Creationism in Crisis - Earth's Magnetic Field 3.5 Billion Years Before 'Creation Week'.

Illustration of the dynamo mechanism that generates the Earth's magnetic field: convection currents of fluid metal in the Earth's outer core, driven by heat flow from the inner core, organized into rolls by the Coriolis force, generate circulating electric currents, which supports the magnetic field.

Andrew Z. Colvin via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Researchers find oldest undisputed evidence of Earth’s magnetic field | University of Oxford

The problem with trying to sustain a belief that Earth is just a few thousand years old, is that scientists keep finding evidence that it is very much older. Here, for example, is a recent paper by Oxford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists that shows not only the Earth had a magnetic field 3.5 billion years ago, but that it was not hugely dissimilar in strength to the present magnetic field.

To add insult to injury, Earth's magnetic field, and the way it deflects harmful solar radiation away from the surface if often cited by creationists as evidence for their absurd claim that Earth is fine tuned for life, so a god must have fine-tuned it. If that were true, it was fine tuned for life almost 3.5 billion years before creationists believe there was any, and before there was even a universe, let alone solar radiation and Earth.

But then what did the primitive Bronze Age hill farmers who described the universe as a small, flat planet with a dome over it centred on the Middle East in the Bible, know about solar radiation, magnetic fields or the history of the planet? Well, nothing at all, obviously!

Creationism in Crisis - Sophisticated Wooden Hunting Tools Were Being Made In Schöningen, Germany - 290,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Examples of pointed split woods and close-up images of the worked point.

Photos: Matthias Vogel, Jens Lehmann, Dirk Leder, NLD.

Early humans used wood splitting 300,000 years ago to hunt animals, study shows

290,000 years before creationism's little god decided to create the small flat planet with a dome over it, in the Middle East, and before anatomically-modern humans had left Africa, someone was creating hunting weapons in a 'workshop' in what is now Schöningen, Lower Saxony, Germany.

What information do you have on the archaeological site at Schöningen, Lower Saxony, particularly on how the wooden artifacts were dated? The archaeological site at Schöningen, located in Lower Saxony, Germany, is renowned for its remarkable finds of wooden artifacts, particularly wooden spears. These artifacts have provided valuable insights into the behavior and technology of early humans in Europe.

The Schöningen site has yielded several wooden spears, some of which are remarkably well-preserved. These spears are estimated to be around 300,000 years old, making them some of the oldest known hunting weapons in the archaeological record.

One of the methods used to date the wooden artifacts found at Schöningen is dendrochronology, also known as tree-ring dating. Dendrochronology involves analyzing the growth rings of trees to determine the age of wooden samples. However, in the case of the Schöningen spears, dendrochronology was not applicable because the wood had undergone significant chemical and physical changes over time, making it difficult to identify and count growth rings.

Instead, researchers utilized other dating methods such as radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon dating involves measuring the amount of radioactive carbon-14 remaining in organic material to estimate its age. However, radiocarbon dating is only effective for materials up to around 50,000 years old. To overcome this limitation, researchers at Schöningen used a method called electron spin resonance (ESR) dating.

ESR dating is a technique used to date materials that contain trapped electrons, such as tooth enamel or certain minerals. By measuring the amount of trapped electrons and their properties, scientists can estimate the age of the material. This method was used to date the sediment layers surrounding the wooden artifacts at Schöningen, providing an estimate of their age.

Through these dating methods, researchers have been able to establish the approximate age of the wooden spears found at Schöningen, shedding light on the hunting practices and technological capabilities of early humans in Europe during the Middle Pleistocene epoch.

Tell me more about electron spin resonance dating.

Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) dating is a scientific technique used to date materials that have been exposed to radiation, such as certain minerals or tooth enamel. It is particularly useful for dating archaeological and geological materials beyond the range of radiocarbon dating.

Here's how ESR dating works:

1. Principle: When certain materials are exposed to radiation, such as cosmic rays or natural radioactivity in the environment, they can become trapped in defects within the crystal lattice structure of the material. These trapped electrons have an inherent spin, which can be affected by an external magnetic field. ESR dating measures the amount of trapped electrons and their spin properties to estimate the age of the material.
2. Trapped Electrons: Over time, trapped electrons accumulate in the crystal lattice of the material. The rate of accumulation depends on factors such as the type and amount of radiation to which the material has been exposed, as well as its environment. Trapped electrons are usually produced by ionizing radiation, such as gamma rays or cosmic rays, which knock electrons out of their atomic positions and into trap sites within the crystal lattice.
3. Measurement: To measure the trapped electrons, the sample is first exposed to a magnetic field, causing the electrons to absorb energy and move to higher energy states. When the magnetic field is removed, the electrons return to their original state, emitting energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. This emitted energy is detected and analyzed to determine the concentration of trapped electrons and their properties.
4. Age Calculation: The age of the sample is calculated based on the accumulated dose of radiation it has received over time. This dose is determined by comparing the concentration of trapped electrons in the sample to a standard dose rate calibration curve, which relates the amount of trapped electrons to the known radiation dose received by the material. By extrapolating the accumulated dose from the concentration of trapped electrons, scientists can estimate the age of the sample.

ESR dating has been used to date a variety of materials, including tooth enamel, quartz, and certain types of fossilized shells. It is particularly valuable for dating materials beyond the range of radiocarbon dating, extending the chronological record of archaeological and geological sites back hundreds of thousands to millions of years. However, ESR dating requires careful calibration and consideration of factors such as radiation dose rates and environmental conditions to produce accurate age estimates.

What hominins were in what is now Germany, 300,000 years ago? Around 300,000 years ago, during the Middle Pleistocene epoch, the hominins inhabiting what is now Germany were likely early members of the Homo genus. One of the most well-known and widespread species during this time was Homo heidelbergensis. Fossil evidence suggests that Homo heidelbergensis inhabited parts of Europe, including what is now Germany, during the Middle Pleistocene. These early humans were likely skilled hunters and toolmakers, and they may have been the ancestors of both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. However, it's important to note that our understanding of ancient hominin populations is continually evolving as new discoveries are made and research progresses.

The main candidate for their creator is Homo heidelbergensis, believed to be the immediate ancestor of Neanderthals, but whoever made them, they are the oldest known complete hunting weapons.

They were found during an archaeological dig at Schöningen in 1994 and have now been examined using modern technology by researchers from the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage (NLD) and the Universities of Reading, UK and Göttingen, Germany, who have reported their findings, open access, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).

The researchers have shown how these pre-Homo sapiens people resharpened broken points on spears and throwing sticks and made tools by splitting wood - the first time this has been demonstrated for other than Homo sapiens. Some of the tools may have been used for softening and scraping animal skins rather than for hunting.

Creationism in Crisis - How Early Modern Humans Survived a Massive Super-Volcano Which Spurred Their Migration Out Of Africa

Northern Africa.
Inset: Part of South West Ethiopia around Shinfa-Meta 1 site

Excavations at a Middle Stone Age archaeological site, Shinfa-Metema 1, in the lowlands of northwest Ethiopia, revealed a population of humans at 74,000 years ago that survived the eruption of the Toba super-volcano.

Photo courtesy https://topographic-map.com, Open Database License (ODbL) v1.0

Toba super-eruption unveils new insights into early human migration | ASU News

This, the fourth in a clutch of very recent papers that casually and unintentionally refute creationism simply by revealing the facts that run counter to the claims of creationists. It concerns the effects of a devastating volcanic eruption of Mount Toba in Indonesia 64 thousand years before creationists think there was life on Earth, or even an Earth to have life on it.

They believe this because a bunch of Middle Eastern pastoralists made up a tale to fill the gaps in their knowledge and understanding and describe a magic man in the sky creating a small flat planet with a dome over it, just a few thousand years earlier.

The facts are those revealed by a research team which included Curtis Marean, Christopher Campisano and Jayde Hirniak from Arizona State University who have shown that not only did African populations of humans survived the effects of this volcano, the most devastating in human history, but that its effects may have facilitated human dispersal out of Africa into Eurasia. They have presented their evidence in the form of a paper in Nature and explained the research in a University of Arizona news release:

Creationism in Crisis - An Ancestral Croccodile from 215 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

An artist’s interpretation of the newly identified aetosaur Garzapelta muelleri.

Márcio L. Castro.

An artist’s interpretation of the newly identified aetosaur Garzapelta muelleri

Márcio L. Castro.

Tanks of the Triassic: New Crocodile Ancestor Identified | Jackson School of Geosciences | The University of Texas at Austin

In that very long period of Earth's history, long before creationism's god decided to create a small flat planet with a dome over it, and before even the dinosaurs rose to pre-eminence, another group of reptiles had evolved into armour-plated tank-like creatures with thick body-plates and fringes of curved spikes to deter predators. Some of these were later to evolve into the modern crocodiles.

Now three researchers from the University of Texas at Austin have identified a new species that lived 215 million years ago in the Triassic. The newly-identified species was found on a museum shelf where it had been since its discovery in Garza County in northwest Texas, some 30 years ago by the palaeontologist, Bill Mueller. The researchers have named the new species in his honor, as Garzapelta muelleri (Pelta = plate).

Creationism in Crisis - Dinosaur Footprints In Alaska from 100 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'!

Part of the Nanushuk Formation, visible as a darker slanted rock layer, rises in a bluff above a bend of the Kukpowruk River. A large number of dinosaur tracks were found in this area.

Photo: Anthony Fiorillo

A theropod track lies in rock near the west bank of the Kukpowruk River.

Photo: Anthony Fiorillo

Alaska dinosaur tracks reveal a lush, wet environment | Geophysical Institute

About 100 million yearsd before creationism's god decided to create a small flat planet with a dome over it to keep the water about its sky out, there were dinosaurs living in what is now northern Alaska. The problem for creationists is that the people who wrote their favourite creation myths were ignorant both of dinosaurs and Alaska so had no idea their tales needed to include something about them, which is why everything they wrote about either happened within a day or two's walk if the Canaanite Hills or were plagiarized from nearby cultures.

Now a team of paleontologists and archaeologists have discovered fossilised dinosaur footprints and the remains of plants in the Nanushuk Formation that show the climate there was warmer and wetter than today, at a time when species were migrating over the landbridge between Siberia in Asia and North America.

Unlike the Paluxy hoax, which had creationists fooled for the best part of a decade, there were no human footprints (hand-carved or otherwise) associated with these dinosaur tracks.

Because creationists will try to falsify the aging of the Nanshuk Formation, claiming the method must have been flawed to such an extent that if made 10,000 years or less look like 100 million years, here is actually how the dating was done - it’s; those dreaded zircons in volcanic deposits again, plus stratigraphy based on index fossils found in rocks of known age:

Do you have any information on the Nanushuk Formation in northern Alaska and how its age was estimated? The Nanushuk Formation is a geological formation located in northern Alaska, particularly in the North Slope region. It is primarily composed of sandstone, siltstone, and shale, and it contains significant oil and gas reserves. The formation is of great interest to geologists and petroleum geologists due to its hydrocarbon potential.

The age of the Nanushuk Formation has been estimated through various methods, including biostratigraphy and radiometric dating of volcanic ash layers within the formation. Biostratigraphy involves the study of fossil assemblages found within the rocks to determine their relative ages. By comparing the fossils present in the Nanushuk Formation to those found in other formations with well-established ages, geologists can infer the approximate age of the Nanushuk Formation.

Additionally, radiometric dating techniques, such as radiocarbon dating or uranium-lead dating, can be used to determine the absolute ages of specific minerals or volcanic ash layers within the formation. These methods rely on the decay of radioactive isotopes within the rocks to estimate the time since their formation.

Through a combination of these techniques, geologists have estimated that the Nanushuk Formation was deposited during the Late Cretaceous period, approximately 70 to 80 million years ago. However, the precise age estimates may vary depending on the specific location within the formation and the methods used for dating.

The team, led by Dr. Anthony R. Fiorillo of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science, Albuquerque, USA and including Professor Paul McCarthy of University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) College of Natural Science and Mathematics, have published their findings open access in the journal Geosciences. It is explained in a UAF news item:

Creationism in Crisis - Earth's Oldest Forest Was In Present-Day Dorset, UK - 390 Million Years Before Creationism's 'Creation Week'

Illustration of Calamophyton trees.

Credit: Peter Giesen/Chris Berry

Cliffs of the Hangman Sandstone Formation, where many of the fossils were found.

Credit: Neil Davies

Earth’s earliest forest revealed in Somerset fossils

Archaeologists have found what are believed to be the remains of the earliest forest so far discovered in Devonian sandstone rocks dated to 390 million years ago, which makes them 4 million years older than the previous record found in New York State, and means they were living almost 390 million years before creationism's 'Creation Week' when their god decided to create a small flat planet with a dome over it, centered on the Middle East.

The fossils were discovered in coastal cliffs near Minehead, Dorset, England in what is known as the Eifelian Hangman Sandstone Formation and consist of primitive trees which were ancestral to today's trees but looked more like palm trees. The discovery is the subject of a paper in the Journal of the Geological Society and a news release from the University of Cambridge, UK.

First a little about this rock formation:

Creationism in Crisis - How Radiometric Dating Really Works - And Refutes Creationism

Example of a radioactive decay chain from lead-212 (²¹²Pb) to lead-208 (²⁰⁸Pb) . Each parent nuclide spontaneously decays into a daughter nuclide (the decay product) via an α decay or a β− decay. The final decay product, lead-208 (²⁰⁸Pb), is stable and can no longer undergo spontaneous radioactive decay.

Source: Wikipedia

Creationism in Crisis - How Radiometric Dating Really Works - And Refutes Creationism

As a service to Creationists, I asked ChatGPT to outline the main geochronology techniques, how and when they are used by palaeontologists, what their limitations are, and how scientists allow for possible sources of error.

All creationists need do is explain how and where these techniques are wrong and what the source of error is that can make 10,000 years or less look like hundreds of millions, or billions of years, without claiming the fundamental forces which control the universe changed to such an extent that atoms would not have been able to form when the they believe the universe, Earth and all life on it were created.

Remember to supply the verified evidence because a claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, and false claims will simply demonstrate what many people already know - that creationism is a cult for people gullible enough to believe falsehoods and ignorant enough not to know they've been fooled.

How Science Works - A Fossil Whale Is Not What Was Thought - But It Still Refutes Creationism!

Perucetus colossus

Bianucci, G., Lambert, O., Urbina, M. et al. (2023)

Size comparison of a modern blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) and the extinct Perucetus colossus, known from a fossil discovered in Peru.

Image by Cullen Townsend (https://www.cullentownsenddesign.com/)

Slimming Down a Colossal Fossil Whale | UC Davis

Scientists may have got it wrong when they thought they had the fossilised remains of the heaviest thing that ever lived, in the form of a 39 million-year-old fossil whale from the Peruvian Middle Eocene, which they called Perucetus colossus.

But, before creationists get over-excited, thinking it's the 30 million years they got wrong, they need to read on; it isn't the age they got wrong, but the estimated mass.

A new analysis by palaeontologist at the University of California Davis has put Perucetus colossus back into the same range as modern whales and lighter than the blue whale, which retains its position as the largest and heaviest organism ever to exist on Earth, dwarfing even the largest dinosaurs.

How they went about it is the subject of an open access paper in PeerJ and a news release from UC Davis:

Creationism in Crisis - What Life Was Like 3.5 Billion Years Before 'Creation Week'

Rocks of the Pilbara Craton exposed on the surface: grey barite rock at the bottom, reddish stromatolites due to oxidation at the top

Photo: Jan-Peter Duda

Barite quarry in the “Dresser Formation” of the Pilbara Craton. These rocks are around 3.5 billion years old and contain evidence of microbial life.

Photo: Jan-Peter Duda

Information for the Media - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Long, long ago, in that dim distant past when Earth was young, and fully 3.5 billion years before creationism's god decided to create a small flat planet with a dome over it centred on the Middle East, thermophile organisms, probably bacteria or archaea were living in a lake in a volcanic caldera in what is now the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia.

This is the conclusion of a research team led by the University of Göttingen wo have just published their work, open access, in the journal, Precambrian Research. Their work is also the subject of a brief news release by the University of Göttingen.

Creationism in Crisis - Fossil Plants from Australia, from 30 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Permineralised dicotyledonous leaves (QMF 61184) in a leaf litter layer from QML 1775, Glencoe sub-basaltic silcrete, Capella District (Clermont Volcanic Province). The leaf shows raised primary and secondary venation indicating that this is abaxial leaf surface and a partially skeletonised leaf of the same species lies across the distal end of the leaf.

From: Rozefelds, Andrew C.; Webb, John; et al.(2024) (Fig 2.)

Impression of lobed Proteaceae leaf (SAM P59649) from the Stuart Creek fluvial silcrete, South Australia.

From: Rozefelds, Andrew C.; Webb, John; et al.(2024)

A botanical Pompeii: we found spectacular Australian plant fossils from 30 million years ago

With so much of Earth's long history recorded in the geology, it’s quite astonishing that there are grown adults who still believe Earth is about 10,000 years old and was created out of noting, along with everything on it, in 6 days, with a few magic words, and that the science which shows otherwise is false or even forged.

It's even more astonishing that many of those people will live in technologically advanced societies that take products of science such as modern medicines, air transport, electricity, computers, radio and telephone communications and satellite navigation systems for granted and will never have any doubt about the truth of the science that created them.

Yet here we have yet more evidence that there were plants growing and leaving fossilised remains, 30 million years before creationists believe 'Creation Week' happened. And all they will have by the way of rationalising the facts with their evidence free-superstition is to lie about the science and claim the scientists used a flawed dating method that somehow managed to make 10,000 years look like 30 million years, or they lied about their results for some nefarious reason as part of a multi-million person conspiracy about which no-one ever breaks ranks and blows the whistle, even though they would gain instant fame and fortune if ever they did so.

And the same creationists who will tell that lie are the same people who hang on every word of a small handful of pseudo scientists who have taken an oath to always reach a required conclusion in their work, regardless of what the facts really reveal, as a condition of their employment.

How and where these fossils were found and dated, and the geological processes of silicification that preserved them, is the subject of a recent paper in the journal Gondwana Research. Andrew Rozefelds, Adjunct Assoc Professor in Central Queensland University and Principal Curator Geosciences Queensland Museum, CQ University Australia, lead author of the paper in Gondwana Research has also written about the research in an article in The Conversation, reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism in Crisis - What Creationist Frauds Will Never Tell You - Vittrup Man's Body Could Not Have Survived a Global Genocidal Flood

In northern Europe, people have been found in marshes and wetlands.
Vittrup Man was found in 1915 and his remains are now in Vendsyssel Historical Museum.

Photo: Stephen Freiheit

The life of a Stone Age man has been mapped | University of Gothenburg

There are two things about a global flood deep enough to cover the highest mountains, just about 4,000 years ago, that would have been inevitable.

The first is that the whole surface of Earth would have been scoured and all trace of prior human and animal existence would have been destroyed along with any soil or alluvial deposits which would have been suspended in the water to fall out later or be left behind as silt. For example, no bog burial would have survived because no bogs would have survived.

The second is that the bare rocks would then have been left with a layer of silt which settled out, complete with the remains of all the animals and plants destroyed in the flood. Those remains, moreover would not just be from the local area, but would have had a world-wide distribution prior to the flood, so bodies of animal and plants from the Americas would have been jumbled up with those from Africa, Asia and Australia, etc. and they would all have been mixed with the remains of sea creature that would have inevitably been killed to. In fact, on that point, the Bible is quite specific that all living matter outside the Ark was destroyed.

But that's simply not what we see, ever!

Nowhere on the surface of the planet is there such a layer and yet its existence is a certain prediction of the legendary global genocidal flood.

Creationism in Crisis - Hundreds of Fossils From France From 470 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Biomineralized taxa of the Cabrières Biota

Saleh, F., Lustri, L., Gueriau, P. et al. (2024)

New fossil site of worldwide importance uncovered in southern France - UNIL L'ACTU

Artistic reconstruction of the Cabrières Biota.

Credit: Christian McCall (Prehistorica Art).

The news just keeps getting worse for creationism as the relentless scientific refutation of all their sacred dogmas continues unabated.

Today, it's the turn of palaeontologists from the Faculty of Geosciences and Environment at the University of Lausanne (UNIL), Switzerland, who, together with international colleagues, have just announced the discovery of a large collection of exceptionally well preserved fossils in the Lower Ordovician formation at Montagne Noire, in the Hérault department of France. The Lower Ordovician deposits were formed between about 485.4 and 470 million years before creationists believe Earth was magicked out of nothing.

Tell me all about the Lower Ordovician period particularly in the Montagne Noire, in the Hérault department of France, including how its age was determined. The Lower Ordovician period is a significant geological epoch characterized by a diversification of marine life, particularly marine invertebrates such as trilobites, brachiopods, and mollusks. It spans from approximately 485.4 to 470 million years ago. The Lower Ordovician is part of the larger Ordovician period, which is divided into three stages: Tremadocian, Floian, and Dapingian.

Montagne Noire, located in the Hérault department of France, is a region renowned for its Lower Ordovician sedimentary rocks, which provide valuable insights into the Earth's geological history during this period. The geological formations in Montagne Noire contain a wealth of fossils and sedimentary structures that have been studied extensively by geologists and paleontologists.

Creationism in Crisis - Humans Were Making Beads In North America 2,900 Years Before 'Creation Week' - And The Evidence Survived The Legendary Genocidal Flood!

12,940-year-old bead made of hare bone, discovered at Wyoming’s La Prele Mammoth site.

Photo: Todd Surovell.

UW Archaeology Professor Discovers Oldest Known Bead in the Americas

The problem with having counter-factual beliefs that are only believed because you want to feel more important than you're afraid you really are, is that you need a vast array of strategies for ignoring the vast amount of evidence that your beliefs are wrong. This is especially important if you live in a technological society where there is free access to that vast amount of evidence and news such as this discovery of what could be the oldest known bead from the western hemisphere, dated to 12,940 years ago.

It was recovered from a site in Wyoming, USA at an archaeological site known as the La Prele Mammoth site:

What information do you have on the La Prele Mammoth site in Wyoming, USA?

Creationism in Crisis - Now It's Fossils of Air-Breathing Fish From Australia - From 380 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Life reconstruction of Harajicadectes zhumini, a 40 cm long lobe-finned fish that is not too distantly related to the fishes that gave rise to the earliest limbed tetrapods.

Brian Choo/Flinders University

A 380-million-year-old predatory fish from Central Australia is finally named after decades of digging

It seems every day brings a new scientific refutation of creationism that the frauds who lead the cult and feed it disinformation need to keep hidden, or at least give the half-baked strategies for ignoring. The scientists are lying; the scientists get their dates wrong; no matter what the evidence shows, God's holy word trumps it; if you weren't there to see it, it probably didn't happen.

Maybe creationists can be satisfied with such obvious logical fallacies and evidence free assertions, but normal people will allow the evidence to lead their opinions, not the misrepresentations and lies of frauds who know nothing of the subject.

And what better evidence that the world wasn't created out of nothing by magic in a few days about 10,000 years ago, than yet more evidence that there were creatures like fish living on Earth 380 million years before creationist mythology says the magic creation happened; creatures like this fossil air-breathing, lobe-finned fish found in Devonian rocks in Central Australia.

And to make matters worse for creationists, this fish was a close relative of one of the lobe-finned fish that evolved into the terrestrial tetrapods from which all terrestrial vertebrates are descended. Taxonomists have now named this fish, Harajicadectes zhumini.

Creationism in Crisis - More Bad News For Creationists - 12 Million-Year-Old Colored Snail Shells

Coloured fossil snail shells (left) and a snail shell from modern times (large specimen on the right)
Scale bar represents 1 cm.

Photo: Klaus Wolkenstein

Examples of coloured Miocene and modern gastropods used for Raman measurements. A, Pithocerithium rubiginosum, Miocene, Nexing, Austria, NHMW 2023/0101/0001. B, Tiaracerithium pictum, Miocene, St Margarethen, Austria, NHMW 2023/0103/0001. C, Potamides disjunctus, Miocene, Fertőrákos, Hungary, NHMW 2023/0104/0002. D, Sarmatigibbula podolica, Miocene, Fertőrákos, Hungary, NHMW 2023/0104/0003. E, Megalotachea sylvestrina, Miocene, Nexing, Austria, NHMW 2023/0101/0003. F, Thericium vulgatum, modern, Mediterranean Sea, Malacological Collection of NHMW, NHMW 2023/0105/0001. Scale bar represents 1 cm.

Photo: Klaus Wolkenstein

Fossil shell of Pithocerithium rubiginosum (height is 1.5 cm) from the Miocene sediments of Nexing in Austria (left) and isolated reddish polyene pigments on calcium fluoride disc (diameter of disc is 2 cm) (right).

Photo: Klaus Wolkenstein

Information for the Media: Surprisingly vibrant colour of 12-million-year-old snail shells - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Another terrible week for creationists is continuing today with news that a team of researchers from the University of Göttingen and the Natural History Museum Vienna (NHMW) have shown that the red pigment frequently found associated with the shells of fossilised snails from the Middle Miocene is the pigment that would have been present in the living shells, and not, as had been suggested, the product of later reactions.

This makes these pigments, from the chemical group of polyenes which includes the carotenes that give the colour to the plumage of some birds and to carrots, the oldest known pigments ever discovered. The fossil snails, Pithocerithium rubiginosum, so named from the 'rusty red' pigment they often contain, are from the Middle Miocene deposits in the geologically important Vienna Basin:

Creationism in Crisis - How A Pterosaur Flew Like A Bird On The Wing, Over The Sea To Skye - 165 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Reconstruction of Ceoptera evansae.

© NHM & Witton 2021

Skeleton of the new pterosaur Ceoptera evansae from the Middle Jurassic of the Isle of Skye.

Trustees of the Natural History Museum London

---

3D models of skeleton.

Natural History Museum London

February : New species of Jurassic pterosaur discovered | News and features | University of Bristol

In another of those casual refutations of the creation myth in the Bible, archaeologists have discovered a new species of pterosaur that flew in the skies of what if now the Isle of Skye, Scotland, about 165 million years before creationism's fabled god decided to magic up out of nothing, a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East.

They are thought to have lived for some 5 million years between the late Early Jurassic up to the Late Jurassic.

The fossilised skeleton fills another of those gaps in the fossil record so beloved of creationist, where the scarcity of fossils meant that the evolution of pterosaurs was poorly understood. This fossil shows that all the main clades of pterosaurs had evolved before the end of the Early Jurassic and earlier than previously thought.

The team from the University of Bristol Natural History Museum, the University of Leicester, and the University of Liverpool have named the new species, Ceoptera evansae: Ceoptera from the Scots Gaelic word Cheò, meaning mist (a reference to the Gaelic name for the Isle of Skye, Eilean a’ Cheò, or Isle of Mist - Scots Gaelic is still widely spoken on Skye), and the Latin -ptera, meaning wing. Evansae honours Professor Susan E. Evans, for her years of anatomical and palaeontological research, in particular on the Isle of Skye.

Creationism in Crisis - How An Iconic Australian Plant Originated in Africa - 132 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Banksia serrata photographed in the Australian Blue Mountains

Bjørn Christian Tørrissen via Wikipedia
(CC BY-SA 3.0)

Banksia spinosa inflorescence

Credit: Nadiatalent via Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Banksias are iconic Australian plants, but their ancestors actually came from North Africa

No real scientists these days sets out to refute creationism as such, but most do anyway, because creationism is so counter-factual that almost any scientific facts, especially in the fields of biology, cosmology, archaeology, geology and palaeontology refute it. It takes a resolute and determined ignoramus to not be aware of that. The problem creationists have is that they get all their beliefs from an ancient text that is demonstrably wrong, even when explained away as allegorical or metaphorical. It is neither. It is quite simply wrong on every level.

So, creationists are left desperately trying to defend the childishly absurd claim that the entire Universe, including Earth and all living things on it, were all created out of nothing in a few days, about 10,000 years ago, by a magic man also made of nothing who designed himself before he existed then self-assembled according to that plan, with all the complexity and information needed to create and micromanage an entire Universe.

This, despite the fact that there are fossil remains of plants and animals from hundred, even thousands of millions of years before then and despite the fact that all the evidence points to a long, slow, evolutionary process of divergence from a common ancestor that lived well over a billion years ago, which was itself the result of a symbiotic associations of much earlier organisms.

One such paper, which casually and incidentally refutes creationism, recently published in Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics by three Australian botanists and plant ecologists and a South African Professor of botany, traces the origin of the family of iconic Australian plants, the Banksias, to North West Africa, 132 million years ago.

The story of this migration meshes in with the sciences of plate tectonics and oceanography allowing the plants to migrate across then contiguous land masses from what is now North West Africa to what is now Australia via South America and Antarctica, as land-masses split and diverged and sea-levels rose and fell to reveal land bridges where there is now ocean.

How they discovered this is the subject of an article in The Conversation by the four scientists. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism in Crisis - Something For Creationists to Squawk About - Parrot-Like Dinosaurs from 67 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artist’s depiction of Eoneophron infernalis (top left), MOR 752 (bottom left), and Anzu wyliei (right) in the Hell Creek Formation.

Illustration by Zubin Erik Dutta
Atkins-Weltman et al., 2024, PLOS One,
CC-BY 4.0

OSU-CHS student discovers new dinosaur species, publishes findings | Oklahoma State University

Between about 67 and 66 million years ago, during a period that geologists call the Maastrichtian, there was a thriving ecosystem of dinosaurs in what is now the Hell Creek formation which spans parts of Montana, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota. We know this because their remains are frequently found in this fossil-rich formation known as the Hell Creek Formation.

The great thing about this formation is the way, as the layers built up, nearby volcanoes periodically spread a layer of ash (or tufa) over it forming neat bands that can be accurately dated using one of the most accurate radiometric dating methods - Uranium-Lead (U-Pb) in zircons. This gives a maximum and minimum age of the fossils found between these layers of tufa.

I wrote about U-Pb dating in a recent blogpost, but for the sake of creationists who are about to squawk "Radiometric dating is false!", I'll expand on what I said here:

Creationism in Crisis - A Multicellular Organism 1.63 Billion Years Before 'Creation Week'

1.63-billion-year-old multicellular fossils from North China
The oldest record of a multicellular eukaryotes

(Artist’s concept.)
Credit: SciTechDaily.com

Fig. 1. Transmitted-light (TL) photomicrographs of Q. magnifica from the Chuanlinggou Formation.
(A to D and K) Filaments with cells of varying length and width. (E) Four-celled filament with hemispherical terminal cell. (F and G) Filament with notably decreasing cell width toward one end. Note that (F) and (G) represent the same specimen; (F) lost the narrowest part of the filament as shown in (G). (H to J) Filaments displaying more uniformity of cell dimensions. (L) Two-celled filament with ovoid terminal cell. All specimens were handpicked from organic residues of acid maceration and photographed in wet mounts, except for (K), which was photographed from a permanent strew mount. Solid and empty gray triangles in (A), (C), and (K) indicate the longest and the shortest cells, respectively, within single filaments. tb, transverse band (interpreted as cross wall); tr, transverse ring (interpreted as partially preserved cross wall). Scale bar, 50 μm [(A) to (E), (I), (J), and (L)] and 100 μm [(F) to (H) and (K)].

Fossils from North China indicate eukaryotes first acquired multicellularity by at 1.63 billion years ago---- Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology Chinese Academy of Sciences

As though the abundant evidence of life on earth before about 10,000 years ago wasn't bad enough for creationists who believe the Universe and everything in it were was magicked out of nothing in 6 days around about then, a team of scientists led by led by Professor ZHU Maoyan from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NGIPAS), has now pushed the date of oldest-known multicellular, eukaryote organism back another 70 million years to a whapping 1.63 billion years before the supposed 'Creation Week'.

This would mean, if their superstition had any merit that creationists believe Earth has been around for just the last 0.0006% of the time that multicellular eukaryotes have existed on it.

And they wonder why people laugh!

The fossils were discovered in the Yanshan area of North China in the late Paleoproterozoic Chuanlinggou shale Formation which is about 1,635 million years old. The age of the fossils is constrained by a layer of volcanic ash ~40 m above the fossil horizon in the Kuancheng area, which has yielded a U-Pb zircon age of 1634.8 ± 6.9 Ma (23).

All complex life on Earth, including diverse animals, land plants, macroscopic fungi and seaweeds, are multicellular eukaryotes. Therefore, multicellularity is key for eukaryotes to acquire organismal complexity and large size, and often regarded as one major transition in Earth’s life history by scientists. However, it is still poorly understood when eukaryotes first evolved this innovation in their deep evolutionary history.

Fossil records with convincing evidence show that eukaryotes with simple multicellularity already appeared at 1.05 billion years ago, including red and green algae, and putative fungi. Older records claimed to be multicellular eukaryotes, but most of them are controversial due to their simple morphology and lack of cellular structure.

Creationism in Crisis - Evolution In Progress As a Tiny Ant Changes The Ecosystem.

'Big headed' ant, Pheidole megacephala (soldier cast).

Tiny ant species disrupts lion’s hunting behavior - News - University of Florida

As well as species evolving, there is another form of biological evolution that is often not recognised as such - the evolution of ecosystems as the populations of species that exist within it changes.

Environmental change is the prerequisite of evolutionary change on the classic Darwinian evolution by natural selection model, so we would expect to see an evolutionary change to significant environmental change, given time, but changes to delicately-balanced ecosystems can occur very quickly - in a matter of years or even months, whereas evolutionary change in the species gene pool will normally take many generations to occur, and that slow response to ecosystem change often results in extinction or sometimes, in favourable conditions, a population boom.

And one such ecosystem change is currently underway in Africa due to a small, invasive species of ant, as Professor Todd Palmer, an ecologist and professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Florida, with colleagues including University of Wyoming doctoral candidate and Kenyan scientist Douglas Kamaru, Jake Goheen, from the University of Wyoming, and Corinna Riginos, with The Nature Conservancy reported recently in Science.

I have remarked several times elsewhere how, because the giraffe's long neck and legs have evolved in an arms race with acacia trees, if acacia trees disappeared what is now an advantage to giraffes, would become a handicap as they find drinking difficult and are vulnerable to predation by lions and leopards as they drink because they can't raise their heads up rapidly without a dangerous fall in blood pressure to their brain and that, together their spread-eagled legs, mean they can't suddenly get up and run. Their long necks and legs only make sense in the presence of acacia trees.

And acacia trees have also been evolving in this expensive -do-or-die arms race with giraffes and other browsing species, in which the massive cost of producing enough sugar to build such a tall trunk would also be a handicap in the absence of giraffes. But, in one of those serendipitous turns of good fortune, acacia trees have an ally in this arms race in the form of vicious ants of the Pseudomyrmex and Crematogaster genera that take up residence in swellings at the base of thorns in the crown of the tree. These ants vigorously defend the trees against not only giraffes, but also elephants which can reach to lower branches with their trunks and will even push them over to get at the leaves.

The close interdependence of acacia trees and these ants is an example of co-evolved mutualism: