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

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

Artwork by Rudolf Hima.

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

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

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

Creationists need to believe absurdities to cope with believing absurdities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image by NIGPAS.

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

Image by NIGPAS.

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

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

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

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

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

Refuting Creationism - Oceanic Oxygenation Spured Rappid Evolution - 390 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

An artist’s rendering of a prehistoric jawed fish from the Late Devonian called Dunkleosteus. These sorts of large, active vertebrates evolved shortly after the deep ocean became well-oxygenated.

© 2008 Nobu Tamura/CC-BY-SA.

How oxygen made the deep ocean home to animals, spurring rapid evolution | UW News

Another wave of reality breaks over the impervious rocks of creationist dogma, in the form of news that an international team of researchers led by the University of Washington has shown a correlation between the rapid radiation of marine vertebrates and the evolution of plants on land. As trees and other vascular plants spread, more atmospheric carbon became locked into their woody stems, reducing carbon dioxide levels. At the same time, increased photosynthesis raised atmospheric oxygen levels, which in turn oxygenated the oceans, making oxygen available in depths that had previously been anoxic.

Creationists will, of course, need to ignore the fact that this finding flatly contradicts their claims that evolution only occurs within “kinds” and that all diversification happened in a brief burst of warp-speed evolution following a genocidal global flood some 4,000 years ago. The timeline alone is utterly inconsistent with their favourite creationist fairy tale.

Scientists once believed this major oxygenation event had occurred about 500 million years ago, but the new research shows that episode was short-lived. A more significant oxygenation occurred around 390 million years ago. Initially, oxygenation would have taken place in shallow coastal regions where vertebrates first evolved. As oxygen penetrated deeper into the oceans, vertebrates followed into the newly opened niches, leading to a rapid proliferation of jawed vertebrate species — the ancestors from which terrestrial tetrapods later evolved.

The team reached their conclusions after measuring selenium isotopes in 97 sedimentary rock samples from five continents, dated between 252 and 541 million years ago. These rocks had been deposited near the edges of continental shelves, where shallow seas transition into the deep ocean. Selenium occurs naturally in several isotopic forms, and the ratios in which they were deposited depend on the level of oxygen dissolved in seawater. These isotopic signatures thus provide an indirect measure of oxygenation levels at the time the rocks were laid down.

Refuting Creationism - Where Our Earliest Common Primate Ancestor Lived

Early primates survived in cold, not tropical climates

Japanese snow macaque - unusual for a modern primate but our common ancestor may have lived in a similar climate.

New research, led by Dr Jorge Avaria-Llautureo of the University of Reading, UK, suggests that our early ancestors evolved in a cold climate rather than the tropical environment traditionally assumed.

Ever-hopeful creationists will no doubt seize on this as evidence that science keeps “getting everything wrong” and is now supposedly admitting that humans did not evolve in Africa but… somewhere else. (Not in Mesopotamia either, and certainly not just 10,000 years ago, but we can worry about that later — the important thing is that science got it wrong again, right?).

But of course, this is a distortion. The new findings don’t overturn evolution, nor do they suggest humans suddenly popped up in the “wrong” place. The study doesn’t even concern early human ancestors directly. Instead, it examines the very earliest primates — the common ancestor of the entire primate clade, which includes monkeys, apes, and humans, but also tree shrews, tarsiers, bush babies, and lemurs.

So the debate here isn’t about whether primates share a common ancestor — that fact is firmly established — but about where that ancestor first evolved. The conventional view has long been that primates arose in warm, tropical forests, because that’s where the majority of them live today. But by examining genetic data, ecological modelling, and the fossil record, Avaria-Llautureo and colleagues argue that the earliest primates actually adapted to cooler conditions. In other words, the roots of the primate family tree may lie in temperate regions, not the tropics.

Far from being a “crisis for evolution”, this is science doing what it always does: refining our understanding in light of new evidence. No biologist doubts that primates, including humans, share common ancestry going back tens of millions of years — far beyond the Bible’s compressed and mythical 6,000–10,000-year timeline. What changes is our picture of the environment in which those ancestors thrived.

As Dr Jason Gilchrist of Edinburgh Napier University — who was not involved in the study — points out in his article in The Conversation, this research challenges old assumptions but also enriches our understanding of primate resilience. If our lineage began in colder settings, it helps explain how primates could later spread and diversify into such a wide range of habitats, from the tropics to the highlands, deserts, and even urban environments where some species now live.

So the take-home message is not “science was wrong again” but rather “science is working as it should”. Each new finding gives us a sharper, more accurate picture of our evolutionary story — a story that remains completely at odds with creationist myth-making, but endlessly fascinating in its complexity.

Refuting Creationism - How Large Herds Of Rhino Roamed North America - 12 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

UC researchers discovered that prehistoric rhinos like these that shared a waterhole 12 million years ago lived in enormous herds.

Photo/John Haxby/The University of Nebraska State Museum

Ash from the eruption of a volcano in Yellowstone preserved more than 100 specimens of a prehistoric rhino at Nebraska's Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park.

Photo/John Haxby/The University of Nebraska State Museum

UC study finds evidence that prehistoric rhinos lived in huge herds | University of Cincinnati

Recent research has presented yet another problem for young-Earth creationism, which asserts that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and that all existing species were created simultaneously without ancestors.

A study conducted by paleontologists from the University of Cincinnati provides compelling evidence that large herds of the extinct rhinoceros species, Teleoceras major, inhabited North America approximately 12 million years before creationism's mythical 'Creation Week'.

This conclusion is derived from isotopic analyses performed on fossils of these rhinos, which were preserved in volcanic ash at the Ashfall Fossil Beds in Nebraska. The fossils represent individuals that perished together at a waterhole, suggesting herd behavior. The study, titled "Enamel carbon, oxygen, and strontium isotopes reveal limited mobility in an extinct rhinoceros at Ashfall Fossil Beds, Nebraska, USA," was published in the journal Scientific Reports on April 4, 2025.

The University of Cincinnati further elaborated on these findings in a news release by Michael Miller, highlighting the evidence that prehistoric rhinos lived in substantial herds.

Refuting Creationism - Common Ancestry Of Mosses and Algae - 600 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

The star-shaped algae Zygnema circumcarinatum shows similar stress reactions to the moss

Photo: Tatyana Darienko

The branching moss Physcomitrium patens, which the researchers used to study stress reactions and compare them to algae.

Photo: Tatyana Darienko.

600 million years of stress: plants retain shared gene hubs - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Like animals, plant life originated in the sea and only colonized land once they evolved the necessary adaptations. For animals, this meant developing mechanisms for breathing air and terrestrial locomotion. For plants, the primary challenge was desiccation, creating strong selection pressure for traits that mitigated water loss. This led to the evolution of a highly connected network of genes, known as a 'hub,' that regulates responses to environmental stress.

So fundamental is this genetic hub to plant survival that it has remained highly conserved throughout evolutionary history.

What information do you have on the evidence for the evolution of land plants and their divergence from marine algae? The evolution of land plants from their algal ancestors is one of the most significant transitions in Earth's history. Multiple lines of evidence, including molecular phylogenetics, comparative genomics, palaeobotany, and developmental biology, support the hypothesis that land plants (embryophytes) evolved from a group of green algae, specifically within the Charophyte clade. Below is a summary of the key evidence:

1. Molecular and Phylogenetic Evidence
   • Shared Genetic Markers: Molecular phylogenetic studies show that land plants are most closely related to charophyte algae, such as Chara and Klebsormidium.
   • Chloroplast DNA Similarities: Land plants and charophytes share specific gene arrangements in their chloroplast DNA, supporting common ancestry.
   • Cellulose Synthase Genes: The enzyme responsible for cellulose biosynthesis (CesA) has similar genetic sequences in charophytes and land plants.
   • Regulatory Genes: Some transcription factors crucial for land plant development, such as KNOX and BELL genes, have homologs in charophyte algae.
2. Morphological and Structural Evidence
   • Cell Division Similarities: Charophyte algae and land plants share a phragmoplast-based cell division mechanism, distinct from other algal groups.
   • Sporopollenin Protection: Spores of early land plants and some charophytes are encased in sporopollenin, a tough biopolymer that protects against desiccation.
   • Plasmodesmata: Both groups have plasmodesmata, cell-to-cell communication channels that enable coordinated growth.
   • Branching Growth: Some charophyte algae, such as Coleochaete, show apical growth similar to land plants.
3. Fossil Evidence
   • Ordovician and Silurian Microfossils (470-440 Ma): Fossilized spores with sporopollenin coatings appear before macroscopic land plant fossils, indicating early adaptation to terrestrial environments.
   • Rhynie Chert (Early Devonian, ~407 Ma): Preserves some of the earliest land plants (Rhynia, Aglaophyton), showing vascular tissue development.
   • Cooksonia (Silurian-Devonian Transition, ~430-410 Ma): One of the earliest known vascular plants, showing transition from bryophyte-like ancestors to tracheophytes.
4. Biochemical and Physiological Adaptations
   • Desiccation Tolerance: Early land plants and some charophytes can survive drying out, an adaptation to terrestrial life.
   • Hormonal Pathways: Land plants and charophytes use similar hormones, such as auxin and abscisic acid, for growth and stress response.
   • Symbiosis with Fungi: Fossil evidence and molecular studies suggest that early land plants formed mutualistic associations with mycorrhizal fungi (Glomeromycota) to obtain nutrients.
5. Transitional Forms
   • Zygnematophyceae as a Key Group: Recent genomic studies suggest that the Zygnematophyceae, a subgroup of charophyte algae, are the closest relatives of land plants. These algae lack complex multicellularity but share stress tolerance genes with land plants.
   • From Simple Algae to Complex Embryophytes: Gradual increase in structural complexity, from filamentous and parenchymatous algae to early non-vascular land plants, suggests a stepwise transition to terrestrial life.

Conclusion

The divergence of land plants from marine algae is well-supported by multiple independent lines of evidence. The transition was driven by adaptations to terrestrial challenges such as desiccation, nutrient acquisition, and reproduction. The evolutionary path likely involved early colonization by freshwater charophyte algae, which evolved desiccation tolerance, protective spores, and symbiotic relationships that facilitated the transition to permanent land-based life.

Now a team of researchers from Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany, led by Professor Jan de Vries, Göttingen University, who led the research, explains: has shown that this same 'hub' is present in both mosses and algae, even though they diverged 600 million years ago, the mosses having evolved out of simple algae.

Refuting Creationism - Human Cannibalism In Europe - 8,000 Before Creation Week

The entrance to the Maszycka Cave in southern Poland

Photo: Darek Bobak

This article is best read on a laptop, desktop, or tablet

The 18,000-year-old discoveries from the Maszycka Cave include decorated hunting tools made of bone and antler.

Photo: Darek Bobak.

Information for the Media - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

A good 8,000 years before creationism's little god created the small flat planet with a dome over it as described in Genesis, modern humans were painting wonderful paintings in caves in France and Spain, and cannibalising other humans in what is now southern Poland.

These people were the Magdalenian, a pan-European culture that existed during the Last Glacial Maximum, who are widely regarded as having a form of religion and belief in an afterlife, or at least a spiritual connection to the animals they hunted and depicted on cave walls. However, judging by their cannibalism and casual disposal of human remains along with the bones of the species they hunted for food, and the fact that they decorated and used human bones as utilities such a drinking cups made from human skull caps, they may not have had much regard for the dead.

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.

---

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

---

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

---

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 Eggs Evolved Hundred of Millions of Years Before Chickens

A cell of the ichthyosporean C. perkinsii showing distinct signs of polarity, with clear cortical localization of the nucleus before the first cleavage. Microtubules are shown in magenta, DNA in blue, and the nuclear envelope in yellow.

© DudinLab

Chromosphaera perkinsii resembles the early stages of animal embryo development during its multicellular life stage

DudinLab

The egg or the chicken? An ancient unicellular says egg! - Medias - UNIGE

Scientists believe they may have cracked the chicken and egg 'problem' that creationists have been fooled into thinking is a killer problem for the Theory of Evolution. With their child-like understanding of evolution, creationists can't imagine how species emerge over time from earlier species by a process of evolution and think that their mythical magic creation without ancestors is actually what happens, or at least what evolutionary biologists think happens. So, they imagine explaining how the first chicken hatched from the first egg before there was a chicken to lay it, is an insurmountable problem.

In fact, of course there never was a first chicken just as there never was a first human, and eggs are simply a phase in the life cycle of, in this case, chickens, so hens' eggs are chickens just as much so as adult hens are. The ancestral species that the Southeast Asian jungle fowl evolved from had been laying eggs ever since they diverged from the egg-laying avian dinosaurs that had evolved from the egg-laying theropod dinosaurs, etc, etc, back to the egg-laying tunicates and chordates in the Cambrian and their egg-laying ancestors...

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

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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 - Aotearoa New Zealand's Rich Fauna - 20 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

St Bathans Fauna

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Artist's impression of the Miocene landscape of Aotearoa New Zealand’s South Island

Kākāpō are the true ancient species of Aotearoa… | Canterbury Museum

The Bronze Age Middle Eastern Pastoralists who made up the Hebrew origin myths could have known nothing about a southern hemisphere, let alone archipelagoes like New Zealand (or to give the name that more accurately reflects its dual cultures, Māori and European, Aotearoa New Zealand) and they knew nothing of the rich history of Earth's wildlife, so they said not a word about it in their mythology.

So, we have the ludicrous situation where a sizable proportion of people - especially Americans - think nothing older than about 10,000 years and nothing that wasn't known to parochial Middle Eastern pastoralists, ever existed, despite the abundant evidence that it did and that it had ancestors very much older.

What information do you have on the St* Bathan's fauna found in the Bannockburn Formation on New Zealand's South Island? The St. Bathans Fauna is a remarkable fossil assemblage from the Early Miocene (around 19-16 million years ago) found in the Bannockburn Formation in New Zealand's South Island. Discovered near the small town of St. Bathans, this fossil site is part of the Manuherikia Group, which is known for providing a window into New Zealand's unique prehistoric ecosystem.

Here’s a detailed overview of the St. Bathans fauna and its significance:

1. Paleontological Importance
   • The fossils represent a critical period when New Zealand was transitioning from being an isolated landmass with its own flora and fauna. This period is significant for the evolution of New Zealand's unique species after it split from Gondwana.
   • The St. Bathans Fauna provides insights into how climate change affected New Zealand's environment and species during the Miocene epoch. At that time, the region was much warmer and covered with subtropical forests and wetlands, a stark contrast to the cooler, drier conditions that followed in the Pliocene and Pleistocene.
2. Vertebrate Fossils
   • Birds: The site is most famous for its extensive and diverse avian fossil record. Notable examples include:
     • The giant flightless bird species similar to moa (though these are not the moa we are familiar with).
     • Ancient species of waterfowl, shorebirds, and parrots, some of which are now extinct.
     • Fossils of a possible heron species, various songbirds, and even a previously unknown eagle.
   • Mammals: Mammal fossils in New Zealand are rare, but the St. Bathans site yielded intriguing examples of early mammals. These include:
     • A small, shrew-like mammal (perhaps representing one of the only land mammals known in New Zealand before humans introduced others).
     • Marsupial fossils that hint at a lineage distinct from modern marsupials in Australasia.
   • Reptiles: Various lizard and possible gecko remains have been found, along with fossils that may represent tuatara ancestors.
   • Fish: Several species of freshwater fish, especially primitive forms such as galaxiids, have been found, showing that New Zealand's fish diversity extended back tens of millions of years.
3. Flora
   • Plant fossils from the same region indicate that the Miocene landscape was densely vegetated with subtropical and temperate plants, including ferns, conifers, and flowering plants. The existence of forests and wetlands provided ideal habitats for the wide variety of animals found there.
4. Significance for Climate and Ecological Studies
   • The St. Bathans fauna gives researchers a clear picture of what New Zealand's environment was like during a warmer period of Earth's history, making it invaluable for studies on climate change and its impact on ecosystems over time.
   • It shows a diversity of life forms that existed before the drastic cooling in the Pliocene, which led to the extinction of several species.
5. Unique Species
   • One of the notable discoveries includes a species dubbed the "St. Bathans mammal," which is a mysterious, small mammal species. New Zealand is generally known for its lack of native land mammals, but this discovery suggests that mammals may have once been present in ancient New Zealand, challenging previous assumptions.
   • Bird species found in the Bannockburn Formation are also unique, some showing traits that link them to extinct lineages or suggest evolutionary connections with species outside New Zealand.

The St. Bathans fossil site continues to be a rich source of paleontological discovery, providing ongoing insights into the Miocene ecosystems of New Zealand and the biogeographical history of its fauna and flora.

For example, palaeontologists are discovering more fossils of the so-called St Bathan's fauna that charcterised Aotearoa New Zealand's South Island, most of which are of extinct species. These are being found in rocks known as the Bannockburn Formation that formed in an ancient lake by a team led by Associate Professor Trevor Worthy of Flinders University, Australia and including Dr Paul Scofield, senior curator of natural history, Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. They have recently published their findings, open access, in the journal Geobios:

Kākāpō are the true ancient species of Aotearoa New Zealand

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Aotearoa New Zealand’s true ancient species are animals like Kākāpō, small wrens, bats and freshwater limpets, not recent Aussie immigrants like kiwi, moa and takahē.

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This is the conclusion reached by an international team of palaeontologists after two decades of groundbreaking research at the St Bathans fossil site in Central Otago recently published in Geobios.

The team, including Canterbury Museum Senior Curator Natural History Dr Paul Scofield, have been excavating the large St Bathans site since 2001, uncovering thousands of fossil bones. The site, which was once at the bottom of a large prehistoric lake, offers the only significant insight into Aotearoa‘s non-marine wildlife from 20 million years ago.

The new research summarises the extraordinary creatures discovered in the more than 9,000 specimens collected across 23 years. Exotic creatures identified at the site include a giant parrot that the scientists nicknamed “Squawkzilla”, two mystery mammals, flamingos, a 3-metre crocodile, a giant horned turtle and a giant bat.

Reconstruction of the 1m tall giant parrot Heracles inexpectatus, dwarfing a bevy of 8 cm high Kuiornis – small New Zealand wrens scuttling about on the forest floor.

Illustration: Dr Brian Choo, Flinders University.

Paul Scofield, who has been involved in digs at St Bathans since 2002, said the research had prompted a rethink of our native fauna.

Many of the species that we thought of as iconic New Zealand natives – a classic example would be the takahē – we now know are relatively recent blow-ins from Australia, arriving only a few million years ago. Twenty-three years of digging at St Bathans has changed our idea about the age of the New Zealand fauna and the importance of some animals over others. For example, until now we thought that birds like kiwi and moa were among the oldest representatives of New Zealand fauna. We are now realising that the Kākāpō, tiny New Zealand wrens and bats, and even a bizarre freshwater limpet, are the real ancient New Zealand natives.

Dr Paul Scofield, co-author
Canterbury Museum
Christchurch, New Zealand

The research concludes that this menagerie of exotic animals was wiped out by dramatic temperature drops over the last about 5 million years.

Lead author Flinders University Associate Professor Trevor Worthy said 23 years of research at St Bathans had transformed our understanding of how non-marine vertebrate life in New Zealand looked around 20 million years ago during the Early Miocene era.

It’s exciting to be involved in a project that continues to make absolutely fresh discoveries about what animals lived in New Zealand’s lakes and rivers, and the forests around them, during this critical period in history. Every year we find new specimens. Finds that reveal amazing new species that we couldn’t have imagined when we first started working there.

Associate Professor Trevor H. Worthy, lead author
College of Science and Engineering
Flinders University
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Study co-author Dr Vanesa De Pietri of the University of Canterbury said the animals that lived in New Zealand 20 million years ago were very different to what we have now.

For example, we had another giant eagle that was not related to Haast’s Eagle. We had a whole bunch of songbirds that were quite different, crocodiles and even potentially a small mammal that we’ve nicknamed the waddling mouse. We are still in the middle of our research into understanding exactly what that was.

Dr Vanesa L. De Pietri, co-author
School of Earth and Environment
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand.

The latest research paper was a collaboration between Flinders University, Canterbury Museum, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha University of Canterbury, The University of Queensland, University of Copenhagen and University of New South Wales.

Artist's impression of the St. Bathans Fauna. Source: New Zealand Geographic

Illustrations: Tom Simpson

Abstract
The St Bathans Fauna, from sites near the village of St Bathans, Central Otago, South Island, is the first substantive pre-Quaternary terrestrial vertebrate fossil fauna discovered in New Zealand. This fauna derives from 33 sites or discrete sedimentary beds located in the lower 50 m of the lacustrine Bannockburn Formation, Manuherikia Group, and is generally accepted as local stage Altonian (19–15.9 Ma; Burdigalian, Early Miocene) in age. Investigations since 2001 have revealed an abundant and diverse fauna from over 9000 catalogued lots that is herein reviewed. Invertebrates notably include eight genera and species of terrestrial molluscs. Among vertebrates, freshwater fish remains dominate with 17 species evidenced by 16,500 analysed otoliths (genera Neochanna, Galaxias, Prototroctes, and Mataichthys) and many thousands of bones. Birds (minimally 45 species, several thousand bones) are the most common non-fish vertebrates, among which waterfowls dominate all assemblages (10 species). Co-occurring with these was a diverse herpetofauna, including undetermined crocodylians and a terrestrial turtle, both absent in Recent faunas. Significantly, the St Bathans Fauna evidences that Zealandia already had all of New Zealand’s ‘old’ endemic Recent taxa (sphenodontids, leiopelmatids, dinornithiforms, apterygids, aptornithids, strigopoid parrots, acanthisittids, and mystacinids) during the Early Miocene. Furthermore, it includes Australasia’s oldest ardeids, two flightless rallids, a novel higher landbird family, a greater diversity of bats, and terrestrial mammals. All sites reflect a single fauna, except that the ducks Manuherikia lacustrina (stratigraphically lower in section) and M. primadividua (higher) have a mutually exclusive distribution that is not yet correlated with any other biotic distribution differences.

1. Introduction New Zealand is a small emergent part of the India-sized continent of Zealandia that is largely submerged and from which New Caledonia, Lord Howe, Norfolk Island, the Chatham Islands, and the New Zealand subantarctic islands all project (Mortimer et al., 2017, Strogen et al., 2023). The New Zealand archipelago includes 800+ islands >1 ha, totalling 270,000 km2, of which North Island (114,740 km2) and South Island (151,120 km2) are the largest. Mainland New Zealand (North and South islands) averages ca. 2000 km from Australia. Seafloor-spreading that initiated 85–80 Ma in the south of the present Tasman Sea gradually rifted the new continent Zealandia from Eastern Gondwana, with rifting complete in the north by 60–55 Ma (Gaina et al., 1998, Schellart et al., 2006). The recent reconstructions by Strogen et al. (2023) developed these early models and in addition have a focus on land on Zealandia. They show Zealandia became fully separated from the Australian part of East Gondwana ca. 57 Ma although land connections had already been severed in the preceding few million years (Strogen et al., 2023). Thereafter, land area was progressively reduced, as the continent submerged, until the Late Oligocene marine highstand when ∼150,000 km2 remained (Strogen et al., 2023). Subsequently, land area increased, especially after the Australia–Pacific plate boundary migrated from its mid-Tasman Sea spreading centre to become propagated through New Zealand during the Early Miocene ∼18–16 Ma forming the Alpine Fault and resulting in regional uplift.

Worthy, Trevor H.; Paul Scofield, R.; De Pietri, Vanesa L.; Salisbury, Steven W.; Schwarzhans, Werner; Hand, Suzanne J.; Archer, Michael
A synopsis of the Early Miocene St Bathans Fauna of New Zealand
Geobios (2024), DOI: 10.1016/j.geobios.2024.03.002

Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

If only the authors of Genesis had been a little better informed about the real world and its history, they could have come up with at least a half plausible creation myth by including some of the fauna from distant lands from millions of years ago, even if they felt they had to include magic to explain a world they thought ran on it.

As it was, their parochial ignorance was about the worst imaginable preparation for the task, hence the laughable result that could only be believed by someone at least as parochially ignorant as they were.

Refuting Creationism - How Earth Became 'Fine-Tuned' For Death And Extinction

Fine-Tuned for death.
Artist's impression of Earth during the Great Dying

Richard Jones/Science Source

The synapsid Lystrosaurus survived the mass extinction and came to dominate the landscape later.

Julio Lacerda

September: El Nino | News and features | University of Bristol

Creationist claims that Earth was created perfectly designed for life (especially their life) are farcical and can only be believed by people carefully ignorant of the facts.

Of course, insisting that Earth is merely a few thousand years old, makes it easier to dismiss the 99.9975% of it that proves them wrong.

In my previous post I wrote about a newly-discovered trilobite with an additional pair of legs, and the reason we don't have them scuttling over marine sediment any more is because Earth turned against them when a climate catastrophe caused a marine catastrophe, depriving the oxygen-dependent organism's living in it of oxygen. This was one of the so-called Oceanic Deoxygenation Events.

That explains the mass extinction of marine life, but the question is, why did it also cause a terrestrial mass extinction of comparative severity?