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 Trasitional 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.

Refuting Creationism - DNA Reveals How Mastodons Had Diversified in North America - A Hundred Thousand Years Before 'Creation Week'

Mastodons lived in Arctic and Subarctic North America during an interglacial period when the area was covered in forests and wetlands.

Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

Ancient DNA reveals deeply complex Mastodon family and repeated migrations driven by climate change - Brighter World

Creationism is rooted in Bronze Age mythology and rests on a single source, the Bible, whose only claim to authority is its own demonstrably false assertion that it is the inerrant word of a creator god.

This is a claim anyone could make, and it collapses when its statements are compared with the observable world.

For example, biblical genealogies, beginning with a mythical first couple created from dust without ancestors, imply that Earth is only a few thousand years old. In reality, geological and astronomical evidence shows that Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and the fossil record demonstrates that life was flourishing hundreds of millions of years before the Bible implies creation began.

One striking piece of evidence comes from an analysis of mastodon DNA, which shows that between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago mastodons in North America had already diversified into several genetically distinct populations.

Refuting Creationism - Dinosaur Eggs From 85 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Egg clutch sampled for chronological studies.

Credit Dr. Bi Zhao

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

Dinosaur egg fossil sampled for geochronology.

Credit: Dr Bi Zhao

Newly dated 85-million-year-old dino eggs could improve understanding of Cretaceous climate

The dating of a clutch of fossil dinosaur eggs will leave creationists scrambling for excuses to dismiss the evidence and cling to the childish notion that Earth is only 6,000–10,000 years old, created ex nihilo by magic, with all extant and extinct species brought into existence without ancestors just a few days later. In other words, this discovery is yet another small addition to the mountain of evidence showing that the biblical creation story was the work of ignorant Bronze Age people trying to make sense of the world around them, not the word of an omniscient creator god who would have known better.

An added problem for creationists is that the research team used a new method of dating the eggs based on measuring when the eggshell itself formed, rather than relying solely on dating the rock in which the eggs were embedded. The difficulty with the latter approach is that, while it gives the age of the surrounding rock, the mineral grains in that rock may predate the eggs and could have been transported there by water or wind.

The new technique is conceptually similar to the uranium–lead (U–Pb) method used to date zircon crystals in volcanic tuff. Tiny amounts of uranium, which readily substitute into the crystal lattice, are incorporated when the zircon forms, but lead is excluded. Over time, uranium isotopes decay into stable isotopes of lead. Thus, any lead present within a zircon crystal must have come from radioactive decay, and by measuring the ratio of uranium to lead isotopes, scientists can calculate the crystal’s age with high precision.

A very similar process occurs in the carbonate of dinosaur eggshells: uranium is incorporated during formation, but lead is excluded. Measuring uranium–lead isotope ratios in the shell carbonate therefore provides a direct and highly accurate age for the eggs themselves, leaving little room for error.

Refuting Creationism - Tool-Making Humans In Indonesia - 1 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Stone tools from Sulawesi, dated to over 1.04mya, scale bars are 10mm.Credit: M W Moore

Credit: M W Moore

Map of Southeast Asia showing the location of Calio in southern Sulawesi.

Oldest evidence of humans on ‘Hobbit’s’ island neighbour discovered – who they were remains a mystery - Griffith News

Archaeologists led by Budianto Hakim of Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) and Professor Adam Brumm from Griffith University’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution have uncovered evidence of tool-making on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi dating back 1.04 million years. The identity of the toolmakers remains unknown, as no hominin fossils have yet been found on the island. Their discovery has just been published open-access in Nature.

The most likely candidates are Homo erectus or a descendant population that adapted to Sulawesi’s distinctive environment. The island lies close to Flores, home of the diminutive ‘Hobbit’ (H. floresiensis), thought to have evolved from H. erectus through island dwarfism, a process that also produced the miniature elephants of Flores. A related discovery was made in 2019 on Luzon in the Philippines, where H. luzonensis—another likely offshoot of H. erectus—was identified. It is therefore entirely plausible that H. erectus, or one of its evolutionary branches, was present and making tools on Sulawesi more than a million years ago.

For creationists, such finds are troublesome because they align seamlessly with evolutionary theory, showing hominins branching, adapting, and diversifying in different environments, just as Darwin and Wallace first described in 1859. They also highlight the profound role of environment in shaping evolutionary outcomes.

For science, the discovery is particularly significant because it implies that an early hominin was capable of undertaking sea crossings across the formidable ‘Wallace Line’—a biogeographic boundary that long isolated the fauna of Australasia from mainland Asia by preventing the natural dispersal of terrestrial animals.

Refuting Creationism - How Bronze Age Brittons Refute the Bible Flood Tale

East Chisenbury midden under excavation.

Credit: Cardiff University

Landscape location of All Cannings Cross midden.

Credit: Cardiff University.

The Age of Feasting: Late Bronze Age networks developed through massive food festivals, with animals brought from far and wide | EurekAlert!

Archaeologists from Cardiff University have published the largest study of its kind into animal remains from Late Bronze Age Britain, and their findings reveal a surprisingly complex picture of feasting, farming, and far-reaching social networks. The research, published in iScience, reports on multi-isotope analysis of more than 3,500 bones from six prehistoric middens in Wiltshire and the Thames Valley. These vast heaps of discarded remains are the archaeological traces of large communal feasts held some 3,000 years ago.

The team found that the animals consumed—cattle, pigs, and sheep—were not all raised locally. Some were brought from considerable distances, suggesting both a sophisticated agricultural economy and a culture in which travel and exchange linked communities across southern Britain. Such large-scale gatherings, the researchers conclude, were central to forging alliances, maintaining social bonds, and reinforcing ritual practices in the closing centuries of the Bronze Age.

In other words, these middens are the material testimony of thriving societies in Britain whose development ran seamlessly from the Neolithic into the Bronze Age, without any trace of a catastrophic global flood. If Genesis were literal history, such sites could not exist. But they do. The Cardiff findings are therefore another piece of hard archaeological evidence that exposes the biblical flood as a myth, not a record of real events.

Far from being isolated farming villages, Late Bronze Age communities in Britain were enmeshed in a dynamic cultural landscape with trade and ritual at its heart. I have previously written about the political control and economic development in Britain being sufficient to command and supply the manpower needed to undertake massive civil engineering projects such as building Stonehenge and Silbury Hill. Silbury Hill alone took an estimates 18 million man-hours to build (i.e. 500 men working for 15 years) - a level of political and economic development which would have been impossible within the Bible's framework.

And here lies the striking problem for biblical literalism. If we take the chronology given in Genesis at face value, Noah’s Flood is supposed to have occurred around 2348 BCE. By that reckoning, all humans and animals on earth, save those aboard the Ark, were annihilated. The Late Bronze Age middens, however, date to between 1200 and 800 BCE—well after the supposed global deluge. The isotope evidence shows continuity of local herds, supplemented by long-distance transport of animals, not a sudden repopulation from a single Middle Eastern source.

Refuting Creationism - What Dinosaur Teeth Tell Us About Life - From 150 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Giraffatitan

AI-generated image (ChatGPT 5)

Photo of teeth in a jaw section of Giraffatitan from Tanzania (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, MB.R.2180.20.5). The light-coloured area is the dentin, which has been exposed by tooth wear.

Image Credit: Jan Kersten, Freie Universität Berlin, Fachrichtung Paläontologie.

What Dinosaur Teeth Reveal About Life 150 Million Years Ago - Information for Media and Journalists | Freie Universität Berlin

An international team of researchers, led by Dr Daniela E. Winkler (postdoctoral researcher at Kiel University), Dr Emanuel Tschopp (visiting scientist at the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change and research associate at Freie Universität Berlin), and André Saleiro (PhD student at NOVA University Lisbon), has shed new light on the diet and movements of the 150-million-year-old long-necked dinosaur, Giraffatitan.

By using high-resolution microscopy to examine patterns of microscopic wear on fossilised teeth, the team could reconstruct not only what Giraffatitan ate, but also how it foraged and where it roamed. The results show that these enormous sauropods fed on a wide range of vegetation, from soft leaves to tougher plant material, indicating a flexible feeding strategy. The wear patterns also suggest that the animals migrated across different habitats, rather than remaining in one area, allowing them to exploit seasonal changes in plant availability. This paints a picture of a highly adaptable browser, capable of sustaining its gigantic size by ranging widely across the Jurassic landscape.

In many ways, their lifestyle resembles that of today’s elephants or giraffes, which travel long distances to reach food and switch between different types of vegetation depending on what is available. Like elephants stripping branches or giraffes plucking leaves from the tops of trees, Giraffatitan used its immense neck to access food that other animals could not, helping to reduce competition and maintain the balance of its ecosystem.

They also represent an interesting example of convergent evolution where two unrelated species, in this case a dinosaur and giraffes, converge on the same solution to the same environmental problem - how to reach the leaves at the top of tall trees, so avoiding competition with other browsing animals - long necks and long front legs.

As ever, such discoveries are impossible to reconcile with creationist notions of a young Earth, supposedly only 6,000–10,000 years old. Yet this is merely one more example of the widening gulf between the reality uncovered by science and the superstitions preserved in ancient texts. These texts, after all, were written by Bronze Age pastoralists who imagined the universe as a flat disc beneath a dome, bounded by the few square miles they could walk in a couple of days across the Canaanite hills.

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 - How A Fish Was Equipped to Kill - 310 Million Years Before 'Death Entered the World'

Artist's impression of Platysomus parvulus

Image by Joschua Knüppe

Artist's impression of Platysomus parvulus

Image by Joschua Knüppe.

Fossil fish sheds new light on extra teeth evolution to devour prey - University of Birmingham

Palaeontologists led by Professor Sam Giles of Birmingham University, UK, have discovered the earliest known example of a ray-finned fish, Platysomus parvulus, with extra teeth deep inside its mouth. It lived around 310 million years before creationists believe Earth was created. Aside from that insurmountable problem for creationist mythology, there are other difficulties for their childish beliefs:

Creationists insist that death only “entered the world” as a result of “Eve’s sin”. Before that supposed event, some 6,000–10,000 years ago, nothing ever died. Taken literally, this would mean that every mouthful of food remained alive throughout the entire digestive process, only to be excreted still living at the other end. Alternatively, humans and animals didn’t eat at all, somehow running on an unidentified, miracle source of energy. Either way, the claim collapses into absurdity.

An additional disappointment for creationists is that this team of evolutionary biologists show no hint of the widely predicted (in creationists circles) abandonment of the Theory of Evolution in favour of creationism, that two generations of creationists have been told will happen, like the second coming of Jesus, "Any day now, real soon. You'll see!".

From an evolutionary biology perspective, this fossil sheds light on the diversification of ray-finned fish following the End-Devonian mass extinction and represents a transitional stage in the evolution of tongue-biters from simple jawed fish. It also shows that advanced forms evolved relatively quickly in ecosystems dominated by predator-prey relationships.

Creationism Refuted - Fossil Record Of Fatal Pathogens In Brazil - 80 Million Years Before Creation Week

Arrows indicated by BL point to the lesion caused by osteomyelitis. HB is the unlesioned part, and MB is the bone marrow.

Tito Aureliano et al. (2025)

Fossils with signs of bone disease were from sauropods, of the same order as Tambatitanis

illustration: Palaeotaku/Wikimedia Commons.

Deadly bone disease wiped out long-necked dinosaurs in what is now the interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil

According to creationist dogma — though not explicitly stated in the Bible but added later to patch over awkward evidence — death did not enter the world until Eve’s sin somehow allowed it to. Along with death, so the story goes, came parasites, pathogens, and anything else creationists find inconvenient. And, of course, all of this supposedly happened just 6,000–10,000 years ago.

The problems with that are two-fold:

• Firstly, there is the question of what Adam and Eve, and the animals allegedly created for their use, ate. Did the plants they consumed remain alive as they passed through the digestive system, nutrients extracted but the plant cells excreted still living? Or did none of them eat anything at all? Obviously, the myth’s authors didn’t understand that plants are just as alive as animals.
• Secondly, the entire narrative collides with the fossil record, which shows long-dead animals preserved in strata dated to tens or even hundreds of millions of years before the mythical ‘Creation Week’—during the 99.9975% of Earth’s history that creationism simply erases. Those animals had metabolisms dependent on consuming living or dead tissues, and their fossils often show evidence not only of death, but of predation, parasitism, and disease. Many evolved armour plating, spines, and other defences that make sense only in the presence of predators and pathogens.

And here’s a paradox creationists often tie themselves in knots over: did God design humans with an immune system, or was it a post-Fall upgrade? If it was there from the start, then God was already planning for parasites and pathogens—hardly the “perfect” world creationists claim. If it was added later, then God wasn’t omniscient, as he failed to foresee a future need. Either way, the story collapses under its own contradictions.

It is therefore no surprise that researchers from the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) and the Regional University of Cariri (URCA) in Crato, Ceará, Brazil, have found evidence of dinosaurs being infected—and killed—by osteomyelitis around 80 million years before ‘Creation Week’. Fossils of sauropod dinosaurs show clear signs of active osteomyelitis, with no signs of healing, indicating that the disease proved fatal.

Creationism Refuted - Filling The Gaps That Ignorant Creationists Never Knew Existed

Artistic reconstruction of Bolg amondol, depicted raiding an oviraptorosaur dinosaur nest amidst the lush Kaiparowits Formation habitat.

Art by Cullen Townsend.

A Monster “Goblin” at the Feet of Dinosaurs | Natural History Museum

View of the Kaiparowits Formation from Death Ridge in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Figure 4. Reconstruction of UMNH VP 16266 (holotype, Bolg amondol gen. et sp. nov.). Gold: preserved skeletal elements. Grey: morphological hypotheses of reconstructed elements based on the morphology of preserved skeletal elements. Black: missing skeletal elements, based on publicly available rendered CT scans on morphosource.org of specimen UF:Herp:153328, Heloderma horridum.

Woolley C. Henrik, et al. (2025)

There was a gaping hole in our knowledge of evolution which, had creationists been aware of it, we would never have heard the end of. They would have claimed that their gap-shaped god fitted it perfectly, like a puddle in its hollow. Of course, it was no secret. Biologists—especially those studying the evolution of lizards—knew about it well enough. No one was hiding it from creationists. Their blissful ignorance was simply the result of their fear of engaging with real biology.

We knew that today’s large-bodied lizards must share common ancestors, but the gap lay in the fossil evidence to support that view—what creationists dismissively call “conjecture” or claims made without evidence. Yet the Theory of Evolution always predicted that such ancestral and transitional forms must have existed.

Creationists, however, have missed that particular boat because the gap has now been filled. The prediction of evolutionary theory has, once again, been vindicated.

The gap-filling discovery was made by Dr Hank Woolley of the Dinosaur Institute while examining a jar of bones at the Natural History Museum of Utah, simply labelled “lizard bones.” Dr Woolley identified them as belonging to the Monstersauria—a group of lizards with a 100-million-year history, but until now an incomplete fossil record. A modern member of this group is the Gila Monster, one of only two venomous lizards alive today. The fossil, belonging to a large-bodied lizard which Dr Woolley has named Bolg amondol after a character in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, was found in the Kaiparowits Formation of the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, Utah—a palaeontological treasure trove and one of North America’s richest dinosaur-dominated records. Alongside dozens of new species, the site offers a vital window into the deep past. The age of this fossil places it squarely in the age of the dinosaurs, a crucial factor in lizard evolution.

Incidentally, the picture above shows the Kaiparowits Formation. Perhaps a creationist would like to explain how those vast sedimentary strata could have been deposited in a single global flood.

Refuting Creationism - Another Fossil; Another Thorny Problem for Creationists

Artist's impression of Spicomellus afer

Credit: Matt Dempsey

Fossils of S. afer

© The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London

“Bizarre” armoured dinosaur, Spicomellus afer, had spikes sticking out from its neck, fossils show - University of Birmingham

A newly-identified bizarre dinosaur fossil from Morocco has presented creationists with yet another thorny problem to ignore.

It is that of an ankylosaur from early in the evolutionary history of that group. Not only is its great age a problem for those who believe Earth was magicked into existence by a god with all living things fully formed and an environment perfectly tuned for life (i.e. human life — supposedly the god’s favourite), but at 165 million years old it comes from the vast span of Earth’s pre-“Creation Week” history — that 99.9975% of the planet’s history which creationists pretend never happened. This is, in fact, the oldest ankylosaur yet discovered.

Unlike later ankylosaurs, however, this one had long spikes firmly attached to its bones. These appear to have been lost as the group evolved, showing relatively rapid change. That in itself runs counter to the creationist dogma that evolution cannot proceed by loss of genetic information and must always involve increasing complexity for it to be “real” evolution. This claim, like so many creationist assertions, ignores abundant evidence — such as the reduction in genome size and anatomical complexity in many endoparasites.

Now they have yet another example to ignore while busily constructing their infantile strawman versions of evolution to attack.

The discovery by palaeontologists co-led by Professor Susannah Maidment of Natural History Museum, London, and the University of Birmingham, has just been reported in Nature and is explained in a news item from the University of Birmingham and an accompanying YouTube video: