Creationism in Crisis - Transitional Penguin Fossils From New Zealand - 60 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

An artistic representation of a North Canterbury beach some 62 millions years ago.

Canterbury Museum and Tom Simpson, CC BY-SA

Dagger beaks and strong wings: new fossils rewrite the penguin story and affirm NZ as a cradle of their evolution.

One of the most glaring flaws in creationist reasoning — among the many — is its desperate reliance on gaps in knowledge as hiding places for their putative god. It’s a strategy that ensures their god grows ever smaller and often vanishes entirely as science steadily closes those gaps. This “god of the gaps” approach is ultimately doomed—either to complete collapse or to a never-ending scramble for new gaps, real or imagined, in the forlorn hope that this time, unlike every other, the gap will contain the one thing they crave: a god that cannot be explained away.

One such gap — of which creationists so far seem blissfully unaware, or we would never hear the end of it — is the evolutionary transition between the flying ancestors of penguins and the modern, flightless penguins whose skeletons have adapted from an aerial to a marine existence. This transformation involved all the changes needed to turn wings into powerful flippers for ‘flying’ underwater, a more upright gait, and feathers adapted for life in the water and for the cold of the Antarctic environment where most species now live.

That gap has just been substantially filled by the discovery of a large collection of ancient penguin fossils in the Waipara Greensand Formation in New Zealand, north of Canterbury. This formation spans roughly 62.5 to 58 million years ago—a period of some 4.5 million years, beginning only a few million years after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago. With every such discovery, the supposed “mystery” shrinks a little more—and the god wedged into it fades further into irrelevance. How these fossils fill the gap in our knowledge of penguin evolution is the subject of an article in The Conversation by two palaeontologists from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand: Vanesa De Pietri, Senior Research Fellow in Palaeontology, and Paul Scofield, Adjunct Professor in Palaeontology. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

First, some background information on the Waipara Greensand Formation:

Refuting Creationism - Ancestors Of Mammals Lived 40 Million Years Earlier Than We Thought.

Using a tooth, researchers have identified the oldest known species of docodont, the ancestor of mammals.

Illustration by Pedro Andrade

Docodontids in their natural setting

AI-generated image (ChatGPT)

Nova FCT student identified a new ancestor of mammals from a two-millimeter tooth

A student palaeontologist, Sofia Patrocínio, from the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of Lisbon (Nova FCT), has identified a fossil tooth as belonging to a docodontan – a group of mammaliform vertebrates considered close relatives and ancestors of true mammals. This discovery pushes back the known origin of this group by a further 40 million years.

This is the sort of find that often prompts headlines seemingly designed to play into the hands of anti-science groups such as creationists, with claims like *“The science books will need to be rewritten”* or *“Everything you thought you knew about evolution was wrong!”* These sensationalist lines risk creating the false impression that scientists are constantly realising they were “wrong all along”.

In reality – as in this case – what has happened is that a gap in our knowledge has been filled. Our understanding is now slightly more complete than before. Rather than overturning evolutionary theory, this discovery fits perfectly within it, supporting what was already known: there was a gradual transition from small reptiles to early mammals. The main uncertainty was *when* certain steps in that transition occurred.

Creationists who seize on such discoveries to claim scientists are forever changing their minds overlook an inconvenient detail – the timeline. Nearly all of these fossil finds involve organisms that lived hundreds of thousands, even millions of years before creationists believe the Earth and life began. If anything needs rewriting, it’s the creationist books that peddle disinformation to those willing to pay for material that reassures them their preconceived beliefs are correct – even when the evidence says otherwise.

Sofia Patrocínio and her colleagues have recently published their findings in the journal of the Palaeontological Association, Papers in Palaeontology. The discovery is also covered in a news article from Nova FCT, published in Almadense.

What Were Docodontans? Docodontans were small, extinct mammaliforms that lived during the Jurassic period, between about 201 and 145 million years ago. Although not true mammals, they were close relatives and part of the larger group from which mammals evolved.

They are best known from their distinctive teeth, which had complex cusps adapted for an omnivorous diet of insects, plants, and other small food sources. Fossils suggest docodontans were shrew-like in size and appearance, with some adapted to specialised habitats – including burrowing, climbing, and even semi-aquatic lifestyles.

The group is important to palaeontologists because their anatomy preserves key stages in the evolution from reptile-like synapsids to the first true mammals. Discoveries like the one by Sofia Patrocínio help refine our understanding of when and how early mammal traits emerged.

Nova FCT student identified a new ancestor of mammals from a two-millimeter tooth

---

The fossil measures less than seven millimeters in total and is partially hidden in a rock. However, meticulous work has identified a new species that combines the name of a goddess with that of a constellation. The new species pushes back the emergence of this group of animals by 40 million years.

---

After several years of researching a molar tooth from an animal that might resemble a mouse and several months until she was able to publish the scientific article, Sofia Patrocínio "closed" this cycle on Friday, June 13, 2025. The result presented in the scientific journal Papers in Palaeontology owes nothing to bad luck, but it does have its share of incidents, as the paleontologist told ALMADENSE.

"There's a funny story from high school: I had to do a project on paleontology and got a failing grade; I was so upset I said it wouldn't happen again," she says in a relaxed conversation, while admitting that she loves what she does. And she does a lot of things, even though many of them aren't even paid. "Paleontology isn't seen as a serious profession." Something she's determined to change.

Sofia Patrocínio is from Cartaxo and graduated in Environmental Education and Nature Tourism. It's been more than half a dozen years since she enrolled in the program, but the price of student housing elsewhere was unaffordable (then, as it is now) , and it was one of the factors that forced her to stay closer to home and enroll at the Polytechnic Institute of Santarém. After that, she interned at Dino Parque da Lourinhã and stayed on to work there.

It was impossible to remove the fossil from the rock due to the risk of damaging it. In the center of the image, the yellowish structure corresponds to the dentary (mandible), and the dark structure is the partially visible molar.

Photo: Sofia Patrocínio

“It was them [my colleagues at Dino Parque] who encouraged me to do a master's degree in Paleontology at Nova; they said I had a knack for it,” he says, referring to the course at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Lisbon (Nova FCT), which has a campus in the parish of Caparica, Almada.

In one of her master's degree courses, Vertebrate Paleontology, Sofia Patrocínio and her colleagues were challenged to prepare and describe fossils, some from the Lourinhã Museum collection and some from an excavation in Greenland. The then-master's student worked with needles and a microscope to remove the sediments still clinging to the fossil, which was less than seven millimeters long —even so, she was unable to free the entire piece, as we will see.

She then described the fossil in detail and attempted to identify its group and its phylogenetic relationships with other animal groups—in other words, she attempted to place the animal in its proper position on the tree of life. "It had similarities with several groups, but didn't seem to belong to any. It was most likely a new species," says the researcher. "I had so much study material that I could have continued [with the same topic] for my master's degree."

How does a tooth allow us to identify a new species?

The first step was to include the species in the order Docodonta, a group of mammaliforms—the evolutionary predecessors of mammals—with very distinctive molars. To put it simply, the molars were long and low, with a characteristic cusp pattern. (Cusps are the conical protrusions on molars, which we also have.) But this particular tooth had characteristics that didn't fit into any of the previously known genera or species within docodonts.

Docodont fossils are very rare, but there are fossils with entire jaws, which allowed comparison with the available material and ruled out a tooth with a small defect. "If it were just a change in the tooth's morphology, there might be doubt, but I counted five to seven differences," explains Sofia Patrocínio. Among these differences was a cusp facing the tongue.

While the tooth's original pattern allowed it to be classified as a new species, the layer in which it was found offers another new discovery. To determine the age of fossils, paleontologists "measure" the age of rocks found in the same layer. In this case, the fossil would have formed about 200 million years ago, during the transition between the Triassic and Jurassic periods (the period in which a wide variety of easily recognizable dinosaurs emerged). Even more interesting is that this species would have appeared 40 million years before the oldest known docodont species.

A new species at the transition between pre-docodont mammals and docodonts adds another piece to the puzzle of mammalian evolution, particularly the order Docodonta, which diversified and occupied various environments at the same time as large dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Furthermore, this fossil places the origin of docodonts in Greenland and Europe—connected before the continents separated into their current positions—rather than Russia and Asia as previously thought.

The layers of soil containing the fossils are like shelves in a bookcase, each corresponding to a period of time. By exploring each shelf as if reading the books stored there, the scientists were able to date the layer and the fossils—among them a new species of dinosaur, Plateosaurus trossingensis, identified by a fellow student in Sofia's master's program — and also describe the environment. The fossils were found in an ancient lake, with little oxygen in the water and which served as a passageway for many animals.

200 million years ago, when the 'Nujalikodon cassiopeiae' fossil is believed to have formed, what are now Greenland and Europe were connected, and also in contact with the continental plates of North America and Asia.

Adapted from: Patrocínio et al. (2025) Papers in Paleontology

A goddess tooth named after a constellation

Now 25, Sofia Patrocínio boasts the identification of a new species on her resume. "It's strange; it seems like it hasn't sunk in yet." Whoever discovers a new species can give it a name, naturally following the rules used by the scientific community. A species always has two Latin names (first the genus name, which functions almost like our surnames, and then the "proper name" that conveys the distinctive characteristic), as defined by the scientist Carlos Linnaeus in the mid-18th century.

This new docodont was named Nujalikodon cassiopeiae . Nujalik is the goddess of the earth hunt in Inuit mythology—the indigenous population of the Arctic regions of Canada, Alaska, and Greenland—and "nujalikodon" means "Nujalik's tooth." The specific epithet cassiopeiae owes its name to the constellation Cassiopeia, whose five stars appear to form a W, like the cusps of the molar Sofia Patrocínio studied.

The 831 photographs taken by the scan allowed a three-dimensional reconstruction of the fossil measuring just seven millimeters.

Adapted from Patrocínio et al. (2025) Papers in Paleontology

Naming the species requires all the prior work of studying fossils, in this case a complete molar, the piece of bone that housed the tooth, and the broken roots of a second tooth. But a large portion of the fossil was not visible; it was still embedded within the rock, and removing it could irreparably damage the tooth. Furthermore, it was extremely small, the molar measuring only two millimeters. Therefore, a scan of the fossil was necessary—a kind of CT scan for very small objects—which was very difficult to achieve, says the researcher. "But without the scan, it was impossible to move forward, nor to submit the article for publication." Then, using the 831 photographs from the scan—as if the fossil had been cut into very thin slices—a three-dimensional model was created on the computer, allowing us to see the details hidden within the rock.

Sofia Patrocínio's work was supported by her advisors, Vicente Crespo, a paleontologist at Nova FCT, and Elsa Panciroli, a researcher at the National Museum of Scotland, and involved collaboration with other researchers. The work was funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology, as part of the GeoBioTec project.

Having completed this stage, the paleontologist hopes to continue studying the evolution of mammalian ancestors with a doctorate from the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon. This time, she will study the inner ear—but she will continue to observe bones and very small structures. In the meantime, she will participate in paleontological excavations, collaborate with a fossil database in Portugal, and, in the activities she organizes for Ciência Viva, try to spark children's interest in paleontology.

Publication:

Patrocínio, S., Panciroli, E., Rotatori, F.M., Mateus, O., Milàn, J., Clemmensen, L.B. and Crespo, V.D. (2025)
The oldest definitive docodontan from central East Greenland sheds light on the origin of the clade. Pap Palaeontol, 11: e70022. https://doi.org/10.1002/spp2.70022

ABSTRACT
The first mammaliaforms emerged in the Late Triassic, but their exact origins remain unclear due to the scarcity of fossils from this period. One of the earliest diverging mammaliaform groups, the order Docodonta, became unusually ecomorphologically diverse compared with other early mammals, and this may be connected to the possession of complex molar cusp morphology. The specimen described here, found in the Rhætelv Formation of the Kap Stewart Group (Rhaetian–Sinemurian) of central East Greenland, provides novel information on docodontan origins and evolution, as well as key biogeographic insights into early mammal dispersal. Nujalikodon cassiopeiae gen. et sp. nov. is the first mammaliaform found in the Rhætelv Formation, and is likely to be Early Jurassic (Hettangian) in age. Comprising an incomplete dentary with a single preserved molar, it was visualized using micro-computed tomography; the molar bears similarities to the putative early docodontan Delsatia, and docodontan Dobunnodon. Phylogenetic analysis places Nujalikodon cassiopeiae as a basal member of Docodonta or a close sister taxon, making it one of the oldest definitive docodontans and pushing the origin of the group back to at least the Early Jurassic. It provides insights into the development of docodontan dental complexity, a key factor in their ecological diversification during the Middle to Late Jurassic. Its presence in Greenland supports the hypothesis that docodontans originated in the region now comprising Europe and Greenland before dispersing across the rest of Laurasia.

Patrocínio, S., Panciroli, E., Rotatori, F.M., Mateus, O., Milàn, J., Clemmensen, L.B. and Crespo, V.D. (2025)
The oldest definitive docodontan from central East Greenland sheds light on the origin of the clade. Pap Palaeontol, 11: e70022. https://doi.org/10.1002/spp2.70022

© 2025 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This fossil tooth extends the known existence of docodontans by around 40 million years, placing them much earlier in the evolutionary timeline than previously documented. This is significant because:

• It strengthens the fossil record for the transition from reptile-like synapsids to early mammals, filling a critical gap rather than overturning existing theory.
• It confirms evolutionary predictions — that mammaliforms had already diversified long before the rise of true mammals, in line with phylogenetic models.
• It demonstrates the self-correcting nature of science — evidence leads to refinements in understanding, not wholesale abandonment of established frameworks. When the evidence changes, scientists change their minds, unlike theologians who try to change the evidence.

For creationism, the problem is twofold: the fossil is tens of millions of years older than the 6,000–10,000-year timeline central to young-Earth creationist belief, and docodontans are transitional, exhibiting a mosaic of traits bridging reptiles and mammals, exactly the kind of “missing links” creationists claim do not exist.

Rather than undermining evolution, this discovery is yet another piece of independent evidence that fits perfectly into its framework — and yet another reminder that creationist models fail when confronted with reality.

Refuting Creationism - Adapting to Climate Change - 56 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Ancient soils preserved in the rock, known as paleosols, in the Willwood Formation, Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, are rich fossil sites.

Fossil studies of the extinct predator Dissacus praenuntius offer clues as to how ancient animals responded to environmental changes. The ancient omnivore was about the size of a jackal or a coyote.

ДиБгд, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

An Ancient Predator’s Shift in Diet Offers Clues on Surviving Climate Change | Rutgers University

Long before the supposed "Creation Week" — when creationists claim Earth was magicked into existence just a few thousand years ago — our planet was already teeming with life and undergoing dramatic changes. Around 56 million years ago, a mere tick in geological time, Earth experienced a sharp and rapid rise in global temperatures known as the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). This event had a profound effect on ecosystems and the species that lived through it. Many, of course, did not survive, but those that did, adapted to the new, harsher conditions.

One such survivor was an early mammal, Dissacus praenuntius, a member of the now-extinct Mesonychidae order. D. praenuntius was an omnivore that resembled a hyena, but with small hooves on each toe, and like a hyena, it likely lived as an opportunistic scavenger and predator. Now, a team of palaeontologists has revealed how its behaviour changed during the PETM: it began consuming more bone, presumably because its usual prey had become scarce or disappeared altogether. In this respect, D. praenuntius serves as a record of the environmental pressures of the PETM and how some species responded to survive.

It paints a picture of an Earth that is far removed from the idealised, "perfect" planet imagined in creationist mythology — a planet supposedly fine-tuned for life. Instead, the fossil record tells the story of a world that can quickly become hostile, where survival depends not on divine design but on the ability to adapt — or perish.

Creationism Crushed - By Big Biting Dinosaurs

Dinosaur bite illustrations.

Rowe and Rayfield, Current Biology (2025)

Gigantic, meat-eating dinosaurs didn’t all have strong bites | EurekAlert!

Creationists will likely dismiss the recent paper in Current Biology because, as is common in creationist psychology, any scientific evidence contradicting their fundamental beliefs is either ignored, misrepresented, or actively denied—particularly if it suggests their views should be reconsidered.

The study by Andre J. Rowe and Emily J. Rayfield of the University of Bristol (UK) demonstrates that, during the long stretch of Earth’s history predating creationist timelines, giant carnivorous dinosaurs evolved markedly different jaw mechanics to tackle prey—leading to distinct ecological roles. For example, crushers such as Tyrannosaurus rex developed jaws optimised for forceful crushing, akin to crocodilians, whereas slashers - other large theropods such as allosaurids or spinosaurs - developed weaker jaws tailored to ripping and slashing flesh, like modern Komodo dragons [1.1].

This divergence in feeding mechanics underscores a fundamental principle in evolutionary biology: adaptive radiation and allopatric speciation — whereby offspring inheriting intermediate jaw characteristics (neither fully adapted for crushing nor ripping) would likely be at a disadvantage, reducing their reproductive success. Over time, this selective pressure fosters reproductive barriers and drives lineages apart.

Creationism Refuted - What Caused Our Teeth To Shrink Until 690,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Chronologically from left, the molars of human ancestors got longer over millennia to suit a diet of high-carb grassy plants.

Photo credits: Public domain; Don Hitchcock; Fernando Losada Rodríguez (rotated)

Changes in Diet Drove Physical Evolution in Early Humans | Dartmouth

A recent discovery by palaeoanthropologists, led by researchers from Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA, highlights the stark difference between how a teleological thinker—such as a creationist—imagines evolution works and how it actually proceeds. The study found that the teeth of ancient hominins evolved over a period of some 700,000 years in response to the increasing availability of soft, starchy foods, which began to replace the coarse, fibrous plant matter they had previously consumed.

A teleological thinker—someone who sees purpose and agency in natural processes—would assume that something *caused* the teeth to evolve in order to better process the new food. However, as the theory of evolution predicts, any variation that improves efficiency in food processing or reduces the now-unnecessary cost of growing and maintaining large teeth will be favoured by natural selection. Over evolutionary time, such traits become more common. In the case of archaic hominins, this meant their teeth gradually became smaller.

Teleological thinkers often make the mistake of believing that asking, "Who or what told the teeth they needed to change?" or "How did the teeth know they had to evolve?" is a meaningful challenge to evolutionary theory. To them, it seems reasonable to assume a supernatural intelligence must be involved.

This simplistic view of evolution is actively encouraged by creationist pseudo-scientists such as William A. Dembski and his colleagues at the Discovery Institute, who claim that the genetic information resulting from such optimisation must have been intelligently designed because it is "specified" for a purpose. Of course, at every stage of human evolution, the genetic information that produced a particular tooth shape was necessarily "specified" for that outcome. Dembski never discloses this to his audience, nor does he attempt to correct the teleological bias on which his movement depends.

An interesting aspect of this discovery is that the evolutionary change in this case was driven not so much by environmental change - the starch foods had always been there - as by a change in behaviour - a case of meme-gene co-evolution, using the term 'meme' in the original sense as coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, to mean a unit of cultural inheritance - the analogue of the gene in genetic inheritance.

Refuting Creationism - A Diverse Human Population in China - 290,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Members of the research team.

A study reveals the human diversity in China during Middle Pleistocene | CENIEH

A study recently published in the Journal of Human Evolution reports the discovery of a mixture of archaic and modern traits in the dentition of 300,000-year-old hominin fossils unearthed at the Hualongdong site in Anhui Province, China.

These fossils predate the migration of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) out of Africa by around 250,000 years. They indicate that hominin populations in East Asia were already diversifying and possibly interbreeding with archaic humans, such as Homo erectus, to form lineages distinct from both Neanderthals and Denisovans.

The research, led by Professor Wu Xiujie, director of the Hualongdong excavations, is the result of a longstanding collaboration between scientists from the Dental Anthropology Group at CENIEH — María Martinón-Torres, Director of CENIEH and corresponding author of the paper, and José María Bermúdez de Castro, researcher ad honorem at CENIEH — and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing.

The findings reveal a rich and complex picture of human evolution in East Asia, wholly at odds with the simplistic biblical narrative still clung to by creationists. That account, written by ancient people with no knowledge of the broader world, reflects a worldview in which Earth was small, flat, covered by a dome, and located at the centre of the universe.

Refuting Creationism - Our Ancestors Evolved To Walk Upright In Trees - Like Modern Savannah Chimpanzees

A young male chimp feeds on woodland seeds (cropped).

Image by Rhianna C. Drummond-Clarke/Greater Mahale Ecosystem Research and Conservation (GMERC)

How much time did our ancestors spend up trees? Studying these chimpanzees might help us find out

A group of Issa Valley chimpanzees navigate an open woodland crown to forage on new leaves.

Image by Rhianna C. Drummond-Clarke/Greater Mahale Ecosystem Research and Conservation (GMERC)

A new study published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution delivers yet more evidence for the Theory of Evolution and decisively contradicts Bible-literalist creationism. By closely studying wild chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Issa Valley—an environment that mirrors the mixed woodland–savannah habitats of our early ancestors—researchers found that these apes still spend most of their time in trees and conduct over 85 % of their bipedal movements arboreally. This finding strongly supports the evolutionary view that human bipedalism did not emerge from a sudden exodus from trees but evolved gradually while our ancestors still relied heavily on arboreal habitats.

What is particularly striking is the complete absence of any doubt among the scientists that evolution, driven by natural selection, is the correct framework for interpreting these observations. At no point do they resort to supernatural explanations or even hint that evolution might be insufficient to explain the data. On the contrary, their conclusions seamlessly integrate with the existing evolutionary narrative, demonstrating how behaviours seen in modern chimpanzees provide a living window into the adaptations of our shared ancestors. This directly undermines the creationist claim that mainstream biologists are “abandoning” evolution in favour of unproven religious explanations—a claim that has no basis in reality.

Creationist dogma insists on static, unchanging “kinds” and appeals to unverifiable supernatural causes. Yet, studies like this show that every aspect of our evolutionary past—anatomical, genetic, and behavioural—can be explained through natural processes, without the need for divine intervention. The evidence for a shared ancestry between humans and other primates grows with every new study, while creationism remains stuck with no predictive power and no scientific methodology.

In short, this research reinforces the power and universality of the Theory of Evolution. The scientists involved didn’t set out to “disprove creationism”; they simply applied rigorous observation and analysis, and the results—once again—fell squarely on the side of evolution. Far from being abandoned, the ToE continues to thrive as the backbone of modern biology, while creationism, with its untestable supernatural entities, offers no explanation at all.

Creationism Refuted - How Neanderthals Were Getting Fat - 125,000 before 'Creation Week'

Neanderthals smashing bones to extract the fat

AI generated image (ChatGPT 4o)

Excavation at the Neumark-Nord 2 in central Germany.

Photo: Professor Wil Roebroeks, Leiden University

125,000-year-old Neanderthal ‘fat factory’ discovered in Germany - Leiden University
More evidence has emerged that Neanderthals were far from the slow-witted, lumbering brutes of popular myth. In fact, they were highly organised, culturally sophisticated, and capable of processing food on what can only be described as an industrial scale.

This latest insight comes from a team of archaeologists led by researchers from MONREPOS (Leibniz Centre for Archaeology, Germany) and Leiden University (The Netherlands), in collaboration with the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt (Germany). Their findings were recently published in Science Advances.

At a site known as Neumark-Nord 2 in central Germany, dating back 125,000 years, the researchers have discovered compelling evidence of a bone-processing ‘factory’. Here, Neanderthals systematically broke up the massive bones of straight-tusked elephants and other large mammals—including deer, horses, and aurochs—to extract fat from the marrow by steeping the fragments in hot water. The straight-tusked elephant, which could weigh up to 13 tonnes, would have yielded enough meat to feed 2,000 adult humans their daily caloric needs.

This site predates the arrival of modern humans in Europe by tens of thousands of years, placing it firmly within the Neanderthal era. At the time, Europe was enjoying an interglacial period with a climate comparable to today's.

Creationism Refuted - Scientists Got It Wrong About Coelacanths - But Not About Evolution

One of the authors of the study, Professor Aléssio Datovo, poses next to a coelacanth specimen on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (photo: personal archive)

New examination of fish considered a ‘living fossil’ changes our understanding of vertebrate skull evolution

Here is something that will cause creationists to jump for joy – until they read beyond the headline (if they ever do). Scientists have announced that they were wrong about the evolution of the vertebrate skull, including that of mammals.

However, beneath that headline lie some disappointing facts for creationists:

• The error was uncovered by re-examining the 400-million-year-old skull of a coelacanth.
• The mistake concerns details of how the vertebrate skull evolved – not whether it evolved.
• The paper directly contradicts the common creationist claim that scientists are only permitted to publish research that conforms to the scientific consensus. This study openly challenges the prevailing view.
• The discovery enhances our understanding of how the vertebrate skull evolved from that of ancestral lobe-finned fishes – precisely the kind of evidence creationists would rather didn’t exist.

Still, creationists can enjoy the headline and may even use it to 'prove' to their audience that science is unreliable because scientists sometimes make mistakes. Of course, they’ll likely ignore the fact that the fossil in question is 400 million years old, and gloss over the reality that – unlike religious dogma – science is a process of continuous refinement. Science allows for doubt, re-examination, and re-evaluation. When the evidence changes, scientists change their minds. In contrast, religious dogma is fixed and unchanging, usually despite the evidence, not because of it, hence the widening gap between what creationists are required to believe and what science reveals.

Upon re-examining the cranial musculature of the African coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), the researchers found that only 13% of the previously identified evolutionary muscle innovations in major vertebrate lineages were accurate. They also identified nine new evolutionary transformations related to innovations in feeding and respiration.

The researchers, Professor Aléssio Datovo from the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil and the late David Johnson from the Smithsonian Institution in the United States, who sadly died when the paper was in review, have just published their findings in Science Advances.

Creationism Refuted Again - Neanderthal Footprints in Portugal - 68,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

General view of the main tracksite with hominin trackways located in the northern cliff of Monte Clérigo beach

de Carvalho, et al. (2025)

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

Gibraltar National Museum scientists participate in a major new international study - 505/2025

Reconstituted scenario of Monte Clérigo tracksite, generated by AI tools following the guidance, and final artworks of J.M. Galán (ChatGPT-4 was used to select the prompts, at https://openai.com/index/gpt-4/; Image Generator Pro to generate various versions, at https://imagegeneratorpro.com; DALL-E3 for the nuances and quality of the image, at https://openai.com/index/dall-e-3/; Photoshop 26.4.1 (www.adobe.com) and digital pencil of Procreate for iPad version 5.3.14, at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/procreate/id425073498, for drawing over the selected image version).

de Carvalho, et al. (2025)

The discovery of 78,000-year-old Neanderthal footprints on a Portuguese beach is yet another blow to creationist pseudoscience. Preserved in the ancient sands of Monte Clérigo, the tracks of an adult male, a child, and a toddler walking together paint a vivid picture of Neanderthal life — not as brutish subhumans, but as highly social beings living in complex family groups, navigating diverse coastal environments long before modern humans entered Europe. Such findings are not only consistent with the evolutionary timeline but utterly irreconcilable with young-Earth creationist beliefs.

According to mainstream geological dating techniques, these footprints were made tens of thousands of years before the supposed biblical date of creation (around 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, depending on interpretation). For creationists who insist that all of Earth’s history must be crammed into a few millennia, these kinds of discoveries are profoundly inconvenient. Worse still, the clarity of the evidence — physical impressions in sediment, dated using well-established methods like optically stimulated luminescence — makes them difficult to hand-wave away.

Faced with such a challenge, creationists will likely fall back on a familiar toolkit of denial strategies. Some will try to cast doubt on the dating methods, resorting to pseudoscientific critiques of OSL or claiming unknown “contamination” skewed the results. Others may assert that the footprints were made after Noah’s Flood — an idea that stretches credulity beyond breaking point given the age and geological context. And, of course, some will simply ignore the evidence altogether, pretending it doesn’t exist or insisting that Neanderthals were just humans who lived in “post-Babel dispersion” times, despite the overwhelming fossil, genetic, and archaeological data to the contrary.

The discovery has been reported recently in the journal Scientific Reports by a team of researchers which includes experts from the Gibraltar National Museum and the University of Lisbon, Portugal.

Refuting Creationism - What Life was Like In Illinois - 300 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

A Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium)

Concretions

Recreating Mazon Creek’s 300-million-year-old ecosystem

A major difference between science and religion can be summarised as follows: science embraces reasonable uncertainty, while religion often promotes unreasonable certainty.

In practice, this means science always allows room for doubt—however small—and continually re-examines and reassesses evidence to determine whether a change of understanding is justified. Religion, by contrast, typically seeks reasons not to change its views, no matter how tenuous those reasons may be or how far removed from observable reality.

This essential feature of the scientific method is frequently misrepresented by creationists, who portray science as unreliable precisely because it revises its conclusions in light of new evidence. They contrast this with the supposed ‘eternal truths’ of the Bible, arguing that science books need constant revision while scripture remains unchanging.

One of those supposed eternal truths—about which creationists are not permitted to change their minds—is that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and that all living things were created ex nihilo in their current forms, with no evolutionary ancestry or shared origins. Science, on the other hand, can re-evaluate the evidence from a 300-million-year-old fossil bed in Illinois and conclude that the original interpretation underestimated the complexity of the ancient ecosystem that once existed there.

A prime example of such a scientific reassessment has recently been published—open access—in the journal Paleobiology. The study was conducted by a team of palaeontologists from the University of Missouri’s College of Arts and Science, in collaboration with Gordon Baird of the Department of Geology & Environmental Sciences at the State University of New York (SUNY), Fredonia.

The work is based on a comprehensive reassessment of the rich fossil deposits from the Mazon Creek Lagerstätte in Illinois, which, during the Carboniferous Period (~300 million years ago), was part of a vast area of tropical swamps, deltas, and shallow seas. These habitats were shaped by rising sea levels that inundated earlier coal-forming wetlands.

Creationism Refuted - What Dinosaur Teeth Tell Us About Life 150 million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Original skull of the Giraffatitan from Tanzania.

Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, MB.R.2223

For details, see below.

What Dinosaur Teeth Reveal About Life 150 Million Years Ago | Leibniz Institute

Some 150 million years before the mythical events of ‘Creation Week’—give or take a few thousand years—our distant ancestors were small, nocturnal, rodent-like mammals eking out an existence in a world dominated by colossal reptiles. Among these dominant life forms were the dinosaurs, thriving in a variety of ecosystems and feeding on plants or other animals, depending on their species.

As they ate, they unwittingly left behind a record of their diet etched into the microscopic wear patterns on the enamel of their teeth. Today, with the help of sophisticated analytical techniques, palaeontologists can read these patterns like a diary of prehistoric meals. And with each new discovery, such as the one published by a team led by Dr Daniela E. Winkler of Kiel University, the yawning gap between ancient mythology and modern science widens ever further. Their findings provide yet another decisive refutation of the simplistic narrative crafted by Bronze Age storytellers—later compiled into what some still insist is the inerrant word of an omniscient creator.

This latest blow to creationist pseudoscience comes in the form of an open-access paper, Dental microwear texture analysis reveals behavioural, ecological and habitat signals in Late Jurassic sauropod dinosaur faunas, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

The team focused on the teeth of sauropods—long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs such as Camarasaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Diplodocus — from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation in North America and the Lusitanian Basin in Portugal. Using a method called Dental Microwear Texture Analysis (DMTA), they examined the microscopic wear patterns caused by feeding, revealing a fascinating spectrum of dietary strategies and environmental adaptations among different species.

What they found demolishes the notion of sauropods as a homogenous group of giant leaf-munchers. Instead, the microwear textures show distinct differences in feeding behaviour, likely linked to differences in available vegetation and habitat. For example, Camarasaurus appears to have consumed tougher, more fibrous plant material—perhaps conifers—while others such as Diplodocus may have specialised in softer vegetation like ferns or aquatic plants. These variations not only suggest niche partitioning, where species avoid direct competition by diversifying their diets, but also point to distinct ecological zones across the ancient landscapes they inhabited.

Even more telling is the comparison between North American and European sauropods. Despite being closely related, the differences in their dental microwear suggest adaptations to different environmental pressures and available flora, implying behavioural flexibility and evolutionary divergence shaped by their respective habitats.

Such complexity and diversity, preserved for over 150 million years in the microscopic textures of fossilised teeth, are a world away from the simplistic narratives of static 'kinds' created in a single week. Instead, we see a dynamic, evolving biosphere responding to ecological challenges—exactly what we’d expect in a world governed by natural selection and deep time.

Creationism In Crisis - Neanderthals With Different Cullinary Styles - 50,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

[left caption]

[right caption]

Specialty of the house: Neanderthals at two nearby caves butchered the same prey in different ways, suggesting local food traditions

Cut-marks on a bone found at Amud.

Image by the authors, supplied by Anaëlle Jallon.

More embarrassment for creationists comes in the form of new evidence that Neanderthals were butchering and cooking meat in two caves in what is now Israel. Not only did this occur some 40,000 to 50,000 years before creationists believe the Earth was created, but it also shows that Neanderthal culture had diversified into distinct culinary traditions—even among populations inhabiting neighbouring areas.

The most damning evidence against creationist claims is, of course, the very existence of such archaeological remains. According to the biblical narrative of a global, genocidal flood just a few thousand years ago, this evidence simply should not exist. Such a cataclysm would have erased any trace of it—or at best buried it beneath thick layers of chaotic silt, jumbled together with fossils of plants and animals from distant land masses in no coherent stratigraphic order.

The evidence for Neanderthal cultural diversity comes from researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who studied remains in the nearby caves of Amud and Kebara, located just 70 km apart.

What they found was a marked difference in how the two Neanderthal groups butchered their prey, including whether they processed the carcasses at the kill site or transported them back to their caves for preparation. There also appear to be differences in how the meat was cooked.

The researchers’ findings are published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.

Creationism Refuted - A Flint Arrowhead Embeded In A Human Rib Is Hurting Creationism

Flint arrowhead embedded in a human rib, found at the Roc de les Orenetes site (Queralbs, Ripollès).

Credit: Maria D. Guillén
/ IPHES-CERCA

Archaeological excavation work in June at the Roc de les Orenetes site (Queralbs, Ripollès).

IPHES-CERCA

Arrowhead embedded in a human rib reveals prehistoric violence in the Pyrenees over 4,000 years ago

Around the time creationists claim Earth was undergoing a global flood — a mass genocide by drowning, supposedly enacted by a deity - a belief based solely on the origin myths of a Bronze Age Middle Eastern pastoralist tribe — people in the Pyrenees were engaged in violent conflict, using bows and arrows. Unlike biblical mythology, this insight is grounded in tangible evidence: a human rib bone with a flint arrowhead still embedded in it. Remarkably, the injury had healed before the individual died, suggesting they survived the attack for some time. The rib was found in a mass grave at Roc de les Orenetes (Queralbs, Girona), alongside the remains of several others, many of whom showed signs of trauma from blunt or sharp weapons, particularly to the head and upper body.

The timing of this violence — dated to between 4,100 and 4,500 years ago — is problematic for biblical literalists. If the Genesis flood had truly occurred as described, these remains should either have been destroyed or buried beneath a thick layer of flood-deposited silt, mixed with the remains of animals and plants not native to the region. Alternatively, one must believe that just a few years after a supposed global reset that reduced humanity to eight survivors, their descendants had multiplied sufficiently to form warring groups in the mountains of what is now northern Spain.

And yet, these individuals show no sign of having heard of Noah, his family, or the god who allegedly saved them. There’s no indication of the monotheistic religion supposedly preserved aboard the ark. If the flood story were true, the moral lesson it was intended to deliver seems to have been forgotten almost immediately, everywhere except among a small group in the Canaanite hills.

This discovery joins a growing list of archaeological findings that contradict the flood narrative. Far from showing a global cataclysm, the archaeological record reveals continuous human habitation before, during, and after the time the flood is supposed to have occurred—with no signs of interruption, no replacement by a Near Eastern culture, and no characteristic flood-deposited sediment layer.

It’s almost as if the global flood never happened. Not only is there no geological or archaeological evidence supporting it, but what evidence we do have consistently contradicts it. This find from the Pyrenees is yet another example.

Creationism Refuted - There May Have Been Two Or More Species Of the Hominin Paranthropus That Interbred

Parathropus robustus

© Roman Yevseyev.

New clues from 2 million-year-old tooth enamel tell us more about an ancient relative of humans

Where exactly the archaic hominin, Paranthropus robustus fits into the human evolutionary tree remains a subject of debate among palaeontologists. This species lived in southern Africa around 2 million years ago. They walked upright, indicating a shared ancestry with the Australopithecus and the later Homo genus. However, their comparatively small brains and massive jaws and teeth suggest a distinct evolutionary path, likely adapted for processing tough, fibrous plant material.

Determining their precise place in our evolutionary history would ideally require DNA analysis—but DNA does not survive long in the warm African climate. To overcome this limitation, a team of African and European researchers from the fields of molecular science, chemistry, and palaeoanthropology turned to a cutting-edge technique known as palaeoproteomics. By analysing proteins recovered from ancient tooth enamel, they were able to infer aspects of the underlying DNA, since the amino acid sequence in proteins is directly determined by the nucleotide sequence in DNA.

Their findings suggest that the story of early hominins is more complex than previously thought. There may have been more than one closely related species, with evidence of interbreeding or genetic divergence followed by remixing — patterns that would later come to characterise the tangled branches of the hominin family tree.

The research team included three postdoctoral scientists from the University of Copenhagen — Palesa P. Madupe, Claire Koenig, and Ioannis Patramanis — who have written about their work and its significance in the open-access magazine The Conversation.

Their findings are also published in Science.

Their article in The Conversation is reproduced here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism In Crisis - A 145-Million-Year-Old Fossil Early Mammal From Dorset, England

Imaginative reconstruction of Novaculadon mirabilis. Likely this animal would have been a little larger than a mouse.

Picture credit: Hamzah Imran.

(L-R) Dr Roy Smith and University of Portsmouth student Ben Weston by the flint bed in Durlston Bay near Swanage, which is the layer of rock which the mammal fossil came out of.

Credit: Ben Weston.

New species of tiny Cretaceous mammal discovered by University of Portsmouth student | University of Portsmouth

When someone grows up being threatened with divine punishment for merely entertaining doubts about the literal truth of the Bible, it's hardly surprising that real-world evidence struggles to break through the psychological defences they've built to protect themselves. This phenomenon is what atheist author and philosopher, Professor Peter Boghossian refers to as doxastic closure — a mental state in which contrary ideas are shut out before they can even be considered.

Former young-Earth creationist and now science advocate and geologist Glenn Morton once described it as like having a “gatekeeper demon” perched on the edge of your consciousness—filtering out any facts or logical arguments that challenge creationist beliefs, while admitting only those misrepresentations of science that appear to support them.

In this mindset, inconvenient realities — such as the discovery of a 145-million-year-old fossil of an early mammal — are unlikely to dent the conviction that the Earth is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old, and that all animals were created in a single supernatural event. In this view, evolution is simply an illusion, no matter how well the evidence supports it.

Even so, for any creationist with the courage and intellectual honesty to read this far, the story of that inconvenient little fossil is well worth exploring. It was discovered by a palaeontology student from the University of Portsmouth, along the Dorset coast of England, and is the subject of a recent paper in Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association.

This find marks the first discovery of a multituberculate jaw at Swanage since Victorian times. Its distinct size and shape confirmed it as a completely new species.

Refuting Creationism - African Hunter-Gatherers obtained Coloured Stones for Tools - 30,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'.

[left caption]

[right caption]

Where did Stone Age hunter-gatherers get the raw material for their tools? | University of Tübingen

The Mgwayiza Valley in Eswatini

The Mgwayiza Valley in Eswatini

300,000 years before the Bronze Age pastoralists who later shaped the origin myths found in the Bible set their tales, South African hunter-gatherers were undertaking long journeys to a valley in what is now Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) in search of the right colour of stone for their tools. This is the conclusion of a study led by Dr Gregor D. Bader from the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen. The stones they collected included red jasper, green chalcedony, and black chert. Researchers examined artefacts from four sites: Hlalakahle, Siphiso, Sibebe, and Nkambeni. Their findings have just been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

What information do you have on the geology of the Mgwayiza Valley, Eswatini? Here’s what current geological and environmental research indicates about the Mgwayiza Valley in Eswatini:

---

1. Ancient Cratonic Bedrock
   
   • The valley lies within the Barberton Greenstone Belt, part of the Kaapvaal Craton - one of Earth’s oldest, stable geological units, dating back 3.6–2.5 billion years (1).
   • Bedrock comprises metamorphosed sedimentary volcanic sequences (Onverwacht, Fig Tree, Moodies series) alongside ancient granites such as the Lochiel Granite (~3 billion years old) (2).
   
   

   ---

   
   
2. Landscape & Relief Formation
   • Differential erosion of ironstones, quartzites, soapstones, and dolerite dykes has sculpted the region’s rugged scenery, forming commanding ridges (e.g. Ngwenya, Silotfwane) and valleys like Mgwayiza (2).
   • The southern escarpment serves as a critical hydrological catchment, feeding multiple rivers (Motjane, Ngwenya, Nkomati), with ongoing open-pit mining risks to water quality and downstream systems (3).
   
   

   ---

   
   
3. Green Chert Resources & Mining
   • Green chert, a cryptocrystalline quartz variant, is abundant and actively mined at the head of the valley. Michael Lee Enterprises holds a controversial mining licence, while environmental assessments have downplayed both ecological and geological significance (4).
   • Local EIA objections critique inadequate geological data—reports lack independent surveys verifying chert deposit size and longevity, with some geologists suggesting only a 7‑year mine life instead of the claimed 173 years (5).
   
   

   ---

   
   
4. Archaeological & Scientific Value
   • Geological uniqueness goes hand‑in‑hand with archaeological significance—evidence of Middle and Later Stone Age human activity exists, underscoring the valley’s cultural and lithic importance (6).
   • Scientists view the region as ideal for examining early Earth crust, sedimentary processes, and early life—factors that make its preservation scientifically vital (7).
   
   

   ---

   
   
5. Conservation & Risk Analysis
   • As part of the Malolotja Nature Reserve (incl. Mgwayiza Range), this area is a global biodiversity hotspot. It supports rainforest gorges, abundant endemic flora and fauna, and serves as an ecological transition zone (3).
   • Critics argue mining may degrade unique microhabitats, disrupt water systems, and potentially degrade the site’s eligibility for UNESCO World Heritage listing (4).
   
   

---

Summary

Mgwayiza Valley showcases a rare combination of ancient Archean geological formations, specific mined resources (green chert), and rich ecological and archaeological overlays. This makes it both scientifically precious and environmentally sensitive. While mining continues, environmental and geological assessments are contested, with concerns over incomplete data and potential irreversible damage.

---

The research is also summarised in an official press release from the University of Tübingen.

Where did Stone Age hunter-gatherers get the raw material for their tools?

---

International research team from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Nature Research Society finds early humans in southern Africa traveled long distances to get the right stone color

---

A new study has shown that as early as the Stone Age, people in Africa traveled long distances to procure colorful stone, forming the raw material for the manufacture of tools. The study was led by Dr. Gregor D. Bader from the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen. The researchers investigated worked stone tools from sites up to 40,000 years old and natural rock deposits in what is now the Kingdom of Eswatini on the borders of South Africa and Mozambique, formerly Swaziland. They found that thousands of years ago, hunter-gatherers traveled between 30 and a hundred kilometers to collect certain rock materials with striking colors, such as red jasper, green chalcedony and black chert. The study has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

In order to reconstruct the movements and migrations of early humans, it helps to look at entire landscapes, so the international research team included several sites with tools and potential sources of raw materials in its study. "Eswatini, with the collections of the National Museum in Lobamba, provided good conditions for this. Artifacts from numerous archaeological sites are kept there," Gregor Bader says. In their study, the researchers examined stone artifacts from the four sites of Hlalakahle, Siphiso, Sibebe and Nkambeni.

By working closely with Dr. Brandi MacDonald from the research reactor in Missouri, USA, Bader's team used neutron activation analysis to determine the origin of the stones. In this process, the stone samples are irradiated with neutrons, resulting in an interaction between the atomic nuclei in the sample and the neutrons. In this process, the resulting products and the radiation released reveal the quantitative composition of the stone sample, the elements it contains and their isotopes, which are similar atoms of different masses. The specific pattern – in research this is also referred to as a geochemical fingerprint – is characteristic of stone materials of different types and their respective places of origin. “Although the method is destructive, only tiny sample quantities are required and the results are excellent,” Bader explains. “By comparing the analysis patterns of the stone used and the rocks found in the region, we can pinpoint the origin of the raw stone.”

Preference shifts to red jasper

Natural outcrop of red jasper in the Mgwayiza Valley, Eswatini

Man-made tools made of green chalcedony and red jasper from the sites had the same geochemical fingerprint as corresponding rock deposits in the Mgwayjza Valley, 20 to a hundred kilometers away. "We have calculated whether the stones used may have been transported via the local Komati and Mbuluzi rivers. However, this could only have happened as far as Hlalakahle, and the other three sites of Siphiso, Sibebe and Nkambeni are a long way from there. Even if we assume that the hunter-gatherers took the shortest routes, we still find considerable distances between the rock deposits and the places where the stones were used. In addition, an exchange of materials with other early human groups is conceivable," says Bader. The stones were transported over long distances. "Colorful and shiny materials seemed attractive to early humans; they often used them for their tools. We can only speculate as to whether the colors had a symbolic meaning."

What is particularly interesting is the finding that color preferences shifted over time, says Bader. While black and white chert and green chalcedony were frequently used in the Middle Stone Age in Africa 40,000 to 28,000 years ago, red jasper was particularly popular in the later Stone Age around 30,000 to 2,000 years ago. “Both colors occurred close together in the same valley and in the same river deposits, so we can assume a deliberate selection of different materials at different times,” says Bader.

Publication: Gregor D. Bader, Christian Sommer, Jörg Linstädter, Dineo P. Masia, Matthias A. Blessing, Bob Forrester, Brandi L. MacDonald: Decoding hunter-gatherer-knowledge and selective choice of lithic raw materials during the Middle and Later Stone Age in Eswatini. Journal of Archaeological Science, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2025.106302

Highlights

• We successfully traced MSA and LSA chert stone tools to their source in Eswatini using Neutron Activation Analysis.
• Green and red chert varieties were transported by hunter gatherers between 20 and up to 100 km distance.
• We observed different preferences for raw materials during the LSA compared to the MSA.

Abstract
Reconstructing past movement and mobility patterns requires a landscape-scale approach with knowledge of potential raw material sources and, ideally, multiple archaeological sites. Building on legacy collections in the Lobamba Museum in Eswatini and the identification of primary lithic raw material outcrops through landscape survey, we can provide scenarios of raw material provisioning for hunter-gatherers in Eswatini over the past 40 000 years. We used Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) to refine the terminology as the three ‘chert’ varieties from the archaeological sites Hlalakahle, Siphiso, Sibebe and Nkambeni are more precisely described as red jasper, green chalcedony and black chert. We were able to identify the primary outcrops for both red jasper and the green chalcedony. Using a least cost path (LCP) analysis together with hydrological and geomorphometric estimates of clast transport in relevant rivers, we reconstructed potential transportation routes of raw material and infer likely provisioning scenarios. During the final Middle Stone Age (MSA), red jasper occurs rarely or is absent in archaeological assemblages, while green chalcedony and other chert variants are frequently observed. This is despite the source of red jasper occurring near the green chalcedony outcrop. During the Later Stone Age (LSA), the red jasper, and a red chert variant of unknown provenance appear more frequently, indicating different raw material provisioning choices.

1. Introduction
Reconstructing hunter-gatherer mobility is crucial to understanding human behavior, their relation and interaction with the landscape, and selective choices regarding natural resources. As stated by Close (Close, 2000, p. 50) “The act of moving is an ephemeral thing, which may or may not leave any material trace in the archaeological record. Usually, it does not“. Understanding where people obtained different types of raw materials for the production of tools or pigments, and over which distances they were transported, offers the opportunity to find these rare traces of past movements or social networks. In southern Africa, several attempts have been made using mineralogical and geochemical characterization of lithic raw materials such as silcrete (Nash et al., 2013, 2022) and earth mineral pigments (ochre) (Dayet et al., 2016; McGrath et al., 2022.1), mostly related to the Middle Stone Age (MSA ∼300 000–28 000) (e.g. Bader et al., 2022.2a, Bader et al., 2022.3b, Bader et al., 2022.4c; McBrearty and Brooks, 2000.1; Wadley, 2015). Recently, Mackay and colleagues (2021) provided a coherent macroscopic study of the Still Bay technocomplex in the Doring River catchment area, where they demonstrated that bifacial Still Bay points (∼77–70ka) from varying raw materials were regularly transported over fairly long distances between 30 and 60 km. Other than the work of Mackay et al., most studies on raw material provenance are site-specific and thus offer only a narrow window towards an understanding of human mobility, migration, and potential networks of exchange. In terms of lithic provenance studies in South Africa, there has been an almost exclusive focus on silcrete, which limits the geographic range of such studies to the Cape coastal belt where this material naturally occurs. Masia (2022.5) is an exception, offering a comprehensive analysis of different raw material varieties from Olieboomspoort Rock Shelter and Mwulu's Cave in Limpopo based on a combination of macroscopic and microscopic characterizations coupled with X-ray fluorescence, thin section petrography, and Inductive Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry.

The most common lithic raw materials used by prehistoric knappers for stone tool production during the MSA and the Later Stone Age (LSA ∼30 – 2ka) of southernmost Africa are silcrete, quartzite, quartz, dolerite, rhyolite and hornfels, depending on the region. Other materials such as opalines, chalcedony or jasper are often grouped under the umbrella terms chert or crypto-crystalline silicates, although the latter requires microscopic investigations. Those materials naturally occur in diverse waxy lustres, colors ranging from red, orange, and grey to black, yellow and green. These variations are driven by distinct formation processes, post depositional alterations and specific elemental concentrations. It is surprising, therefore, that these materials have not yet been the subject of geochemical provenance studies in southern Africa.

1.1. Eswatini study area
Archaeological research in Eswatini started in the 1950s with Johnny Masson conducting intensive surveys and some small-scale excavations at sites like Nyonyane Rock Shelter (Bader et al., 2021.1). Peter Beaumont conducted multiple excavations in the late 1960s, the most famous revealing the oldest ochre mine in the world, Lion Cavern (Boshier and Beaumont, 1972; Dart and Beaumont, 1969). All the material from his excavations is currently stored in the McGregor Museum in Kimberley (Northern Cape, South Africa), but the repatriation process has recently started. Between the late 1970s and 1989, David Price Williams undertook a large-scale archaeological investigation of Eswatini. He founded the Swaziland Archaeological Research Association (SARA) and conducted excavations at important sites such as Sibebe (Bader et al., 2022.2a; Price Williams, 1981), Siphiso (Barham, 1989a) and Nyonyane (Barham, 1989a, 1989.1b), as well as on multiple open-air sites (Price Williams et al., 1982). Since 2016, new archaeological investigations have been undertaken in the country by our joint research team consisting of Swazi, European, South African, Canadian, and American researchers, and SARA has been resurrected. The major achievements of this new episode of research have been the scientific curation of the Price Williams collection in the Eswatini National Museum (Lobamba) supported by the German Archaeological Institute, a re-investigation of the MSA assemblages from Sibebe in the highveld (Bader et al., 2022.2a), a large-scale ochre provenance study based on Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA), and the redating of Lion Cavern using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) (MacDonald et al., 2024). As a direct consequence of the curatorial work in the National Museum, we have access to the assemblages from every site excavated in the country under David Price Williams.

With permission from the Eswatini National Trust Commission (ENTC), we undertook a 10-day expedition to the Mgwayiza Valley within the Malolotja Nature Reserve at the western border of Eswatini to South Africa in 2021. Following the advice of local informants, we went there to find a green chert mine representing a potential source for macroscopically similar material found in several assemblages of the Price Williams Collection, e.g. Hlalakahle or Sibebe. We found the green chert mine on the first day of the expedition, high up at the northernmost extension of the Mgwyiza Valley (Fig. 1, Fig. 2). On the third day, we found several outcrops of a red chert variety up on the cliffs of the western mountain ridge (Fig. 3). Finally, we also surveyed the Mgwayiza stream and located secondary deposits of a black chert variety in the form of big river pebbles. Based on the geomorphology of the area, the primary outcropping of this black chert can only originate from upstream. The green and red chert varieties are macroscopically distinct, and, based on our observation of the Price Williams collection, we were convinced that these materials were used at different times by prehistoric knappers. We took multiple samples from various sections on each of the chert outcrops and recorded GPS coordinates. These archaeological investigations took place at just the right time and represented the last opportunity before permission for green chert mining was granted to a commercial mining company in 2023. Today, the green chert mine has been irretrievably destroyed.

Fig. 1. Map of Eswatini and the locations of archaeological sites and lithic sources mentioned in the text.

---

Fig. 2. (a) View of the Mgwayiza valley; (b, c) Green chalcedony outcrop. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

---

Fig. 3. (a) View of the Mgwayiza valley; (b) detail of red jasper outcrop with white quartz veins; (c) knapped materials. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

Bader, Gregor D.; Sommer, Christian; Linstädter, Jörg; Masia, Dineo P.; Blessing, Matthias A.; Forrester, Bob
Decoding hunter-gatherer-knowledge and selective choice of lithic raw materials during the Middle and Later Stone Age in Eswatini Journal of Archaeological Science 180 106302 (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2025.106302

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Findings like these present a serious challenge to creationist narratives, particularly the belief that humans were created in their present form only a few thousand years ago. The archaeological evidence from the Mgwayiza Valley—showing that Stone Age hunter-gatherers in southern Africa were selectively sourcing coloured stone for tool-making around 40,000 years ago—demonstrates that Homo sapiens were behaving in symbolically rich, cognitively sophisticated ways long before the biblical timeline would allow for human existence at all.

This kind of long-distance transport and selective use of materials reflects advanced planning, deep environmental knowledge, and cultural traditions. Such behaviours are the product of gradual cognitive evolution, not sudden appearance or divine design.

In addition, the ancient geology of the region—formed billions of years ago as part of the Kaapvaal Craton—further undermines any notion of a young Earth. These formations, and the archaeological layers associated with them, simply cannot be reconciled with claims of a global flood just a few thousand years ago or with any literal reading of Genesis.

As always, the evidence supports a world that is deep in time, shaped by natural processes, and inhabited by humans who have evolved, adapted, and innovated for tens of thousands of years. It is a story not of sudden creation, but of deep history—painstakingly uncovered, layer by layer.