Refuting Creationism - How Baby Pterosaurs Met Their Death - 150 Million Years Before "Eve's Sin"

An artist’s impression of a tiny Pterodactylus hatchling struggling against a raging tropical storm, inspired by fossil discoveries.

Artwork by Rudolf Hima.

Lucky II, another hatchling Pterodactylus, preserved as a part and partial counterpart under UV light. Like the other individual, it has a fractured wing, providing rare insight into how even the youngest pterosaurs experienced injuries.

150-million-year post-mortem reveals baby pterosaurs perished in a violent storm | News | University of Leicester

The Bible hints at the notion that human death only entered the world through "The Fall," as seen in Romans 5:12 and 1 Corinthians 15:22; however, it says nothing about the possibility of plant or animal death prior to that. Setting aside the tautology that humans cannot die before being created, some creationist fundamentalists regard this as a profound New Testament revelation absent from Genesis, inferring that no death whatsoever occurred before the Fall. This interpretation often serves as a psychological counterbalance: death is unpleasant and unexpected in a supposedly perfect, evil-free world.

Creationists need to believe absurdities to cope with believing absurdities.

I'm not concerned about people clinging to absurd delusions for comfort, but what does concern me is the fact, confirmed by recent history, that those capable of believing absurdities can be persuaded to commit atrocities, often underpinned by the very book from which their delusions derive.

In a recent blog post, I mentioned the absurdity of believing that the food consumed by people or animals somehow remained alive through and after digestion. Additionally, the fossil record unequivocally demonstrates that plants and animals died tens to hundreds of millions of years before creationists' "creation week".

Now, paleontologists from the University of Leicester, led by Robert S. H. Smyth, have shed new light on why two juvenile pterosaurs in the 150-million-year-old Solnhofen Limestone of southern Germany died and were preserved in such extraordinary detail. These Solnhofen deposits are known for exquisitely preserved fossils, especially juveniles, but few intact adult remains.

A forensic-style examination revealed broken wing bones on the hatchlings - somewhat ironically nicknamed “Lucky” and “Lucky II” - consistent with storm-induced injuries, possibly from being hurled by powerful winds. These fractures likely prevented flight, causing them to crash into a lagoon, drown, and be rapidly buried by sediment washed in by the same storm—thus preserving them in remarkable fidelity.

These findings explain why juvenile pterosaurs are disproportionately represented in the Solnhofen fossil assemblage: young, relatively flight-inexperienced individuals suffered catastrophic outcomes during storms, while adults—better flyers—were less likely to meet the same fate, and their remains were more likely scavenged or fragmented before preservation.

Refuting Creationism - Why Plant-Mimicking Insects Make a Fool of ID Creationists

Paleoart illustration showing the two species' leaf mimicry
among Anomozamites in the Daohugou biota.

Image by NIGPAS.

Leaf-mimicking orthopteran fossils of Prophalangopsidae from the Daohugou biota.

Image by NIGPAS.

Scientists Discover 165-Ma Jurassic Orthopterans with Leaf Mimicry, First for Co-preserved Insect-Plant Fossils----Chinese Academy of Sciences

When we think of leaf mimicry, we usually picture modern insects like stick insects or katydids blending seamlessly into their surroundings. But new fossil discoveries show that this evolutionary trick is far older than we might imagine. In fact, insects were already disguising themselves as leaves 165 million years ago, during the Jurassic, long before flowering plants even appeared.

Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have uncovered an astonishing fossil example of close mimicry between three species of orthopteran insects—a group that includes grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids — and the leaves of an extinct cycad-like seed-bearing plant, almost certainly the very plant on which they lived. These fossils come from the 165-million-year-old Daohugou Biota of Inner Mongolia, northeastern China.

Instances of defensive mimicry or camouflage are exactly what one would expect from evolution by natural selection. In fact, it would be more surprising if potential prey species hadn’t evolved some form of defence. To an intelligent design advocate, however, such examples are awkward to explain—unless one imagines a forgetful designer who repeatedly undermines his own work. Why design predators that rely on a given prey species for food, and then deliberately design prey that are difficult for those predators to find? An arms race against oneself is hardly the hallmark of an intelligent mind.

And yet, arms races are precisely what we observe throughout the natural world — whether in competition for resources, the struggle for the fittest mate, parasite–host dynamics, or, as in this case, the evolutionary contest between predator and prey.

Refuting Creationism - How A Fish Was Equipped to Kill - 310 Million Years Before 'Death Entered the World'

Artist's impression of Platysomus parvulus

Image by Joschua Knüppe

Artist's impression of Platysomus parvulus

Image by Joschua Knüppe.

Fossil fish sheds new light on extra teeth evolution to devour prey - University of Birmingham

Palaeontologists led by Professor Sam Giles of Birmingham University, UK, have discovered the earliest known example of a ray-finned fish, Platysomus parvulus, with extra teeth deep inside its mouth. It lived around 310 million years before creationists believe Earth was created. Aside from that insurmountable problem for creationist mythology, there are other difficulties for their childish beliefs:

Creationists insist that death only “entered the world” as a result of “Eve’s sin”. Before that supposed event, some 6,000–10,000 years ago, nothing ever died. Taken literally, this would mean that every mouthful of food remained alive throughout the entire digestive process, only to be excreted still living at the other end. Alternatively, humans and animals didn’t eat at all, somehow running on an unidentified, miracle source of energy. Either way, the claim collapses into absurdity.

An additional disappointment for creationists is that this team of evolutionary biologists show no hint of the widely predicted (in creationists circles) abandonment of the Theory of Evolution in favour of creationism, that two generations of creationists have been told will happen, like the second coming of Jesus, "Any day now, real soon. You'll see!".

From an evolutionary biology perspective, this fossil sheds light on the diversification of ray-finned fish following the End-Devonian mass extinction and represents a transitional stage in the evolution of tongue-biters from simple jawed fish. It also shows that advanced forms evolved relatively quickly in ecosystems dominated by predator-prey relationships.

Creationism Refuted - Fossil Record Of Fatal Pathogens In Brazil - 80 Million Years Before Creation Week

Arrows indicated by BL point to the lesion caused by osteomyelitis. HB is the unlesioned part, and MB is the bone marrow.

Tito Aureliano et al. (2025)

Fossils with signs of bone disease were from sauropods, of the same order as Tambatitanis

illustration: Palaeotaku/Wikimedia Commons.

Deadly bone disease wiped out long-necked dinosaurs in what is now the interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil

According to creationist dogma — though not explicitly stated in the Bible but added later to patch over awkward evidence — death did not enter the world until Eve’s sin somehow allowed it to. Along with death, so the story goes, came parasites, pathogens, and anything else creationists find inconvenient. And, of course, all of this supposedly happened just 6,000–10,000 years ago.

The problems with that are two-fold:

• Firstly, there is the question of what Adam and Eve, and the animals allegedly created for their use, ate. Did the plants they consumed remain alive as they passed through the digestive system, nutrients extracted but the plant cells excreted still living? Or did none of them eat anything at all? Obviously, the myth’s authors didn’t understand that plants are just as alive as animals.
• Secondly, the entire narrative collides with the fossil record, which shows long-dead animals preserved in strata dated to tens or even hundreds of millions of years before the mythical ‘Creation Week’—during the 99.9975% of Earth’s history that creationism simply erases. Those animals had metabolisms dependent on consuming living or dead tissues, and their fossils often show evidence not only of death, but of predation, parasitism, and disease. Many evolved armour plating, spines, and other defences that make sense only in the presence of predators and pathogens.

And here’s a paradox creationists often tie themselves in knots over: did God design humans with an immune system, or was it a post-Fall upgrade? If it was there from the start, then God was already planning for parasites and pathogens—hardly the “perfect” world creationists claim. If it was added later, then God wasn’t omniscient, as he failed to foresee a future need. Either way, the story collapses under its own contradictions.

It is therefore no surprise that researchers from the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) and the Regional University of Cariri (URCA) in Crato, Ceará, Brazil, have found evidence of dinosaurs being infected—and killed—by osteomyelitis around 80 million years before ‘Creation Week’. Fossils of sauropod dinosaurs show clear signs of active osteomyelitis, with no signs of healing, indicating that the disease proved fatal.

Creationism Refuted - Filling The Gaps That Ignorant Creationists Never Knew Existed

Artistic reconstruction of Bolg amondol, depicted raiding an oviraptorosaur dinosaur nest amidst the lush Kaiparowits Formation habitat.

Art by Cullen Townsend.

A Monster “Goblin” at the Feet of Dinosaurs | Natural History Museum

View of the Kaiparowits Formation from Death Ridge in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Figure 4. Reconstruction of UMNH VP 16266 (holotype, Bolg amondol gen. et sp. nov.). Gold: preserved skeletal elements. Grey: morphological hypotheses of reconstructed elements based on the morphology of preserved skeletal elements. Black: missing skeletal elements, based on publicly available rendered CT scans on morphosource.org of specimen UF:Herp:153328, Heloderma horridum.

Woolley C. Henrik, et al. (2025)

There was a gaping hole in our knowledge of evolution which, had creationists been aware of it, we would never have heard the end of. They would have claimed that their gap-shaped god fitted it perfectly, like a puddle in its hollow. Of course, it was no secret. Biologists—especially those studying the evolution of lizards—knew about it well enough. No one was hiding it from creationists. Their blissful ignorance was simply the result of their fear of engaging with real biology.

We knew that today’s large-bodied lizards must share common ancestors, but the gap lay in the fossil evidence to support that view—what creationists dismissively call “conjecture” or claims made without evidence. Yet the Theory of Evolution always predicted that such ancestral and transitional forms must have existed.

Creationists, however, have missed that particular boat because the gap has now been filled. The prediction of evolutionary theory has, once again, been vindicated.

The gap-filling discovery was made by Dr Hank Woolley of the Dinosaur Institute while examining a jar of bones at the Natural History Museum of Utah, simply labelled “lizard bones.” Dr Woolley identified them as belonging to the Monstersauria—a group of lizards with a 100-million-year history, but until now an incomplete fossil record. A modern member of this group is the Gila Monster, one of only two venomous lizards alive today. The fossil, belonging to a large-bodied lizard which Dr Woolley has named Bolg amondol after a character in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, was found in the Kaiparowits Formation of the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, Utah—a palaeontological treasure trove and one of North America’s richest dinosaur-dominated records. Alongside dozens of new species, the site offers a vital window into the deep past. The age of this fossil places it squarely in the age of the dinosaurs, a crucial factor in lizard evolution.

Incidentally, the picture above shows the Kaiparowits Formation. Perhaps a creationist would like to explain how those vast sedimentary strata could have been deposited in a single global flood.

Refuting Creationism - Ferocious Ancestor of Crocodiles - 70 Million Years Before Creation Week

Kostensuchus atrox – life restauration, 3 meters long.

Art by Gabriel Diaz Yanten. (CC-BY 4.0)

Figure 2. Skull and jaw of Kostensuchus atrox gen. et sp. nov.
Photographs in (A) right lateral, (B) dorsal, and (C) ventral views. Interpretative drawings in (D) right lateral, (E) dorsal, and (F) ventral views. Abbreviations: ang, angular; ap, anterior palpebral; de, dentary; ec, ectopterygoid; fr, frontal; j, jugal; la, lacrimal; mx, maxilla; pa, parietal; pal, palatine; pmx, premaxilla; pnf, perinarial fossa; po, postorbital; pp, posterior palpebral; pt, pterygoid; q, quadrate; qj, quadratojugal; na, nasal; rarp, retroarticular process; sang, surangular; sof, suborbital fossa; spl, splenial; sq, squamosal; stf, subtympanic foramen. Scale bar 5 cm.

Novas FE, et al. (2025)

New crocodile-relative “hypercarnivore” from prehistoric Patagonia was 11.5ft long and weighed 250kg | EurekAlert!

Seventy million years before creationists believe the universe even existed, a ferocious crocodile was prowling the rivers of what is now Brazil. Its fossil remains, recently described in an open-access paper in PLOS One and summarised in a press release from EurekAlert, add yet another line to the mountain of evidence that life has a vast, deep history stretching back hundreds of millions of years.

For creationists, however, discoveries like this present a problem. To remain in the cosy confines of their self-referencing dogma, they must either ignore such evidence or twist it into their narrative that evolution is a Satanic lie and the universe is only a few thousand years old because the Bible says so. Their mission, as they see it, is to defend God’s revealed truth from the “deceptions” of science.

But even if one accepts, for the sake of argument, that a god created the universe and a demonic adversary named Satan exists, the logic collapses under its own weight. Surely it would have been easier for Satan to forge a single book than to fabricate all the astronomical, geological, radiometric, genetic, and fossil evidence pointing to an ancient universe and the evolutionary diversification of life. The alternative is that the creator itself deliberately falsified the evidence science uncovers—yet creationists prefer to believe that this same deceiver told the truth in just one book.

And so the walls of the creationist cult remain, impervious to evidence. But outside those walls, science continues to reveal the true story of life on Earth, in discoveries like this ancient crocodile from long before “Creation Week”—from a time when, according to creationist belief, nothing at all should have existed.

Refuting Creationism - Another Plethora of Transitional Fossils - From 250 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

iv> Fresh fossil finds in Africa shed light on the era before Earth’s largest mass extinction | UW News

An artistic rendering of an evening approximately 252 million years ago during the late Permian in the Luangwa Basin of Zambia. The scene includes several saber-toothed gorgonopsians and beaked dicynodonts.

Gabriel Ugueto

Another day, and another clutch of transitional fossils from millions of years before “Creation Week” for creationists to lie about, misrepresent, or simply ignore in order to cope with the resulting cognitive dissonance. This time, it’s not just a single research paper, but a series of 14 published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The fossils are the result of 15 years of excavation at three sites in Africa and cover the 47-million-year Permian era, which ended with the “Great Dying” 252 million years ago — the mass extinction at the end of the Permian in which an estimated 70% of species became extinct. Not only is that timeline fatal to those creationists who like to imagine the Earth and life on it are just 6,000 to 10,000 years old, but the fact of a mass extinction raises insurmountable problems for intelligent design advocates. They would need to explain the intelligence behind designing species only to have them wiped out by a climate catastrophe — one which should have been anticipated by an omniscient designer and could have been prevented by an omnipotent god.

And of course, another problem for creationists is the abundance of these transitional fossils, which, according to creationist dogma, should not exist at all.

Refuting Creationism - Ancestors Of Mammals Lived 40 Million Years Earlier Than We Thought.

Using a tooth, researchers have identified the oldest known species of docodont, the ancestor of mammals.

Illustration by Pedro Andrade

Docodontids in their natural setting

AI-generated image (ChatGPT)

Nova FCT student identified a new ancestor of mammals from a two-millimeter tooth

A student palaeontologist, Sofia Patrocínio, from the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of Lisbon (Nova FCT), has identified a fossil tooth as belonging to a docodontan – a group of mammaliform vertebrates considered close relatives and ancestors of true mammals. This discovery pushes back the known origin of this group by a further 40 million years.

This is the sort of find that often prompts headlines seemingly designed to play into the hands of anti-science groups such as creationists, with claims like *“The science books will need to be rewritten”* or *“Everything you thought you knew about evolution was wrong!”* These sensationalist lines risk creating the false impression that scientists are constantly realising they were “wrong all along”.

In reality – as in this case – what has happened is that a gap in our knowledge has been filled. Our understanding is now slightly more complete than before. Rather than overturning evolutionary theory, this discovery fits perfectly within it, supporting what was already known: there was a gradual transition from small reptiles to early mammals. The main uncertainty was *when* certain steps in that transition occurred.

Creationists who seize on such discoveries to claim scientists are forever changing their minds overlook an inconvenient detail – the timeline. Nearly all of these fossil finds involve organisms that lived hundreds of thousands, even millions of years before creationists believe the Earth and life began. If anything needs rewriting, it’s the creationist books that peddle disinformation to those willing to pay for material that reassures them their preconceived beliefs are correct – even when the evidence says otherwise.

Sofia Patrocínio and her colleagues have recently published their findings in the journal of the Palaeontological Association, Papers in Palaeontology. The discovery is also covered in a news article from Nova FCT, published in Almadense.

What Were Docodontans? Docodontans were small, extinct mammaliforms that lived during the Jurassic period, between about 201 and 145 million years ago. Although not true mammals, they were close relatives and part of the larger group from which mammals evolved.

They are best known from their distinctive teeth, which had complex cusps adapted for an omnivorous diet of insects, plants, and other small food sources. Fossils suggest docodontans were shrew-like in size and appearance, with some adapted to specialised habitats – including burrowing, climbing, and even semi-aquatic lifestyles.

The group is important to palaeontologists because their anatomy preserves key stages in the evolution from reptile-like synapsids to the first true mammals. Discoveries like the one by Sofia Patrocínio help refine our understanding of when and how early mammal traits emerged.

Nova FCT student identified a new ancestor of mammals from a two-millimeter tooth

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The fossil measures less than seven millimeters in total and is partially hidden in a rock. However, meticulous work has identified a new species that combines the name of a goddess with that of a constellation. The new species pushes back the emergence of this group of animals by 40 million years.

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After several years of researching a molar tooth from an animal that might resemble a mouse and several months until she was able to publish the scientific article, Sofia Patrocínio "closed" this cycle on Friday, June 13, 2025. The result presented in the scientific journal Papers in Palaeontology owes nothing to bad luck, but it does have its share of incidents, as the paleontologist told ALMADENSE.

"There's a funny story from high school: I had to do a project on paleontology and got a failing grade; I was so upset I said it wouldn't happen again," she says in a relaxed conversation, while admitting that she loves what she does. And she does a lot of things, even though many of them aren't even paid. "Paleontology isn't seen as a serious profession." Something she's determined to change.

Sofia Patrocínio is from Cartaxo and graduated in Environmental Education and Nature Tourism. It's been more than half a dozen years since she enrolled in the program, but the price of student housing elsewhere was unaffordable (then, as it is now) , and it was one of the factors that forced her to stay closer to home and enroll at the Polytechnic Institute of Santarém. After that, she interned at Dino Parque da Lourinhã and stayed on to work there.

It was impossible to remove the fossil from the rock due to the risk of damaging it. In the center of the image, the yellowish structure corresponds to the dentary (mandible), and the dark structure is the partially visible molar.

Photo: Sofia Patrocínio

“It was them [my colleagues at Dino Parque] who encouraged me to do a master's degree in Paleontology at Nova; they said I had a knack for it,” he says, referring to the course at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Lisbon (Nova FCT), which has a campus in the parish of Caparica, Almada.

In one of her master's degree courses, Vertebrate Paleontology, Sofia Patrocínio and her colleagues were challenged to prepare and describe fossils, some from the Lourinhã Museum collection and some from an excavation in Greenland. The then-master's student worked with needles and a microscope to remove the sediments still clinging to the fossil, which was less than seven millimeters long —even so, she was unable to free the entire piece, as we will see.

She then described the fossil in detail and attempted to identify its group and its phylogenetic relationships with other animal groups—in other words, she attempted to place the animal in its proper position on the tree of life. "It had similarities with several groups, but didn't seem to belong to any. It was most likely a new species," says the researcher. "I had so much study material that I could have continued [with the same topic] for my master's degree."

How does a tooth allow us to identify a new species?

The first step was to include the species in the order Docodonta, a group of mammaliforms—the evolutionary predecessors of mammals—with very distinctive molars. To put it simply, the molars were long and low, with a characteristic cusp pattern. (Cusps are the conical protrusions on molars, which we also have.) But this particular tooth had characteristics that didn't fit into any of the previously known genera or species within docodonts.

Docodont fossils are very rare, but there are fossils with entire jaws, which allowed comparison with the available material and ruled out a tooth with a small defect. "If it were just a change in the tooth's morphology, there might be doubt, but I counted five to seven differences," explains Sofia Patrocínio. Among these differences was a cusp facing the tongue.

While the tooth's original pattern allowed it to be classified as a new species, the layer in which it was found offers another new discovery. To determine the age of fossils, paleontologists "measure" the age of rocks found in the same layer. In this case, the fossil would have formed about 200 million years ago, during the transition between the Triassic and Jurassic periods (the period in which a wide variety of easily recognizable dinosaurs emerged). Even more interesting is that this species would have appeared 40 million years before the oldest known docodont species.

A new species at the transition between pre-docodont mammals and docodonts adds another piece to the puzzle of mammalian evolution, particularly the order Docodonta, which diversified and occupied various environments at the same time as large dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Furthermore, this fossil places the origin of docodonts in Greenland and Europe—connected before the continents separated into their current positions—rather than Russia and Asia as previously thought.

The layers of soil containing the fossils are like shelves in a bookcase, each corresponding to a period of time. By exploring each shelf as if reading the books stored there, the scientists were able to date the layer and the fossils—among them a new species of dinosaur, Plateosaurus trossingensis, identified by a fellow student in Sofia's master's program — and also describe the environment. The fossils were found in an ancient lake, with little oxygen in the water and which served as a passageway for many animals.

200 million years ago, when the 'Nujalikodon cassiopeiae' fossil is believed to have formed, what are now Greenland and Europe were connected, and also in contact with the continental plates of North America and Asia.

Adapted from: Patrocínio et al. (2025) Papers in Paleontology

A goddess tooth named after a constellation

Now 25, Sofia Patrocínio boasts the identification of a new species on her resume. "It's strange; it seems like it hasn't sunk in yet." Whoever discovers a new species can give it a name, naturally following the rules used by the scientific community. A species always has two Latin names (first the genus name, which functions almost like our surnames, and then the "proper name" that conveys the distinctive characteristic), as defined by the scientist Carlos Linnaeus in the mid-18th century.

This new docodont was named Nujalikodon cassiopeiae . Nujalik is the goddess of the earth hunt in Inuit mythology—the indigenous population of the Arctic regions of Canada, Alaska, and Greenland—and "nujalikodon" means "Nujalik's tooth." The specific epithet cassiopeiae owes its name to the constellation Cassiopeia, whose five stars appear to form a W, like the cusps of the molar Sofia Patrocínio studied.

The 831 photographs taken by the scan allowed a three-dimensional reconstruction of the fossil measuring just seven millimeters.

Adapted from Patrocínio et al. (2025) Papers in Paleontology

Naming the species requires all the prior work of studying fossils, in this case a complete molar, the piece of bone that housed the tooth, and the broken roots of a second tooth. But a large portion of the fossil was not visible; it was still embedded within the rock, and removing it could irreparably damage the tooth. Furthermore, it was extremely small, the molar measuring only two millimeters. Therefore, a scan of the fossil was necessary—a kind of CT scan for very small objects—which was very difficult to achieve, says the researcher. "But without the scan, it was impossible to move forward, nor to submit the article for publication." Then, using the 831 photographs from the scan—as if the fossil had been cut into very thin slices—a three-dimensional model was created on the computer, allowing us to see the details hidden within the rock.

Sofia Patrocínio's work was supported by her advisors, Vicente Crespo, a paleontologist at Nova FCT, and Elsa Panciroli, a researcher at the National Museum of Scotland, and involved collaboration with other researchers. The work was funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology, as part of the GeoBioTec project.

Having completed this stage, the paleontologist hopes to continue studying the evolution of mammalian ancestors with a doctorate from the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon. This time, she will study the inner ear—but she will continue to observe bones and very small structures. In the meantime, she will participate in paleontological excavations, collaborate with a fossil database in Portugal, and, in the activities she organizes for Ciência Viva, try to spark children's interest in paleontology.

Publication:

Patrocínio, S., Panciroli, E., Rotatori, F.M., Mateus, O., Milàn, J., Clemmensen, L.B. and Crespo, V.D. (2025)
The oldest definitive docodontan from central East Greenland sheds light on the origin of the clade. Pap Palaeontol, 11: e70022. https://doi.org/10.1002/spp2.70022

ABSTRACT
The first mammaliaforms emerged in the Late Triassic, but their exact origins remain unclear due to the scarcity of fossils from this period. One of the earliest diverging mammaliaform groups, the order Docodonta, became unusually ecomorphologically diverse compared with other early mammals, and this may be connected to the possession of complex molar cusp morphology. The specimen described here, found in the Rhætelv Formation of the Kap Stewart Group (Rhaetian–Sinemurian) of central East Greenland, provides novel information on docodontan origins and evolution, as well as key biogeographic insights into early mammal dispersal. Nujalikodon cassiopeiae gen. et sp. nov. is the first mammaliaform found in the Rhætelv Formation, and is likely to be Early Jurassic (Hettangian) in age. Comprising an incomplete dentary with a single preserved molar, it was visualized using micro-computed tomography; the molar bears similarities to the putative early docodontan Delsatia, and docodontan Dobunnodon. Phylogenetic analysis places Nujalikodon cassiopeiae as a basal member of Docodonta or a close sister taxon, making it one of the oldest definitive docodontans and pushing the origin of the group back to at least the Early Jurassic. It provides insights into the development of docodontan dental complexity, a key factor in their ecological diversification during the Middle to Late Jurassic. Its presence in Greenland supports the hypothesis that docodontans originated in the region now comprising Europe and Greenland before dispersing across the rest of Laurasia.

Patrocínio, S., Panciroli, E., Rotatori, F.M., Mateus, O., Milàn, J., Clemmensen, L.B. and Crespo, V.D. (2025)
The oldest definitive docodontan from central East Greenland sheds light on the origin of the clade. Pap Palaeontol, 11: e70022. https://doi.org/10.1002/spp2.70022

© 2025 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This fossil tooth extends the known existence of docodontans by around 40 million years, placing them much earlier in the evolutionary timeline than previously documented. This is significant because:

• It strengthens the fossil record for the transition from reptile-like synapsids to early mammals, filling a critical gap rather than overturning existing theory.
• It confirms evolutionary predictions — that mammaliforms had already diversified long before the rise of true mammals, in line with phylogenetic models.
• It demonstrates the self-correcting nature of science — evidence leads to refinements in understanding, not wholesale abandonment of established frameworks. When the evidence changes, scientists change their minds, unlike theologians who try to change the evidence.

For creationism, the problem is twofold: the fossil is tens of millions of years older than the 6,000–10,000-year timeline central to young-Earth creationist belief, and docodontans are transitional, exhibiting a mosaic of traits bridging reptiles and mammals, exactly the kind of “missing links” creationists claim do not exist.

Rather than undermining evolution, this discovery is yet another piece of independent evidence that fits perfectly into its framework — and yet another reminder that creationist models fail when confronted with reality.

Refuting Creationism - Adapting to Climate Change - 56 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Ancient soils preserved in the rock, known as paleosols, in the Willwood Formation, Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, are rich fossil sites.

Fossil studies of the extinct predator Dissacus praenuntius offer clues as to how ancient animals responded to environmental changes. The ancient omnivore was about the size of a jackal or a coyote.

ДиБгд, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

An Ancient Predator’s Shift in Diet Offers Clues on Surviving Climate Change | Rutgers University

Long before the supposed "Creation Week" — when creationists claim Earth was magicked into existence just a few thousand years ago — our planet was already teeming with life and undergoing dramatic changes. Around 56 million years ago, a mere tick in geological time, Earth experienced a sharp and rapid rise in global temperatures known as the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). This event had a profound effect on ecosystems and the species that lived through it. Many, of course, did not survive, but those that did, adapted to the new, harsher conditions.

One such survivor was an early mammal, Dissacus praenuntius, a member of the now-extinct Mesonychidae order. D. praenuntius was an omnivore that resembled a hyena, but with small hooves on each toe, and like a hyena, it likely lived as an opportunistic scavenger and predator. Now, a team of palaeontologists has revealed how its behaviour changed during the PETM: it began consuming more bone, presumably because its usual prey had become scarce or disappeared altogether. In this respect, D. praenuntius serves as a record of the environmental pressures of the PETM and how some species responded to survive.

It paints a picture of an Earth that is far removed from the idealised, "perfect" planet imagined in creationist mythology — a planet supposedly fine-tuned for life. Instead, the fossil record tells the story of a world that can quickly become hostile, where survival depends not on divine design but on the ability to adapt — or perish.

Creationism Crushed - By Big Biting Dinosaurs

Dinosaur bite illustrations.

Rowe and Rayfield, Current Biology (2025)

Gigantic, meat-eating dinosaurs didn’t all have strong bites | EurekAlert!

Creationists will likely dismiss the recent paper in Current Biology because, as is common in creationist psychology, any scientific evidence contradicting their fundamental beliefs is either ignored, misrepresented, or actively denied—particularly if it suggests their views should be reconsidered.

The study by Andre J. Rowe and Emily J. Rayfield of the University of Bristol (UK) demonstrates that, during the long stretch of Earth’s history predating creationist timelines, giant carnivorous dinosaurs evolved markedly different jaw mechanics to tackle prey—leading to distinct ecological roles. For example, crushers such as Tyrannosaurus rex developed jaws optimised for forceful crushing, akin to crocodilians, whereas slashers - other large theropods such as allosaurids or spinosaurs - developed weaker jaws tailored to ripping and slashing flesh, like modern Komodo dragons [1.1].

This divergence in feeding mechanics underscores a fundamental principle in evolutionary biology: adaptive radiation and allopatric speciation — whereby offspring inheriting intermediate jaw characteristics (neither fully adapted for crushing nor ripping) would likely be at a disadvantage, reducing their reproductive success. Over time, this selective pressure fosters reproductive barriers and drives lineages apart.

Creationism Refuted - What Caused Our Teeth To Shrink Until 690,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Chronologically from left, the molars of human ancestors got longer over millennia to suit a diet of high-carb grassy plants.

Photo credits: Public domain; Don Hitchcock; Fernando Losada Rodríguez (rotated)

Changes in Diet Drove Physical Evolution in Early Humans | Dartmouth

A recent discovery by palaeoanthropologists, led by researchers from Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA, highlights the stark difference between how a teleological thinker—such as a creationist—imagines evolution works and how it actually proceeds. The study found that the teeth of ancient hominins evolved over a period of some 700,000 years in response to the increasing availability of soft, starchy foods, which began to replace the coarse, fibrous plant matter they had previously consumed.

A teleological thinker—someone who sees purpose and agency in natural processes—would assume that something *caused* the teeth to evolve in order to better process the new food. However, as the theory of evolution predicts, any variation that improves efficiency in food processing or reduces the now-unnecessary cost of growing and maintaining large teeth will be favoured by natural selection. Over evolutionary time, such traits become more common. In the case of archaic hominins, this meant their teeth gradually became smaller.

Teleological thinkers often make the mistake of believing that asking, "Who or what told the teeth they needed to change?" or "How did the teeth know they had to evolve?" is a meaningful challenge to evolutionary theory. To them, it seems reasonable to assume a supernatural intelligence must be involved.

This simplistic view of evolution is actively encouraged by creationist pseudo-scientists such as William A. Dembski and his colleagues at the Discovery Institute, who claim that the genetic information resulting from such optimisation must have been intelligently designed because it is "specified" for a purpose. Of course, at every stage of human evolution, the genetic information that produced a particular tooth shape was necessarily "specified" for that outcome. Dembski never discloses this to his audience, nor does he attempt to correct the teleological bias on which his movement depends.

An interesting aspect of this discovery is that the evolutionary change in this case was driven not so much by environmental change - the starch foods had always been there - as by a change in behaviour - a case of meme-gene co-evolution, using the term 'meme' in the original sense as coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, to mean a unit of cultural inheritance - the analogue of the gene in genetic inheritance.

Creationism Refuted - Scientists Got It Wrong About Coelacanths - But Not About Evolution

One of the authors of the study, Professor Aléssio Datovo, poses next to a coelacanth specimen on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (photo: personal archive)

New examination of fish considered a ‘living fossil’ changes our understanding of vertebrate skull evolution

Here is something that will cause creationists to jump for joy – until they read beyond the headline (if they ever do). Scientists have announced that they were wrong about the evolution of the vertebrate skull, including that of mammals.

However, beneath that headline lie some disappointing facts for creationists:

• The error was uncovered by re-examining the 400-million-year-old skull of a coelacanth.
• The mistake concerns details of how the vertebrate skull evolved – not whether it evolved.
• The paper directly contradicts the common creationist claim that scientists are only permitted to publish research that conforms to the scientific consensus. This study openly challenges the prevailing view.
• The discovery enhances our understanding of how the vertebrate skull evolved from that of ancestral lobe-finned fishes – precisely the kind of evidence creationists would rather didn’t exist.

Still, creationists can enjoy the headline and may even use it to 'prove' to their audience that science is unreliable because scientists sometimes make mistakes. Of course, they’ll likely ignore the fact that the fossil in question is 400 million years old, and gloss over the reality that – unlike religious dogma – science is a process of continuous refinement. Science allows for doubt, re-examination, and re-evaluation. When the evidence changes, scientists change their minds. In contrast, religious dogma is fixed and unchanging, usually despite the evidence, not because of it, hence the widening gap between what creationists are required to believe and what science reveals.

Upon re-examining the cranial musculature of the African coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), the researchers found that only 13% of the previously identified evolutionary muscle innovations in major vertebrate lineages were accurate. They also identified nine new evolutionary transformations related to innovations in feeding and respiration.

The researchers, Professor Aléssio Datovo from the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil and the late David Johnson from the Smithsonian Institution in the United States, who sadly died when the paper was in review, have just published their findings in Science Advances.

Refuting Creationism - What Life was Like In Illinois - 300 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

A Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium)

Concretions

Recreating Mazon Creek’s 300-million-year-old ecosystem

A major difference between science and religion can be summarised as follows: science embraces reasonable uncertainty, while religion often promotes unreasonable certainty.

In practice, this means science always allows room for doubt—however small—and continually re-examines and reassesses evidence to determine whether a change of understanding is justified. Religion, by contrast, typically seeks reasons not to change its views, no matter how tenuous those reasons may be or how far removed from observable reality.

This essential feature of the scientific method is frequently misrepresented by creationists, who portray science as unreliable precisely because it revises its conclusions in light of new evidence. They contrast this with the supposed ‘eternal truths’ of the Bible, arguing that science books need constant revision while scripture remains unchanging.

One of those supposed eternal truths—about which creationists are not permitted to change their minds—is that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and that all living things were created ex nihilo in their current forms, with no evolutionary ancestry or shared origins. Science, on the other hand, can re-evaluate the evidence from a 300-million-year-old fossil bed in Illinois and conclude that the original interpretation underestimated the complexity of the ancient ecosystem that once existed there.

A prime example of such a scientific reassessment has recently been published—open access—in the journal Paleobiology. The study was conducted by a team of palaeontologists from the University of Missouri’s College of Arts and Science, in collaboration with Gordon Baird of the Department of Geology & Environmental Sciences at the State University of New York (SUNY), Fredonia.

The work is based on a comprehensive reassessment of the rich fossil deposits from the Mazon Creek Lagerstätte in Illinois, which, during the Carboniferous Period (~300 million years ago), was part of a vast area of tropical swamps, deltas, and shallow seas. These habitats were shaped by rising sea levels that inundated earlier coal-forming wetlands.

Creationism In Crisis - A 145-Million-Year-Old Fossil Early Mammal From Dorset, England

Imaginative reconstruction of Novaculadon mirabilis. Likely this animal would have been a little larger than a mouse.

Picture credit: Hamzah Imran.

(L-R) Dr Roy Smith and University of Portsmouth student Ben Weston by the flint bed in Durlston Bay near Swanage, which is the layer of rock which the mammal fossil came out of.

Credit: Ben Weston.

New species of tiny Cretaceous mammal discovered by University of Portsmouth student | University of Portsmouth

When someone grows up being threatened with divine punishment for merely entertaining doubts about the literal truth of the Bible, it's hardly surprising that real-world evidence struggles to break through the psychological defences they've built to protect themselves. This phenomenon is what atheist author and philosopher, Professor Peter Boghossian refers to as doxastic closure — a mental state in which contrary ideas are shut out before they can even be considered.

Former young-Earth creationist and now science advocate and geologist Glenn Morton once described it as like having a “gatekeeper demon” perched on the edge of your consciousness—filtering out any facts or logical arguments that challenge creationist beliefs, while admitting only those misrepresentations of science that appear to support them.

In this mindset, inconvenient realities — such as the discovery of a 145-million-year-old fossil of an early mammal — are unlikely to dent the conviction that the Earth is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old, and that all animals were created in a single supernatural event. In this view, evolution is simply an illusion, no matter how well the evidence supports it.

Even so, for any creationist with the courage and intellectual honesty to read this far, the story of that inconvenient little fossil is well worth exploring. It was discovered by a palaeontology student from the University of Portsmouth, along the Dorset coast of England, and is the subject of a recent paper in Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association.

This find marks the first discovery of a multituberculate jaw at Swanage since Victorian times. Its distinct size and shape confirmed it as a completely new species.

Refuting Creationism - North America's Oldest Pterosaur - From 200 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

An artist’s reconstruction of the fossilized landscape, plants and animals found preserved in a remote bonebed of Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park

Illustration by Brian Engh

Reconstruction of life in Arizona, 200 million years ago.

AI generated image (ChatGPT4o)

A Bone Bed From the Dawn of the Dinosaurs Has Revealed the Oldest Known Pterosaur Found in North America

Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park is a place that many creationists might prefer to ignore—or misrepresent. It offers a vivid record of how life changed during the Triassic Period, between 252 and 201 million years ago. In other words, it documents the history of life in what is now Arizona during the vast stretch of time that predates the so-called “Creation Week,” as described in Bible-based creationist mythology.

In addition to the petrified remains of ancient conifers, the site preserves fossils of long-extinct crocodile-like reptiles and some of the earliest dinosaurs known from North America. Now, a new study of a fossil-rich bone bed from the late Triassic—around 09 million years ago—has revealed new insights into stream ecosystems of that time, including the discovery of the largest pterosaur yet found in North America.

Refuting Creationism - The Cambrian 'Explosion' Just Blew Up In Creationists' Faces

Cambrian explosion may have occurred much earlier than previously thought - Current events - University of Barcelona

Creationists have long misrepresented the so-called "Cambrian Explosion" as vindication of their belief in the spontaneous creation of complex multicellular life ex nihilo — as though organisms simply appeared, fully formed, without precursors. They portray it as an instantaneous event that defies evolutionary explanation, and falsely claim that it presents an insurmountable problem for evolutionary biology. In doing so, they even misquote the late Stephen Jay Gould, asserting that he admitted Darwinian evolution could not account for it and so invented the concept of "punctuated equilibrium" to paper over the cracks.

In a particularly striking display of cognitive dissonance, this version of events — supposedly occurring half a billion years ago — is frequently cited by the same creationists who insist the Earth is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old.

As is so often the case with creationist arguments, these claims are simply wrong. The Cambrian Explosion was not an instantaneous event, but a prolonged evolutionary process unfolding over some 10 million years, with evidence showing a transition from the static Ediacaran biota to the more mobile, complex organisms of the Cambrian. Gould, far from being an opponent of evolutionary theory, remained a staunch evolutionary biologist throughout his career. His now largely outdated concept of punctuated equilibrium was never an alternative to evolution, but rather an attempt to explain the appearance of abrupt change in the fossil record — a perception largely due to the compression of deep time in the geological column. When properly scaled, the fossil record easily accommodates the gradual evolution of complex traits.

Trace fossils are an indicator of the palaeoecological conditions in which the organism that generated them lived.

Now, new research by Olmo Miguez Salas of the University of Barcelona and Zekun Wang of the Natural History Museum in London has uncovered compelling evidence that pushes the roots of the Cambrian Explosion even further back in time. Their findings suggest that signs of mobility and bilateral body plans were already emerging within the Ediacaran biota. This extends the evolutionary runway leading into the Cambrian, giving more time for the radiation of novel body plans and for the development of evolutionary arms races—such as the emergence of predation, defence mechanisms, and sensory adaptations.

Their results are published in the journal Geology (paper here) and summarised in a news release from the University of Barcelona.

Refuting Creationism - Yes, It's Another Of Those 'Non-Exitent' Transitional Fossils!

Reconstruction of the Burgess Shale concilitergan Helmetia expansa.

Artwork by Marianne Collins.

Holotype of Helmetia expansa USNM 83952, dorsal view. Cross polarized light.

Losso, S. R., Caron, J. B., & Ortega-Hernández, J. (2025).

Ancient fossil sheds big light on evolution mystery: solving a 100-year arthropod mystery | Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

A fundamental problem with creationism is that it depends on wilfully ignoring the vast and ever-growing body of contrary evidence. The intellectual dishonesty required to sustain this belief system makes its adherents the subject of ridicule—not just among scientists, but even among many fellow theists. Its prominent proponents, often elevated to near-prophetic status by their followers, are notorious for misrepresenting or outright lying about scientific findings. Unsurprisingly, they are treated with contempt by the scientific community.

One of the more blatantly counterfactual claims in the creationist repertoire is the assertion that there are no transitional fossils, and no evidence supporting the evolution of species from common ancestors. This denialism is essential to preserve belief in the spontaneous, magical creation of all species a few thousand years ago, without any ancestral lineage.

Accordingly, the creationist industry will need to deploy its usual strategies of misdirection and denial in response to a fascinating Cambrian stem arthropod, first discovered in 1918 in the Burgess Shale of Canada. Initially described from a single specimen, this enigmatic fossil has now been thoroughly reclassified thanks to the work of a team of Harvard researchers led by Dr Sarah Losso, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. Their analysis, based on 36 newly examined specimens, sheds significant light on early arthropod evolution.

Their findings are detailed in an open-access paper published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, and summarised in a Harvard University news article.

Creationism Refuted - Fossil Euarthropod - From 444 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'!

Keurbos susanae, close-up of segments

Gabbott, S.E., et al. (2025)

Keurbos susanae, close-up of segments

Gabbott, S.E., et al. (2025)

Marine fossil found in South Africa is one of a kind, thanks to unusual preservation

In the face of overwhelming evidence contradicting the creationist view of reality, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that such beliefs are rooted in a deep-seated psychological need—one that drives wilful ignorance and a denial of the observable world.

Consider, for example, the mountain of data showing that Earth is not a few thousand years old, nor was life magically created in its present form within days. Instead, the planet is over four billion years old, and the diversity of life we see today is the product of a long, gradual evolutionary process, shaped by environmental change and punctuated by countless extinctions.

One small yet compelling piece of that vast evolutionary puzzle comes in the form of an exquisitely preserved, 444-million-year-old fossil, discovered some 25 years ago in a South African quarry. Only recently has it been identified as a stem-group arthropod by Professor Sarah Gabbott of the University of Leicester. She outlines her findings in an article for The Conversation and a detailed research paper published in *Papers in Palaeontology.

Professor Gabbott's article in The Conversation is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism Refuted - Exquisite Fossils From 226 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

The Karoo Basin is a rich source of fossils for the Permian Period of life.

Image © WOLF AVNI/Shutterstock

Other life of this time included the lizard-like ancestors of tortoises, large amphibians that lurked like crocodiles just below the water surface, and forests dominated by a tree called Glossopteris with an understorey of spore-producing plants such as mosses, ferns and horsetails.

Photo: PEXELS

Exquisite new fossils from South Africa offer a glimpse into a thriving ecosystem 266 million years ago

In the realm of palaeontology, few discoveries are as illuminating as those that offer a window into ecosystems long vanished. A recent study published in The Conversation by palaeontologist Rosemary Prevec of Rhodes University, South Africa, unveils such a discovery: an exquisitely preserved fossil site in South Africa's Northern Cape province, dating back 266 million years to the middle Permian period. This site reveals a thriving ecosystem teeming with diverse plant life and a myriad of insect species, providing an unprecedented glimpse into pre-dinosaur terrestrial life.[1]

The significance of this find extends beyond its immediate scientific value; it directly challenges fundamental creationist assertions. By presenting concrete evidence of complex ecosystems existing millions of years before the advent of humans, it undermines the young-Earth creationist timeline that posits a 6,000 to 10,000-year-old Earth. The detailed stratigraphy and radiometric dating techniques employed corroborate the Earth's ancient history, aligning with the broader scientific consensus on geological and biological evolution.

Moreover, the discovery underscores the continuity and gradual progression of life forms, countering the notion of sudden creation. The intricate details preserved in these fossils—ranging from delicate insect wings to diverse plant structures—highlight the complexity and diversity of life well before the emergence of humans. Such findings reinforce the evolutionary narrative of life's development over hundreds of millions of years, offering tangible evidence against creationist models that reject evolutionary theory.

Rosemary Prevec's article in The Conversation is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism Refuted - New Finding Shows That Reptiles Were Around At Least 350 million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Early amniote reconstruction.

Martin Ambrozik.

Fossil tracks revise march of early life on Earth – News

In a paper that creationists will no doubt feel compelled to ignore, misrepresent, or dismiss, scientists report the discovery of reptile tracks in 350-million-year-old Australian rocks. This remarkable find pushes back the earliest known trace of reptiles by some 40 million years.

For mainstream science, this discovery provides further clarification of the timeline for the evolution of terrestrial tetrapods. However, for creationists—who continue to compress Earth's 3.8-billion-year history into a mere 6,000 to 10,000 years in order to preserve a literal interpretation of Genesis—it presents yet another challenge to their beliefs.

It is the kind of evidence that science routinely uncovers, forcing creationists into ever more creative contortions to avoid confronting the reality of evolution.

The discovery was made by Professor John Long of Flinders University and colleagues, who have detailed their findings and their significance in a Flinders University press release. Additionally, Professor Long, together with Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki and Professor Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University, Sweden, has published an open-access article discussing the research in The Conversation.

Their article in The Conversation is reproduced here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency: