Refuting Creationism - People Were Making Goatskin Leather Thousands Of Years Before 'Creation Week'

AI-generated depiction of Neolithic leather-working in 5th century BCE Andalucia

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A Bermeya goat from the Principality of Asturias, Spain, one of the modern breeds showing the closest genetic affinity to the Neolithic goat from Cueva de los Murciélagos.

MUTERMUR Project in collaboration with ACRIBER, CC-BY 4.0

A 7,000-year-old piece of leather reveals a deep history of Spanish goats | EurekAlert!

More than a thousand years before the traditional biblical date of creation, people in southern Spain were already using domestic goats to make leather. They belonged to an agricultural world with established skills in animal husbandry and the processing of animal products. A surviving piece of their handiwork now provides another awkward encounter between the physical evidence of human history and the compressed chronology of young-Earth creationism.

In a paper published in PLOS One, Jolijn A. M. Erven and colleagues report the recovery of ancient DNA from worked leather found in Cueva de los Murciélagos, near Albuñol in southern Spain. Radiocarbon dating places the specimen at approximately 5300–5060 BCE. Its manufacture therefore predates the familiar creation date of 4004 BCE by well over a millennium. This was already an artefact of human culture when, according to that chronology, there should have been neither humans nor goats — nor even an Earth on which they could live.

The genetic evidence identifies the hide as domestic goat rather than wild Iberian ibex, and links it with European goat populations, including the modern Bermeya breed of northern Spain. That does not mean that Bermeya goats existed as a distinct breed in the Neolithic. It indicates shared ancestry connecting ancient livestock with animals alive today. The leather thus preserves evidence both of prehistoric craftsmanship and of the population history of a domesticated species.

There are sensible limits to what can be inferred. One object cannot establish the history of goat husbandry throughout Iberia, and the surviving DNA is fragmented. Nevertheless, those limitations do not diminish the central finding: a manufactured object can retain genetic information that helps identify its animal source and place it within a much longer biological history.

The contrast with creationist reasoning is instructive. Here, researchers combine an archaeological object, radiocarbon measurements and genetic comparisons to reconstruct part of the past, while acknowledging what remains uncertain. There is no requirement that the evidence fit a predetermined sacred chronology. The resulting history is constrained by what survives and what can be tested — even when an unassuming piece of leather turns out to be older than the entire universe is supposed to be.

Creationism Refuted - Reconstructing Europe's Ancient Landscape - Long Before 'Creation Week'

Miocene European landscape

Painting: Márton Zsoldos

Pliocene European landscape.

Márton Zsoldos.

Dense, dark forests in Europe are a modern phenomenon

Europe’s landscapes have a history far older, richer and more dynamic than anything envisaged by the authors of Genesis. Long before humans cleared fields, planted crops or managed woodlands, changing communities of plants and animals were shaping the continent’s vegetation. The countryside was neither a finished creation nor a permanent backdrop against which life played out. It was itself the changing product of ecological interactions operating over millions of years.

A review published in Biological Conservation, by Szymon Czyżewski and colleagues, examines that history across approximately 23 million years. The researchers challenge the familiar picture of prehistoric Europe as an almost continuous expanse of dark, closed-canopy forest. Their synthesis instead supports a widespread mosaic of grassland, scrub, open woodland and denser forest patches, with large herbivores playing an important role in maintaining this variety.

This reconstruction rests on several complementary sources of evidence, including fossil pollen, plant remains, charcoal, animal teeth and ancient environmental DNA. Together, these records allow researchers to investigate landscapes that no human observer ever saw. The result is not a picture of one habitat remaining unchanged for 23 million years, but of recurring landscape patterns within a long history of ecological change.

The animals were active participants in that history. Feeding and disturbance by large herbivores helped maintain open vegetation; their disappearance could alter the balance between trees and open ground. Later, people introduced further changes through hunting, burning, farming and livestock grazing. What we now regard as “natural” therefore requires historical explanation: today’s landscape is not necessarily a reliable guide to the environments in which its species evolved.

For young-Earth creationism, the difficulty begins with the timescale. Here is an environmental history extending millions of years before the supposed creation of the entire Universe, reconstructed from physical evidence rather than ancient storytelling. The study does not investigate creationist claims, but its findings belong to the immense body of evidence those claims must somehow explain away. Compressing this history into a few thousand years does not explain it; it discards the chronology that makes the evidence intelligible.

Creationism Refuted - Homo Erectus Genes In Modern Humans Via Denisovans

AI-generated depiction of a Homo erectus group

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Ancient tooth proteins suggest ‘Homo erectus’ may have left a genetic legacy in people today

One of the difficulties creationists face when trying to squeeze human origins into the Genesis story is that the evidence keeps revealing a history far richer than their mythology allows. Instead of a single founding couple appearing a few thousand years ago, we find an extended human family, with populations diverging, migrating and sometimes exchanging genes. Now, ancient proteins preserved in fossil teeth suggest that even Homo erectus may have left a genetic legacy in some people alive today.

In a paper published in Nature, researchers report enamel proteins recovered from six Homo erectus teeth from three Chinese sites, dating to approximately 400,000 years ago. They identified two shared variants in the enamel protein ameloblastin. One distinguishes these specimens from other sampled human lineages; the other also occurs in Denisovans, with its corresponding genetic variant present in some modern humans.

The intriguing possibility is that this variant passed from a population related to these Homo erectus individuals into Denisovans, and subsequently into Homo sapiens. This is a proposed route of inheritance, not a recovered Homo erectus genome or proof of direct mating between Homo erectus and our own species. Further molecular evidence will be needed to clarify the relationship.

Refuting Creationism - Hundreds of Rock Art Figures In A Spanish Cave - From About 30,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

AI-generated imaginative depiction of Palaeolithic people examining cave art.

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Location of Cova de la Font Major

Hundreds of Ice Age rock art engravings discovered hidden in plain sight | Antiquity Journal

Sometimes a gap in our knowledge of the past is sitting right in front of us, waiting to be recognised. In the Cova de la Font Major in Catalonia, Spain, visitors spent decades passing ancient engravings without recognising their Palaeolithic origin. Some even added their own names and dates over them. A cave that became a tourist attraction in 1993 has now emerged as an important repository of Ice Age artistic expression — another contribution to the long human history that young-Earth creationism attempts to squeeze into a few thousand years.

A study published in Antiquity by Josep Maria Vergès Bosch and Míriam Salas-Altès describes 280 graphic motifs, including 55 animal figures, first recognised as a Palaeolithic assemblage in 2019. Horses, deer, bovids, caprines and a bear feature alongside non-figurative markings. The discovery challenges the apparent scarcity of Palaeolithic cave art in north-eastern Iberia and adds to the evidence for a distinctive Mediterranean artistic tradition.

The chronology deserves precision. These are not 280 engravings each supplied with its own radiometric date. Their attribution rests on archaeological context and comparisons with established artistic conventions. Radiocarbon evidence places episodes of human activity in the deeper cave between approximately 40,000 and 26,000 years ago, while features of some animal figures support a pre-Magdalenian attribution. Those contextual dates should not be mistaken for direct measurements of when individual images were made. Dating calcite covering one animal figure is a prospect for future research.

Unintelligent Design - Evolution Of Egg Mimicry In The Parasitic Cuckoo Finch Carries A Genetic Cost - No Intelligence Detected

Male cuckoo finch, Anomalospiza imberbis

By terathopius - https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/1507136, CC BY 4.0, Link

Maternal inheritance accelerates sex chromosome degeneration and mitonuclear coevolution in a brood parasitic bird | Nature Ecology & Evolution

Cuckoo finch mimicry of tawny-flanked prinia eggs.

This photograph shows eggs of the cuckoo finch (middle circle) and one of its common host species, the tawny-flanked prinia (outer circle), revealing the diversity of host egg colour and pattern “signatures” (an anti-parasite adaptation that aids host parents in recognizing their own eggs) that are mimicked by cuckoo finch egg “forgeries". However, cuckoo finches do not mimic the rich olive-green eggs (top left) laid by some tawny-flanked prinia females. The new study suggests that a genetic constraint in cuckoo finches may account for their apparent inability to mimic this host egg type.

Source: University of Cambridge (2022).

An intelligent designer worth its salt would presumably avoid improving one feature by compromising another, then introducing further modifications to compensate for the damage. Yet this is precisely the sort of outcome we should expect from evolution: adaptations that work well enough to spread, carrying disadvantages with them because natural selection cannot separate every useful change from its genetic baggage. The African cuckoo-finch, Anomalospiza imberbis, provides a particularly revealing example.

Cuckoo-finches are brood parasites: they lay their eggs in other birds’ nests and leave the hosts to rear their offspring. Their success depends partly on producing eggs that resemble those of their intended foster parents. Hosts, meanwhile, benefit from recognising and rejecting the impostors. The result is an evolutionary arms race between increasingly effective deception and increasingly effective detection — an odd arrangement to attribute to a single intelligent designer supposedly responsible for both sides.

Creationism Refuted - DNA Shows Hidden Human Connections Across Europe - 20,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

AI-generated depiction of Gravettian life at the Isturitz Cave, southwest France

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Ancient human DNA reveals hidden connections across Ice Age Europe

Location of the sampled individuals and estimated dates. The map was obtained from https://mapswire.com under a CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

More than 30,000 years ago, people living in Ice Age Europe were leaving genetic evidence of connections between widely separated populations — tens of thousands of years before the world supposedly existed, according to the familiar young-Earth creationist interpretation of Genesis. Their descendants inherited traces of those encounters, and scientists can now recover those traces from ancient human remains. What emerges is a history of migration, interbreeding and survival through changing climates, on a timescale wholly incompatible with a recent creation followed by a global flood and the repopulation of Earth by Noah’s family.

The evidence comes from a study led by researchers at the University of Vienna, published in Science Advances. A woman who lived around 30,000 years ago, whose remains were found in Isturitz Cave in south-western France, carried predominantly western European ancestry, together with ancestry related to populations farther east. Assuming a single pulse of admixture, genetic modelling places that exchange approximately 32,500–31,500 years ago. This does not mean that the woman herself crossed Europe: her genome preserves evidence of connections between ancestral populations.

The researchers also recovered human nuclear DNA from an approximately 22,000-year-old sediment layer at El Mirón Cave in northern Spain, despite the absence of human bones or teeth. This supports the persistence of western European ancestry through the Last Glacial Maximum. Regional continuity and incoming ancestry could therefore coexist: populations could maintain deep local roots while also exchanging genes with other groups.

For biblical literalism, the difficulty extends beyond finding room for another inconveniently ancient date. Here are distinguishable populations, an inferred episode of interbreeding and evidence of ancestry persisting through a major climatic upheaval. These findings belong to a reconstructable human history stretching far beyond the few thousand years allowed by young-Earth chronology. Compressing that history into a post-Flood dispersal would require evidence for the compression, not simply a declaration that the biblical account must be correct.

Refuting Creationism - Violent Death But Also Care And Compassion in Neanderthal Society - No Religious Handbook Required

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[credit]

Neanderthal scapula with spear hole.

View of Shanidar Cave from approximately the south.

Photo: G. Barker.

Fatal Neanderthal wound may be earliest evidence of a wooden spear attack on a human ancestor | University of Cambridge

Some 75,000 years ago, a Neanderthal in what is now Iraqi Kurdistan survived a devastating facial injury, apparently with help from others, only to suffer a probably fatal penetrating wound later in life. The remains preserve a striking combination of vulnerability, probable compassion and possible interpersonal violence: recognisably human behaviour from a time tens of thousands of years before the biblical creation story places the beginning of human history.

The individual, designated Shanidar A, is described in a new paper in Scientific Reports. Researchers led by Dr Emma Pomeroy identified a roughly circular, 15-millimetre-wide perforation in the left shoulder blade, consistent with a sharpened wooden spear entering through the chest and passing through the body. The injury occurred around the time of death and was probably lethal. Its position and the force required suggest a deliberate attack, although a hunting accident remains a possibility. The evidence supports a violent death; it does not supply the identity or intentions of whoever held the spear.

Earlier in life, Shanidar A had suffered a severe blow to the mouth, splitting a lower incisor lengthways. Subsequent wear and the accumulation of dental calculus show that the individual survived the injury for a considerable period. Given the likely pain and difficulty eating, the researchers suggest that survival involved care from companions. This is not a fossilised moral code, nor proof that Neanderthals thought exactly as we do. It is, however, evidence consistent with practical compassion in an extinct human lineage closely related to our own. The capacity to help an injured companion evidently has a much deeper history than the religious traditions that now claim ownership of morality.

For young-Earth creationism, the chronology is already fatal: these events occurred around 69,000 years before the supposed creation of the Universe in the familiar six-thousand-year chronology. The archaeological context adds another difficulty. Fragile remains survived within a cave sequence that researchers can investigate in detail, including evidence that a local flash flood disturbed the bones after decomposition. That is evidence of a particular event in a particular landscape, not of a recent worldwide deluge. Any attempt to impose the biblical catastrophe on this record must explain the actual sequence of deposition, decay, disturbance and preservation, rather than treating every mention of flooding as confirmation of Genesis.

Creationism Refuted - Horizontal Gene Transfer From A Giant Virus Into Our Complex-Celled Ancestor

AI-generated representation of a giant DNA virus, its host and a potassium channel.

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Viruses as master builders of complex proteins – TU Darmstadt

Where do new genes and complex proteins come from? For intelligent design creationists, gaps in our knowledge are opportunities to invoke a supernatural designer. For scientists, they are opportunities to investigate. A discovery reported in PNAS illustrates the difference: researchers have identified a functional protein in a giant virus that offers clues to the evolutionary origins of a more elaborate family of cellular proteins.

The proteins concerned are tandem potassium channels, which allow potassium ions to cross cell membranes. In humans, members of this family help stabilise the electrical potential across membranes and regulate the excitability of nerve cells. Their distinctive architecture includes two linked pore-forming domains within each protein subunit. Although simpler precursors of other potassium-channel families are known from bacteria, the evolutionary origins of this tandem arrangement have remained uncertain.

The researchers found a gene encoding such a channel in Pyramimonas orientalis virus, which infects a single-celled marine alga. Its protein, named Kpov, contains just 178 amino acids, yet experiments in artificial membranes confirmed that it functions as an ion channel with a preference for potassium over sodium. Here, then, is a comparatively simple working version of a molecular structure associated with more elaborate cellular machinery.

The evolutionary analysis adds a particularly interesting twist. The results suggest that the virus did not simply acquire this gene recently from its host. Instead, the channel may have originated through the fusion of simpler viral pore-forming components. This supports the possibility that viruses have contributed both genetic material and molecular innovations to cellular evolution.

Creationism Refuted - Now It's Transitional Dinosaur Egg Shells - From 195 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

An imaginative AI-generated reconstruction of a basal sauropodomorph beside a clutch of eggs in Early Jurassic woodland, approximately 195 million years ago.

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Fig. 1 | Localities of Sinemurian basal sauropodomorph eggs/eggshells, stratigraphic section of the Zhangjiawa Member (Lufeng Formation, Dawa Dinosaur Mountain), and the rock containing Mutabilisoolithus dawaensis and associated embryonic skeletons.

From: Di, Z., Wang, H., Wang, T. et al (2026).

A team led by Di Zhiyong from the School of Life Sciences at Hebei University, in collaboration with others, spent six years meticulously analyzing the world's oldest and most complete amniotic eggshell structure.

Creationism thrives on gaps because it is easy to fool scientifically illiterate people looking for confirmation for their pre-exiting bias with a god of gaps and a false dichotomy fallacy. But one massive gap they invariably ignore is the gap between the real start of the history of life on Earth some 3.8 billion years ago and the mythical 'Creation Week' 6,000-10,000 years ago, as the Bible narrative claims. This means it's easy to refute creationist beliefs simply by discovering evidence from the long pre-'Creation Week' history.

Other gaps creationists crave are the ones that transitional fossils fill, hence creationists insistence that such transitional fossils are missing, despite them regularly being found by palaeontologists, as reported in this blog and the scientific journals. This article then will have creationists performing all manner of intellectual gymnastics to try to minimise it or ignore it altogether.

Some 195 million years ago, in what is now Yunnan, China, an early dinosaur laid eggs with a revealing combination of features: a thick organic membrane and a thin mineralised layer that had not formed a rigid, interlocking shell. These eggs pre-date the supposed creation of the Universe in the conventional young-Earth biblical chronology by almost their entire existence. They also preserve something creationists repeatedly insist is missing from the fossil record: an intermediate condition illuminating an evolutionary transition.

The fossil eggshell, named Mutabilisoolithus dawaensis, is described by Zhiyong Di and colleagues in a paper published in Nature Communications. Associated with an early-diverging sauropodomorph dinosaur, it combines flexibility with a limited degree of biomineralisation — the biological deposition of minerals. Its thin calcareous layer consists of shell units that do not interlock, while its underlying membrane is exceptionally thick. This is a soft eggshell, but “soft” does not mean entirely devoid of mineral reinforcement.

Refuting Creationism - How Our Complex Cells Evolved

3D volume segmentations of Cryo-electron tomogram slice of Methanocalculus. Red, ferritin-like granules; yellow, actin filaments

From: Imachi, H., Nobu, M.K., Ishii, S. et al. (2026).

How could a comparatively simple cell give rise to the elaborate internal organisation found in the cells of animals, plants, fungi and other eukaryotes? For creationists, this is another opportunity to insert a supernatural designer into an unanswered question. For scientists, it is an invitation to investigate. A new study has now brought that investigation a significant step forward by cultivating two strains of microbes belonging to one of our closest known archaeal relatives.

The research, led by Hiroyuki Imachi and Masaru K. Nobu of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, with colleagues including Satoshi Nakagawa of Kyoto University, was published in Nature on 28 October 2026. The organisms belong to Heimdallarchaeia, within the group widely known as Asgard archaea, now formally classified as Promethearchaeota.

What makes these organisms especially informative is the combination of internal simplicity and elaborate external structures. They lack a nucleus and persistent internal membrane systems, yet produce long, branching membrane protrusions. They also depend on metabolic partnerships with other microorganisms. Their biology therefore provides a way to investigate how close associations between initially separate cells could have helped set the stage for a much more intimate evolutionary partnership.

Endosymbiosis involves one organism living inside another. In the case of eukaryotic origins, a bacterial partner eventually became the mitochondrion. The outstanding questions concern how that relationship began and how it became integrated with changes in the host cell. These new findings support scenarios in which the archaeal host was still internally simple, with much of eukaryotic cellular complexity developing during or after the establishment of that partnership.

Refuting Creationism - Early Humans Lived In The Jordan Valley - 1.9 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

A bifacial stone tool from ‘Ubeidiya

Credit: Omry Barzilai

A specialized imaging technique reveals mineral layers preserved within a fossilized Melanopsis shell (sample UB1).

Credit: Perach Nuriel

Study Finds 1.9 Million Year Out-of-Africa Migration wave leaves its mark in the Jordan Valley | EUROPEAN FRIENDS OF THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY

Long before anyone composed the biblical creation stories, early members of our genus were making stone tools and inhabiting the Jordan Valley. Research on the prehistoric site of ‘Ubeidiya, south of the Sea of Galilee, now suggests that this chapter of human history began earlier than previously thought — probably more than 1.9 million years ago. The landscape subsequently woven into biblical tradition preserves a much older history, written in sediments, fossils and archaeological remains.

The research, published in Quaternary Science Reviews brings together cosmogenic burial dating, ancient magnetic signatures and uranium–lead dating of fossil freshwater snail shells. Their combined interpretation favours an older chronology for the site, with implications for when tool-making hominins dispersed beyond Africa.

These inhabitants were not modern Homo sapiens. They were earlier members of our genus, probably associated with the Homo erectus/ergaster group, although the surviving fossils do not justify an unqualified species identification. Their presence, together with the site's Acheulean stone tools, contributes to an increasingly detailed picture of early human expansion into Eurasia.

Refuting Creationism - More On Denisovans Exposes Moronic Creationism

An artist's reconstruction of what a Denisovan might have looked like.

Image credit: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology / Chinese Academy of Sciences

Chinese Scientists Solve Puzzle of Identifying Extinct Group of Hominins----Chinese Academy of Sciences

One of the strengths of science is its willingness to leave a question open until there is enough evidence to answer it. An incomplete picture is an invitation to investigate, and an explanation that changes when new evidence emerges is a demonstration that the method is working. The developing story of the Denisovans provides an excellent example: an extinct group of humans is acquiring a clearer identity through the patient accumulation and comparison of evidence.

As a Xinhua report reproduced by the Chinese Academy of Sciences explains, Denisovans were first identified in 2010 through DNA recovered from a tiny finger bone found in Siberia. Scientists could recognise a distinct evolutionary lineage before they had much idea of what its members looked like. That imbalance between molecular knowledge and anatomical knowledge presented a problem that further discoveries and improved analytical methods could address.

Unintelligent Design - A Marine Amphibian With an Evolutionary Past - 237 MIllion Years Before 'Creation Week'

AI-assisted rendering of Gerrothorax maritumus, informed by newly discovered fossil evidence of the creature, which is the first fully marine amphibian on record. AI was used to adjust lighting, brightness, fish skin and amphibian skin.

Chen Geng/Guizhou University

New fossil evidence reveals the first fully marine amphibian, Gerrothorax maritimus, which dates to the Late Triassic period nearly 237 million years ago. The animal had a flattened body that was covered in bony armor, a potential defense mechanism against predators like ichthyosaurs.

Credit: Ryosuke Motani, UC Davis.

Researchers Unearth Fossil Evidence of First Fully Marine Amphibian | UC Davis

Why would an omniscient designer give an animal the inherited anatomy of a four-limbed vertebrate, then adapt that anatomy for life on the seabed? Evolution has a straightforward explanation: descendants inherit structures from their ancestors, and natural selection modifies what is already available. An unrestricted designer, supposedly capable of anticipating every requirement, has no comparable constraint. Yet nature repeatedly presents us with organisms whose bodies make sense as products of history.

A newly described amphibian adds another intriguing example. According to research, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Gerrothorax maritimus, an armoured amphibian that lived approximately 237 million years ago, presents evidence for a fully marine existence in a group whose living representatives have no equivalent ocean-going species.

The evidence includes two remarkably complete skeletons from Guizhou Province, China, marine sediments deposited far from major land masses, and strontium isotope proportions consistent with Triassic seawater. Together, these observations support an animal that inhabited the sea, rather than a freshwater carcass that happened to wash into it.

Refuting Creationism - A Continuous Record Of Climate History In A Peruvian Cave - From 440,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Professor Elizabeth Olson collecting drip waters inside Haugapo cave in the Peruvian Andes

Past and future Milankovitch cycles via VSOP model Graphic shows variations in five orbital elements:

Axial tilt or obliquity (ε).

Eccentricity (e).

Longitude of perihelion (sin(ϖ)).

Precession index (e sin(ϖ)) Precession index and obliquity control insolation at each latitude:

Daily-average insolation at top of atmosphere on summer solstice () at 65° N Ocean sediment and Antarctic ice strata record ancient sea levels and temperatures: Benthic forams (57 widespread locations) Vostok ice core (Antarctica) Vertical gray line shows present (2000 CE)

By Incredio - Own work, CC BY 3.0, Link

News and Events | Geosciences | Union College

Another awkward chapter in Earth's history has emerged from the darkness of Peruvian caves — and it stretches back some 450,000 years. For young-Earth creationists, that is an inconvenient amount of climate history to squeeze into a universe supposedly created only a few thousand years ago. For scientists, it is an opportunity to investigate how the rainfall systems on which ecosystems and human societies depend respond to a changing planet.

The research, published in Nature was led by Elizabeth Olson, a former postdoctoral researcher at Union who is now at Wesleyan University. The team examined stalagmites from caves in the Peruvian Andes, using their chemical composition to reconstruct the history of the South American summer monsoon. The resulting record has an average resolution of about 50 years, providing an unusually detailed view of changes across several glacial–interglacial cycles.

Stalagmites grow upwards as dripping water deposits minerals on cave floors. As they accumulate, their layers can preserve changes in oxygen-isotope composition that reflect the climatic history of the water reaching the cave. Uranium–thorium dating provides the chronology, while the oxygen isotopes provide evidence of past monsoon behaviour. These are complementary measurements: the researchers are reading a dated chemical archive, not simply assuming that every stalagmite grows at a constant rate.

Location of caves where speleothems were recovered.

Credit:Olson, E.J., et al (2026)

Comparison with Asian cave records reveals that the two monsoon systems generally varied in opposite directions, against a background of Milankovitch forcing — the changes in the distribution of incoming sunlight associated with Earth's orbital and axial cycles. But the relationship was not fixed. The researchers identified ten episodes of unusually synchronous behaviour, including during transitions out of ice ages. Changes in greenhouse gases, ocean temperatures and temperature differences between the hemispheres probably contributed to these departures from the usual pattern.

Refuting Creationism - A Peculiar Belemnite From Wyoming - 160 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

AI-generated impression of Wyoteuthis linsterorum in the Sundance Sea

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Artists impression of Wyoteuthis linsterorum

Jasom C Poole.

“Peculiar” new species of Jurassic squid found in Wyoming

Some 160 million years ago, a peculiar, thick-bodied relative of modern squid inhabited the sea that covered parts of what is now Wyoming. That alone places it inconveniently far outside the few thousand years allowed by a literal reading of Genesis. Now, two rare fossils have revealed that this animal was also a late-surviving representative of an ancient belemnite lineage — another small but revealing piece of an evolutionary history that creationism requires its followers to deny.

The newly described species, Wyoteuthis linsterorum, is the subject of a paper in Papers in Palaeontology. Although the headline calls it a Jurassic squid, it was a belemnite: a member of an extinct group of squid-like cephalopods. Its most striking feature was its exceptionally broad internal shell component, known as the rostrum or guard. Where familiar belemnite guards resemble slender bullets, these specimens are unusually stout, earning their owner the distinction of having the thickest known belemnite guards.

The fossils come from the Sundance Formation and date to the Oxfordian stage of the Late Jurassic. Examination of their external features and CT scans of their interiors led the researchers to assign the animal to the Megateuthididae, a family that had largely disappeared earlier in the Jurassic. Rather than representing a newly created form appearing from nowhere, Wyoteuthis appears to have been a surviving offshoot of an older evolutionary lineage, persisting in a regional refuge after its relatives had declined elsewhere.

For young-Earth creationism, the chronological problem is straightforward. An animal living approximately 160 million years ago cannot be accommodated within a universe supposedly created just 6,000–10,000 years ago. Nor does calling its remains a product of Noah’s Flood explain away the geological succession in which they occur. The problem is not merely the existence of a marine fossil on dry land, but its place within an ordered history of changing environments and successive assemblages of organisms.

Creationism Refuted - Dinosaur Tracks Record Transition From Crawling to Bipedalism

Holotype of Pachychirotherium gardenaensis

Photo: @ University La Sapienza of Roma.

From Sprawling to Bipedalism: How Locomotion Evolved in Dinosaur Ancestors - Museum für Naturkunde Berlin

One of the familiar refrains of creationism is that the fossil record contains no transitional forms. Yet transitions need not be preserved only in bones: sometimes, animals left evidence of evolutionary change in the footprints they made. A new study of ancient reptile tracks reveals a stepwise acquisition of features associated with upright locomotion — changes that helped establish the conditions for the later evolution of two-legged movement in dinosaurs and their close relatives.

The research, by Lorenzo Marchetti of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and Hendrik Klein of the Saurierwelt Paläontologisches Museum, is published in Palaeontology, concerns early archosauriforms, members of the wider evolutionary group that includes archosaurs — dinosaurs, pterosaurs, crocodilians and their relatives. Their history extends back into the Late Permian, more than 250 million years ago: already an insurmountable chronological problem for a literal reading of Genesis.

Marchetti and Klein re-examined footprints from the Val Gardena Sandstone Formation of northern Italy, including previously undescribed specimens, and recognised a distinctive track type, which they named Pachychirotherium gardenaensis. This is a name for the fossil traces, rather than a newly identified species of skeletal animal. Comparisons with fossil feet suggest that their makers were early archosauriforms with an anatomy resembling that of erythrosuchids.

The wider comparison with Permian and Triassic tracks is particularly revealing. Late Permian forms retain evidence consistent with sprawling locomotion; some Early Triassic forms show transitional characteristics; and a fully erect stance probably emerged during the Middle Triassic. Increasing reliance on the toes, changes in toe proportions and a reduction in the relative size of the forefoot impressions accompanied this evolutionary transition. These features were assembled progressively, rather than appearing together as a completed package.

Refuting Creationism - Yet Another of Those 'Non-Existent' Transitional Fossils - From 150 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Life reconstruction of the Late Jurassic bird Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis.

Image by Chung-Tat Cheung

Life reconstruction of the Late Jurassic bird Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis.

Image by Chung-Tat Cheung

Not All Early Birds Evolved Toward Better Flight, Jurassic Fossil Suggests----Chinese Academy of Sciences

Creationists who insist that there are no transitional fossils might wish that palaeontologists would stop finding animals that refuse to respect their imaginary boundaries. A newly described Jurassic bird from China is another such inconvenience: an evolutionary mosaic combining bird-like features with conspicuously dinosaurian anatomy. And, to compound the difficulty for Bible literalists, it lived approximately 150 million years ago — long before their supposed ‘Creation Week’.

The animal, Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis, discovered in the Late Jurassic Zhenghe Fauna of Fujian Province, is described in a paper published in Nature. This crow-sized animal possessed bird-like pelvic and hindlimb features alongside serrated teeth and a hyperextensible second toe bearing a sickle-shaped claw — a combination reminiscent of its close dinosaurian relatives.

Its unusually short forelimbs provide another intriguing part of the story. Analyses of its limb proportions strongly support a terrestrial, flightless lifestyle, despite its placement within Avialae, the evolutionary group containing living birds and their closest extinct relatives. The researchers interpret it as evidence of exceptionally early flight loss. That interpretation necessarily involves reconstructing ancestral capabilities: the fossil provides anatomical evidence about how this animal lived, rather than a direct record of either its behaviour or its ancestors’ flight.

This matters because evolution has no destination. Early birds were not obliged to become progressively better flying machines, any more than every mammalian lineage was obliged to become a bat. Natural selection favours traits according to their consequences in particular environments; it does not work towards a predetermined ideal. A lineage exploiting opportunities on the ground could follow a different evolutionary course from one increasingly dependent on flight.

Creationism Refuted - How Cephalopods Evolved Intelligence - No Magic Needed

Cephalopods

Californian two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides). Embryo at the final stage before hatching. The species is named after the two prominent blue eyespots that can help deter predators.

3D structure of DNA may explain how cephalopods evolved complex brains

How much new DNA does evolution need to produce a new biological capability? Intelligent design creationists commonly assume that new functions require new “complex specified information”, then insist that only an intelligent designer can supply it. But this overlooks something fundamental about genomes: what matters is not simply which genes an organism possesses, but how, where and when those genes are used. Rearranging existing components can change what a biological system does, without requiring every component to be invented afresh, and, importantly, no new DNA being inserted into the genome.

A new study published in Nature Communications explores this possibility in coleoid cephalopods — octopuses, squid and cuttlefish. These animals have elaborate nervous systems and remarkable behavioural capabilities. The research suggests that part of the explanation for their evolutionary innovations may lie in the three-dimensional organisation of their genomes.

DNA does not lie inside a cell as a neatly stretched-out sequence. It folds, bringing regions that are distant along a chromosome into physical proximity. Those contacts can influence gene regulation. An ancient episode of extensive genome rearrangement in the ancestors of coleoids created opportunities for previously separated regions to acquire new regulatory relationships. The researchers describe the resulting interdependence as “regulatory entanglement”.

Comparing genome organisation and gene activity across species, tissues and developmental stages, the team found a combination of stability and flexibility: larger chromatin domains were broadly conserved, while hundreds of smaller DNA loops varied with species and biological context. Their experiments also went beyond comparisons: deleting a candidate regulatory sequence using CRISPR–Cas9 demonstrated a role for these long-range interactions in neural development.

This is not proof that genome rearrangement alone produced cephalopod intelligence, nor does it mean that no new DNA evolved. The study also considers genome expansion. Its importance is more interesting than either oversimplification: evolutionary novelty can involve changes in the relationships between genetic components, as well as changes to the components themselves.

That leaves the intelligent design argument with a familiar problem. Calling a biological outcome “information” does not demonstrate that it required a supernatural author. Here, scientists are investigating physical mechanisms through which genome evolution can generate new regulatory possibilities. Whether creationists choose to call those possibilities “new information” changes neither the mechanisms nor the evidence. The scientific question is how complexity evolved — and this research offers another testable part of the answer.

Refuting Creationism - A Newly-Discovered Giant Fungus from A Family That Evolved 65 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

Stromata of Dianjunus rex in the field. (a, c, d, f) Stromata attached to host roots. (b, e, g, h) Stromata around host plant. (a) Collectors. (i) Total weight of largest bilobedstromata.

Song, Yan, Pérez-Moreno, et al (2026)

Stromata of Dianjunus rex attached to host root.

Song, Yan, Pérez-Moreno, et al (2026)

Scientists discover ‘D-rex’, a giant fungus from Chinese forests whose unique lineage dates back 65 million years | EurekAlert!

Another newly described species has brought with it an evolutionary history that refuses to fit into creationism’s abbreviated chronology. This time it is a giant fungus from China’s Yunnan Province, named Dianjunus rex, whose family lineage is estimated to have diverged about 65 million years ago — almost 65 million years before the supposed ‘Creation Week’ of young-Earth creationism. Apparently, this fungus’s ancestors failed to wait for the universe to be created.

Described in a new paper in Frontiers in Fungal Biology, the fungus produces imposing reproductive structures reaching 50 centimetres high and weighing up to 2.2 kilograms. Its anatomy and genetic relationships justified the recognition of not merely a new species and genus, but a new family: Dianjunaceae.

The date needs a little care. The researchers are not claiming that today’s species has remained unchanged for 65 million years. Their evolutionary analysis estimates when its family lineage separated from its closest relatives, with a reported range of approximately 50–80 million years. That uncertainty is scientifically significant, but offers no refuge for biblical literalism: even the youngest end of the range is vastly older than the entire history permitted by a young-Earth reading of Genesis.

There is a further irony here. Genesis offers no recognition of fungi as a distinct group of organisms. Although biblical passages refer to conditions translated as mould or mildew, these are hardly an account of fungal biology or evolutionary relationships. We cannot know that the authors simply assumed mushrooms were plants, but we can say that their creation narrative supplies none of the distinctions needed to understand this discovery. That is unsurprising in an ancient religious text; it becomes a problem only when that text is presented as authoritative natural history.

Creationism In Crisis - A Jurassic Crocodile With Needle Teeth - 170 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

AI-generated impression of Ctenosuchus tenuidens hunting.

ChatGPT-6 Astra

An artist’s restoration of Ctenosuchus tenuidens.

Artwork by Nathan Dehaut.

New species of Jurassic crocodile had unusually slender teeth | University of Portsmouth

Some 170 million years ago, in the rivers and lakes of what is now Morocco, a crocodile relative was exploiting a feeding niche very different from that of the large-prey predators familiar today. Named Ctenosuchus tenuidens, it had a long, narrow snout armed with exceptionally slender, closely spaced teeth. For young-Earth creationists, its existence presents the familiar chronological problem: an animal was living, feeding and participating in a complex ecosystem more than 169 million years before their preferred biblical chronology allows Earth itself to have existed.

The discovery is described in a paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology by Hamzah Imran of the School of the Environment and Life Sciences, University of Portsmouth, and colleagues. The animal belonged to the thalattosuchians, an extinct group of crocodile relatives. Its delicate dentition suggests a diet of small aquatic prey, such as tiny fish, shrimps and worms, rather than large, struggling animals capable of breaking those fine teeth.

This makes the fossil particularly informative about evolutionary specialisation. Teeth are not simply more or less effective in some universal sense: their usefulness depends on what an animal eats and how it feeds. A robust tooth suited to restraining substantial prey and a fine tooth suited to retaining small organisms represent different solutions to different ecological problems. An adaptation can therefore open up one feeding opportunity while limiting another. Evolution produces such compromises because natural selection favours reproductive success under particular conditions, rather than engineering an organism that excels at everything.