Refuting Creationism - How The Common Barn Swallow Shows Evolution In Progress

Hirundo rustica rustica (left) and Hirundo rustica tytleri (right) have different sexually selected traits. For example, one has a red chest and the other has a pale chest.

A pair of Hirundo rustica erythrogaster.

Credit: Matt Wilkins.

A front-row seat to evolution: What common barn swallows can teach us about how new species form | CU Boulder Today | University of Colorado Boulder

This paper in Science passed me by last December but it's too good to ignore because it is an example of something that creationists insist has never been seen because it doesn't happen - evolution in progress. And, to annoy creationists even more, it's an example of something Charles Darwin proposed as a mechanism for speciation - mate selection - as the isolating mechanism.

Barn swallows are one of the species that has formed a commensal relationship with humans that does not, like many other commensal species, involve it in consuming our crops either in the fields or in storage, from when we began building permanent or semi-permanent buildings. They are now dependent on our barns and out-houses as nesting places.

What can you tell me about the subspecies of barn swallow, Hirundo rustica, their commensal relationship with humans and their evolution into different subspecies? The barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) is a widely distributed passerine bird with several recognized subspecies that have evolved in different geographic regions. Their evolution and divergence into subspecies have been shaped by geographical isolation, ecological adaptation, and their long-standing commensal relationship with humans.

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Subspecies of the Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica)
There are six generally recognized subspecies, each adapted to different regions:

1. H. r. rustica – Nominate subspecies
   • Breeds in Europe and Asia (west of the Urals) and winters in Africa and South Asia.
   • Characterized by a long, deeply forked tail and a reddish forehead and throat.
2. H. r. transitiva
   • Found in the Levant (Middle East, particularly Israel and Palestine).
   • Slightly darker underparts and a shorter tail compared to H. r. rustica.
3. H. r. savignii
   • Endemic to Egypt.
   • Has shorter tail streamers and a darker, more intense red coloration on the throat and forehead.
4. H. r. gutturalis
   • Breeds in East Asia (Japan, China, Korea, and parts of Russia) and winters in Southeast Asia.
   • Has a paler underbelly and slightly shorter tail than H. r. rustica.
5. H. r. tytleri
   • Breeds in central Asia (from the Altai Mountains to Mongolia and northeast China) and winters in South Asia.
   • Larger body size, darker plumage, and a more pronounced reddish throat.
6. H. r. erythrogaster
   • Found in North America, migrating to Central and South America in winter.
   • Has a deeper red or orange belly and a more robust body compared to Old World subspecies.

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Commensal Relationship with Humans
Barn swallows have one of the most well-documented commensal relationships with humans among birds. Unlike many species that avoid human settlements, barn swallows have thrived in human-altered environments, particularly in agricultural landscapes.

How They Benefit from Humans:

• Nesting Sites: They originally nested in caves and rocky outcrops but now prefer human-made structures such as barns, bridges, and eaves of houses. This shift has expanded their range and allowed for increased breeding success.
• Foraging Opportunities: Agricultural areas provide open fields where they can hunt flying insects more efficiently.
• Predator Protection: Nesting near human settlements reduces predation by natural enemies such as corvids and raptors.

Human Benefits:

• Pest Control: Barn swallows consume vast numbers of flying insects, including mosquitoes and agricultural pests, making them beneficial to farmers.
• Aesthetic and Cultural Value: Many cultures associate barn swallows with good luck and the arrival of spring.

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Evolution and Subspecies Divergence
The divergence of barn swallow subspecies is a classic example of allopatric speciation (geographical isolation) and ecological adaptation:

1. Glacial and Post-Glacial Expansion:
   • During the last Ice Age, populations were likely confined to refugia in warmer regions. As glaciers receded, they expanded into new territories, leading to genetic divergence.
2. Geographical Barriers:
   • Mountain ranges (e.g., the Himalayas), deserts, and oceans have limited gene flow between populations, leading to the formation of distinct subspecies.
3. Adaptation to Local Environments:
   • Differences in climate, insect availability, and nesting opportunities have influenced morphological and behavioral traits.
   • For example, H. r. erythrogaster in North America has evolved a more vibrant belly color, possibly due to sexual selection pressures differing from those in Europe.
4. Human Influence:
   • Their close association with human settlements has likely accelerated their spread and may have contributed to gene flow between some subspecies.

While the different subspecies show clear distinctions in plumage, size, and migratory behavior, they still interbreed where their ranges overlap, maintaining them as a single species rather than diverging into separate species.

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Conclusion
The barn swallow is a remarkable example of how a species can adapt to human presence and expand its range globally. Their subspecies have evolved due to historical climatic events, geographical isolation, and ecological pressures, yet they remain a single, highly mobile species with a complex migratory and commensal relationship with humans.

News of how they are in the process of speciating comes in the form of a paper in Science by a team led by Professor Rebecca Safran, the paper’s senior author and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, and an article in CU Boulder Today by Yvaine Ye:

A front-row seat to evolution: What common barn swallows can teach us about how new species form

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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder—even if that beholder is a barn swallow.

Depending on where the birds live, some of them may favor mates with a paler chest color while others find a redder chest more attractive. The difference in what these birds prefer when it comes to choosing a mate is helping scientists unlock one of biology’s greatest mysteries: How do new species originate?

In a new CU Boulder-led study, biologists used genetic sequencing from barn swallows around the globe to provide real-time evidence that sexual selection, in which organisms choose mates based on traits they find attractive, drives the emergence of new species.

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The study was published Dec 12 in the journal Science.

This is one of the very first papers to comprehensively show the role of mate selection decisions in the evolution of new species.

Professor Rebecca Safran, senior author
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Colorado University Boulder
Boulder, Colorado, USA.

The new findings shed light on how new species form, a fundamental but elusive process for all life on Earth.

Proving Darwin right

Charles Darwin proposed the theory of sexual selection in 1875. It suggests that organisms evolve showy traits, like extravagant plumage or eye-catching dance moves, to attract mates. When organisms of the same species develop preferences for different traits and no longer breed with each other, new species could emerge over time, a process known as speciation.

For the past 150 years, researchers of sexual selection have primarily studied organisms that already diverged into distinct species. For example, orchids, which now encompass more than 25,000 species, originated from a common ancestor. Their remarkable diversity often leads to the assumption that they evolved different looks to attract different pollinators, said Drew Schield, the paper’s first author and assistant professor at the University of Virginia.

It’s logical to think this way and it could totally be the case, but with speciation already having occurred, it’s impossible to know for certain.

Assistant Professor Drew Schield, first author
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA. Now at the Department of Biology
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.

As a result, it has been difficult to find direct evidence that sexual selection drives the emergence of new species.

Barn swallows provide a unique opportunity to explore the speciation process as it unfolds.

These birds are one of the most common and widespread species on our planet. Currently, there are six subspecies of barn swallow each looking slightly different in some traits critical to the mate choice decisions depending on where they are.

For example, the East Asian group, Hirundo rustica gutturalis, has a pale chest and shorter tail streamers—the elongated outer tail feathers. Hirundo rustica tytleri, found in Siberia, has long tail streamers and red chest feathers. The subspecies in Europe and western Asia, Hirundo rustica rustica, has a pale chest and long tail streamers.

Reuniting after isolation

Evidence suggests that the bird’s ancestors left the Nile River valley in northern Africa about 11,000 years ago and spread out across the Northern Hemisphere. For thousands of years, different populations barely interacted and developed diverse traits, forming subspecies.

Some 800 to 2000 years ago, certain subspecies expanded their territories, and habitats began to overlap. In some parts of the world, subspecies now interact with each other, producing hybrid offspring.

Safran and her team set out to investigate whether sexual selection in these birds was driving the speciation process.

The team, including Elizabeth Scordato, associate professor at the California State Polytechnic University, sequenced the genomes of 336 barn swallows from around the globe, encompassing all subspecies and three hybrid zones, where subspecies interbreed, in Eurasia.

The researchers found a dozen regions in the barn swallow genome associated with the birds’ two sexually selected traits: Ventral coloration—the plumage color of their chest and belly— and tail streamer length.

When individuals reproduce, the genes from both parents reshuffle and combine to form the genes of their offspring. When two populations encounter one another, the flow of genetic material from one to another is a marker of how similar the populations are. If the rate of gene flow is low, it means the two populations are breeding with each other at a lower rate than they would if they are the same species.

The study found that in barn swallow hybrid zones much of their genes flows freely across groups. But the genetic regions coding for ventral coloration and tail streamer length hardly transfer to other populations.

A pair of Hirundo rustica rustica in Turkey.

Credit: Matt Wilkins.

It suggests that among the hybrid individuals with parents from different subspecies, a small number of lucky birds that inherit a favorable combination of tail streamer and ventral color genes are able to attract mates. Hybrids that receive less favorable combinations tend to be less successful in reproduction.

These genes are hitting a boundary due to divergent sexual selection, and they stop moving from one population to the other.

Assistant Professor Drew Schield.

The different preferences for tail feather length and chest color across subspecies make barn swallows more likely to mate within their own group, Schield added. If the trend continues, these groups could no longer interbreed or produce offspring, markers for the formation of separate species.

Next, the team plans to sample more birds and study whether being a hybrid affects reproductive success.

It’s very cool that we could capture a real-time evolutionary portrait of this common animal and understand how and why the populations are diverging. Our understanding of the process is fundamentally important for addressing a wide range of questions related to biodiversity, evolution and conservation.

Professor Rebecca Safran.

Structured Abstract

INTRODUCTION
Assessing how sexual traits and their genetic basis contribute barriers to gene flow in secondary contact due to effects on hybrid fitness remains critical to establishing a causal role of sexual selection in in speciation. Leveraging natural systems with intraspecific variation in sexual traits at early stages of the speciation process holds promise for identifying links between patterns of phenotypic and genomic variation and the evolution of reproductive isolation.

RATIONALE
Observational and experimental studies indicate that barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) are a robust empirical model of divergent sexual selection and that the presence of multiple hybrid zones between populations in Eurasia enables investigation of barriers to gene flow. We investigate genotypic and phenotypic variation in barn swallows to (i) map the genetic basis of plumage traits used in sexual signaling, (ii) test whether loci underlying sexual traits have experienced divergent sexual selection in allopatry and present barriers to gene flow in secondary contact, and (iii) test the prediction that sexual selection has maintained linkage disequilibrium (LD) between barrier loci in secondary contact as a result of their effects on hybrid fitness.

RESULTS
We sequenced the genomes of 336 barn swallows sampled across the breeding distribution of the species and quantified variation in ventral coloration and tail streamer length, two signal traits used in mate choice. Populations differ in these traits and hybrids between the subspecies rustica, tytleri, and gutturalis exhibit phenotypes that are intermediate between or similar to parental populations. The genetic architecture of ventral color is concentrated on chromosome 1A and the Z chromosome whereas phenotypic variation is largely explained by genotypic variation at 10 loci, including the melanogenesis genes KITLG, SLC45A2, and BNC2. Variation in tail streamer length is explained by loci on chromosome 2. Sexual trait loci—ventral color loci in particular—exhibit peaks of high differentiation between populations and signatures of divergent positive selection in allopatry. We further investigated whether loci under divergent sexual selection contribute barriers to gene flow in secondary contact using geographic and genomic cline analyses across hybrid zone transects, finding that sexual trait loci constitute barriers in the rustica-tytleri and rustica-gutturalis hybrid zones whereas gene flow is less constrained across the remainder of the genome. Clines for sexual trait loci in these hybrid zones also show a high degree of concordance, consistent with selection for specific combinations of alleles from parental populations in hybrids. Finally, we tested whether selection has generated ongoing coupling of barrier loci by investigating LD patterns in hybrid zones. These tests reveal elevated LD among sexual trait barrier loci in hybrids beyond what is expected under admixture alone, consistent with the genetic coupling of barriers being an emergent property of divergent sexual selection.

CONCLUSION
Our findings demonstrate an important role for sexual selection in speciation through the analysis of the genomic basis of sexual signal traits in barn swallows, evidence for divergent selection in geographic isolation, and evidence that loci underlying traits involved in prezygotic isolation represent barriers to gene flow. Our results further support the conclusion that the genetic coupling of sexual trait loci generated by selection promotes reproductive isolation upon secondary contact.

Sexual signal traits form barriers to gene flow upon secondary contact. Barn swallows breed across nearly the entire North Hemisphere and exhibit variation in sexual signal traits across populations. Hybrid zones between these populations enable the identification of the genetic basis of sexual traits and tests of the hypothesis that divergent sexual selection promotes reproductive isolation. Genetic loci underlying sexual traits show signatures of divergent selection between allopatric populations and are barriers to gene flow in secondary contact, whereas gene flow is less constrained across the rest of the genome.

Abstract
Despite the well-known effects of sexual selection on phenotypes, links between this evolutionary process and reproductive isolation, genomic divergence, and speciation have been difficult to establish. We unravel the genetic basis of sexually selected plumage traits to investigate their effects on reproductive isolation in barn swallows. The genetic architecture of sexual traits is characterized by 12 loci on two autosomes and the Z chromosome. Sexual trait loci exhibit signatures of divergent selection in geographic isolation and barriers to gene flow in secondary contact. Linkage disequilibrium between these genes has been maintained by selection in hybrid zones beyond what would be expected under admixture alone. Our findings reveal that selection on coupled sexual trait loci promotes reproductive isolation, providing key empirical evidence for the role of sexual selection in speciation.

Schield, Drew R.; Carter, Javan K.; Scordato, Elizabeth S. C.; Levin, Iris I.; Wilkins, Matthew R.; Mueller, Sarah A.; Gompert, Zachariah; Nosil, Patrik; Wolf, Jochen B. W.; Safran, Rebecca J. (2024)
Sexual selection promotes reproductive isolation in barn swallows
Science; 386(6727) eadj8766; DOI: 10.1126/science.adj8766

Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

So, there we are; as good an example as any creationist would wish to ignore, of observed evolution in progress as the barn swallow diversifies into species which then become species as barriers to geneflow evolve to ensure complete genetic isolation. And an example of how, as the process of speciation progresses, interbreeding is still possible when the process is sympatric, in other words, where the two gene pools are not physically isolated. This is pretty much how human speciation occurred both in Africa and in Eurasia when Homo erectus followed by H. sapiens migrated there.

Unitelligent Design - How The Giant Clam Has a Needlessly Complex Way To Get Nutrients

Giant clams have colourful mantles.

Ruiqi Li/CU Boulder

How tiny algae shaped the evolution of giant clams | CU Boulder Today | University of Colorado Boulder

You can depend on creationism's idiot designer to never do something the obvious uncomplicated way when there is an obscure and much more complicated way to achieve the same result. It's almost exactly like it's a mindless fool, blundering about without a plan who sometimes happens across something that works and sticks with it, trying to make the best of it with more blundering.

Quite the opposite of what anyone other than a creationist would call intelligent, in fact.

For example, having designed a giant clam to live in nutrient poor coral reefs, it then designed them to have algae living symbiotically inside them, supplementing their megre diet got by filtering the seawater, with sugars manufactured by photosynthesis. This enables the giant clam to grow up to 4.5 feet (1.4 metres) in length and weigh over 700 pound (317 Kg).

Any intelligent designer could have either designed them to live in a less nutrient-poor environment or given them the chloroplasts the algae have to achieve the same result far more simply.

But of course, the giant clam wasn't intelligently designed; it evolved by the utilitarian evolutionary process that is constrained by its evolutionary history and so finds suboptimal but functional processes that a needlessly complex. This complexity impresses creationists because, not understanding how evolution works, they imagine it reflects intelligent design, instead of refuting it.

Refuting Creationism - Beetles Were Feeding on Dinosaur Feathers - 100 million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Moult remains of feather-feeding beetle larvae intimately associated with downy feather portions from an unidentified theropod dinosaur in Early Cretaceous amber of Spain. Insets show the head with powerful mandibles of one of the larval moults (top) and the pigmentation pattern of feather second order branches (bottom), with the main stem of one feather at the right of the amber fragment. The length of the amber fragment is 6 millimetres across.

Image credit: CN IGME-CSIC.

Fossils reveal a 100-million-year-old relationship between feathered dinosaurs and feather-feeding beetles | University of Oxford

Isolated moult of the feather-feeding beetle larva found in the Spanish amber outcrop of Rábago/El Soplao, with detail of its powerful mandibles (right). Length of the moult is less than two millimetres.

Image credit: CN IGME-CSIC.

To normal people, the discovery of feather-eating beetles and feather fragments in 105-million-year-old amber, 30 million years before there were birds might be a clue that something had feathers before bird had them, suggesting that birds might have evolved from whatever that was.

Not so, creationists, however. Creationists conclude that any evidence that doesn't agree with them must be wrong because their evidence-free dogma is sacred and therefore uninfluenced by real-world evidence.

So, the following is just something else for creationists to ignore while they pretend to know better than the experts who have, unlike creationists, actually studied the subject.

It is news that a study, co-led between the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain of the Spanish National Research Council (CN IGME-CSIC) and Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH) has shown that beetles fed on the feathers of dinosaurs about 105 million years ago. This is based on an analysis of spectacular fossil amber fragments, from the locality of San Just in north-eastern Spain, revealed moults of tiny beetle larvae tightly surrounded by portions of downy feathers.

The feathers belonged to an unknown theropod dinosaur that lived around 105 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous. This means that the feathers could not have come from a ‘modern bird’ species, since current evidence indicates that this group appeared about 30 million years later in the fossil record, during the Late Cretaceous.

Refuting Creationism - How Leaf Beetles Got New Genes

The leaf beetle Spilopyra sumptuosa lives in the rainforests of eastern Australia. Its spectacular, colourful appearance is an example of the rich diversity of the large family of leaf beetles.

© Veit Grabe / Roy Kirsch,
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology

Asparagus beetle, Crioceris asparagi

David Gould

Reading the genome and understanding evolution: Symbioses and gene transfer in leaf beetles

Creationists who have been fooled by the disinformation pumped out by the Discovery Institute, especially by William Dembski, believe that the only way an organism can gain new genetic information is by being given it, pre-prepared, by a magic intelligent designer, who has the magical power to assemble new DNA in just the right order and insert it into a species' genome, by a mysterious process that neither Dembski, nor one of his co-misinformers, are willing to explain.

This, of course, ignores the scientific evidence that new genetic information can be acquired by a species in several different ways, not the least of which is by horizontal gene transfer from another species, as researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, the Max Planck Institute of Biology in Tübingen, Germany, and a consortium of international scientists have just shown in respect of the leaf beetles, one of the most successful group of beetles with more than 50,000 different species worldwide.

The Malevolent Designer - How Creationism Divine Malevolence Brilliantly Designed HIV to Kill Us With

Getty Images

HZI | Decoding HIV's tactics

This should thrill devotees of creationism's intelligent designer because it exposes what a brilliant job it did in designing the human immunosuppressive virus (HIV) that causes the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). It was discovered by a group of researchers at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) in Würzburg and the University of Regensburg, Germany.

They have discovered how HIV hijacks the internal machinery in our cells to ensure its own survival.

Creationism in Crisis - Early Hominins in Eurasia - >1.95 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Cut marks on specimen from the Olteţ River Valley assemblage.

Curran, et al (2025)

Research team led by OHIO’s Sabrina Curran finds new evidence that pushes back the arrival of early hominins in Europe; discovery published in Nature Communications

Mandible with cut marks

Curran, et al (2025)

The problem with trying to maintain a belief that Earth is between 6 and 10 thousand years old is that 99.9975% of its history occurred earlier than 10,000 years ago, so almost everything archaeologists and geologists discover will prove to be from before you believe Earth existed, which, for normal people, might just be more than a hint that Earth is considerably older than you think.

Not so for creationists however, who consider their beliefs to be sacred and unfalsifiable, so the facts must be wrong.

The traditional way is to declare that radioactive decay rates on which geological formations and archaeological artifacts are dated must have changed, sometimes by many orders of magnitude.

These same creationists will also argue in a different context that the laws of nature which govern the structure and behaviour of the Universe and everything in it are so finely tuned to support life, that they must have been set by an intelligent designer.

However one of those 'fine-tuned' parameters is the weak nuclear force that binds the protons and neutrons in the atomic nuclei and for a radioactive atom to decay means that a quantum fluctuation in the energy levels in some of these particles must exceed the weak force binding them together, so the particle is ejected. But, for radioactive decay rates to be several orders of magnitude higher, the weak nuclear force would need to be much lower, below the point at which even stable atomic nuclei form at all. This means, when they believe the universe was created along with atoms, planets and life were created, there would have been no atoms to make it all from. Life would have been impossible.

An added problem is that scientists have shown that radioactive decay rates of different elements remain absolutely constant in a range of extreme temperature and pressure conditions, so there appears to be no support whatsoever for the declaration that decay rates have changed by several orders of magnitude so that an age of 10,000 year or less just happens to look like 300 million years or whatever finding is being waved aside.

If there were any merit in the creationist claim of a fine-tuned Universe, then it has been fine-tuned to make it look 14 billion years old, Earth to look nearly 4 billion years old and living organisms to have been on it for most of that time.

With that in mind then, researchers have just announced that they have found evidence of the presence of hominins in Eurasia 2 million years ago, which pushes back the earliest evidence of hominin presence outside Africa by at least 150,000 years to a time considerably earlier than Homo sapiens first appear in the fossil record - supporting the theory that the earliest migration into Eurasia was by an archaic hominin such as H. erectus.

Refuting Creationism - Walking With Dinosaurs - 166 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Researchers found carnivore and herbivore tracks crossing over which raises questions about whether and how the two were interacting.

Credit: University of Birmingham.

Excavated footprint.

Credit: Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Major new footprint discoveries on Britain’s ‘dinosaur highway’ | University of Oxford

Scientists from Oxford and Birmingham Universities have uncovered hundreds of tracks of different sorts of dinosaur in a quarry in North Oxfordshire, and, unlike those in the Paluxy Riverbed, Texas, USA, no-one has carved human footprints in amongst them to fool tourists.

Amongst the tracks are five distinct trackways, the longest of which is 150 meters. Sadly for creationists, we can be sure there will not be any human footprints in the same rock formation because these tracks were made around 166 million years ago when the earliest mammals hadn't diversified even into simians, let alone the African apes.

Refuting Creationism - Our Ancesters Were Vegetarian, 3 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

'Little Foot' from the Sterkfontein Cave, South Africa

Witwatersrand University

Three million years ago, our ancestors were vegetarian - Wits University

The Australopithecus genus is widely regarded as the immediate ancestor of the Homo genus that includes modern humans, Homo sapiens, but, from new evidence revealed by a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, it appears that meat did not become part of our immediate ancestors' diet until after Homo species emerged.

The evidence comes from an isotope analysis of the enamel from the fossilised teeth of seven Australopithecus individuals is strongly indicative of a vegetarian diet with little or no meat consumption.

How they discovered this is the subject of a paper in Science and a new item from Witwatersrand University. Creationists should note that the isotopes of nitrogen on which this analysis is based are stable, so the traditional excuse that radioactive decay rates have changes over time is not relevant here. Besides, they are not the basis of dating these fossils, but of working out where in the food chain these Australopithecines were:

Unintelligent Design - Creationism's Designer Tries Again, and Fails, Five Times

Barbourofelis in its native Miocene habitat

AI-generated image (ChatGPT4o)

New research reveals why sabre-toothed predators evolved their deadly teeth

Creationism's designer god is nothing if not a trier - or maybe it’s just a slow learner. It tried and failed five times to create carnivores with ferocious-looking but ultimately fatal, sabre teeth.

The problem with long, curved canine teeth is that, although they are good at killing big animals quickly by tearing their throat out or stabbing them to death, because of the additional leverage on the long teeth, and the high risk of striking bone, they are prone to break, leaving their owner to starve to death.

And this has happened at least five times in evolutionary history.

The problem is there is an optimal size and shape depending in the prey species but this produces selection pressure to become more specialised in the prey which in turn produces selection pressure to produce longer, sharper teeth until the tooth shape reaches a pinnacle of shape optimised for that particular prey species. However, there is an evolutionary trade-off in that as the teeth become more specialised, the carnivore becomes more specialised and dependent on the prey species, so they are vulnerable to ecological changes that mean their prey becomes scarce of goes extinct.

How and why this occurred repeatedly due to convergent evolution is the subject of a paper in Current Biology and an open access article in The Conversation by Dr. Tahlia Pollock, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Evans EvoMorph Laboratory, Monash University. Her article is reprinted here, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Refuting Creationism - Ability to Perform Complex Tasks Had Already Evolved Before Chimps and Hominins Split

Male chimp cracking nuts.

Photo: Dora Biro.

Study shows that chimpanzees perform the same complex behaviours that have brought humans success | University of Oxford

Time and again, science is showing that characteristics which were once considered uniquely human, and therefore, according to creationists, evidence that humans are a special creation, distinct from all other animals, are in fact shared with other animals.

Instead of being evidence of unique creation, they are evidence of common origins and descent with modification.

On such human characteristic is the ability to perform complex tasks, involving tool use, in organised sequence, and adapt those sequences if necessary to complete the task. In other words, to plan a strategy for achieving a specific goal.

However, a new study has shown that chimpanzees also have this ability, suggesting it was present in the common ancestor before chimps and Hominins diverged some 6 million years ago.

Refuting Creationism - First Americans Were Killing Mammoths 3,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Clovis people hunting mammoth in Montana during the Ice Age

AI Generated (ChatGPT4o)

An artist’s reconstruction of Clovis life 13,000 years ago shows the Anzick-1 infant with his mother consuming mammoth meat near a hearth. Another individual crafts tools, including dart projectile points and atlatls. A mammoth butchery area is visible nearby. The scene is inspired by the La Prele mammoth site in Wyoming and set against the Montana landscape where the Anzick burial was discovered. Artist Eric Carlson created the scene in collaboration with archaeologists Ben Potter (UAF) and Jim Chatters (McMaster University).

Eric Carlson

Study reveals mammoth as key food source for ancient Americans | UAF news and information

A good 3,000 years before creationism's small god allegedly created the little flat planet with a dome over it described in the Bible, thinking that's what a universe looked like, human beings had migrated to North America and were hunting mammoths.

This is according to a new stable isotope analysis by a team led by researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). Creationists should note that a stable isotope analysis does not depend on radioactive decay rates, so the evidence-free claim that radioactive decay rates have changed isn't open to them. Stabel isotope analysis shows us what the person's diet consisted of.

The analysis was conducted by Professor Ben Potter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and James Chatters of McMaster University, and their colleagues. Their findings are published, open access, in the journal Science Advances and is explained in a UAF new release:

Refuting Creationism - Scientists Got The Date of the Earliest Dinosaur Wrong - It Was Even Earlier

An artist’s rendering shows how Ahvaytum bahndooiveche may have appeared in a habitat dating to around 230 million years ago.

Illustration by Gabriel Ugueto

A University of Wisconsin Geology Museum field crew is seen here in 2016 prospecting for additional material at the site in Wyoming where fossils of Ahvaytum bahndooiveche were discovered in 2013. The researchers are Aaron Kufner (left) and Jennifer Lien.

Photo by David M. Lovelace.

Dinosaurs roamed the northern hemisphere millions of years earlier than previously thought, according to new analysis of the oldest North American fossils

The thing about science that distinguishes it from religion is the willingness to change its collective mind when the facts change. This is because science is led by the fact wherever they lead

Science is reasonable uncertainty religion is unreasonable certainty. Religion appeals to those who value certainty over truth, whereas science appeals to those who value truth above certainty.

And scientists have just changed their collective minds about where and when the first dinosaurs appeared.

The consensus had been that they first appeared on the southern end of the supercontinent Pangea before it split into Gondwana in the South and Laurasia in the north and only spread to Laurasia millions of years later.

What can you tell me about the ancient reptile, Ahvaytum bahndooiveche, and its place in the evolution of dinosaurs? Ahvaytum bahndooiveche is a recently identified dinosaur species from the Late Triassic period, approximately 230 million years ago, discovered in what is now Wyoming, USA. This species is notable for being the oldest known dinosaur from the ancient northern supercontinent Laurasia, challenging previous beliefs that dinosaurs originated solely in the southern supercontinent Gondwana.

Discovery and Naming
The fossil remains of Ahvaytum bahndooiveche were uncovered in 2013 at the Garrett's Surprise locality within the Popo Agie Formation in Wyoming. The genus name "Ahvaytum" translates to "long ago," and the species name "bahndooiveche" means "water's young handsome man," a term used by the Eastern Shoshone to refer to both dinosaurs and colorful native salamanders. This naming honors the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, whose ancestral lands include the discovery site, and reflects a collaborative effort between researchers and Indigenous communities.

Physical Description
Ahvaytum bahndooiveche was a small dinosaur, estimated to be about 3 feet (0.91 meters) in length and 1 foot (0.30 meters) in height, comparable in size to a modern chicken but with a notably long tail. The fossil material includes fragmentary hindlimb bones, such as an isolated left astragalus and a partial left femur, suggesting it had progressed beyond the juvenile stage and was still slowly growing.

Evolutionary Significance
This discovery has significant implications for our understanding of dinosaur evolution. Prior to this find, it was believed that dinosaurs originated in Gondwana and later dispersed to Laurasia. The existence of Ahvaytum bahndooiveche in Laurasia during the same period as the earliest known southern dinosaurs indicates that dinosaurs were more widely distributed across the globe earlier than previously thought. This challenges the hypothesis of a delayed dinosaurian dispersal out of high-latitude Gondwana and suggests a more complex scenario for the early evolution and distribution of dinosaurs.

In summary, Ahvaytum bahndooiveche provides valuable insights into the early stages of dinosaur evolution, highlighting a broader and more rapid dispersal of these creatures across ancient Earth than was previously understood.

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

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

R. Bicknell, et al (2025)

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

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

R. Bicknell, et al (2025)

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

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

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

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

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

Common Origins - How The Mammalian Outer Ear Evolved - From Our Ancestral Fish Gills

An earful of gill: USC Stem Cell study points to the evolutionary origin of the mammalian outer ear | USC Stem Cell

I'm sorry if this spoils a creationists new year, but a bunch of scientists from the Stem Cell Lab of the University of Southern California have just published a paper showing an ancient ancestor of mammals, including of course us humans, was a fish.

It comes in the form of evidence that our outer ear develops from the same tissues in the embryo as the gills of fish. These tissues have been exapted by evolution for many new structures, one of which is the outer ear of mammals.

Refuting Creationism - Jaw-Dropping Evolution in Reptiles

An anole - a species of ‘false chameleon’ - crushing a snail with its jaws.

Professor Anthony Herrel

December: Jaw evolution in lizards and snakes | News and features | University of Bristol

A research team from Bristol University, UK with Professor Anthony Herrel of the Mécanismes Adaptatifs et Evolution, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris, France has recently published a paper showing the close link between the lower jaw shape of lizards and snakes, known collectively as the lepidosaurs, and their ecological niche as well as factors such as their phylogeny and scaling for body size (allometry).

They found that evolution was rapid in specialised groups such as burrowing and aquatic species.

Malevolent Design - The Sneak Tactics of Toxoplasma gondii

Toxoplasma gondii.

Image by Michael Holmes

Toxoplasma gondii parasite uses unconventional method to make proteins for evasion of drug treatment

Here we are with yet another example of an organism that, if there is a designer behind it, that designer can only be described as malevolent and determined to maximise the suffering and misery in the world.

It is, of course, another example of a nasty little parasite which, if you subscribe to the creationist view that complexity 'proves' design, has been designed to ensure we are as vulnerable to is as possible by helping it evade the immune system and other mechanisms, supposedly designed by the same designer god to protect us from the parasites it designs to harm us.

This example is the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which is notorious for manipulating its natural victims, which are felines and their prey species. For example, mice infected with T. gondii lose their fear of cats so they get eten and the parasite gets into its primary host; infected chimpanzees develop a liking for the smell of leopard urine.

Humans are not the natural secondary host, but the parasite readily infects us as we catch it from cats. It is thought that about one third of humans are infected. Once infected it is impossible to get rid of from the body because, even if antibodies are produced by our immune system, the parasites go into a dormant state as cysts which can form in any organs of the body, including the brain.

Refuting Creationism - Ritual Gatherings in a Cave in Israel - 25,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Reconstruction of a ritual gathering in Manot Cave

AI-Generated image (ChatGPT4o)

Manot Cave, Israel

Earliest deep-cave ritual compound in Southwest Asia discovered The Daily The Daily

Clearly, the authors of the creation myths in Genesis had no knowledge of their own history let alone the history of the rest of the world, as 25,000 years before the time in which they set their 'creation week', there were people holding ritual gatherings in a cave in what is now Israel.

Before the mythical 'creation week' there was supposedly no Earth, no Universe, no living beings and only a god made of nothing which had self-assembled out of nothing according to a design it made before it existed.

Creationists reason that the Universe and life on Earth is too complex to have arisen spontaneously, and it couldn't have all come from nothing, so an even more complex god must have arisen spontaneously out of nothing first then created everything else out of nothing by magic. To a child-like creationists there is no possible flaw in that reasoning.

Refuting Creationism - Another Gap Closed - No God Found

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

Photo credit: Shen TIAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Refuting Creationism - Domesticated Dogs 2000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

A tibia, or lower-leg bone, of an adult canine from Swan Point, Alaska, radiocarbon dated to about 12,000 years old.

François Lanoë
School of Anthropology

Eurasian/North American Grey Wolf, Canis lupus.

By User:Mas3cf - This file was derived from: Eurasian wolf.JPG, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

How did humans and dogs become friends? Connections in the Americas began 12,000 years ago | University of Arizona News

At least 2,000 years before Creationists' little god created a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, human in Alaska were feeding domesticated dogs on salmon, according to the findings of palaeontologists from the University of Arizona.

But of course, the parochial Bronze Age pastoralists from the infancy of our species who made up that myth, couldn't possibly have known anything about when dogs were domesticated, or Alaska for that matter because, as we can see from the tales they made up, they knew nothing of the world beyond a day or two's walk from their pastures and were completely ignorant of the geography, geology and history of the planet and life on it - which is why they made up such implausible origin myths in the first place.

That there were people feeding salmon to their domesticated dogs about 12,000 years ago is the subject of a paper published recently in Science Advances by the Arizona University team led by Assistant Professor François Lanoë, of the School of Anthropology in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. They explain their findings in an Arizona University News release

Refuting Creationism - How the 'Lizard' Part of Your Brain Influences Your Thinking

In a new Northwestern Medicine study, scientists sought to better understand how humans evolved to become so skilled at thinking about what’s happening in other peoples’ minds.

Amygdala is the organ in the limbic system (inner mind) —though a tiny little one is significantly responsible for our emotions which falls in the bracket of implicit memories.

Overthinking what you said? It’s your ‘lizard brain’ talking to newer, advanced parts of your brain: For Journalists - Northwestern University

Few things upset creationists more than evidence that they are not only apes and share a common ancestor with the other African apes, but that they also share a common ancestor even with non-mammals such as reptiles, and yet, as the American evolutionary biologist, Theodosius Dobzhansky reminds us, nothing in biology makes sense without the Theory of Evolution (TOE).

And one thing that does make sense is how the human brain is the result of an evolutionary process with ancestry in those common ancestors, including lizards.

A second thing that creationists who have deluded themselves into believing that mainstream biomedical scientists are giving up on the TOE and adopting the childish notion of intelligent design, will find distressing, is the news that the team who did this piece of research are firmly convinced that the structure of our brain and the way it works is the result of evolution, not magic.

The third thing is how this explains empathy, of which creationists often feign ignorance, claiming they get their sense of right and wrong from their invisible friend and have a handbook to tell them how to behave. The curious belief that even influenced supposed Christian intellectual 'giants' such as the smugly self-satisfied, C.S. Lewis, is despite the fact that one of the Golden Rules of human society, that even the founder of Christianity, Jesus, allegedly told his followers to apply - "Do unto others what you would they do unto you" or words to that effect, depend entirely on having the empathetic ability to know what someone else would want.

The research explains how this ability in humans comes from an ancestral ability to read social signals and form relationships, including an understanding of social hierarchies, possessed even by lizards.