Refuting Creationism - Dinosaurs Thrived Until Disaster Struck - 66 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Small primitive mammals live alongside a Triceratops, pre-extinction. A softshell turtle climbs up a log, unaware that its freshwater surroundings will shelter it from the asteroid.

Illustration © Henry Sharpe.

Dinosaurs were on the up before asteroid downfall | News | The University of Edinburgh

This, the second paper, published in 2022 that utterly refutes creationism on several different levels, reports evidence that particularly undermines their claim that an omnibenevolent god created a world fine-tuned for life.

This belief arises from a deeply ignorant, rose-tinted view of the world — one that conveniently ignores history and habitually attributes anything bad to something else: sin, free will, or other theological constructs that, by their own narrative, could only have applied after some supposed “fall”.

In reality, even a superficial understanding of Earth’s history — 99.9975 % of which took place before creationism’s legendary “Creation Week” — reveals that the planet is anything but fine-tuned for life. Life on Earth has repeatedly been subjected to mass extinctions triggered by geological and cosmological catastrophes that wreaked havoc on the environment, often at a pace too rapid for most species to adapt.

One of the most famous of these events was the meteor impact in what is now the Yucatán Peninsula, 66 million years ago. This strike plunged the planet into a “nuclear winter” as atmospheric dust blotted out the Sun. Within weeks, almost all large species were exterminated, leaving only the avian dinosaurs — likely shielded by insulating feathers — and early mammals, protected by their insulating fur.

But as this recent paper shows, the dinosaurs were thriving in a healthy, biodiverse environment in which they were the dominant species right up until the moment the meteor struck. Had they shared the creationists’ mindset, they might well have concluded that Earth was “fine-tuned” for them too.

The evidence for this comes from an international team of palaeontologists and ecologists, including researchers from University of Oulu (Finland), Universidade de Vigo (Spain), University of Washington (Seattle, USA), University College London (UK), New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (USA), and University of Edinburgh (UK).

Creationism Refuted - Now It's A Transitional Dinosaur - Khankhuuluu The Dragon Prince

An artist's impression of Khankhuuluu mongoliensis

Masato Hattori

An artist's impression of the newly discovered dinosaur

Julius Csotonyi

Paleontologists from the University of Calgary identify closest-known ancestor to Tyrannosaurs | EurekAlert!

Two new papers announced today will have creationists scratching their heads as they try to decide which technique for dismissing them will meet with the most approval from their fellow cultists.

The first, in Nature, concerns yet another of those supposedly non-existent transitional fossils which, because Charles Darwin predicted they would be found, must be dismissed at all costs. It comes in the form of an 86-million-year-old dinosaur fossil from Mongolia that is intermediate between the small, fleet-footed predatory dinosaurs and the larger apex predators — the tyrannosaurs.

The usual creationist response is to declare that these intermediate fossils are “not transitional; they are fully formed, created species.” Of course, that doesn’t explain why species that are intermediate between ancestral and descendant species show a mosaic of features from both. Presumably, given their parody of evolution — in which evolution is imagined as a single event where one species suddenly turns into another — they expect an intermediate to be half one and half the other: the equivalent of the “crocoduck” or a chimpanzee with a human head. In reality, this discovery shows exactly what we would expect from the fossil record of tyrannosaur evolution 86 million years ago.

It's also important to creationism that the so-called 'missing link' stays missing. It is only ever referred to in the singular and refers to some supposed link between apes and humans, and it is definitely not one of the many archaic African hominins. But of course, every fossil is the 'link' or transitional form between its parents and its offspring because evolution is a process, not the parody event of creationism, evolving species form a continuum, and this discovery from Mongolia is no exception.

How Science Works - Biologists Might Need To Rethink A Detail Of Evolutionary Biology

Details of the surface of two sheet-like colonies of the ‘Berenicea’ type: (A) In Hyporosopora dilatata, the colony surface is relatively flat, save for the slightly convex zooids and faint growth lines (Upper Callovian or Lower Oxfordian, Oxford Clay; Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire); and (B) Well-defined transverse ridges cross the colony surface in Rugosopora enstonensis (Bathonian, Hampen Marly Beds; Enstone, Oxfordshire). Scale bars are 500µm.

Source: Bryozoans in the British Jurassic

New Study Reveals Berenicea Zooid Size Reduction Over 200 Million Years Contradicts Cope's Rule----Chinese Academy of Sciences

The discovery that a group of organisms has, contrary to “Cope’s Rule,” undergone a steady reduction in body size over the past 200 million years is a useful reminder of how science works — and why religion so often falters.

A cornerstone of the scientific method is its willingness to acknowledge error. Real intellectual strength lies not in clinging to discredited beliefs as though doing so were a test of character, but in facing up to mistakes, learning from them, and changing one’s mind. That is how knowledge advances.

Religion, by contrast, remains shackled to the dogmas of its ancient founders. To alter those fundamental beliefs is, in effect, to abandon the religion itself. This is why, while science has sent probes into deep space and placed human beings on the Moon, faith — despite lofty claims of being able to “move mountains” — has yet to lift so much as a feather a millimetre off the ground.

The new finding was just reported in the journal Palaeontology by Associate Professor MA Junye of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) and collaborators. They found that Berenicea, a genus of cyclostome bryozoans, has experienced a continuous reduction in zooid size over the past 200 million years. This runs counter to “Cope’s Rule,” which describes a tendency for body size to increase during the evolution of many lineages.

Cope’s Rule was formulated by the American palaeontologist Edward Drinker Cope (1840–1897). There are, of course, well-known exceptions — such as the “island effect,” where animals isolated on small islands often evolve into miniature versions of their mainland relatives — but these are localised adaptations to particular environments. Cope’s Rule, by contrast, applies to long-term, broad-scale evolutionary trends.

Refuting Creationism - A Tiny Fossil From New Zealand Is Another Huge Problem For Creationism

A male satin bowerbird by his highly decorated avenue bower.

Photo by Daniel J. Field

Tiny fossil bone helps unlock history of the bowerbird | University of Otago
Apart from the fact that this fossil is a million years old, there is nothing in this discovery that creationists will struggle to dismiss with one of their well-worn stock phrases — “It was just a bird ‘kind’,” “It wasn’t transitional,” and so on. This is despite the fact that their Bible is remarkably vague about how many bird ‘kinds’ there were, includes bats as birds, and says absolutely nothing about anything outside a few square miles of the Middle East.

And of course, the date — like the entire fossil record — will be casually brushed aside as forged, fabricated, or “wrongly dated using proven false carbon dating” [sic].

But to anyone who actually values evidence and truth, and is not intent on proving their strength by clinging to demonstrably false beliefs in defiance of all contrary evidence, this find is genuinely fascinating. It provides strong evidence that the bowerbirds, today confined to Australia and New Guinea, were once far more widespread. This conclusion is based on the fact that the fossil was discovered in New Zealand. It is also suggested that climate change may have brought about its extinction in New Zealand and driven the bowerbirds' range back to its present distribution.

The discovery is reported in the journal Historical Biology by researchers from University of Cambridge, University of Otago, and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. A [news release from the University of Otago]() explains the significance of the find and four of the authors have also written an article about the find in The Conversation. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

Creationism Refuted - How Science Works - A Fossil Fly That Challenged Evolution.

A 150-million-year-old fossil with a singular adaptation may unlock the origin of quironomids | Estación Biológica de Doñana - CSIC

In a striking example of how science, in contrast to creationism, starts from the evidence and builds understanding accordingly, a newly discovered fossil fly has led scientists to revise their view on a seemingly minor detail of insect evolution.

Creationism, by contrast, starts with the conclusion and either distorts the evidence or ignores it altogether when, as is usually the case, it contradicts what they believe. To a creationist, the belief is sacred, so facts must comply—or be disregarded.

In my last blog post, I explained how psychologists view this behaviour as a perceived test of strength: creationists see challenges to their beliefs as threats that would make them appear weak if they accepted and adapted to the evidence. They respond by setting their faces like flint against any contradiction.

Science, by contrast, sees a refusal to change one’s mind when the evidence demands it as a mark of intellectual dishonesty. A willingness to revise one’s views shows a desirable strength of character — the hallmark of a good scientist. To a scientist, facts are sacred; opinions must flow from them. In any scientific debate, facts are neutral.

The discovery in question involves a Jurassic fossil midge from Australia — Telmatomyia talbragarica, the oldest known member of the Chironomidae (non-biting midge) family in the Southern Hemisphere. The fossil shows a mechanism for attaching to rocks using suction pads on its feet. This trait was previously thought to have evolved in marine species, but this insect lived in freshwater. That detail suggests the family did not originate in Siberia, as once believed, but in Gondwana before it broke apart.

Not the most dramatic scientific breakthrough, perhaps, but this is precisely how science advances — especially evolutionary biology: one careful step at a time, with constant re-examination and revision as new evidence emerges. It’s like working on a million-piece jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box.

Refuting Creationism - Tracking Dinosaurs In Oxfordshire - 166 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Aerial view of the trackway at Dewars Farm Quarry, Oxfordshire

Credit: Richard Butler,
University of Birmingham.

Oxford researchers return to the Jurassic Highway | University of Oxford

Members of the 2025 excavation team

One of the sauropod trackways.

Photos: Emma Nicholls.

Oxfordshire, where I was born and spent the first twenty-odd years of my life, is steeped in fossil history. Notably, the lower jaw of the very first named dinosaur — Megalosaurus bucklandii — was discovered in Stonesfield, in the quaintly named valley, Bag's Bottom, the centre of the former Stonesfield slate industry, just about a mile and a half from my childhood home in the hamlet of Fawler.

About 166 million years ago, in the Middle Jurassic, much of the region now known as Oxfordshire lay under a warm, shallow sea. A sandbar separated it from the open ocean, forming a tranquil lagoon. Sediment slowly accumulated, forming limestone that preserved innumerable small molluscs. Even today, you can spot their fossilised shells in the drystone walls built from that same limestone — a subtle but constant reminder of deep time.

When I was a teenager, I would take the grandsons of the renowned palaeoanthropologist and former President of the Royal Society, Sir Wilfrid Le Gros Clark, on fossil-hunting excursions. One disused quarry, rich in fossil mussels, coiled snails and bivalves, became a familiar haunt. But nothing we ever uncovered then compares to what has just been unearthed at Dewars Farm Quarry, between Middleton Stoney and Ardley. Dubbed the “Oxfordshire Dinosaur Highway,” this newly announced discovery appears to be the longest dinosaur trackway known in Europe, at 220 metres.

The work was conducted by a team of palaeontologists co-led by Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH) and The University of Birmingham. Unsurprisingly, this find challenges certain creationist narratives and casually refuted the Bible creation myth. The announcement was recently made in an Oxford University news release.

Creationism Refuted - Hippos Lived In The Rhine - More Than 21,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Left mandible fragment of a female hippopotamus from Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen Mannheim.
Between 46,000 and 48,300 years old.

Photo: Rebecca Kind

Hippos lived at the Upper Rhine in the same time frame as mammoths. In the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen a hippo reconstruction meets a mammoth skeleton.

Photo: Rebecca Kind

Hippos lived in Europe during the last ice age | University of Potsdam!

News that an international research team led by University of Potsdam and Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen Mannheim, working with Curt-Engelhorn-Zentrum Archäometrie, has produced evidence that hippos lived along the Rhine in what is now Germany some 21,000 years before creationists believe Earth was created out of nothing, will probably come as no surprise to creationists.

They are well-practised at living in a world where verifiable evidence repeatedly refutes their beliefs. Over time, they have developed all manner of convoluted mental gymnastics to cope with the resultant cognitive dissonance—secure in the arrogant conviction that their beliefs trump evidence simply because they label them “faith”.

Normal people, of course, tend to have the humility to accept that evidence is the only valid basis for an informed opinion, and that it must therefore take precedence over myths and fairy tales told to them by parents and authority figures with vested cultural interests. The real test of whether a belief is right or wrong is how well it is supported by evidence—not how cleverly the evidence can be ignored.

This discovery extends our knowledge of the extinction timeline of European hippos, previously believed to have disappeared around 115,000 years ago. The new evidence pushes that date forward dramatically, showing that they survived until about 31,000 years ago, at least in that part of Europe. It also clarifies how these European populations were related to the African hippos.

That timeline is not only inconvenient for creationists; it also highlights the parochial nature of the Bible’s authors, who clearly had no knowledge of flora and fauna beyond their narrow Middle Eastern world. Notably, the Bible makes no mention of the African megafauna—hippos, elephants, giraffes, or ostriches, for example. In fact, the latter would have posed a serious problem for their primitive taxonomy, which classified bats as “birds” simply because they could fly. One can only wonder where they might have placed the flightless ostrich.

Creationism Refuted - Time For A Bible Re-Write

A Palaeolithic handaxe with a broken distal end, discovered during the Ayvalık survey

Early humans may have walked from Türkiye to mainland Europe, new groundbreaking research suggests - Taylor & Francis Newsroom

A phrase much loved by journalists (and creationists) is “the history/science books will need to be re-written”. It’s a convenient bit of lazy journalistic rhetoric — but in this case, the book that actually needs to be re-written is the Bible.

The discovery in question concerns the migration of early Homo sapiens, who may have spread from the Levant across Asia Minor (modern-day Türkiye) and then into Greece via a northern Aegean land bridge, exposed when sea levels were much lower during the last Ice Age — between 115,000 and 11,700 years ago.

This new evidence challenges some existing models of early human migration routes. However, it represents only a refinement of the broader, well-established story of humanity’s dispersal out of Africa, not a challenge to it. What it does completely undermine, however, is the Biblical narrative claiming that all humans descended from a single, ahistorical couple created without ancestors some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago — followed by a supposed global “reset” just 4,000 years ago when a genocidal flood left only eight related survivors.

The evidence for this Ice Age land bridge comes from the recovery of 138 stone tools at ten sites within a 200 km² area around Ayvalık in north-west Türkiye, opposite the Greek island of Lesbos.

Creationism Refuted - Inclusions In 112 Million-Year-Old Amber Show A Diverse Ancient Ecosystem

Diptera: Chironomidae

Scientists unearth a 112-million-year-old time capsule filled with ancient insects | ScienceDaily

A rich source of amber from the Genoveva quarry in the Napo Province of Ecuador is revealing information about life in a dense, tropical rainforest 112 million years ago, requiring the most convoluted of mental gymnastics for creationists to ignore or deny. This newly described deposit, part of the Hollín Formation in the Oriente Basin, represents the first Mesozoic amber deposit with preserved insects ever discovered in South America — and one of the largest known anywhere on the former Gondwanan supercontinent.

Unlike rock fossils, where finer detail is often lost through mineralisation and geological processes, amber frequently preserves plant and animal life with exquisite microscopic precision. This makes the Ecuadorian deposit, produced at a time when Gondwana was on the verge of splitting into Africa and South America, a rare and invaluable window into the humid, densely vegetated ecosystem of an equatorial rainforest during the Cretaceous Period.

Amber is the solidified resinous sap of trees — often conifers such as araucariaceans — and can originate from branches, trunks or even roots, preserving both aerial and subterranean organisms. Almost all known amber deposits come from the northern hemisphere, particularly from Eurasia and North America, so this southern hemisphere deposit provides an unprecedented opportunity to study an ancient Gondwanan ecosystem at a crucial time in Earth’s evolutionary history.

The contrast between this rich, 112-million-year-old ecosystem and the simplistic biblical creation myth is as stark as it could be. Even if we had no other fossils, the life forms trapped in this amber — representing at least five insect orders, spider silk, and an abundance of pollen and spores from ferns, cycads, conifers and early angiosperms — would comprehensively refute the notion of a young Earth created in its present form.

Another strength of amber as a fossil medium is that it is always contemporaneous with the bioinclusions it preserves — organisms became trapped while the resin was still liquid — removing the additional uncertainties sometimes introduced when dating fossils embedded in sedimentary matrices.

Refuting Creationism - Rock Art From Arabia - 2,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

[left caption]

[right caption]

12,000-year-old monumental camel rock art acted as ancient 'road signs' to water sources - Griffith News

Thousands of years before creationism’s god supposedly decided to create a small, flat planet with a dome over it, centred on a tiny patch of the Middle East, humans were already leaving road signs and directions to water sources carved into rocks in what is now the Arabian desert. These carvings offer a fascinating insight into the region’s prehistoric megafauna—and, of course, all such evidence of early human activity would have been completely obliterated by the biblical genocidal flood, had such an event really occurred as described.

The rock carvings were discovered by an international team of archaeologists, led by the Heritage Commission of the Saudi Ministry of Culture, and including scholars from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), University College London, Griffith University’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE), and others. Their findings were published open access in Nature Communications a few days ago.

At the time, the region that is now arid desert was made habitable by a humid period following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), when surface water was abundant. Stone tool manufacture from the site shows clear cultural links with Neolithic societies in the Levant—ironically, the very region where the authors of Genesis set most of their imaginative origin myths, apparently oblivious to the deeper history of the area or the existence of earlier human populations beyond their narrow horizons.

Refuting Creationism - Hominins Hunted Elephants in Italy - 400,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Hunting straight-tusked mammoths, Palaeoloxodon antiquus

AI-generated image (ChatGPT 5)

Butchering the carcass with small flint blades

AI-generated (ChatGPT 5)

Early humans butchered elephants using small tools and made big tools from their bones | EurekAlert!

A recent archaeological finding, by Beniamino Mecozzi of Sapienza University of Rome, Italy and colleagues, at the site of Casal Lumbroso in northwest Rome, has once again refuted the Bible narrative by extending the known depth of human prehistory far beyond the limits imposed by biblical literalism.

In sediments dated to some 400,000 years before creationism’s mythical 'Creation Week', the research team has uncovered evidence that early humans were butchering elephants with small stone tools and then fashioning large implements from the animals’ bones. These traces of planning, adaptation, and technological innovation demonstrate that human ingenuity was already well advanced hundreds of millennia before the supposed creation of Adam.

More interestingly from a scientific perspective is not the incidental refutation of ancient creation myths, which happens with almost every archaeological and palaeontological discovery, but the fact that these hominins predate the successful Homo sapiens migration out of African and into Eurasia by tens of thousands of years and pre-date even the earliest evidence of Neanderthals in western Eurasia. Such discoveries highlight the sheer scale of time over which our lineage evolved—an evolutionary saga measured not in millennia but in hundreds of thousands of years. The people who left these marks were not modern humans, but archaic members of the genus Homo, close relatives or ancestors of the Neanderthals. Their world was already ancient when the earliest chapters of Genesis were imagined.

Creationism Refuted - Blood suckers Were Around Long Before Creationist Frauds - Leeches are 200 Million Years Older Than We Thought

Macromyzon siluricus Ancient leech, 473 million years old

Rare fossil reveals ancient leeches weren’t bloodsuckers | UCR News | UC Riverside

Artist's reconstruction of the ancient Macromyzon siluricus leech.

EK Chan.

Unlike creationist frauds, leeches haven’t always been blood-sucking parasites. Around 473 million years ago, they were probably marine predators preying on small creatures.

It had previously been assumed that leeches evolved around 150–200 million years ago, but this fossil, found in the Waukesha biota — a geological formation in Wisconsin —might more than double that timeline to 473 million years, if confirmed. This extended timescale makes sense, as the complex adaptations required for a blood-sucking lifestyle would have had longer to evolve. However, the classification is disputed and may be an example of convergent evolution. This fossil shows the large posterior sucker that modern leeches still possess, but lacks the anterior suctorial mouthparts used by leeches today to pierce their victims’ skin and suck blood.

The fossil was discovered by researchers from Ohio State University, but was initially unrecognised for what it was until it was identified by Karma Nanglu, a palaeontologist with the University of California, Riverside, during the early pandemic years. Nanglu collaborated with researchers from the University of Toronto, the University of São Paulo, and Ohio State University on a paper describing the fossil, which is now published in PeerJ.

Refuting Creationism - A Tiny Fish Ancestor of Catfish and Carp - From 70 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Photograph of Acronichthys maccagnoi fossil (with scale), which was discovered in Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park.

Royal Tyrrell Museum

View of Dry Island Buffalo Leap.

New tiny prehistoric fish species unlocks origins of catfish and carp

A newly discovered fossil fish from the Late Cretaceous has filled a key gap in the evolutionary record of two major freshwater groups – catfish and carp. The fossil was found by researchers from Western University, Ontario, Canada, the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, and international collaborators. Its discovery is bound to send creationists into another bout of denial as they struggle to cope with the cognitive dissonance between reality and their preferred mythology.

When every fossil is transitional, each new find becomes harder for creationists to ignore—unless they retreat to one of their childish parodies of evolution and pretend it means one species instantly transforming into another, as though a ‘species’ consists of a single individual rather than a population, and evolution is a sudden event rather than a gradual process over time. This caricature allows them to dismiss every transitional fossil as a ‘complete species’ with ‘no evidence of intermediates’. From there, they retreat to Bible literalism, invoking vague categories of ‘kinds’ and imagining evolution as one taxon spontaneously giving rise to another—cats turning into dogs, or amoebas becoming humans—something that, if it ever occurred, would indeed defy any scientific explanation.

Hence their constant demands that science provide evidence for their straw-man version of evolution, while they ignore the overwhelming evidence that actually supports evolutionary theory—arguments deliberately crafted to mislead those ignorant of basic biology and to give them spurious reasons to feel smugly superior to ‘elitist scientists’ with their ‘big words’, as though ignorance were a shortcut to expertise.

So they cling to their childish mythology despite the growing number of fossils showing clear mosaic features linking different taxa—exactly what we would expect from ancestral stem species from which two groups diverged. This newly discovered fossil fish from the Late Cretaceous, displaying a mosaic of catfish and carp characteristics, exemplifies that pattern and sheds light on the evolutionary origins of these two major groups of freshwater fish.

Creationism in Crisis - A Transitional Lizard-Snake - From 167 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

[left caption]

[right caption]

a, Life reconstruction of Breagnathair elgolensis based on measured proportions of NMS G.2023.7.1. b, Digital render of the bones as originally preserved in NMS G.2023.7.1, using information from the pilot scan (Supplementary Data 1 and 2). c–f, Digital renders of cervical vertebra (CEb in Extended Data Fig. 5) in left lateral (c), ventral (d), anterior (e) and posterior (f) views. g–i, Caudal vertebra (CAa in Extended Data Fig. 5) in left lateral (g), ventral (h) and anterior (i) views. Scale bars: 50 mm (b), 2 mm (c–i). Life reconstruction reproduced with permission from Mick Ellison (American Museum of Natural History).

Benson, R.B.J., Walsh, S.A., Griffiths, E.F. et al. (2025)

New Species of Ancient Hook-toothed Reptile Discovered | AMNH

A newly described Jurassic fossil from the Isle of Skye, Scotland, has revealed a remarkable “missing link” between lizards and snakes. The find, named Breugnathair elgolensis, provides important evidence of snake evolution and further undermines creationist claims that no transitional forms exist. The research has just been published in Nature and reported by the American Museum of Natural History.

For creationists, this week must feel much like any other, as science continues to produce paper after paper that refutes their beliefs, while not a single one provides a shred of evidence in support of creationism — whether young-Earth or old-Earth, whether invoking an interventionist deity who micro-manages every detail of the universe, or a distant creator who merely lit the blue touch-paper and now sits back to watch the results.

Science, of course, concerns itself only with material reality. It has no use for evidence-free superstitions or fairy tales of the supernatural — notions born of human imagination and the desire for narrative to fill the gaps in our knowledge and understanding. Creationists, therefore, must rely on self-delusion and the irrational belief in a false dichotomy of “facts versus faith”, where even the slightest perceived flaw in science supposedly means total failure and victory for faith by default.

Sadly for creationists, that long-dreamed-of day when science collapses and their god descends triumphantly from the skies in a chariot — looking for all the world like a Bronze Age tribal despot — seems increasingly remote. Science continues to validate the scientific method and to build knowledge upon verifiable evidence, always willing to revise and refine its understanding in light of new discoveries. One such discovery is that of a transitional Jurassic reptile showing a mosaic of lizard and snake features — exactly what we would expect if snakes and lizards share a common ancestor. The problem with pinning one’s hopes on a false dichotomy that depends on science failing is that every new discovery only strengthens science and renders the alternative ever more irrelevant and untenable.

The troublesome fossil for creationists was discovered about ten years ago on the Isle of Skye, in the Inner Hebrides off Scotland’s west coast, by Roger Benson, Macaulay Curator of the American Museum of Natural History, and his colleagues. Named Breugnathair elgolensis — a Latinised form of the Scots Gaelic for “false snake of Elgol” — it has now been described in an open-access paper in Nature.

Refuting Creationism - An Ichthyosaur from 200 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artist’s interpretation of Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis on 'belemnite battleground'.

Credit: Andrey Atuchin.

Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis specimen from the Urwelt-Museum Oberfranken on a belemnite battleground. The fossil plate is about 4 m long.

Credit: Spicher et al (2025).

New Jurassic ichthyosaur species discovered in Mistelgau

It's shaping up to be another bad week for creationism, with the evidence for evolution on an old Earth continuing to accumulate, and evidence against any intelligence being involved in its evolution growing unabated. There is even a paper describing how and when Earth was really formed, and the contrast between that reality and the Bible’s version could hardly be greater.

This article looks at just one of these developments (more will follow). From the perspective of evolutionary biology, it is not especially remarkable—simply the description of a new species of extinct ichthyosaur, Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis, from the Lower Jurassic (around 200 million years ago).

But for creationism, it serves as yet another stark reminder of how wrong the biblical creation story and timeline are. To put it bluntly, this fossil would not exist if the Bible’s story were true. It doesn’t take a genius to see how the fact of its existence bears on debates about the truth or falsity of Genesis—though creationists appear to struggle with this basic deductive logic.

Creationism Refuted - Scientists Revisit Some Old Fossils, Extend Scientific Knowledge - And Casually Refute Creationism Again

296-Million-Year-Old Fossil Unearthed in Brazil Sheds Light on Ancient Plant Mystery Hidden for Over Half a Century - Notícia

In another of those regular events in science, a team of researchers led by the University of Vale do Taquari – Univates, Rio Grande, Brazil, through the Graduate Program in Environment and Development (PPGAD), re-examined material held in the Univates Palaeontological Collection. Using modern equipment that was not available when the fossils were first studied more than 50 years ago, they uncovered new information – and, without intending to, once again demonstrated the weakness of creationist claims. As usual, creationism is refuted by the evidence.

What the team discovered were plant spores preserved in situ in fossils dating to between 298.9 and 252.17 million years ago – long before dinosaurs appeared and well before flowering plants evolved. At that time, the most advanced land plants were spore-bearing, like today’s mosses and ferns. This showed that the original classification as Lycopodites was incorrect. Instead, the fossils belonged to a new genus, which the team named Franscinella, giving the newly described Upper Palaeozoic plant the species name Franscinella riograndensis.

The significance extends further: the spores, now positively linked to this species, are index microfossils found in Permian strata of the Paraná Basin. Yet creationists routinely dismiss the use of index fossils in geochronology as “circular reasoning.” The ability to tie these spores directly to a particular species undermines that objection and strengthens their role in stratigraphy.

Refuting Creationism - North American Mammoths Interbred - 30,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Columbian Mammoths, Mammuthus colimbi with other Ice Age mammals.

Beth Zaiken

Hybrid mammoths roamed North America following interspecies breeding | Natural History Museum

An open access paper published in Biology Letters by an international team of palaeontologists, led by Marianne Dehasque of the Department of Organismal Biology, Uppsala University, Sweden, will no doubt bring joy to creationists who prefer to see the world in simple black-and-white terms. It shows that one of the usual definitions of species—a group that can reproduce only with one another—needs revising. The paper reports that the two North American species of mammoth—the northern woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) and the southern Columbian mammoth (M. columbi)—regularly interbred where their ranges overlapped, and that the offspring were fertile.

In the black-and-white, science-vs-creationism world of creationist thinking, this will be taken to mean that if science is wrong, then creationism must be right, by default.

Creationist joy will be short-lived, however, once they realise that this interbreeding took place long before they believe Earth was created, and that the researchers explain the findings in terms of how mammoths evolved and diversified. Indeed, the evidence supports the theory that the Columbian mammoth itself evolved from a hybrid population—one of the mechanisms of evolution that creationist dogma insists does not occur. Not only is there not the slightest hint that biologists are abandoning the Theory of Evolution (ToE) in favour of creationism—as creationist leaders have claimed for at least half a century—but the ToE is used to explain the observable facts, and it does so with consummate ease.

Refuting Creationism - A Newly-Identified Dinosaur From About 220 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Reconstruction of Newtonsaurus cambrensis in its natural setting

AI-generated (ChatGPT 5)

September: Newtonsaurus identification | News and features | University of Bristol

A newly-identified dinosaur from the Late Triassic of Wales has turned out to be hiding in plain sight. The fossil, discovered in 1899 and displayed for years in the National Museum of Wales, has only now been correctly recognised thanks to modern imaging technology unavailable to earlier researchers.

Originally described by Edwin Tully Newton in 1899 as Zanclodon cambrensis, the specimen has now been reclassified by a team of palaeontologists led by Owain Evans of Bristol University. Since the name Zanclodon is no longer used for early reptiles, the team have given it a new name: Newtonsaurus.

As always, discoveries like this present a problem for creationists. Fossils of species that lived tens or even hundreds of millions of years ago sit uneasily with their narrative that all life was magically created just a few thousand years ago. To preserve that story, they are forced into feats of mental gymnastics — whether by bearing false witness against scientists, rejecting well-established dating techniques, or simply dismissing the evidence outright as “wrong.”

The rocks, however, are not so easily ignored. Unlike ancient manuscripts, said to have been dictated by a god to prophets and accepted only on faith, the fossil record is physical, testable, and open to constant re-examination. Evidence can be checked, rechecked, and reassessed as methods improve — something faith alone cannot provide.

Refuting Creationism - A 108-Million-Year-Old Fossil From Mongolia Fills Another Gap.

Reconstruction of a pachycephalosaur

AI-generated image (ChatGPT 5)

Young Zavacephale duel for territory along a lakeshore 108 million years ago.

Image: Masato Hattori

‘Teen’ Pachycephalosaur Butts Into Fossil Record | NC State News

Here we have another of those regular discoveries which, according to the press, supposedly means history will need to be “re-written” — something creationists, always looking for a stick to beat science with, will assume means the whole of history, because science has got everything wrong yet again. Unlike their religion, of course, which — so they claim — has never got anything wrong and is therefore eternally true, including the parts about a six-day creation 6,000–10,000 years ago, a global flood which left no evidence, and a universe consisting of a small, flat planet with a dome over it.

In reality, this is merely journalistic hyperbole designed to draw the reader in — or, in the case of creationists, to be seized upon as ‘scientific’ evidence that science is fatally flawed.

The “re-written” part of history is simply the bit about which we previously had no information. The process is not one of tearing up the past but of filling a gap in our knowledge and thereby arriving at an account closer to reality. In this case, “re-writing the history books” will mean telling a more complete history of a group of dinosaurs. The discovery in question is a 108-million-year-old adolescent pachycephalosaur fossil found in the Gobi Desert, Central Asia. Being both the oldest (by about 15 million years) and the most complete skeleton of this group of dinosaurs yet discovered, it provides crucial information about their origins.

Refuting Creationism - 242-Million-Year-Old 'Transitional' Lizard Fossil

Agriodontosaurus helsbypetrae reconstruction

Image credit: Bob Nicholls

Agriodontosaurus helsbypetrae fossil (BRSUG 29950-14) in its sandstone matrix.

September: World's oldest lizard | News and features | University of Bristol

Here is yet another fossil that will give creationists a lot to think about. It’s a fossil of the earliest known lepidosaur — the group that includes lizards, snakes, and the tuatara of New Zealand. It is ∼242 million years old and was found in a sandstone deposit in Devon, in southwest Britain. It was picked up on a beach in Devon in 2015, and has been examined by a team from the University of Bristol.

At that age it is very close to the stem of the order Lepidosauria. However, it already displays some “advanced” features, and some of the assumed primitive features are already absent.

One of the primitive features often discussed is the lower temporal bar — a bony rod running between the cheek and the jaw hinge—which is present in the tuatara but absent (“open”) in modern lizards and snakes. This opening gives greater flexibility to the skull, allowing more motion for feeding. Also, many modern lizards have palatal teeth (teeth on the roof of the mouth) which help grip prey.

The fossil skull (from Agriodontosaurus helsbypetrae) has no skull hinge and no palatal teeth, but it does have an open lower temporal bar. In other words, this is a transitional species: it has a mosaic of primitive and derived traits—a pattern Darwin predicted, but which creationists generally dismiss. To creationists, fossils are often denied, mischaracterised, or claimed to be “just as they were created a few thousand years ago.” But this specimen is clear evidence of evolutionary change.

Meanwhile, the evidence of fossil ages—dating back hundreds of millions of years—refutes the idea of a young Earth (~ thousands of years), which cannot be reconciled with the geological, biological, and radiometric data.

None of that undermines the real discovery: an early lepidosaur with a mosaic of features lived in what is now Devon, UK, in the Middle Triassic, about 242 million years ago. As always, in rational enquiry, solid evidence must take priority over magical or mythological claims.