Creationism in Crisis - An Early Mammal Was Preying On Dinosaurs 125 Million Years Before Earth Existed (According To Creationists)

Illustration showing Repenomamus robustus as it attacks Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis before a volcanic debris flow buries them both, ca. 125 million years ago.

Fossil: Mammal attacks dinosaur - Canadian Museum of Nature

The fossil sowing the entangled skeletons of the dinosaur (Psittacosaurus) and the mammal (Repenomamus). Scale bar equals 10 cm.

125 years before Earth was magicked out of nothing, according to creationists, there were early mammals preying on dinosaurs in Canada. The problem creationist have is that they get all their information from tales made up by primitive people who knew nothing of Canada, dinosaurs or early mammals and though Earth was created by magic just a few years earlier.

This is how we can tell that their favourite source book is worthless as an account of real science, biology, geography and history. It is quite simply demonstrably and unarguably so wrong about just about everything, as we now know, that it's laughable that grown adults believe any of it.

Q: How do we know that early mammals were preying on dinosaurs 125 million years ago?

A: Because we have the evidence.

It comes in the form of a fossil of an early mammal attacking a dinosaur, dated to 125 million years old, as described in a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. The fossil shows a (smaller) mammal in the process of attacking or maybe even eating alive, a (larger) dinosaur. The pair were suddenly engulfed in a volcanic debris flow.

As a news release from the Canadian Museum of Nature explains:

Creationism in Crisis - The Travels Of An Alaskan Mammoth 4,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artwork shows three mammoths being watched by a family of ancient Alaskans from the dunes near the Swan Point archaeological site, a seasonal hunting camp occupied 14,000 years ago.

Image by Julius Csostonyi

Mammoths lived in interior and Arctic Alaska up until about 13,000 years ago. By analyzing the tusk of a mammoth, we can learn about where it lived throughout different times of its life.

Art by Mauricio Anton

Woolly mammoth movements tied to earliest Alaska hunting camps | UAF news and information

Readers may remember a blog post from last November which described how scientists had tracked the lifetime movements of a male Alaskan mammoth that lived 17,100 years ago, by analysing the isotope record in its tusks.

This is possible because mammoth tusks, like those of elephants, grow continually throughout their lifetime and contain a record of the stable isotopes of strontium (⁸⁷Sr and ⁸⁶Sr) in their food, deposited in annual growth rings similar to those of trees, which is dependent on the ratios of those isotopes in the soil the plants grew in. By comparing the record in their tusks with known isotope maps, their movement can be mapped.

Creationists should note that these are naturally-occurring, stable, i.e., not radioactive, isotopes of strontium, so they do not decay to other elements over time, nor do the ratios change significantly over time, so modern maps of these isotope ratios in the soil are valid for tens of thousands of years ago.

Now the same team who used this technique to work out the travels of a male Alaskan mammoth, 17,100 years ago, have repeated used it to map the travels of a female which lived 3,000 years late, and have shown that humans had established encampments close to the routes these mammoths used. The mammoth tusk used was excavated from the Swan Point archaeological site along with the remains of two juvenile mammoths and signs of a campfire, stone tools and the butchered remains of other animals.

The account of the discovery is published, open access in Science Advances and is explained in a news release from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks:

Creationism in Crisis - Revealing The Mysteries of Earth's Fourth Mass Extinction - 200 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

Reconstruction of a Late Triassic ecosystem from Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Published specimens and species preserved at Ghost Ranch were incorporated into the research team’s global ecological dataset.

Illustration: Victor O. Leshyk.

Skeleton of the early dinosaur Coelophysis bauri from the Late Triassic. The protracted restructuring of Early Jurassic terrestrial ecosystems coincided with the diversification of dinosaurs.

Image: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Mysteries of Earth’s ancient mass extinction event revealed

In that multi-billion year history of planet Earth, long before creationism's little god allegedly created a small, flat planet with a dome over it, and put living things on it, the real Earth had already had several mass extinctions when the ecosystem changed so radically and quickly that most species couldn't evolve fast enough to survive.

This give the lie to creationist claims that Earth is finely-tuned for life because, quite frankly, very few of the species that have evolved on it last more than a few million years before being killed off by one catastrophe or another that any omniscient deity worthy of the description could and should have foreseen and planned for.

The fourth of those mass extinctions occurred at the end of the Triassic period when a dramatic rise in greenhouse gasses due to volcanic activity led to rapid global warming and a significant shift in the planet’s biosphere, ending the Triassic period and launching the Jurassic.

The parallel with today when a rise in greenhouse gasses has been caused by industrial pollution and burning fossil fuels is striking.

Now a new insight into this mass extinction has been revealed by researchers from the University of Southern California's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, using a novel "ecospace framework" method that categorizes animals beyond just their species. It accounts for ecological roles and behaviors — from flying or swimming predators to grazing herbivores and from ocean seafloor invertebrates to soil-dwelling animals on land.

As the press release from UCSDornsife explains:

Creationism in Crisis - Sturgeons in Alberta 72 million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Credit: University of Alberta

72-million-year-old sturgeon discovered in Edmonton is a fossil first | Folio

Once upon a time, just a few thousand years ago, a magic man made of nothing appeared from nowhere and said some magic words that magicked a whole universe out of nothing. Right in the middle of that universe he made a small flat planet and put a dome over it to keep the water above the sky out, then he magicked some people, some plants and some animals and this took him nearly a whole week. Even though he did it all with a few magic words, this made him so tired he needed a day off.

After a while he decided he didn't like what he had made because he had given the people free will and they were using it, so he drowned them all apart from a few, then started again without changing his original design, hoping things would turn out differently this time.

What he hadn't realised was that he had only gone and created this imaginary world in a small part of a really big Universe that had been there for billions of years and already had a planet with lots of animals on it, so, although he had started off 'going down' to chat to the humans he had magicked, he promptly disappeared, never to be seen again, almost as though he had gone back to being nothing. Meanwhile, the real planet in the real universe carried on the way it had always done, as though no magician had ever done anything magical.

One of those animals on the real planet was a fish called a sturgeon which lived in what is now Alberta, Canada, 75 million years before 'Creation Week', which is why scientist were able to find a fossil of it in rocks known to be between 84 and 72 million years old. It's little clues like this, and the complete lack of any evidence of magic, that tells us the story of that fantasy creation was wrong and made up by ignorant people who didn't know any better.

The discovery of the fossil sturgeon was announced in a paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology last August and announced to the press in a news release just a couple of days ago:

Creationism in Crisis - Now It's Spa Water From At Least 1.5 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'!

Macaques keeping warm in 1.5-million-year-old spa water.

Is Spa Water a Fossil of Water? Uncover the Real Ultra-Deep Water Cycles | Research News - University of Tsukuba

Snow monkeys (Japanese Macaques, Macaca fuscata) keeping warm in 1.5-million-year-old spa water, in a hot spring, or onsen

The water in aquifers holds a special place in creationist mythology because, despite the fact that there isn't nearly enough of it, they will claim it's where the water that flooded Earth to a depth sufficient to cover the highest mountains (29,000 feet) during their favourite mass murderer's genocidal flood came from and went back to. If that were remotely true, of course, it couldn't possibly be more than 10,000 years old, because that was when Earth was magicked out of nothing, so the tale goes.

However, in yet another science paper that casually refutes creationism, two scientists from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, have dated the water in natural spas in central Japan and found it to be 1.5-5 million years old. Not only does it predate creationism's mythical flood, but it predates creationism's mythical 'Creation Week' when they claim their magic god magicked the universe out of nothing, having first self-assembled out of nothing using a design it made before it existed (I'm not making this up, but you can see why its trivially easy to refute creationism and why most people grow out of it eventually!).

Like the vast majority of the history of Earth, this water entered the aquifers in that immense period of pre-'Creation' history.

First, a brief AI background to the dating method. Creationists should note that this is not radiometric dating, so their traditional dismissal modes don't apply, so they need to ask their cult leaders how best to misrepresent the science:

How can the age of lithospheric water be determined using isotopes of hydrogen (^2H) and oxygen (^18O)? The age of lithospheric water can be determined using isotopes of hydrogen (^2H, also known as deuterium) and oxygen (^18O) through a method called stable isotope analysis. Water molecules with different isotopic compositions can provide information about the origin and history of the water. Here's a brief explanation of how the age determination process works:

1. Isotope Fractionation:
   • Isotope fractionation occurs during various processes like evaporation and condensation.
   • Lighter isotopes tend to evaporate more readily than heavier ones. For example, in the water cycle, water with lighter isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen is preferentially evaporated, leaving heavier isotopes behind.
2. Isotope Ratios:
   • The ratio of heavy to light isotopes in a water sample can be measured. For example, the ratio of ^18O to ^16O and ^2H to ^1H (or deuterium to hydrogen).
3. Meteorological Processes:
   • Different meteorological processes can influence the isotopic composition of water. For instance, precipitation tends to have a characteristic isotopic signature based on temperature, altitude, and other factors.
4. Lithospheric Water Age Determination:
   • The isotopic composition of water in the lithosphere can be compared to known meteoric water lines or regional meteoric water lines.
   • Over time, water interacts with rocks, minerals, and other geological materials. This interaction can affect the isotopic composition of water. By analyzing the isotopic ratios in the lithospheric water, scientists can estimate the age of the water based on these interactions.
5. Modeling and Interpretation:
   • Isotope hydrologists and geochemists often use mathematical models and statistical methods to interpret the isotopic data and estimate the age of the water.
   • The age determination is based on the understanding of how isotopic ratios change over time due to geological processes.

It's important to note that this method provides an estimate of the average age of the water in a particular system, and the accuracy can be influenced by various factors, including the local geological conditions and the complexity of water-rock interactions. Additionally, combining multiple isotopic systems and other geochemical tracers can enhance the precision of age determination.

How the scientists made this discovery is the subject of a paper in the Journal of Hydrology, and a press release from Tsukuba University:

Creationism in Crisis - Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Were Practiced Uninterupted In The Pyrenees Through The Biblical Genocidal Flood

The Pic de Posets, in Huesca Province
Second highest peak in the Pyrenees.

First high mountain settlers at the start of the Neolithic already engaged in other livestock activities apart from transhumance - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona - UAB Barcelona

Figure 1. Location of Coro Trasito cave (Huesca, Spain).

There is no let up for Creationists this week as science continues to reveal facts about the world that casually refute creationism, utterly and irredeemably. Their only hope is for a couple of day's respite over the holiday period when there will be few new science papers published, but we can be sure the onslaught will continue in the New Year.

One of today's clutch shows that there were people living in a cave in the Pyrenees who were practicing animal husbandry before, during and after the mythical genocidal flood. Perhaps someone forgot to tell them that they should all be drowing as the flood waters covered their mountain homes and killed all their livestock.

Curiously, the predicted layer of silt containing a jumble of fossils from disconnected landmasses, which would inevitably result from such a flood, failed to materialise and miraculously, the flood waters failed to wash away the evidence of these farmers' existence. Nor is there any evidence of an abrupt change of culture as the exterminated inhabitants of this cave were replaced by later immigrants from the Middle East.

The Pyrenees is a mountain barrier between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe. It's not particularly high as mountain ranges go, the highest peak being Pic Aneto, at 3404 metres (a little under 11,200 feet). According to the genocidal flood account in the Bible, however, this peak was under water to a depth sufficient to cover Mount Everest under 15 cubits of water (about 30 feet), so the flood would have been about 29,030 feet deep, covering the tallest peak in the Pyrenees by about 27,000 feet.

Sadly for the Bible narrative, however, archaeologists from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) Archaeozoology Laboratory and the High Mountain Archaeology Group, have shown that from the Early Neolithic (about 7,000 years ago) humans had moved into the Huescan Pyrenees and had taken a number of domesticated animals with them, including cows, goats, sheep and pigs (Bos taurus, Capra hircus, Ovis aries and Sus domesticus). The archaeologists have published their findings, open-access, in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. Their research and its significance are explained in a UAB news release:

Creationism in Crisis - A French 7-Year Scientific Program To Disover The Origin Of Life!

Aerial view of the construction site of the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in the Atacama Desert, Chile.

© G. Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)/ESO

Investigating the origins of life | CNRS News

Although it's nothing to do with evolution, which is the science of how living organisms respond to environmental pressures and diversify over time, abiogenesis is a favourite of creationists because they imagine, without being able to define 'life', that it must involve some magical, God-given quality that turns 'non-life' into 'life'. But then when did facts bother creationists?

So it must be disconcerting to those of them who are still in touch with reality, that 28 French scientific organisations, involving over 100 scientists, have formed a partnership (Programme et Équipement Prioritaire de Recherche - PEPR) led by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (French National Center for Scientific Research - CNRS) to research into the origins of life, not only on Earth but on other planets. The project is already being known as 'Origins'.

According to the CNR News release by Mehdi Harmi:

Unintelligent Design - The Late Devonian Mass-Extinction Or How Earth Is Badly Designed For Life

Artist’s impression of a Late Devonian landscape

Nicolas Primola

Fieldwork at Trail Island in East Greenland, near a Late Devonian rock outcrop.

Photo by John Marshall, University of Southampton

Study reshapes understanding of mass extinction in Late Devonian era: IU News

Way back 370 million years before the mythical 'Creation Week' the seas were full of life and angiosperm plants were rapidly replacing the tree ferns and other Tracheophytes and life was looking good, despite the fact that the single large landmass, Pangea, was on the point of breaking up.

Then something happened to cause another of those periodic mass extinctions that have punctuated Earth's long 'pre-Creation' history. What exactly it was has been the subject of ongoing debate by geologists, biologists and climatologists ever since evidence of it was found in the fossil record, particularly in Devonian rocks like those in Greenland.

But whatever the cause, it's not good news for creationists who have been duped by their cult leaders into believing Earth is fine-tuned for life by a designer god, and, by the circular reasoning that characterises creationism, therefore this fine-tuning 'proves' their designer god exists. A cynic might wonder, if faith is any good, why creationists are so desperate to find scientific 'proof' of their god that they perform all manner of ludicrous mental gymnastics and commit just about every logical fallacy in the book, to tell themselves and their target dupes that they have discovered it - and will be producing it any day now, real soon!

But that's by the by.

Sadly for creationists the evidence is that Earth is anything but finely tuned and perfect for life. The simple truth is that an Earth that was perfectly designed for life would never have extinctions, let alone mass extinctions like the ones that ended the Devonian and Cretaceous eras, and the one that's in progress right now. In fact, there would not even be biodiversity on such a planet because there would be no reason to adapt to adverse conditions because since these would not exist on a perfectly designed Earth, so life would not have progressed beyond the simplest of self-replicating molecules.

So, just for any creationists still under the delusion that Earth is finely tuned for life, here is a brief description of the Devonian and the mass extinction at the end of it:

Creationism in Crisis - A 15 Million-Year-Old Former Lake in Southern Germany Is Drowning Creationism With Facts

Ries Crater, Germany

NASA image created by Jesse Allen,

Drill core from borehole taken in 1981 from the Nördlinger Ries. There are distinctive layers of light-coloured dolomite between fine-layered dark sediments of the former crater lake.

Photo: Gernot Arp, Göttingen University

Information for the Media - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

15 million years before 'Creation Week', when creationists think Earth was magically created out of nothing, a meteorite struck in what is now southern Germany, just north of the Danube, creating a circular crater that filled with water to form a lake, in an area surrounded by the hills known as the Nördlinger Ries.

Now the sedimentary rocks formed on the lakebed are revealing their locked-up record of the geological and biological changes in the intervening 15 million years of Earth's 'pre-Creation' history.

They are also providing useful information about what any signs of life in Martian craters might look like.

First, a little AI information about Nördlinger Ries:

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Show How a Dynamic And Changing Earth Influenced Evolution Over Millions of 'Pre-Creation' Years

[left caption]

[Right caption/credit]

Landscape dynamics determine the evolution of biodiversity on Earth - The University of Sydney

A dynamic and changing Earth.

From Salles, T., Husson, L., Lorcery, M. et al. (2023

Again, it's the turn of geologists to refute creationism without even trying, like so many biologists do with their daily work.

Creationists insist that Earth is 'fine-tuned' for life; but as anyone who understands biology will know, life is 'fine-tuned' for Earth and the tuning process is called evolution by natural selection.

The observable fact that, over time, species have either evolved or gone extinct gives the lie to the 'fine-tuned for life' assertion because, if that were true, there would be no selection pressure for change and the fossil record would show no change.

In fact, the fossil record wouldn't exist as we know it because there would have been no evolution beyond the first free-living, single-celled prokaryote organisms because their environment would have been perfect for them.

Yet, as we know from daily observation, Earth is a changing and dynamic planet with periodic climate change, earthquakes and volcanoes caused by the slow process of plate tectonics, changing oxygen and carbon dioxide levels caused by the rise and fall of major ecosystems, and changing ocean currents caused by a number of different factors, not the least of which are climate change and plate tectonics. Then there are the cosmological changes caused by the Milankovitch cycles.

One of the consequences of this dynamic change is the way the Earth's surface is continually being recycled over geological time by erosion, transportation in water and sedimentation in ocean deposits as nutrients, then subduction and mountain-building and eventual resurfacing through volcanic activity. This gives changing levels of nutrients in the oceans that affect biodiversity both in the seas and on land.

This is the conclusion of a study by a team of geologists jointly led by Dr Tristan Salles of The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and Dr Laurent Husson of Université Grenoble-Alpes, Grenoble, France. They have shown an association between changes in nutrient levels due to sedimentation and mass extinctions. Their findings are published open access in Nature and are explained in a University of Sydney news release:

Creationism in Crisis - How America's East Coast Formed - 230 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Vector graphic of the land mass of the supercontinent Pangea.

Credit: Rainer Lesniewski

Vector graphic of the land mass of the supercontinent Pangea.

Credit: Rainer Lesniewski

Study Illuminates Formation of U.S. East Coast During Breakup of Supercontinent Pangea - SMU

It's not just the biologists who are incidentally refuting creationism with just about every peer-reviewed research paper; now the geologists are doing the same.

The problem for creationists is that their superstition has no basis in facts because it didn't happen and the record of how it did happen is in the evidence that science is revealing, so inevitably that evidence is going to refute the childish fairytale that creationists were taught by their parents who were taught it by their parents...

Take this piece of geological research into the formation of the East Coast of the USA, for example. It was carried out by scientists from the University of New Mexico, Southern Methodist University seismologist, Professor Maria Beatrice Magnani, and scientists from Northern Arizona University and the University of Southern California. It occurred in that long 'pre-Creation' history before creationists think Earth was magicked up out of nothing.

It is based on the knowledge that the East Coast of America formed when the supercontinent, Pangea, broke up some 230 million years before creationists think Earth existed.

Because it wasn't known about by the parochial and scientifically illiterate Bronze Age authors of their holy books, creationists are completely unaware of the way the present land-masses were formed on the breakup of Pangea, despite the abundant tectonic evidence in the form of mid-ocean ridges with their embedded record of multiple magnetic reversals over millions of years, subduction zones, earthquakes, volcanoes and uplift folds to form hills and mountains at tectonic plate margins.

Geology is a science about which my education has been somewhat lacking (I'm a biologist, physiologist and biochemist by training) but as I understand it, the edges of continents that were the site of the original rifts that opened up to form the oceans, particularly the Atlantic Oceans, will also show evidence of magma that would have welled up in the initial stages of the split.

In the case of the North American Atlantic coast, which is passive in this process because it is simply being pulled away from what is now Northwest Africa, and has not been subject to collisions with other plates, or any significant volcanic activity, these traces of magma are still to be found in the edges of the continental shelf beneath the ocean floor. Associated with the passive margin is a magnetic anomaly, The East Coast Magnetic Anomaly (ECMA), that runs parallel to the American East Coast.

My knowledge of the American East Coast is limited to two week vacation in Boston about 12 years ago, during which I tried bathing in Cape Cod Bay from a beach near South Wellfleet, to discover that I was standing barefoot on king crabs, either dead or alive (their remains littered the beach along Cape Cod), so I didn't spend long in the water - not that they were any threat to me but because they are not very pleasant to walk on.

As the Southern Methodist University news release explains:

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Identify a Possible Cause of a Mass Extinction - 201 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

An algal bloom

Ichthyosaurs, marine reptiles that went extinct during the Triassic–Jurassic mass extinction.

Deoxygenation levels similar to today’s played key role in marine extinctions during major past climate change event - News & Events | Trinity College Dublin

201 million years before creationists believe Earth was created, something happened to cause one of the pivotal moments in Earth's long 'pre-Creation' history, when very many species went extinct, providing the opportunity for the few survivors to evolve to occupy the vacant niches, so putting the evolutionary trajectory of Earth's ecosystems on a course that led us to where we are today.

This was the Triassic–Jurassic mass extinction.

Creationism in Crisis - How Elephants Got Their Trunks and Tusks 20 Million Years Before 'Creation Week' - No Magic Required

Artist's impression of Platybelodon grangeri

Credit: Tim Bertelink via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Platybelodon grangeri (artist's impression)

How shifting climates may have shaped early elephants’ trunks | For the press | eLife

As expected of scientific research papers, this one deals with events that occurred in that vast expanse of time before creationists think Earth was created, when 99.97% of Earth's history occurred.

This one, published open access in eLife, explains how the ancestors of modern elephants and their recently extinct relatives, the mammoths, got their long flexible trunks and used them for their unique feeding method.

The paper by lead author, Chunxiao Li, and colleagues from the Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, and including Burt Wolff of the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA and Fajun Sun of the Department Environmental Science & Technology, University of Maryland, MD, USA, "combines multiple analyses to reconstruct feeding behaviours in the extinct longirostrine elephantiforms - elephant-like mammals characterised by elongated lower jaws and tusks."

It seems that, as they grew larger, for reasons not yet fully understood, but possibly to give a larger 'vat' in which to ferment their high-cellulose diet, these early ancestors of the elephants had to evolve a longer jaw to reach the grasses and shrubs on which they grazed. The trunk extended as part of this process of facial elongation. This in turn created the opportunity for the end of the truck to play a part in holding the plants as they were cut off by the incisor teeth at the end of the lower jaw. This was more of an advantage in the open grasslands that Platybelodon inhabited, so, when climate change meant loss of habitat and eventual extinction for the two related gomphotheres, Platybelodon's prehensile trunk gave it enough advantage to survive.

A press release by eLife explains the research and its significance for understanding how elephants got their trunks:

Creationism in Crisis - Newly Discovered Species of Trilobite Aid in Dating Rocks - To 490 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

Ten newly discovered species of trilobites, hidden for 490 million years in a little-studied part of Thailand, could be the missing pieces in an intricate puzzle of ancient world geography.

Artist's rendering of a trilobite based on preserved soft body parts.

Nobu Tamura

Trilobites rise from the ashes to reveal ancient map | News

In my last blog post I wrote about the fact that Neanderthals were making marks, interpreted as art, on the wall of a French cave, 40,000 years before creationists believe Earth was created. This blog post is about creatures that lived much further into 'pre-Creation' history, some 490 million years 'pre-Creation' to be precise.

It's also about how the rocks in which their fossils were found were dated and how this means that fossils of these species can now be used to date other rocks, giving the lie to creationist claims that dating rock using 'index' fossils is circular reasoning. And dating those rock formations leads to a new understanding of the details of plate tectonics as the ancient continent, Gondwana, broke up.

Trilobites as a group are known to have diversified and diverged relatively quickly and became extinct relatively quickly too, so each species lived only for a few million years. This means, if we know when the species lived, we can date the rocks they are found in to within a few million years.

The fossils are of ten species of trilobite that are new to science which were found in layers of ancient volcanic ash between layers of sandstone in a little-studied area of Thailand. The ash layer forms greenish 'tuffs' which contains crystals of zircon produced during the volcanic eruption. Zircon crystals are extremely durable and remain unchanged embedded within the rocks. Trapped inside them are atoms of the radioactive isotopes of uranium, ²³⁸U and ²³⁵U, (both of which have very long half-lives and decay to stable isotopes of lead, which remains trapped within the zircon crystal lattice as a permanent record of what proportion of uranium has decayed to lead and which remain, giving a very precise date of the formation of the rock.

Creationism in Crisis - Neanderthals Were Creating Art in Caves in France, At Least 40,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'.

Finger markings on the wall of La Roche-Cotard cave in the Loire Valley, France

Fig 12. The Circular Panel.

Marquet J-C, Freiesleben TH, Thomsen KJ, Murray AS, Calligaro M, Macaire J-J, et al. (2023)

Neanderthals were the world’s first artists | University of Basel

It's shaping up to be another of those terrible weeks for the creation cult, as yet more scientific papers are published that show just how much of Earth's history happened in that vast period of time before 'Creation Week' - the 7 days about 10,000 years ago that creationists believe the Universe, Earth, and all living things were created by magic out of nothing.

The first of these is a mere 40,000 years before 'Creation Week' when hominins - probably Neanderthals - were making marks on a cave wall in La Roche-Cotard in the Loire Valley, France, in what may be some of the earliest examples of human art.

The La Roche-Cotard cave remained sealed by mud and soil sediments from the Loire for over 50,000 years (i.e., about 10,000 years before Homo sapiens appeared in Europe) until rediscovered in 1974 by French archaeologist Jean-Claude Marquet.

The markings have now been dated by an international team from France, Denmark Switzerland, Portugal and Hungary, which included Jean-Claude Marquet of Université de Tours, Tours, France and archaeologist Dorota Wojtczak from University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.

They have published their findings open access in PLOS ONE. Its significance is explained in a University of Basle news release by Christian Heuss:

Creationism in Crisis - 120 Million-Year-Old Bird Footprints Trample on Creationist Mythology

Bird footprints in Cretaceous rocks on Australia's South Coast

One of the Early Cretaceous bird tracks that clearly shows all four toes, including the rear toe, or hallux. The track is nearly 10 centimeters wide and is similar in size and form to tracks made by modern-day green herons.

Photo by Melissa Lowery.

Birds set foot near South Pole in Early Cretaceous, Australian tracks show

Some more of that long history of 'pre-Creation' life on Earth was revealed a couple of days ago when an international team of researchers led by Professor Anthony Martin, of Emory University’s Department of Environmental Sciences, and including researchers from Monash University and the Museums Victoria Research Institute in Australia; the Benemérita Normal School of Coahuila in Mexico; and the Smithsonian Institution, published their discovery of 27 bird tracks which vary in form and size in Early Cretaceous rocks. The tracks range from seven to fourteen centimetres wide and resemble those of modern shore birds such as small herons, waders and oystercatchers.

The discovery is published open access in PLOS ONE.

They were found in the Wonthaggi Formation south of Melbourne. The rocky coastal strata mark where the ancient supercontinent Gondwana began to break up around 100 million years ago when Australia separated from Antarctica and are the oldest bird tracks so far found.

At the time, in the rift valley that was opening up between Australia and what was to become Antarctica, the valley would have contained rivers which were subject to drastic seasonal changes between very cold, winters and several months of perpetual darkness and relatively warm summers when the river flood plain would have been home to migrant waders.

The tracks were made in successive stratigraphic layers which suggests seasonal flooding followed by gentle covering with silt or sand which preserved the footprints.

The Wonthaggi Formation is famous for its variety of polar dinosaur bones, although bird-fossil finds are extremely rare. The Cretaceous strata of the formation has yielded only one tiny bird bone — a wishbone — and a few feathers.

Birds have such thin and tiny bones. Think of the likelihood of a sparrow being preserved in the geologic record as opposed to an elephant.

Professor Anthony Martin.

Creationism in Crisis - The Diverse Landscape Of 'Pre-Creation' Europe

Illustrations by Brennan Stokkerman

Fig. 4.
Palaeoartistic reconstructions of Last Interglacial landscapes in the European temperate forest biome, consistent with our pollen-based estimates of vegetation structure.

Typical Last Interglacial fauna are shown, such as the extinct straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), an extinct rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis), and aurochs (Bos primigenius, the extinct wild form of contemporary domestic and feral cattle), alongside common extant species: fallow deer (Dama dama), a great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major), a European robin (Erithacus rubecula), and greylag geese (Anser anser). (Top left) Early-temperate period: Light woodland, including a mix of taller trees and the shrub hazel (Corylus avellana), and grass-dominated open vegetation. (Top right) Early-temperate period: Open, grassy vegetation interspersed with light woodland and bordering closed forest with shade-tolerant trees. (Bottom left) Late-temperate period: Light woodland, denser forest with frequent hornbeam (Carpinus betulus), and some open vegetation (front). (Bottom right) Late-temperate period: Open grass- and sedge-dominated vegetation with free-standing deciduous oaks (Quercus robur), with more closed tree stands in the background.

Illustrator: Brennan Stokkermans.
Pearce, E. A.; Mazier, F.; Normand, S., et al. (2023) (CC BY 4.0)

Europe was not covered by dense forest before the arrival of modern humans

Researchers led by Elena A. Pearce of the Department of Biology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, have looked again at the evidence for the flora and fauna of Europe during the last interglacial period (130,000 -150,000 years ago) and believe they have shown that the previous assumption that Europe was covered in dense woodland prior to the arrival of modern human, may be wrong. Europe was, instead, "full of variation. Importantly, the landscapes harboured large amounts of open and semi-open vegetation with shrubs, light-demanding trees and herbs alongside stands of tall-growing shade trees."

When was the last interglacial period in Europe and what caused it? The last interglacial period in Europe occurred during the Pleistocene epoch, specifically the Eemian interglacial. The Eemian interglacial is estimated to have occurred roughly between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago. It was a relatively warm period when temperatures were higher than during the subsequent Last Glacial Maximum.

The primary cause of glacial-interglacial cycles, including the Eemian interglacial, is believed to be variations in Earth's orbit and axial tilt, collectively known as Milankovitch cycles. These variations influence the amount and distribution of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface. The interplay of these orbital parameters results in periodic changes in climate, leading to alternating glacial and interglacial periods.

During interglacial periods, such as the Eemian, temperatures were warmer, and ice sheets and glaciers retreated. This warmer climate allowed for the expansion of forests and the development of different ecosystems compared to the colder glacial periods. It's important to note that natural climate variability, driven by factors like Milankovitch cycles, played a significant role in past climate changes, but contemporary climate change is also influenced by human activities, particularly the emission of greenhouse gases.

The team arrived at their conclusion after examining pollen grains from soil samples taken from large parts of Europe.

Creationism in Crisis - How the Birth of the Atlantic Ocean Caused a Mass Extinction - 55 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Top left: The drilling ship "JOIDES Resolution" off the Norwegian coast.
Photo: Peter Betlem (IODP)

Bottom left: Geophysicists on the deck of the "JOIDES Resolution"
Photo: Sayantani Chatterjee (IODP)

Top right: The drilling ship "JOIDES Resolution" at sunrise.
Photo: Peter Betlem (IODP)

Bottom right: Sections of the cores.
Photo: Sandra Herrmann (IODP/JRSO)

Mid-North Atlantic hydrothermal vent

Past climate warming driven by hydrothermal vents - GEOMAR - Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel

In that very long period during which some 99.97% of Earth's history occurred prior to when creationists believe the Universe, Earth and life on it was created, the supercontinent, Pangea, split apart, then about 55 million years ago, North America and Eurasia drifted apart as did South America and Africa, opening up a rift which flooded to become the North and South Atlantic Oceans.

This coincided with an event called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) during which Earth's temperature rose by about 5-8 ^oC. causing a mass extinction. The exact cause of the PETM has been something of a puzzle for palaeontologists and geologists, until now.

Creationism in Crisis - Disastrous Sea Level And Climate Changes - 385 Million Years Ago.

The Malvinoxhosan biota were a group of marine animals that thrived in cooler waters

2023-10 - Ancient sea level and climate changes led to major extinctions around South Africa - Wits University

A planet designed by a loving, omniscient designer would be stable and not subject to periodic bouts of mass extinction because the life on it couldn't cope with a massive environmental change.

And yet new research by Dr Cameron Penn-Clarke from the University of the Witwatersrand and Professor David Harper from Durham University has shown that a catastrophic environmental change in the Early Devonian caused the mass extinction of the Malvinoxhosan biota. This was in the 99.97% of Earth's history that occurred before the Universe was created out of nothing by magic, according to creationists.

The term 'Malvinoxhosan biota' foxed ChatGPT3.5:

Creationism in Crisis - Why Earth is Fine Tuned for Extinction

An arid and uninhabitable planet awaits us - in 250 million years.

September: Nature Geoscience extreme heat | News and features | University of Bristol

Creationists like to imagine that Earth is fine-tuned for life. This belief depends on the parochial ignorance of the creationist of course, because they will be oblivious of the fact that, cozy though their small bit of the planet might be, most of it is uninhabitable by humans without specialist equipment, and even cloths and houses are required in the temperate areas. Human life would be impossible without modern technology in the oceans, deserts, arctic waste, the tops of high mountains or just a few thousand feet above the surface of the planet (this is why modern aircraft that fly at 30-60,000 feet need to be pressurised).

But a planet that is fine-tuned for life would also have an infinite life-span, not a time-limited one where the life-time is limited by entirely natural processes, such as plate tectonics and the solar cycle. In fact, the life span of Earth is a mere blink on a cosmic time-scale that is measured by the life of suns.

Long before the sun becomes a red giant and swallows up the inner planets at the end of its life, shortly before becoming a super nova and blowing away the outer planets, Earth's continents will have coalesced into another single super-continent, reminiscent of Pangea, and the climate will have made life untenable for most species of mammal, according to researcher at Bristol University.

The resulting increase in volcanic rifting and out-gassing, combined with 'continentality' and an increase in solar energy output, will result in a 'wet-bulb' temperature of >35^oC and a 'dry bulb' temperature of >40^oC - temperatures at which mammalian thermoregulation fails, leading to death in about 6 hours.

The team's findings are published open access in Nature Geoscience and explained in a Bristol University press release: