Creationism in Crisis - A Spiny-Legged Arachnid From Over 300 Million Years Before 'Creation Week' - Giving Creationists Nightmares

Fossilized Douglassarachne acanthopoda,

Credit: Paul Selden

Reconstruction of the 308-million-year-old arachnid Douglassarachne acanthopoda from the famous Mazon Creek locality.

Credit: Paul Selden

Ancient arachnid from coal forests of America stands out for its spiny legs | KU News

The technical term for the fear of learning that creationists seem to suffer from, is 'sophophobia' (from the Greek for knowledge or wisdom (sophia) and fear (phobia)). Their other manifest fears are 'atelophobia' (literally, a fear of being wrong) and theophobia (fear of gods).

Combine those acute anxiety disorders with arachnophobia (fear of arachnids or more precisely spiders) and sesquipedalophobia (fear of long words) and you can begin to understand why creationists can never be induced to read science papers like this one, which describes a fossilised arachnid with heavily-armoured, spiky legs from about 308 million years ago, that scientists have named Douglassarachne acanthopoda.

If anything is designed to deter creationists from reading about it, it is a fearsome arachnid with a long name that would make any creationists imaginary 'friend' really angry if they learned about it and might even make them wonder if they could be wrong. What could be more terrifying for a creationist?

So, creationists should either stop reading now, or find a responsible adult to be with them, because this describes how and where this 308 million-year-old fossil was found and how it fits in with what we know of the evolution of the arachnids, which includes spiders, mites, harvestmen, tics and the sister group, scorpions.

The fossil was found in shale in a coalmine spoil tip at Mazon Creek, Illinois, USA by palaeontologists Paul Selden from the University of Kansas and the Natural History Museum of London and Jason Dunlop from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. They have written up their discovery in an open access paper in the Journal of Palaeontology and describe it in a University of Kansas news release:

Creationism in Crisis - Dinosaurs Evolved Warm-Bloodedness 180 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artist’s impression of a dromaeosaur, a type of feathered theropod, in the snow. This raptor was a relative of Velociraptor.

Davide Bonadonna/Universidade

First ‘warm-blooded’ dinosaurs may have emerged 180 million years ago | UCL News - UCL – University College London

Of all the different orders of living organisms' only mammals and birds today are warm-blooded, i.e., they are able to maintain a body temperature, within a certain range of ambient temperatures, by either producing heat or losing it, as necessary.

It might be thought that this indicates that the ability evolved in a common ancestor but of the ancestors of birds, the evidence suggests that many dinosaurs were cold-blooded like today's reptiles, and mammals are descendants of an earlier, pre-dinosaurian reptiles, so these similar processes for maintaining the body temperature may be more a matter of convergence than common ancestry.

Do mammals and birds use the same method to maintain their body temperature, and if not, how do they differ? Mammals and birds both maintain their body temperatures through endothermy, meaning they generate and regulate heat internally to keep their body temperatures stable. However, there are differences in how they achieve this due to variations in their physiology and behaviors. Here’s an overview of the similarities and differences:

Similarities in Temperature Regulation

1. Metabolic Heat Production:
   • Both mammals and birds generate heat through metabolic processes. This involves breaking down food to produce energy, with heat being a byproduct.
2. Insulation:
   • Both groups have evolved insulating layers to retain heat. Mammals have fur or hair, while birds have feathers. These layers trap air and provide a barrier against the cold.
3. Shivering Thermogenesis:
   • Both can generate additional heat through shivering, which involves rapid muscle contractions that produce heat.
4. Behavioral Adjustments:
   • Both mammals and birds engage in behaviors to manage their temperature, such as seeking shade or shelter, sunning themselves, or altering their activity levels based on the ambient temperature.

Differences in Temperature Regulation

1. Physiological Mechanisms:
   • Sweating and Panting: Mammals often use sweating and panting to cool down. Sweat glands secrete moisture that evaporates, taking heat away from the body. Dogs, for instance, pant to evaporate moisture from their respiratory tract. Birds, on the other hand, do not sweat. Instead, they often rely on a behavior called gular fluttering, where they rapidly move the skin in their throat to increase evaporation and cool down.
   • Brown Adipose Tissue (BAT): Many mammals, especially small ones and those living in cold environments, have brown adipose tissue that generates heat through non-shivering thermogenesis. Birds lack this type of tissue.
2. Heat Exchange Systems:
   • Countercurrent Heat Exchange: Birds have highly efficient countercurrent heat exchange systems in their legs and feet, which minimize heat loss. Blood vessels are arranged such that warm arterial blood warms the cooler venous blood returning to the body, conserving heat. While some mammals also use countercurrent heat exchange (such as in extremities), the systems are particularly pronounced and crucial in birds.
3. Basal Metabolic Rate:
   • Birds generally have higher basal metabolic rates compared to mammals of similar size, which means they produce more heat relative to their body size. This higher metabolic rate is partly due to the high energy demands of flight.
4. Hibernation and Torpor:
   • Many mammals can enter states of torpor or hibernation to conserve energy and reduce body temperature during periods of cold or food scarcity. While some birds also enter torpor, true hibernation is rare in birds. Instead, some birds migrate to warmer regions to avoid cold weather.

Behavioral Differences

1. Migration:
   • Migration is a key strategy for many birds to avoid extreme temperatures. While some mammals also migrate, it is far more common and pronounced in birds.
2. Nesting and Roosting:
   • Birds often build insulated nests or seek out warm roosting spots to maintain body temperature, especially during breeding seasons or cold nights. Mammals, on the other hand, may use burrows, dens, or other insulated shelters.

In summary, while both mammals and birds use endothermic processes to maintain their body temperatures, the specific physiological and behavioral strategies they employ can differ significantly due to their distinct evolutionary paths and physical characteristics.

A team of researchers led by University College London (UCL) and Universidade de Vigo, Spain, scientists has concluded that dinosaurs may have evolved warm-bloodedness as long ago as 180 million years ago, some 50 million years after the first dinosaurs evolved.

They concluded this after relating the evolutionary tree of the dinosaurs throughout the Mesozoic era to climate and geographical changes over the same time period and examining 1000 dinosaur fossils.

Their findings are the subject of an open access paper in the Cell Press journal, Current Biology. Their work is also explained in a UCL news release:

The ability to regulate body temperature, a trait all mammals and birds have today, may have evolved among some dinosaurs early in the Jurassic period about 180 million years ago, suggests a new study led by UCL and University of Vigo researchers.

In the early 20^th century, dinosaurs were considered slow-moving, “cold-blooded” animals like modern-day reptiles, relying on heat from the sun to regulate their temperature. Newer discoveries indicate some dinosaur types were likely capable of generating their own body heat but when this adaptation occurred is unknown.

The new study, published in the journal Current Biology, looked at the spread of dinosaurs across different climates on Earth throughout the Mesozoic Era (the dinosaur era lasting from 230 to 66 million years ago), drawing on 1,000 fossils, climate models and the geography of the period, and dinosaurs’ evolutionary trees.

The research team found that two of the three main groupings of dinosaurs, theropods (such as T. rex and Velociraptor) and ornithischians (including relatives of the plant eaters Stegosaurus and Triceratops), moved to colder climates during the Early Jurassic, suggesting they may have developed endothermy (the ability to internally generate heat) at this time. In contrast, sauropods, the other main grouping which includes the Brontosaurus and the Diplodocus, kept to warmer areas of the planet.

Previous research has found traits linked to warm-bloodedness among ornithischians and theropods, with some known to have had feathers or proto-feathers, insulating internal heat.

Our analyses show that different climate preferences emerged among the main dinosaur groups around the time of the Jenkyns event 183 million years ago, when intense volcanic activity led to global warming and extinction of plant groups. At this time, many new dinosaur groups emerged. The adoption of endothermy, perhaps a result of this environmental crisis, may have enabled theropods and ornithischians to thrive in colder environments, allowing them to be highly active and sustain activity over longer periods, to develop and grow faster and produce more offspring.

Dr Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, first author
Centro de Investigación Mariña
Departamento de Ecoloxía e Bioloxía Animal
Universidade de Vigo, Vigo, Spain

And Department of Earth Sciences
University College London, London, UK.

Theropods also include birds and our study suggests that birds’ unique temperature regulation may have had its origin in this Early Jurassic epoch. Sauropods, on the other hand, which stayed in warmer climates, grew to a gigantic size at around this time – another possible adaptation due to environmental pressure. Their smaller surface area to volume ratio would have meant these larger creatures would lose heat at a reduced rate, allowing them to stay active for longer.

Dr Sara Varela, Co-author
Centro de Investigación Mariña
Departamento de Ecoloxía e Bioloxía Animal
Universidade de Vigo, Vigo, Spain.

In the paper, the researchers also investigated if sauropods might have stayed at lower latitudes to eat richer foliage unavailable in colder polar regions. Instead, they found sauropods seemed to thrive in arid, savannah-like environments, supporting the idea that their restriction to warmer climates was more related to higher temperature and then to a more cold-blooded physiology. During that time, polar regions were warmer, with abundant vegetation. The Jenkyns event occurred after lava and volcanic gasses erupted from long fissures in the Earth’s surface, covering large areas of the planet.

This research suggests a close connection between climate and how dinosaurs evolved. It sheds new light on how birds might have inherited a unique biological trait from dinosaur ancestors and the different ways dinosaurs adapted to complex and long-term environmental changes.

Dr Juan L. Cantalapiedra, co-author
Departamento de Paleobiología
Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (CSIC), Madrid, Spain.

The study involved researchers from UCL, University of Vigo, the University of Bristol and the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, and received funding from the European Research Council, the Spanish Ministry of Research, the Natural Environment Research Council and the Royal Society.

Highlights

• Warm-blooded dinosaurs flourished in varied climates.
• Dinosaur groups adapted differently to climate, suggesting diverse thermophysiologies.
• Endothermy in theropods and possibly ornithischians evolved by the Early Jurassic
• Sauropod niche conservatism suggests higher thermal sensitivity and poikilothermy.

Graphical Abstract

Summary

A fundamental question in dinosaur evolution is how they adapted to long-term climatic shifts during the Mesozoic and when they developed environmentally independent, avian-style acclimatization, becoming endothermic.^1,2 The ability of warm-blooded dinosaurs to flourish in harsher environments, including cold, high-latitude regions,^3,4 raises intriguing questions about the origins of key innovations shared with modern birds,^5,6 indicating that the development of homeothermy (keeping constant body temperature) and endothermy (generating body heat) played a crucial role in their ecological diversification.⁷ Despite substantial evidence across scientific disciplines (anatomy,⁸ reproduction,⁹ energetics,¹⁰ biomechanics,¹⁰ osteohistology,¹¹ palaeobiogeography,¹² geochemistry,^13,14 and soft tissues^15,16,17), a consensus on dinosaur thermophysiology remains elusive.^{1,12,15,17,18,19} Differential thermophysiological strategies among terrestrial tetrapods allow endotherms (birds and mammals) to expand their latitudinal range (from the tropics to polar regions), owing to their reduced reliance on environmental temperature.²⁰ By contrast, most reptilian lineages (squamates, turtles, and crocodilians) and amphibians are predominantly constrained by temperature in regions closer to the tropics.²¹ Determining when this macroecological pattern emerged in the avian lineage relies heavily on identifying the origin of these key physiological traits. Combining fossils with macroevolutionary and palaeoclimatic models, we unveil distinct evolutionary pathways in the main dinosaur lineages: ornithischians and theropods diversified across broader climatic landscapes, trending toward cooler niches. An Early Jurassic shift to colder climates in Theropoda suggests an early adoption of endothermy. Conversely, sauropodomorphs exhibited prolonged climatic conservatism associated with higher thermal conditions, emphasizing temperature, rather than plant productivity, as the primary driver of this pattern, suggesting poikilothermy with a stronger dependence on higher temperatures in sauropods.

Chiarenza, Alfio Alessandro; Cantalapiedra, Juan L.; Jones, Lewis A.; Gamboa, Sara; Galván, Sofía; Farnsworth, Alexander J.; Valdes, Paul J.; Sotelo, Graciela; Varela, Sara
Early Jurassic origin of avian endothermy and thermophysiological diversity in dinosaurs Current Biology (2024) DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.04.051

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

Dinosaurs have always been a problem for creationists because their existence betrays the fact that the age of Earth as calculated from the Bible geneaolgies is wildly inaccurate by several orders of magnitude, but this paper piles on the agony by showign a clear evolutionary pathway from poikilothermy (cold-bloodedness) to homeothermy (warm-bloodedness) supported by geological, geographical and climatological evidence sometime around 180 million years before the biblical 'Creation Week'.

And it goes without saying that, being biologists, the authors of the paper show no sign of abandoning the TOE in favour of the childish notion of magic creation by an unproven supernatural entity. Indeed, they could scarcely be considered scientists if they included magic and superstition in their explanation for natural phenomena like creationists pseud-scientists are obliged to for contractual reasons.

---

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Creationism in Crisis - The Origin of Modern Plants - 550 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Microscope image of Zygnema circumcarinatum, a filamentous alga with a star-shaped chloroplast.

Photo: Dr Tatyana Darienko

Green planet - from small beginnings 550 million years ago.

Genomes of “star algae” shed light on origin of plants - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

One of the prerequisites for irreducible complexity to emerge naturally without needing a designer is for the components to be there either as part of a pre-existing structure, or as the result of neutral mutations that have been retained because there is no selection pressure to get rid of them.

This was the situation the first land plants found themselves in about 550 million years ago when gene and genome duplication had created redundant genes that could mutate, diversify, and eventually provide the complex metabolic machinery to enable the marine algae to colonize the land and so beginning the greening of the planet. The result was the appearance of a sudden, one-off event that created the ancestor of land plants.

This is the conclusion of a large international team led by scientists from the Universities of Göttingen and Nebraska–Lincoln, who have published their findings, open access, in the journal Nature Genetics and explained it in a University of Göttingen news release:

Creationism in Crisis - A Newly-Discovered Mammal From Colorado - From 65 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

[left caption]

[Right caption/credit]

OFFICIAL Denver Museum of Nature & Science : Colorado Discovery: Museum Scientists Identify New Species

Apart from some feathered dinosaurs that were destined to become birds, one of the few land vertebrates to survive the catastrophe that wiped out the remaining large dinosaurs and marine reptiles at the K-Pg boundary, was to go one to give rise to the entire mammalian order. They were small fury, probably nocturnal insectivores.

The fossil of one of these, from 65 million years ago (at about the time of the K-Pg mass extinction), has recently been discovered by Denver Museum of Nature scientists in Colorado, at Corral Bluffs, near Colorado Springs.

According to a press release from Denver Museum of Nature & Science: Denver Museum of Nature & Science researchers are excited to announce the fossil discovery of a species of a 65-million-year-old mammal that was collected in the Corral Bluffs area on the edge of Colorado Springs. The newly discovered species, named Militocodon lydae, is part of a group of animals that gave rise to all modern hoofed mammals, including deer, cows and pigs. The fossil skull and jaws of Militocodon lydae were uncovered from rocks dating back to just after the extinction of the dinosaurs. Roughly the size of a chinchilla, Militocodon lydae provides important clues about the explosive diversification of mammals in the wake of the dinosaur extinction.

Rocks from this interval of time have a notoriously poor fossil record and the discovery and description of a fossil mammal skull is an important step forward in documenting the earliest diversification of mammals after Earth’s last mass extinction.

Dr. Tyler Lyson, co-author
Museum Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology
Department of Earth Sciences
Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Denver, CO, USA.

How and when life rebounded in the aftermath of the extinction of the dinosaurs has been shrouded in mystery due to a poor fossil record. But thanks to an extraordinary discovery of remarkably complete fossils from Corral Bluffs, as well a recently awarded collaborative research grant from the National Science Foundation's Frontier Research in Earth Sciences, Museum scientists and collaborators are now able to paint a vivid picture of how and when life rebounded after Earth’s darkest hour. The study, published in April 2024, was led by Dr. Lucas Weaver, Kent State University, and Jordan Crowell, The Graduate Center, City University of New York. The researchers named the mammal Militocodon lydae in honor of two extraordinary contributors to the Corral Bluffs project: volunteer and retired Colorado Springs teacher Sharon Milito and Museum supporter and champion of Colorado Springs Lyda Hill.

Creationism in Crisis - How Neanderthals Were Burying Their Dead - 65,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

Scientists have produced a remarkable reconstruction of what a Neanderthal woman would have looked like when she was alive. It is based on the flattened, shattered remains of a skull whose bones were so soft when excavated they had the consistency of "a well-dunked biscuit". Researchers first had to strengthen the fragments before reassembling them. Expert palaeoartists then created the 3D model.

BBC Studios

Shanidar Z: what did Neanderthals do with their dead?

Illustrated reconstruction of a Neanderthal man.

Hermann Schaaffhausen, 1888.

65,000 years before creationists believe the Universe existed, and before anatomically-modern humans had migrated out of Africa, a community of Neanderthals were living in a the Shanidar cave in what is now northern Iraq.

These Neanderthals also appear to have used the same cave in which to bury their dead, the skeletons of which are now being excavated to learn more about how these hominins lived.

And the picture emerges of a sophisticated people, very different from the brutal sub-human animals Victorian archaeologists depicted them as when Neanderthal remains were first discovered. Like many Creationists and US white supremacists today, Victorians were so wedded to the idea that modern (European) humans are the pinnacle of creation, that they could not conceive of the idea that there may once have been earlier humans who had anything approaching their level of sophistication.

One of the skeletons is of a man with a disabled arm who was probably deaf and had a head trauma that would have made him disabled and dependent, yet he had lived a long time, showing evidence of care and compassion.

Readers of Jean M. Auel's excellent series of imaginative, but painstakingly researched books about a Homo sapiens girl, Ayala, raised by Neanderthals will probably recognise Mog-ur, the Neanderthal tribal elder and shaman who befriended Ayala from that description...

The burials also suggest a sense of an after-life and care for the dead in that after-life. One skeleton is placed with its head pillowed on its hand presumably to make it comfortable.

One of the assembly of (female) skull fragments has been carefully removed from the rock matrix in which it was embedded and used to reconstruct her skull and then build a 3D reconstruction of how she would have appeared in life, for a BBC Netflix documentary on the excavation of the 35 individuals in the cave.

The work is the subject of an open access paper in the journal Antiquity and of a Cambridge University news article by Fred Lewsey:

Creationism in Crisis - How Sabretoothed Cats Were Avoiding Broken Teeth - Before 'Creation Week'

Saber-toothed cat. Smilodon fatalis

Massimo Molinero

Smilodon fatalis skull

The double-fanged adolescence of saber-toothed cats | Berkeley

As an example of daft, Heath-Robinson design, the teeth of the North American sabre-toothed cat, Smilodon fatalis is a good as it gets. Obviously, having huge canine teeth with which to rip the throat out of large prey and so subdue it quickly, has some advantages, but the trouble is that the longer they are, the more likely they are to break, and broken teeth for a Smilodon could well have meant starvation and death. There needs to be a trade-off between ever-bigger teeth and death due to breakages.

And typical of creationism’s daft designer is the Heath-Robinson solution to a simple problem - you've guessed it, another layer of complexity. Instead of losing their 'milk teeth' like many mammals do as their head and mouth grows, Smilodon kept its milk teeth to act as a sort of splint for the adult Sabre tooth, reducing the lateral strain on the adult teeth until the adult was about 30 months old, by which time it had probably learned how to minimise lateral stress on its teeth.

This was discovered by Paleontologist Jack Tseng, associate professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, who has published his findings in an open access paper in the journal The Anatomical Record. It is also explained in a University of California news release by Robert Sanders:

Creationism in Crisis - How Interspecies Rivalry Gave Rise To Multiple Hominin Species

A cast of the skull of Homo Heidelbergensis

Credit: The Duckworth Laboratory

Australopithecus sediba

Interspecies competition led to even more forms of ancient human – defying evolutionary trends in vertebrates | University of Cambridge

The gulf between science and creationism continues to widen with the publication of an open access research paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution in which the two authors argue that early hominins speciates as a result of inter-species competition, but not like most vertebrates through competition for niches, but because the evolution of technology enabled species to evolve quickly into new niches with what amounts to memetic evolution, i.e., evolution of cultures which, in an intelligent species can occur much more quickly than the slow, genetic evolution in other species.

In this respect the pattern of early hominin evolution was more like that of beetles evolving on an island.

Creationists, by contrast, as still stuck desperately looking for evidence that all humans are descended from a single pair of humans who were magically made from dirt just a few thousand years ago.

The researchers, Laura A. van Holstein and Robert A. Foley of the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, explain their research in a Cambridge University new release:

Creationism in Crisis - How Plant Leaves Were Evolving 201 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artistic - and speculative - reconstruction of the Furcula granulifer

© Dolev Fabrikant.

Fossil leaves of Furcula granulifer from the Late Triassic, Greenland, scale bar = 5cm.

© Mario Coiro, Leyla Seyfullah

Seed ferns: Plants experimented with reticulated leaf venation 201 million years ago

Check any plan leaf and it will normally be one of two types - the monocotyledons with parallel leaf veins and the dicotyledons with a network of veins organised around a central vein with regular branches.

But this has not always been so. As a team of researchers at Vienna University, in collaboration with colleagues from the National Museum of Natural History in Stockholm and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, have discovered, plants seem to have evolved the network pattern of leaf several times over the course of their evolution with most of them becoming extinct fairly quickly on an evolutionary timescale.

Their findings are published, open access, in the journal New Phytologist and explained in a University of Vienna news release:

Creationism in Crisis - When Earth Was Flooded, According To Creationist Mythology, Australian Aboriginal People Were Making Pots And Campfires And Sailing To Pacific Islands

View across excavation to Blue Lagoon and reef flat.

Photograph: Ian J. McNiven.

Aboriginal people made pottery and sailed to distant offshore islands thousands of years before Europeans arrived

Sometimes you wonder whether creationists ever stop to think whether what they believe is rational, then you realise that most of them are from America where parochial ignorance and cultural chauvinism are the norm. They can believe, for example, that a global flood which left ancient cultures intact and their artifacts just where they left them, and which failed to lay down the predictable global layer of sediment full of jumbled fossils was still a global flood because er... Grand Canyon.

So, news that Australian archaeologists have unearthed potshards from 6,500 years ago in a shell midden which can be accurately dated (unlike potshards), will almost certainly pass unnoticed by the majority of American creationists.

But for those few who are interested in the truth, here is an article by Sean Ulm Sean Ulm, Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures, James Cook University, Ian J. McNiven, Professor of Indigenous Archaeology; Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity & Heritage, Monash University and Kenneth McLean, Director, Walmbaar Aboriginal Corporation, Indigenous Knowledge describing how they found this evidence. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism in Crisis - How Multicellularity Evolved - With New Genetic Information

Brown Algae

Evolved within past 200,000 years

Green Alaga, Stigeoclonium sp.

Via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Macroalgal deep genomics illuminate multiple paths to aquatic, photosynthetic multicellularity: Molecular Plant

What are the main types of algae and how do they differ? Algae are classified into several main groups based on their characteristics, including pigmentation, cellular structure, and mode of reproduction. The main types of algae include:

1. Diatoms (Bacillariophyta):
   • Diatoms are single-celled algae characterized by their unique glass-like silica cell walls called frustules.
   • They are typically found in freshwater and marine environments.
   • Diatoms are important primary producers and play a significant role in the global carbon cycle.
2. Green Algae (Chlorophyta):
   • Green algae encompass a diverse group of algae that are mostly freshwater but also found in marine and terrestrial environments.
   • They contain chlorophyll a and b, giving them a green color, similar to land plants.
   • Green algae can be unicellular, colonial, filamentous, or multicellular, with a wide range of morphologies.
3. Red Algae (Rhodophyta):
   • Red algae are predominantly marine algae, although some species can also be found in freshwater.
   • They contain pigments like chlorophyll a and various accessory pigments, including phycobiliproteins, giving them shades of red, pink, or purple.
   • Red algae often have complex multicellular structures and are important contributors to coral reef ecosystems.
4. Brown Algae (Phaeophyta):
   • Brown algae are primarily marine algae, commonly found in cold-water habitats.
   • They contain chlorophyll a and c, along with fucoxanthin, which gives them their characteristic brown color.
   • Brown algae can range from small filamentous forms to large, complex seaweeds like kelps.
5. Blue-Green Algae (Cyanobacteria or Cyanophyta):
   • Despite being called algae, cyanobacteria are actually prokaryotic organisms, classified within the domain Bacteria.
   • They are photosynthetic and often form colonies or filaments.
   • Cyanobacteria can be found in diverse habitats, including freshwater, marine environments, soil, and even extreme environments like hot springs.
   • Some cyanobacteria can produce toxins under certain conditions, leading to harmful algal blooms (HABs) and posing risks to aquatic life and human health.

These main types of algae differ in their pigmentation, cellular structure, habitat preferences, and ecological roles. While some are beneficial and essential for ecosystem health, others can become problematic under certain conditions, such as nutrient pollution or climate change. Understanding the characteristics and ecological functions of different types of algae is crucial for managing and conserving aquatic ecosystems.

Today’s refutation of creationists dogma comes in the form of an open access paper just published in the Cell Press journal, Molecular Plant. Research biologists have revealed how multicellularity evolved several times independently in algae, and how many of the new genes were acquired initially by viruses.

This gives the lie to creationist claims that new information can't arise in the genome because of some half-baked confusion of information with energy and a nonsensical assumption that new genetic information would need to come from nothing.

And of course, like about 99.99% of the history of life on Earth, it all happened in that very long period of pre-'Creation Week' history between Earth forming in an accretion disc around the sun and creationism's little god creating a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East out of nothing, according to creationist mythology

In information provided by Cell Press ahead of publication, the scientists at New York Abu Dhabi University and Technology Innovation Institute, United Arab Emirates, said:

A deep dive into macroalgae genetics has uncovered the genetic underpinnings that enabled macroalgae, or "seaweed," to evolve multicellularity. Three lineages of macroalgae developed multicellularity independently and during very different time periods by acquiring genes that enable cell adhesion, extracellular matrix formation, and cell differentiation, researchers report April 12 in the journal Molecular Plant. Surprisingly, many of these multicellular-enabling genes had viral origins. The study, which increased the total number of sequenced macroalgal genomes from 14 to 124, is the first to investigate macroalgal evolution through the lens of genomics.

This is a big genomic resource that will open the door for many more studies. Macroalgae play an important role in global climate regulation and ecosystems, and they have numerous commercial and ecoengineering applications, but until now, there wasn't a lot of information about their genomes.

Alexandra Mystikou, co-first author
Division of Science and Math
New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Macroalgae live in both fresh and seawater and are complex multicellular organisms with distinct organs and tissues, in contrast to microalgae, which are microscopic and unicellular.

There are three main groups of macroalgae -- red (Rhodophyta), green (Chlorophyta), and brown (Ochrophyta) -- that independently evolved multicellularity at very different times and in very different environmental conditions.

Rhodophytes and Chlorophytes both evolved multicellularity over a billion years ago, while Ochrophytes only became multicellular in the past 200,000 years.

To investigate the evolution of macroalgal multicellularity, the researchers sequenced 110 new macroalgal genomes from 105 different species originating from fresh and saltwater habitats in diverse geographies and climates.

The researchers identified several metabolic pathways that distinguish macroalgae from microalgae, some of which may be responsible for the success of invasive macroalgal species.

Many of these metabolic genes appear to have been donated by algae-infecting viruses, and genes with a viral origin were especially prevalent in the more recently evolved brown algae.

They found that macroalgae acquired many new genes that are not present in microalgae on their road to multicellularity.

For all three lineages, key acquisitions included genes involved in cell adhesion (which enables cells to stick together), cell differentiation (which allows different cells to develop specialized functions), cell communication, and inter-cellular transport.

Many brown algal genes associated with multicellular functions had signature motifs that were only otherwise present in the viruses that infect them. It's kind of a wild theory that's only been hinted at in the past, but from our data it looks like these horizontally transferred genes were critical factors for evolving multicellularity in the brown algae.

David Nelson, co-first author
Division of Science and Math
New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Creationism in Crisis - Another Mystery Solved By Science - Giant Ichthyosaurs From 250 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

A reconstruction of a gigantic ichthyosaur - floating dead on the surface of the ocean.

© Image: Marcello Perillo/University of Bonn

Do some mysterious bones belong to gigantic ichthyosaurs? — University of Bonn

The thing about disagreements in science is that they aren't used as an excuse for persecution and schism, based on the notion that the side with the most power or the most followers wins as though truth can be determined by violence or opinion polls. In science, disagreements lead to discovery because in scientific debate the fact are, or should be, neutral, so they can referee the debate. The side with the evidence wins and the losers graciously accept that they were wrong.

This is the case of the long-standing disagreement in palaeontology over the mystery of giant bones which regularly turn up in deposits on Europe, which were first discovered in 1850 by the British naturalist Samuel Stutchbury, who reported finding a large cylindrical bone in Aust Cliff, near Bristol, UK. Similar fossils have also been found at sites around Europe, including Bonenburg in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany and Provence, France. Stutchbury assumed they were from an extinct crocodile-like land animal, labyrinthodontia, but others disagreed. Other candidates were long-necked sauropods and an as yet unidentified, large dinosaur.

Not the mystery may have been solved by two palaeontologists working at the University of Bonn, Germany. They have published their findings, open access, in the journal PeerJ and explain it in a Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität Bonn news release:

Creationism in Crisis - How An Early Jawless Fish Was Feeding - About 400 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Rhinopteraspis dunensis

Artistic reconstruction - via Wikipedia

Fossil of Rhinopteraspis dunensis

Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany

3D mouth of an ancient jawless fish suggests they were filter-feeders, not scavengers or hunters - University of Birmingham

Today's incidental refutation of creationism comes to us from an international team of palaeontologists led by scientists from the University of Birmingham. They have shown how an early jawless fish was feeding, almost 400 million years before creationism's little pet god decided to create a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, in what creationists refer to as 'Creation Week'.

The researchers have used CT scanning techniques to construct a 3D image of the mouth-parts of Rhinopteraspis dunensis, an early, heavily-armoured boney fish that lived some 380 million years ago.

Creationism in Crisis - Evolution Of Improved Hearing In Mammals - 165 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artist's impression of Feredocodon chowi.

© Chuang Zhao

Reconstruction of Feredocodon chowi (right) and Dianoconodon youngi (left).

© Chuang Zhao

New Fossils Change Thinking on Early Mammal Evolution | AMNH

Some 165 million years before their god created the small flat planet with a dome over it that Creationists love hearing about, early mammals were evolving into modern mammals, complete with the tiny bones called ossicles that are essential for hearing. These three small bones transmit sound across the inner ear to the auditory sense organ, the cochlea.

Changes in the mammalian dentition were key to freeing these parts of the jaw joint, according to an analysis of two Jurassic-era mammal fossils which are the subject of articles in Nature. These analyses fill a gap in our understanding of the evolution of mammalian dentition and provide evidence of the transition from part of the jaw to the auditory ossicles - the stapes, malus and incus.

Like almost all of the history of life on earth, this all happened in the very long 'pre-Creation' age when 99.99% of Earth's history happened. The discovery was made by a research team that included Jin Meng of the American Museum of Natural History. Their findings are explained in an American Museum of Natural History press release.

Creationism in Crisis - Researchers Have Discovered An Essential Step In The Evolution Of Walking

Tiktaalik reconstruction

Tiktaalik, (artist's impression)

In the evolution of walking, the hip bone connected to the rib bones | Eberly College of Science

From the day its discovery was announced, Tiktaalik has been a major embarrassment for creationists because not only does it refute the claim that there are no intermediate forms, but it also belies the claim that the Theory of Evolution can't make predictions.

Not only is it intermediate between fully aquatic lobe-finned fish and terrestrial tetrapod, but its discoverers predicted exactly where it would be found in the geological column and promptly went and found it there, exactly were predicted in Canada's Ellesmere Island.

But that embarrassment is about to become even more acute.

Researchers at Penn State's Eberly College have shown that Tiktaalik's ribs were attached to its pelvis and that fact helped in the evolution of walking. The research team, co-led by Tom Stewart, assistant professor of biology in the Eberly College of Science at Penn State and Neil H Shubin, one of the discoverers of Tiktaalik, have published their findings open access in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). It is also explained in a Penn State Eberly College news release by Sam Sholtis:

Creationism in Crisis - Evolving Horses Trample All Over Creationism

Top: Eohippus
Bottom: Hipparion

Modern Arabian Horse

Top: Miohippus
Bottom: Merychippus

Feral modern horses, Ogden, Utah, USA.

Kelly Lambright via Getty Images

Horses lived in the Americas for millions of years – new research helps paleontologists understand the fossils we’ve found and those that are missing from the record

Those few creationists who understand the science hate the record of horse evolution found in the fossil record because it runs counter to their dogma. It shows progressive change over millions of years from a small five-toed herbivore the size of a dog, through increasing size and a progressive reduction in toes to give the modern horse which walks on the tips if a single digit on each foot.

It is a fossil record which gives the lie to creationist assertions that there are no transitional fossils since each stage is clearly intermediate between its ancestors and its descendants. Moreover, most of the evolutionary history of the horse takes place in the very long period of Earth's history from before 'Creation Week' when creationists dogma says Earth was magicked out of nothing by a magic man made of nothing who then magicked all the animals out of dirt, exactly as they are today without ancestors.

And there is more embarrassment for those creationists who like to imagine Stephen J Gould and Nilse Eldredge somehow refuted Darwinian evolution with 'punctuated equilibrium' because the evolution of the horse in North America is a perfect illustration of how Darwinian evolution can produce a local fossil record that looks like a period of 'equilibrium' followed by rapid, even sudden, change in form.

Horses originally evolved in North America before crossing over the land bridge between Alaska and Siberia into Asia where they underwent allopatric speciation and then became extinct in North America during the last Ice Age. The domesticated descendants of the Asian horse were then reintroduced to North America by European colonists during the Middle Ages and subsequently became feral. Any examination of the fossil record will now show what appears to have been a sudden change from the Pliocene horse to the modern horse around 800 years ago because the Darwinian evolution occurred not locally but in Asia, where the fossil record will show what appears to have been the sudden appearance of a Pliocene horse without ancestors and no clear relationship to anything in the local fauna.

Creationism in Crisis - A Dinosaur Fossil In The 'Wrong' Place - But Not What Creationists Hoped For

Ajnabia odysseus

Artist's impression

Duckbill dinosaur discovery in Morocco – expert unpacks the mystery of how they got there

Here's something to excite creationists!

It's a fossil out of place!

Sadly though, it's not out of place in the geological column - which would falsify evolution - but out of place geographically. It's the fossil of a duck-billed dinosaur in Morocco, North Africa, but it's closest relatives appear to be from Europe, which was a long sea voyage away at the time and no obvious island chain for them to island hop on.

And to add to the mystery, the European duck-billed dinosaurs didn't evolve in Europe, but in North America, so they must have got to Europe somehow.

When the news from science is relentless in its refutation of creationism, it would have been nice to find something to give the poor beleaguered fools a few crumbs of comfort, but it was not to be. This one is just as relentless s all the others.

Creationism in Crisis - Now It's An Ancestral Amphibian from 270 Million Years Before 'Creation Week' - And Another Gap Closes

Fossil skull of Kermitops gratus

Brittany M. Hance, Smithsonian.

Fossil skull of Kermitops gratus

Brittany M. Hance, Smithsonian.

Researchers Name Prehistoric Amphibian Ancestor Discovered in Smithsonian Collection After Kermit the Frog | Smithsonian Institution

Once upon a time, about 10,000 years ago, a magic man made of nothing appeared from nowhere and decided to create a universe that looked like a small flat planet with a dome over it, or so some ignorant Bronze Age pastoralists told their children.

Of course, they were doing their best with what little knowledge they had of the world they lived in and its history, so they filled the gaps in their knowledge and understanding with stories, and of course got it almost entirely and spectacularly wrong.

We know this because, unlike the story-tellers from the fearful infancy of our species, we now have the knowledge and understanding that centuries of careful science has revealed to us - at least those of us with the capacity to learn and understand the science know it. This is why those still unable to believe their mummy and daddy could be wrong about the superstitions they were taught as children but have since learned some science, are increasingly calling the creation stories in the Bible allegorical or metaphorical, while those who have a more objective view dismiss then as the work of ignorant people who knew no better.

Of course, despite herculean mental efforts, none of the creation myth can be forced into an allegory or metaphor for the existence of early proto-amphibians 270 million years before the little domed universe was magicked up out of nothing, and the existence of just such an animal was shown to be a fact of history when it was examined by palaeontologists from George Washington University who examines a fossil in the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and found to be 270-million-year-old fossil of a previously unknown proto-amphibian, which they have named Kermitops gratus after Kermit the Frog.

The three scientists who made this discovery, led by Calvin So, a doctoral student at the Department of Biological Sciences, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA, have pubished their finding open access in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society and explained it in a Smithsonian Museum news release:

Creationism in Crisis - Now It's a Giant Amazon Dolphin from 16 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'!

Type specimen (holotype) of Pebanista yacuruna, including a photo of the specimen and a surface 3D model in dorsal view.

Image: Aldo Benites-Palomino.

Ancient Giant Dolphin Discovered in the Amazon | | UZH

The third in a clutch of very recent papers casually refuting the childish beliefs of the creation cult.

This one concerns a giant freshwater dolphin that inhabited the Amazon 16 million years before creationists think there was a Universe, let alone an Earth with life on it.

Tell me about the Peruvian Amazon 16 million years ago. Around 16 million years ago, during the Middle Miocene epoch, the Peruvian Amazon region would have been significantly different from its present-day appearance. This period falls within the broader geological timeframe known as the Neogene Period, characterized by significant changes in climate and biodiversity.

During this time, the Amazon basin was undergoing a transformation from a relatively dry environment to a more humid and tropical one. The climate was warmer and wetter compared to today, with vast stretches of lush tropical rainforest covering much of the region.

The landscape would have been dominated by dense forests, rich in diverse flora and fauna. Ancient ancestors of many of today's Amazonian species would have been present, including various types of plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, and insects. Megafauna such as giant ground sloths, glyptodonts, and various types of large herbivores and predators may have roamed the area.

The river systems of the Amazon basin would have been different as well, as the Andes Mountains continued to uplift and shape the landscape. However, the basic hydrological structure of the Amazon River and its tributaries would have already been established, providing the necessary water sources for the flourishing ecosystems.

Overall, the Peruvian Amazon 16 million years ago would have been a vibrant and biodiverse ecosystem, albeit with species compositions and environmental conditions differing from those of today due to ongoing geological and climatic changes over millions of years.