic changes across the continent, and found there was a very good fit.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who understands how environmental change drives evolutionary change because environmental change inevitably involves a change in the environmental selectors operating on the organisms subject to it.

The Field Museum news release explains the research and its significance: