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

Cut marks on specimen from the Olteţ River Valley assemblage.

Curran, et al (2025)

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

Mandible with cut marks

Curran, et al (2025)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Refuting Creationism - Humans Were Using Fire in Tasmania, 41,000 Years Ago

Indigenous Australians using fire to hunt kangaroos.

Painting by Joseph Lycett, ca. 1817.
Source: National Library of Australia.

Emerald Swamp, Tasmania.

Credit: Simon Haberle

Study uncovers earliest evidence of humans using fire to shape the landscape of Tasmania | University of Cambridge

One of creationism's many problems is that being a counter-factual superstition it is easy to refute with facts. For example, trying to cling to the childish belief that the Universe and Earh are both between 6 and 10,000 years old, must be difficult in view of all the evidence of things happening on Earth before then - like people using fire in Tasmania 41,000 years ago.

But, as though to illustrate how creationism is not science but superstition, creationists have a knee-jerk response to that sort of news by simply shrugging their shoulders and declaring that the scientists have either lied, misunderstood the data or failed to recognise that their dating method must be wrong because it doesn't agree with creationists.

The evidence, of course, comes not only from dating the charcoal found in mud, which shows us that people used fire to clear the land, but the sudden change in the pollen found in the same mud at the same time as the charcoal appears, showing how the vegetation was destroyed by fire to be replaced with other flora. This was discovered by a team of researchers from the UK and Australia, who published their findings, open access, recently in the journal, Science, and explained it in a University of Cambridge, press release.

Transitional Form News - Precambrian Common Ancestor of Insects, Arachnids, and Nematode Worms

3D laser scans enable the researchers to study the fossils’ shape and curvature.

Droser Lab/UCR

Researchers Scott Evans (left) and Ian Hughes examine a fossil bed at Nilpena Ediacara National Park.

Droser Lab/UCR.

Tiny worm makes for big evolutionary discovery | UCR News | UC Riverside

The refutation of creationism continues today with news of another one of those 'non-existent' transitional species that turn up with monotonous regularity only to be dismissed by creationists as 'not transitional but fully formed' with now two gaps in the record where there was originally one, or by simply dismissing the dating method as unreliable and coincidentally wrong by an order of magnitude sufficient to make 6-10,000 years look like x-million years.
Another big disappointment for creationists is the fact that this one is from before the Cambrian when their traditional disinformation claims lots of species popped into existence without ancestors by magic in a single event called the 'Cambrian explosion'. The Cambrian 'explosion' was of course a period of some 6-10 million years during which many of the basic body plans of multicellular organisms evolved.

This fossil however was before then and was clearly the ancestral stem species from which a whole range of Cambrian organism, collectively known as Ecdysozoa evolved. These are a group of organisms with an outer cuticle which is shed periodically as the organism grows. The vast group includes nematode worms and arthropods such as insects, spiders, crustaceans like crabs, shrimps, lobsters, and the horseshow crab. So, this discovery, which the palaeontologists have named Uncus dzaugisi sits at the base of this branch of the evolutionary tree. It resembled a nematode worm.

Tell me all about the Ecdysozoa, please. Ecdysozoa is a major clade of animals within the larger group known as Protostomia, distinguished by their unique mode of growth, which involves periodic moulting of an external cuticle. The term "ecdysozoa" comes from the Greek word ecdysis, meaning "to strip off" or "to shed," referring to this moulting process.

Characteristics of Ecdysozoa

1. Moulting (Ecdysis):
   • The defining feature of Ecdysozoans is the shedding of their cuticle—a tough, non-living outer layer made of proteins, polysaccharides (like chitin), or collagen. This process allows them to grow, as the rigid cuticle limits continuous size increase.
   • After moulting, a new, larger cuticle is secreted, which hardens over time.
2. Body Structure:
   • Many have a hydrostatic skeleton, relying on fluid pressure in their body cavity for movement and structure.
   • Most lack cilia or flagella in their adult form, distinguishing them from other protostomes.
3. Diversity:
   • The group includes some of the most diverse and abundant organisms on Earth, ranging from microscopic species to large, visible ones.
4. Nervous System:
   • Typically, they have a ventral nerve cord and a dorsal brain, with varied sensory adaptations.

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Major Groups Within Ecdysozoa
Ecdysozoa includes eight phyla, with two of the most well-known being Arthropoda and Nematoda:

1. Arthropoda
   • The largest and most diverse group of animals, including insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and myriapods.
   • They have segmented bodies, jointed appendages, and a hard exoskeleton.
   • Examples: Butterflies, crabs, spiders, centipedes.
2. Nematoda (Roundworms)
   • Microscopic to macroscopic worms with a cylindrical, unsegmented body.
   • Found in nearly every habitat on Earth, often as parasites in plants and animals.
   • Examples: Caenorhabditis elegans (a model organism), Ascaris (a human intestinal parasite).
3. Tardigrada (Water Bears)
   • Microscopic, water-dwelling animals known for their extreme resilience to harsh environments.
   • They can survive desiccation, radiation, and even the vacuum of space.
4. Onychophora (Velvet Worms)
   • Segmented, soft-bodied terrestrial animals with slime glands used for capturing prey.
5. Priapulida
   • Marine worms with a tubular body, often found burrowing in sediment.
6. Kinorhyncha
   • Tiny, segmented marine animals often referred to as "mud dragons."
7. Loricifera
   • Microscopic animals inhabiting marine sediment, with a complex, retractable body.
8. Nematomorpha (Horsehair Worms)
   • Parasites as larvae, often controlling the behaviour of their insect hosts.

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Evolution and Phylogeny

• Ecdysozoa was proposed as a clade in 1997, based on molecular evidence (notably studies of ribosomal RNA).
• They share a common ancestor with other protostomes but diverged early to adopt their unique moulting strategy.
• Their evolutionary success is evident in their sheer numbers and adaptability, especially in arthropods.

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Ecological and Economic Importance

1. Ecological Roles:
   • Many ecdysozoans are key components of ecosystems as decomposers, predators, prey, and parasites.
   • Insects, a subgroup of arthropods, are critical for pollination and nutrient cycling.
2. Economic Impact:
   • Beneficial: Insects (e.g., bees) aid in agriculture, while nematodes play a role in soil health.
   • Harmful: Some ecdysozoans are pests or parasites causing diseases in humans, animals, and crops.

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Fun Facts

• Tardigrades can enter a state called cryptobiosis, surviving for decades without water or food.
• Arthropods are the most successful phylum, with over a million described species, and likely many more undiscovered.
• Nematodes may account for about 80% of individual animals on Earth.

The discovery was made by a team from University of California, Riverside (UCR), led by Professor Mary Droser a distinguished professor of geology. The have explained their findings in the journal, Current Biology, and in a UCR press release:

Tiny worm makes for big evolutionary discovery

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UC Riverside scientists have described ‘Uncus,’ the oldest ecdysozoan and the first from the Precambrian period

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Everyone has a past. That includes the millions of species of insects, arachnids, and nematode worms that make up a major animal group called the Ecdysozoa. Until recently, details about this group’s most distant past have been elusive. But a UC Riverside-led team has now identified the oldest known ecdysozoan in the fossil record and the only one from the Precambrian period. Their discovery of Uncus dzaugisi, a worm-like creature rarely over a few centimeters in length, is described in a paper published today in Current Biology.

Scientists have hypothesized for decades that this group must be older than the Cambrian, but until now its origins have remained enigmatic. This discovery reconciles a major gap between predictions based on molecular data and the lack of described ecdysozoans prior to the rich Cambrian fossils record and adds to our understanding of the evolution of animal life.

Mary L. Droser, co-author Earth and Planetary Sciences University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA , USA.

The ecdysozoans are the largest and most species-rich animal group on Earth, encompassing more than half of all animals. Characterized by their cuticle — a tough external skeleton that is periodically shed — the group comprises three subgroups: nematodes, which are microscopic worms; arthropods, which include insects, spiders, and crustaceans; and scalidophora, an eclectic group of small, scaly marine creatures.

Like many modern-day animal groups, ecdysozoans were prevalent in the Cambrian fossil record and we can see evidence of all three subgroups right at the beginning of this period, about 540 million years ago. We know they didn’t just appear out of nowhere, and so the ancestors of all ecdysozoans must have been present during the preceding Ediacaran period.

Ian V. Hughes, first author
Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.

DNA-based analyses, used to predict the age of animal groups by comparing them with their closest living relatives, have corroborated this hypothesis. Yet ecdysozoan fossil animals have remained hidden among scores of animal fossils paleontologists have discovered from the Ediacaran Period.

Top: Uncus fossil from Nilpena Ediacara National Park. The numbers correspond to the coordinates of this fossil on the fossil bed surface. Bottom: 3D laser scans enable the researchers to study the fossils’ shape and curvature.

Droser Lab/UCR.

Ediacaran animals, which lived 635-538 million years ago, were ocean dwellers; their remains preserved as cast-like impressions on the seabed that later hardened to rock. Hughes said uncovering them is a labor-intensive, delicate process that involves peeling back rock layers, flipping them over, dusting them off, and piecing them back together to get “a really nice snapshot of the sea floor.”

This excavation process has only been done at Nilpena Ediacara National Park in South Australia, a site Droser and her team have been working at for 25 years that is known for its beautifully preserved Ediacaran fossils.

Nilpena is perhaps the best fossil site for understanding early animal evolution in the world because the fossils occur during a period of heightened diversity and we are able to excavate extensive layers of rock that preserve these snapshots. The layer where we found Uncus is particularly exciting because the sediment grains are so small that we really see all the details of the fossils preserved there.

Assistant Professor Scott Evans, co-author
Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.

While the team didn’t set out to find an early ecdysozoan during their 2018 excavation, they were drawn to a mysterious worm-like impression that they dubbed “fishhook.”

Sometimes we make dramatic discoveries and sometimes we excavate an entire bed and say ‘hmmm, I’ve been looking at that thing, what do you think?’ That’s what happened here. We had all sort of noticed this fishhook squiggle on the rock. It was pretty prominent because it was really, really deep.

Because it was deep, we knew it wasn’t smooshed easily so it must have had a pretty rigid body. At this point we knew this was a new fossil animal and it belong to the Ecdysozoa.

Ian V. Hughes

After seeing more of the worm-like squiggles the team paid closer attention, taking note of fishhook’s characteristics. Other defining characteristics include its distinct curvature and the fact that it could move around — seen by trace fossils in the surrounding area. Paul De Ley, an associate professor of nematology at UCR, confirmed its fit as an early nematode and ruled out other worm types.

The team called the new animal Uncus, which means “hook” in Latin, noting in the paper its similarities to modern-day nematodes. Hughes said the team was excited to find evidence of what scientists had long predicted; that ecdysozoans existed in the Ediacaran Period.

It’s also really important for our understanding of what these early animal groups would have looked like and their lifestyle, especially as the ecdysozoans would really come to dominate the marine ecosystem in the Cambrian.

Ian V. Hughes

The paper is titled “An Ediacaran bilateran with an ecdysozoan affinity from South Australia.” Funding for the research came from NASA.

Highlights

• A new, motile bilaterian is described from the Ediacaran of South Australia
• Features including morphology and movement suggest an ecdysozoan affinity
• This discovery firmly places ecdysozoans in the Precambrian

Summary
Molecular clocks and Cambrian-derived metazoans strongly suggest a Neoproterozoic origin of many animal clades.^1,2,3,4 However, fossil bilaterians are rare in the Ediacaran, and no definitive ecdysozoan body fossils are known from the Precambrian. Notably, the base of the Cambrian is characterized by an abundance of trace fossils attributed to priapulid worms,^5,6 suggesting that major divisions among ecdysozoan groups occurred prior to this time. This is supported by ichnofossils from the latest Ediacaran or early Cambrian left by a plausible nematoid,^7,8,9 although definitively attributing this inferred behavior to crown-Nematoida remains contentious in the absence of body fossils.¹⁰ Given the high probability of the evolution of Ecdysozoa in the Proterozoic, the otherwise prolific fossil record of the Ecdysozoa, and the identification of more than 100 distinct Ediacaran genera, it is striking that no Ediacaran body fossils have been confidently assigned to this group. Here, we describe Uncus dzaugisi gen. et. sp. nov. from the Ediacara Member (South Australia), a smooth, vermiform organism with distinct curvature and anterior-posterior differentiation. The depth of relief of Uncus is unique among Ediacara fossils and consistent with a rigid outer cuticle. Ecological relationships and associated trace fossils demonstrate that Uncus was motile. Body morphology and the inferred style of movement are consistent with Nematoida, providing strong evidence for at least an ecdysozoan affinity. This validates the Precambrian origin of Ecdysozoa, reconciling a major gap between predicted patterns of animal evolution and the fossil record.⁴

Hughes, Ian V.; Evans, Scott D.; Droser, Mary L.
An Ediacaran bilaterian with an ecdysozoan affinity from South Australia
Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.10.030

© 2024 Elsevier.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

I think my favourite quote from one of the scientists is "We know they didn’t just appear out of nowhere, and so the ancestors of all ecdysozoans must have been present during the preceding Ediacaran period", which just about describes the difference between someone who knows the Theory of Evolution is correct because he understands the evidence for it, and a creationists who believes in fully formed living organisms made from nothing, magically popping into existence from nowhere, with magic spells cast by an unproven supernatural deity their mummy and daddy told them about.

The ancestral form, the transitional species, was in exactly for rock formation of exactly the right age which the theory of evolutionary decent with modifiction from a common ancester predicted.

And in case a creationist is tempted to try the 'radiometric dating is flawed/wrong/faked fallacy. The Ediacaran rock formation these fossils were found in was independently dated several different ways that all converged on a 98-million-year span from 635 to 538 million years ago known as the Ediacaran. The Most important being the Uranium-Lead (U-Pb) dating of zircons found in the layers of volcanic ash sandwiched within the rocks. To compress 600 million years of radioactive decay into less than 6-10,000 years would have caused Earth's rocks to melt and the seas to boil away. And the weak nuclear force would have been so weak that atoms could not have formed, let alone life, and there would have been no planet and no universe to fine tune for it either.

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An exposé of the failure of creationism and especially the Discovery Institute's Wedge Strategy, showing that the Theory of Evolution is as central to biomedical science today as it was when the DI launched its disinformation campaign in 1991. Creationism is not a science; it is religious fundamentalism and, as was shown in the Kitzmiller case, Intelligent design is creationism dressed in a lab coat.

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Refuting Creationism - How 70% of the Mediterranean Sea Was Lost 5.5 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artistic representation of the Gibraltar sill rupture at the end of the Messinian Salinity Crisis. In the final moments of this crisis, the level of the Mediterranean Sea was around 1 km lower than that of the Atlantic Ocean.

© Pibernat & Garcia-Castellanos

How 70% of the Mediterranean Sea was lost 5.5 million years ago | CNRS

The two accumulation phases of the Mediterranean salt layer during the Messinian Salinity Crisis.
In the first phase, salt accumulated in a Mediterranean Basin filled with brine; in the second phase, salt accumulated in a Mediterranean completely isolated from the Atlantic Ocean, as a result of the significant drop in sea level in the western and eastern Mediterranean sub-basins.

© Giovanni Aloisi

Despite living not a stone's throw from it, the authors of Genesis appear to have known next to nothing about the Mediterranean, and, having guessed that Earth was created about 4,000 earlier they blundered on with their preposterous, counterfactual mythology. Had they been away of real history they might have made a better fist of it, but there was no way they could have known that about 5.5 million years earlier there was no sea to speak of; instead there was a salt-filled depression due to what is now called, The Messinian Salinity Crisis.

This event was caused by land rising up under the straights of Gibraltar restricting inflow from the Atlantic and eventually closing it altogether, and, as water levels fell, the ridge between Sicily and the North African coast formed another barrier, effectively dividing the Mediterranean into two seas.

Refuting Creationism - Scientists Discover What Caused Earth's Climate Cycle To Change A million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Rig used for obtaining core samples of seabed sediment

The pattern of glaciation and warmer spells changed about 1,000,000 years ago.

Deep ocean clues to a million-year-old Ice Age puzzle revealed in new study – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Like almost all of Earth's history, a sudden change in the cyclic pattern of climate change occurred in that long, pre-Creation period. To be precise, 700,000 to 1 million years ago the pattern of glaciation and interglacial warm spells changed from a 41,000 year cycle, due to changes in the degree of tilt in Earth's rotation (axial precession), to one of about 100,000 years with no obvious change in axial precession or external causes such as solar radiation. This is known to climatologists and geologists as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT)

Given the conviction of creationists that their putative designer god created Earth perfectly tuned for them to live on, it will probably be disturbing to learn that Earth's pattern of climate can change radically over the long term, and not caused by anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases but by perfectly natural processes that don't need the interference of a magic deity to explain them. On top of this all happening before they believe Earth was created out of nothing as a small flat planet with a dome over it, there is much here for creationists to ignore and for their cult to lie about.

Refuting Creationism - How The Grand Canyon Reveals Life On Earth 540 Million Years Before 'Creation Week',

Professor Carol Dehler samples the 500-million-year-old Bright Angel Formation in the Grand Canyon.

Photo: UNM/Laura Crossey

The Grand Canyon's Horseshoe Bend, where creationisst believe a raging torrent of flood water did a 180 degree turn and headed back the way it came.

USU Geologist, Colleagues Rewrite Textbooks With New Insights From Bottom of the Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon often features in creationist disinformation websites because it needs to be explained away in terms of a history of Earth lasting only some 6-10,000 years and because it is easy to fool people who want to be fooled that it is somehow evidence if a global flood, and in particular how the water in the alleged flood ran away. Cult frauds also pretend the different rock layers in the canyon wall can all be explained in terms of sediment deposited during their god's supposed genocidal flood.

The truth, as usual with creationist claims, is nothing like the childish myth they like to pretend is real history. In fact, the walls of the Grand Canyon are a record of plate tectonics and climate change over hundreds of millions of years and mesh completely with what is known of Earth's history from other sources.

An indication of how creationists cult leaders are terrified of the information in the walls of the Grand Canyon, can be gauged from the notorious creationist purveyor of disinformation, Andrew Snelling's article on the creationists disinformation site, Answers in Genesis and the lengths he went to to obtain sample without disclosing exactly where he got them from, as related in this article in science. Snelling argued that it discriminated against his religion to require him to provide GPS coordinates of his samples! Clearly, Snelling believes his religion requires his 'science' to lack precision and reproducibility in case someone else tried to replicate his measurements and finds his to be bogus.

Snelling was subsequently given permission to collect samples under supervision and then wrote up his findings to try to explain away the fact that his findings didn't conform to his YEC preconceptions. His excuses include the creationists go-to excuse - the unsubstantiated claim that the uniformly old age of the rock he obtained must be because radioactive decay rates used to be different by several orders of magnitude!
One of Snellings stated objectives was to prove that the deformed Tapeats sandstone deposits, which he assures his readers are not fractured, despite the fact that photographs show fractures, were soft when deformed. He mentions this early in his article but then quietly drops the subject, presumably because his findings contradict his claim.

His findings are soundly refuted here.

Clearly, it is important to creationist cult leaders that their dupes are badly misinformed about the date of the rocks in the walls of the Grand Canyon, and it is obvious why, as this paper by geologists from Utah State University, together with colleagues from the University of New Mexico, Boise State University, Idaho, the University of Las Vegas, Nevada and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Denver, Colorado, shows. The rocks at the bottom of the canyon are from the Cambrian, 540 million years before creationists dogma says Earth was made from nothing by magic.

Other rocks map exactly onto what is known of changes in sea level and climate due to plate tectonics and how the canyon itself was carved into those strata is fully explainable in terms of erosion by a river flowing over a river bed that was rising slowly due to forces beneath Earth's crust over a period of millions of years.

Perhaps the most embarrassing thing for creationists is the thing they normally avoid like the plague - the famous Horseshoe bend, which requires their credulous dupes to believe a raging torrent of water, for no apparent reason, changed direction by over 180 degrees and headed back the way it came, when raging torrents of water are notoriously uni-directional.

And why on Earth anyone would imagine the water from a global flood would flow through a canyon in the middle of North America into the Pacific Ocean is anyone's guess and not something Andrew Snelling or any other creationist apologist has ever attempted to explain, simply leaving it to their parochial and culturally chauvinistic dupes to assume that anything important that happened in world history must have happened in the USA.

Refuting Creationism - What Happened When a Massive Metor Hit Earth 3 billion Years Before 'Creation Week'

Impression of a massive impact 3.26 billion years ago

AI-generated (ChatGPT4o)

What happened when giant S2 meteor hit Earth 3 billion years ago?— Harvard Gazette

Barberton Greenstone belt of South Africa.

Photo: Nadja Drabon

Creationists love to tell us how their putative intelligent designer designed an entire Universe with countless trillions of stars many with planetary systems, and made a special one called Earth which is perfectly designed for them to live on.

The problem with that comforting lie is that it isn't borne out by the disturbing truth. Not only is Earth far from perfect for their (human) life over most of its area, being inaccessible and hostile without special human-made technology, but it has been, and probably will be again, subject to almost unimaginable, catastrophic events in its past, such as plate tectonics causing changes in ocean currents which caused climate change so drastic the Earth literally froze over. There have equally been times when the polar icecaps melted flooding coastal areas where many of our modern major cities and ports are located.

Refuting Creationism - Walking With Dinosaurs 70-75 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artist's depiction of H. piceanus in a Late Cretaceous swamp.

Illustration by Brian Engh
LivingRelicProductions.com

Paleontologists discover Colorado ‘swamp dweller’ that lived alongside dinosaurs | CU Boulder Today | University of Colorado Boulder

Paleontologists dig for fossils in northwestern Colorado.

Credit: John and ReBecca Foster.

AI-Generated illustration of life in a Cretaceous swamp near the Western Inland Seaway

ChatGPT4o

For some reason creationists have a fixation with dinosaurs, probably because, deep down, they know their existence refutes the biblical nonsense of an Earth that's only 6-10,000 years old. After all, there is nothing quite like a 75 million-year-old fossil of a living creature for falsifying the idea that the Universe, Earth and life on it were all created in a single week, just a few thousand years ago.

So, their cult leaders are forever scraping around trying to find evidence that human beings and dinosaurs lived together and even that Jesus would have been familiar with T. rex or Diplodocus and was probably used to pterosaurs flying overhead. But of course, there is none - which was never a reason for a creationist to abandon a delusion.

What there is, however, is evidence that dinosaurs were around until about 66 million years ago then promptly went extinct to be replaced by birds and mammals as the dominant terrestrial life forms.

And now we have evidence of an early mammal living amongst dinosaurs in what if now Colorado, USA. Sadly, there is no evidence that the early mammal resembled Jesus or any other humans for that matter; it was more like a muskrat.

Refuting Creationism - Humans Were Butchering Elephants In India 300-400,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

The elephant skull being excavated from the quarry in Kashmir in 2000.

Photo: Advait Jukar

Rare fossils of extinct elephant document the earliest known instance of butchery in India – Research News

Having taken a short break from writing blog posts to work on a new book, I'm now taking a short break from writing a book to catch up on an accumulation of papers that refute creationism, not intentionally (few serious working scientists bother to do that nowadays) but quite incidentally by simply revealing facts that are entirely inconsistent with creationist dogmas.

This news release, for example, exposes the fact that there were humans butchering elephants in India between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago in that 99.9975% of Earth's history that happened before creationists believe there was even an Earth for people and elephants to live on.

The evidence is the cut marks on the remains of a three extinct giant elephants, Palaeoloxodon turkmenicus, which died near a river at what is now Pampore in the Kashmir Valley. Soon after they died, they were covered in sediment and buried along with 87 stone tools that had been used to butcher them along with the bone flakes that show the bones were struck in exactly the right way to extract the marrow. The butchers clearly knew what they were doing.

Refuting Creationism - Ancient Deluges - In Australia, 90,000 years Before 'Creation Week'

Pinnacles at Nambung National Park

Picture: Matej Lipar

Pinnacles at Nambung National Park

Iron nuggets in the Pinnacles unlock secrets of ancient and future climates - News at Curtin | Curtin University, Perth, Australia

For another o todays casual and incidental refutations of creationism, we have news about the climate in Western Australia, 90,000 years before creationists little god magicked up a small flat planet with a dome over it, according to the book of Bronze Age creation myths that creationists have mistaken for a science textbook.

Of course, when everything else about Earth's history occurred in the 99.9975% of its history that occurred before the mythical 'Creation Week', this will come as no surprise to anyone who is not functionally illiterate with the thinking ability of a slow 9year-old.

Refuting Creationism - Living Bacteria Sealed Inside 2 Billion-Year-Old Rock

Microbial cells stained green

© Y. Suzuki, S. J. Webb, M. Kouduka et al. 2024/ Microbial Ecology

2-billion-year-old rock home to living microbes | The University of Tokyo

The Bushveld Igneous Complex (BIC), South Africa.
This picture shows a very famous outcrop where nearly horizontal black and white layers are observed. The BIC made of layers of igneous rock in a basin shape, formed over a period of about 1 million years, after which it seems to have barely changed.

© Y. Suzuki.

In today's incidental rebuttal of creationist dogma, archaeologists have discovered living colonies of microbes sealed within cracks in 2-billion-year-old rocks from South Africa.

The microbes became sealed in the cracks by tightly-packed layers of clay so effectively creating sealed chambers from which nothing could escape and, more importantly, nothing could enter. They have survived over geological time by firstly having an extremely low metabolic rate, with a generation time measured in thousands, even millions of years, compared to surface-dwelling microbes with generation times in hours or minutes, and by utilising sulphates as their energy source.

What they demonstrate, apart from the fallacy of Earth only being made by magic 10,000 years ago, is that in a highly stable environment, a plentiful source of energy and the ability to recycle their dead with almost no loss of energy, there is no environmental pressure to evolve, so the microbes have remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of millions, even billions of years.

Refuting Creationism - Tiny Shells Hold a Record of Sea Temperature Changes 10,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Earth's last ice age may provide crucial insights into the future behavior of El Niño events,

Foraminifera fossils

Ice age clues point to more extreme weather patterns in our future | University of Arizona News

With so much of Earth history occurring before creationism's little god allegedly created a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, it's useful to be able to recover data on global events such as climate change and sea temperature changes that can be projected into the future to predict what changes we can expect.

The 'El Niño' is a climate phenomenon that has a profound effect on world climate. It occurs every 2-7 years and is characterized by a warming of the sea surface in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. It changes ocean currents, atmospheric humidity and rainfall, and jet streams that drive weather patterns, so understanding when these events occurred in the past and mapping them onto known climate patterns can help us predict future weather patterns.

Now scientist at the University of Arizona have developed a model for predicting how El Niño affects global weather patterns which needs to be validated against actual data, so they have analyzed the record of sea temperature change recorded in deposits of tiny foraminifera shells in ocean sediment, going back to the last Ice Age, 10,000 years before creationists think Earth existed.

Of course, the reason was not to refute creationism - it does that incidentally - but to provide a longer history on which to base future predictions than are currently available.

Refuting Creationism - An Improved Method For Analysing Ancient Microfossils To Discover How Life Evolved

Research News - Unveiling Ancient Life: New Method Sheds Light on Early Cellular and Metabolic Evolution | Tohoku University Global Site

One of the clutch of science publications which casually and unintentionally refute creationism to be published today, comes in the form of a paper by a team from the University of Tokyo, Tohoku University and Kochi University, Japan, which describes a new method for analysing ancient microfossils, and so discovering more about how key processes evolved in early cellular life.

The purpose of this is to discover not whether (that is never in doubt) but the precise details of how and when these key processes evolved.

Refuting Creationism - Meteor Strikes Show Earth is NOT Perfectly Designed for (Human) Life!

A surface geology map of the proposed Massive Australian Precambrian-Cambrian Impact Structure.

Credit: Daniel Connelly

A potential 370-mile-wide crater in Australia, known as MAPCIS, may reshape our understanding of Earth’s geological history. Researchers found geological evidence, including shocked minerals and melt rock, suggesting a massive impact at the end of the Ediacaran period. (Artist’s concept.)

Credit: SciTechDaily.com

Australian crater could offer fresh insight into Earth’s geological history - VCU News - Virginia Commonwealth University

It's a sign of their parochial ignorance that creationists believe their magic designer created Earth to be a perfect planet for them to live on. This notion fails to take into account the fact that, for many people, especially in the technologically under-developed parts of the world, life can be a struggle against disease, natural disasters, a lack of water and famine.

It also fails to take into account the record of natural disasters of a cosmological origin such as meteor strikes that have caused sudden mass extinctions in the vast length of time before creationists believe Earth was 'perfectly' created as a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East.

Geologists from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), have identified the remnants of one such massive impact crater in the heart of Australia, measuring some 370 miles across. This impact is believed to have occurred toward the end of the Ediacaran period of Earth’s history, some 540 million years ago.

Refuting Creationism - How, Properly Understood, A Biblical Myth Probably Refutes Creationism.

A violent flood of the Kosi River in the Purniya district, Bihar, India.

Image: Shutterstock

Wylausing State Park in Southern Wisconsin where the Wisconsin River flows into the Mississippi.

Breakthrough study from IU scientists predicts catastrophic river shifts that threaten millions worldwide: College of Arts + Sciences : Indiana University

According to researchers from Indiana University, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin and the University of Minnesota, rivers can and do frequently change their course in an event known as an avulsion. The initial stage of this process is often a catastrophic flood costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars.

The authors speculate that these events could be the origin of numerous flood myths throughout history, especially the history of people living in flood plains of major river systems such as the Tigris and Euphrates on which the Epic of Gilgamesh was based.

The Suncook River, New Hampshire, 2006

The Epic of Gilgamesh, which even in its original form was never more than a story about a local flood, is believed to be the source of the Hebrew origin myth of Noah's Ark.

Ironically, these catastrophic avulsion events, of which the Noah's Ark myth is probably a result, are reminders of just how hostile this planet can suddenly become, giving the lie to parochial creationists assertions that Earth is perfectly designed for life (especially their life). Sudden major river avulsions impact dramatically on people living peacefully in river valleys where soil fertility and water can create the impression of a nicely ordered and well-designed place for life to exist.

Refuting Creationism - Earth May Have had A Ring System 486 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

An asteroid disintegrates under tidal forces as it approaches Earth

AI generated (ChatGPT4o)

Artist's impression.

Oliver Hull

Earth may have had a ring system 466 million years ago - Science

I know I'm always writing about things that happened before creationism's mythical 'Creation Week', but the problem is, almost everything that happened happened then. 99.9975% of Earth's history happened then, for example, and far more of the Universe's, since the Universe is some 3-4 times as old as Earth and an awful lot happened between the Big Bang and the formation of the sun and its planetary system.

And so, true to form, this is about the time 466 million years ago, when, according to the findings of three researchers from Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, led by Professor Andrew G. Thomkins, Earth had a ring system, somewhat like those of Jupiter and Saturn. They believe the ring was composed of the debris of a large asteroid that passed close enough to Earth to be broken up by gravitational tidal forces.

The result was a sudden plunge into an ice age and a period of intense bombardment with meteorites lasting millions of years and producing an otherwise difficult to explain pattern of impact craters.

Refuting Creationism - Why Multicellular Life Evolved - Hundreds Of Millions Of Years Before 'Creation Week'

Cap carbonate rock, South China

Credit: Yarong Liu

Explaining dramatic planetwide changes after world’s last ‘Snowball Earth’ event | UW News

These panels show the new theory for the three phases that ended the Snowball Earth event. In the first stage, thick ice sheets separate most of the atmosphere and ocean. In the second stage, freshwater flows into the ocean to join meltwater floating on the ocean’s surface. In the final stage, ocean mixing resumes, allowing exchanges between the atmosphere, upper ocean and deep ocean.

Thomas, T.B & Catling D.C (2024).

A major theme of the creationist superstition is the childish notion that Earth was perfectly designed for life (and their life in particular because the designer created it all for them).

This of course, as with so much else in creationism, requires a genuine or contrived ignorance of the real world outside their small part of it, or they might notice that large parts of Earth are very hostile to most forms of life, especially multicellular life, and are inhabited, if at all, only by a few extremophile single-celled organisms such as bacteria, archaea and simple algae. Human life is impossible without special equipment at the poles, in deserts, at the top of higher mountains and in the oceans, for example. In fact, the proportion of Earth that is habitable by humans without clothing and shelter is very small indeed.

And there have been times in the past, in that long period of Earth's history that occurred before creationism's mythical 'Creation Week' in which a magic man made of nothing made everything else out of nothing, when Earth was uninhabitable by anything more complex than bacteria and archaea that could life in the depths of the oceans, because Earth was encased in a coating of ice up to 1 Km (0.6 miles) thick, in what is called 'snowball Earth' when the northern and southern icecaps extended until they met at the equator, making terrestrial life impossible.

Refuting Creationism - How Earth's Unstable Landmasses Keep Driving Evolution

The San Andreas Fault

Photograph: Georg Gerster

Rift Valley in Kenya, Africa, where plates are pulling apart.

Photo by Peter Prokosch

Witness 1.8 billion years of tectonic plates dance across Earth’s surface in a new animation

The basis for any evolutionary change is environmental change. Providing that change is slow enough for living organisms to adapt they will adapt and change as the environment changes. This is how life contrives to make Earth look as though it is fine-tuned for life when the reality is that life is fine-tuned for Earth and the tuning mechanism is evolution.

But ask any small-town, American Bible Belt creationist and they will assure you Earth was perfectly designed for life, especially life of the human variety. It's pretty much like small-town American Bible Belt country, all over!

In fact, throughout its history, 99.9975% of which occurred before creationists think Earth was created, Earth has been in a state of dynamic change which, as soon as life manages to get close to tuning itself to it, it’s changed again. The underlying cause of this is mostly plate tectonics which keeps on breaking landmasses apart, sending them scudding across the surface of the planet from the tropics to the poles and ramming them into one another again, creating uplift mountains, deep ocean trenches and volcanos which keep pumping out greenhouse gasses and changing the climate, sometimes quite suddenly.

To illustrate this, a team of geologists, led by Xianzhi Cao of Ocean University of China, and including Professor Allan S. Collins of The University of Adelaide, Australia have reconstructed the last 1.8 billion years of Earth's geography.

How they did it and what it tells us is the subject of an article by Professor Collins in The Conversation. His article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency: