How Science Works - Correcting A Mistake With Modern Technology - But It's No Comfort For Creationists

Three-dimensional model of the only known picrodontid skull in top (left) and bottom (right) views. CT scan technology revealed previously unknown bones of the skull (colored on the right) that helped demonstrate that picrodontids are not primates as previously believed.

Figure 1. Three-dimensional models derived from µCT scan data of Zanycteris paleocenus (AMNH 17180) with descriptions and orientations of skeletal elements organized from left to right. (a) Cranium in dorsal and ventral views with basicranial region transparent showing original position of digitally extracted bones. Box illustrates left upper molars rotated into occlusal view with distolingual basin (asterisk) and postprotocingulum (arrow). (b) Three-dimensional model of right petrosal in ventral view, composite line drawing incorporating preserved morphology from right and left petrosal, and composite line drawing with major neurovascular structures; (c) R partial ectotympanic in oblique posterior and ventral view; (d) R partial alisphenoid/basisphenoid in lateral and ventral view. Scale bars, 1 mm. Abbreviations: C = upper canine; C a = upper canine alveolus; M = upper molar; P a = upper premolar alveolus.

New Research Sheds Light on an Old Fossil, Solving an Evolutionary Mystery | CUNY Graduate Center

The only certainty in science is that there are no certainties in science.

Unlike religions which provide unreasonable certainty in the absence of evidence and call it 'faith', science provides reasonable uncertainty and provisional opinion pending further evidence.

This was illustrated a couple of days ago by a paper published in Royal Society Biology Letters, which describes the reclassification of a middle Palaeocene placental mammal, known to science as a picrodontid, and known only from a partial cranium, some teeth and pieces of jawbone. This was discovered about 100 years ago and 50 years ago was classified as an early primate, in other words, close to the remote placental common ancestor of all the apes, monkeys, lemurs, tree shrews, etc.

Just to remind creationists: the middle Palaeocene lasted from about 66 million years before the mythical 'Creation Week' to 56 million years before the mythical creation of the Universe. It began a few million years after the non-avian dinosaurs all went extinct.

Why Science Works And Religion Fails - Changing Our Minds When the Facts Change

For decades, paleontologists have debated whether Nanotyrannus is a separate species or simply a juvenile T. rex.

Credit Raul Martin

Nanotyrannus lancensi, believed by some to be a juvenile T. rex

Credit: Conty via Wikipedia (CC BY 3.0 DEED)

New research shows “Juvenile T. rex” fossils are a distinct species of small tyrannosaur

One of the key features of science is the so-called 'controversy', where different opinions are discussed within the scientific specialty. They are invariably resolved with new evidence because, in science, the facts are neutral in any debate and so act as referees. This is why science is convergent onto single answers, in contrast to religions.

Creationists, who generally crave certainty at the expense of truth, find this baffling and cite controversies as examples of scientists not being able to make their minds up, not appreciating that this is the scientific method moving toward the truth, unlike religions which have no such built-in method of resolving disagreements and converging on universal truths. If they did, there would only be one religion; instead we have some 40,000 different Christian sects alone, all claiming, without any supporting evidence, to be the one true religion, and continuing to spawn new sects at an average of 20 new sects per year, or roughly one every three weeks.

In the world of religious opinion, controversies frequently lead to schisms and splits because neither side can provide any evidence for its claims and, more often than not, the ancient documents around which disagreements swirl are so ambiguous or impossible to translate accurately that there is no way to determine the intentions of the author, who was probably only expressing an opinion or reporting on evidence-free beliefs and superstitions anyway.

One such controversy that has now probably been resolved was whether the fossil of a relatively small theropod dinosaur was that of a distinct species, Nanotyrannus lancensis, or that of a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex.

Two palaeontologists, Dr. Nicholas Longrich of the Department of Life Sciences, University of Bath, Bath, UK and Dr. Evan Thomas Saitta of the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA have now provided evidence that supports the opinion that the fossil is that a full-grown Nanotyrannus lancensis.

A University of Bath news release explains their research:

Creationism in Crisis - Insects Had Already Evolved An Array Of Defence Strategies 100 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

Larva of a scorpionfly in 100-million-year-old amber with hairs on its back for attaching camouflage material.

© Carolin Haug

Figure 7. Flat wasps (Bethylidae) trapped in Kachin amber while stinging into host larvae for oviposition
(A) Snakefly larva as host, PED 2351.
(B) Beetle larva as host.⁸¹
(C) Lepidopteran caterpillar as host, PED 2575.

Insects already had a variety of defense strategies in the Cretaceous - LMU Munich

On top of the evidence of people practicing animal husbandry in the Pyrenees Mountains before, during and after the legendary genocidal flood inflicted on Earth by creationism's 'omni-benevolent' god according to their superstition, and the fact that the predictable layer of silt from such a flood failed to materialise or was away the evidence of this occupation, we have more bad news for creationists.

A paper which describes how insects had evolved a whole array of defensive strategies, 100 million years before the legendary 'creation Week', when the universe was allegedly magicked up out of nothing by a magic man made of nothing, has just been published in the journal iScience.

The significance of this is that it shows an already mature and established ecosystem with predators against which insects needed protection. Defence is one aspect of an evolutionary arms race, of course, and arms races are entirely inconsistent with any notion of intelligent [sic] design because it is not intelligent to create predators to eat your designs, then created mechanisms and structure for the victims of predation to prevent your designs doing what they were designed to do. Arms races are examples of the needless complexity and prolific waste that can result from a mindless, undirected natural process. Needless complexity and prolific waste are the antithesis of intelligent design which should be minimally complex and minimally wasteful.

And of course, the existence of these fossil insects set in amber from 100 million years ago, alone falsifies the childish notion that Earth has only existed for 10,000 years.

The paper is the work of a team of palaeoarchaeologists from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich), Germany and University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany, led by Professor Carolin Haug of MMU. It is explained in a brief news release from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität:

Creationism in Crisis - What A Juvenile Tyrannosaurid Was Eating 75 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

A Gorgosaurus feeding on a bird-like Citipes.

Illustration by Julius Csotonyi
Royal Tyrrell Museum

A Gorgosaurus feeding on a Citipes

Illustration by Julius Csotonyi

What’s for dinner? UCalgary paleontologist finds out through remarkable specimen | News | University of Calgary

75 million years before creationists think Earth was created, a juvenile Gorgosaurus, a species of tyrannosaur, was catching young avian dinosaurs like Cities but then selectively eating the fleshiest parts, the legs.

At this stage in its life, the Gorgosaurus was slender, had a narrow skull and blade-like teeth and was able to catch small, swift running dinosaurs, but had it lived to grow into an adult, it's body and particularly its head and teeth, would have become massive and capable of catching the large vegetarian dinosaurs and crushing their bones.

We know this because this particular juvenile Gorgosaurusdied and its body became fossilised, complete with the leg bones of two young Citipes still in its stomach, one more digested than the other, showing they were eaten at different times.

This was discovered by a group of palaeontologists led by Dr. Darla Zelenitsky, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Earth, Energy and Environment at the University of Calgary, and Dr. François Therrien from the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Their finding is published, open access, in the journal Science Advances. It is described in a University of Calgary news item:

Creationism in Crisis - Ancestral Geckos from 150 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

The black banded gecko, Coleonyx fasciatus, is a good approximation of the physical appearance of Helioscopus dickersonae

Francisco Farriols Sarabia
via Wikimedia (CC BY 4.0)

Skeleton of Eichstaettisaurus, an early member of the gecko lineage from the Late Jurassic, Germany

Yale study gives grandmother gecko a place of honor — and a new name | YaleNews

If you want to see the origin of today's species, the best place to find them will be in the fossil record of all the millions of species that lived in that vast expanse of pre-'Creation' time, when some 99.97% of Earth History happened and 99% of all known species lived and went extinct - before creationists believe Earth was created.

For example, and for yet another example of a science paper that casually refutes creationism with no effort to do so on the part of the authors, a team of palaeontologists from Yale have identified a new fossil lizard as the ancestor of modern geckos that lived during the late Jurassic period, 163.5 to 145 million years ago. This pushes the date of the earliest known member of the gecko line in North America back 100 million years.

The team have named the new species, Helioscopus dickersonae and have published their find open access in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The publication is accompanied by a Yale University press release:

Creationism in Crisis - How Elephants Got Their Trunks and Tusks 20 Million Years Before 'Creation Week' - No Magic Required

Artist's impression of Platybelodon grangeri

Credit: Tim Bertelink via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Platybelodon grangeri (artist's impression)

How shifting climates may have shaped early elephants’ trunks | For the press | eLife

As expected of scientific research papers, this one deals with events that occurred in that vast expanse of time before creationists think Earth was created, when 99.97% of Earth's history occurred.

This one, published open access in eLife, explains how the ancestors of modern elephants and their recently extinct relatives, the mammoths, got their long flexible trunks and used them for their unique feeding method.

The paper by lead author, Chunxiao Li, and colleagues from the Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, and including Burt Wolff of the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA and Fajun Sun of the Department Environmental Science & Technology, University of Maryland, MD, USA, "combines multiple analyses to reconstruct feeding behaviours in the extinct longirostrine elephantiforms - elephant-like mammals characterised by elongated lower jaws and tusks."

It seems that, as they grew larger, for reasons not yet fully understood, but possibly to give a larger 'vat' in which to ferment their high-cellulose diet, these early ancestors of the elephants had to evolve a longer jaw to reach the grasses and shrubs on which they grazed. The trunk extended as part of this process of facial elongation. This in turn created the opportunity for the end of the truck to play a part in holding the plants as they were cut off by the incisor teeth at the end of the lower jaw. This was more of an advantage in the open grasslands that Platybelodon inhabited, so, when climate change meant loss of habitat and eventual extinction for the two related gomphotheres, Platybelodon's prehensile trunk gave it enough advantage to survive.

A press release by eLife explains the research and its significance for understanding how elephants got their trunks:

Creationism in Crisis - Hippos Were Living Near Rome About Half a Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Modern hippos, Hippopotamus amphibius, arose from African ancestors during the Quaternary and were present in Europe during the Pleistocene.

Photo: Sue Roehl/Flickr

Modern Hippopotamus, Hippopotamus amphibius, present in Europe in the Pleistocene

Earliest known European common hippopotamus fossil reveals their Middle Pleistocene dispersal | EurekAlert!

One of the easiest predictions to make is that, in the next few days there will be more science papers casually refuting creationism, without the slightest intention of doing so on the part of the authors.

This is inevitable, of course, because creationism is so profoundly counter-factual that just about every fact is inconsistent with creationism, so, by merely revealing the facts, scientists refute creationism.

And today's example is the revelation that there were hippos living around Rome during the Pleistocene, about half a million years before creationist superstition says Earth was magicked up out of nothing in 'Creation week'. The amazing thing isn't that there were Hippos living near Rome half a million years ago, but the fact that there are grown adults who believe the creationist superstition of a 'Creation Week' 10,000 years ago, before which, there was nothing and nowhere for anything to happen in.

This news comes in the form of an open access paper in PLOS ONE by Beniamino Mecozzi of the Sapienza University of Rome, and colleagues, and a press release from PLoS:

Creationism in Crisis - 120 Million-Year-Old Bird Footprints Trample on Creationist Mythology

Bird footprints in Cretaceous rocks on Australia's South Coast

One of the Early Cretaceous bird tracks that clearly shows all four toes, including the rear toe, or hallux. The track is nearly 10 centimeters wide and is similar in size and form to tracks made by modern-day green herons.

Photo by Melissa Lowery.

Birds set foot near South Pole in Early Cretaceous, Australian tracks show

Some more of that long history of 'pre-Creation' life on Earth was revealed a couple of days ago when an international team of researchers led by Professor Anthony Martin, of Emory University’s Department of Environmental Sciences, and including researchers from Monash University and the Museums Victoria Research Institute in Australia; the Benemérita Normal School of Coahuila in Mexico; and the Smithsonian Institution, published their discovery of 27 bird tracks which vary in form and size in Early Cretaceous rocks. The tracks range from seven to fourteen centimetres wide and resemble those of modern shore birds such as small herons, waders and oystercatchers.

The discovery is published open access in PLOS ONE.

They were found in the Wonthaggi Formation south of Melbourne. The rocky coastal strata mark where the ancient supercontinent Gondwana began to break up around 100 million years ago when Australia separated from Antarctica and are the oldest bird tracks so far found.

At the time, in the rift valley that was opening up between Australia and what was to become Antarctica, the valley would have contained rivers which were subject to drastic seasonal changes between very cold, winters and several months of perpetual darkness and relatively warm summers when the river flood plain would have been home to migrant waders.

The tracks were made in successive stratigraphic layers which suggests seasonal flooding followed by gentle covering with silt or sand which preserved the footprints.

The Wonthaggi Formation is famous for its variety of polar dinosaur bones, although bird-fossil finds are extremely rare. The Cretaceous strata of the formation has yielded only one tiny bird bone — a wishbone — and a few feathers.

Birds have such thin and tiny bones. Think of the likelihood of a sparrow being preserved in the geologic record as opposed to an elephant.

Professor Anthony Martin.

Creationism in Crisis - The Diverse Landscape Of 'Pre-Creation' Europe

Illustrations by Brennan Stokkerman

Fig. 4.
Palaeoartistic reconstructions of Last Interglacial landscapes in the European temperate forest biome, consistent with our pollen-based estimates of vegetation structure.

Typical Last Interglacial fauna are shown, such as the extinct straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), an extinct rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis), and aurochs (Bos primigenius, the extinct wild form of contemporary domestic and feral cattle), alongside common extant species: fallow deer (Dama dama), a great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major), a European robin (Erithacus rubecula), and greylag geese (Anser anser). (Top left) Early-temperate period: Light woodland, including a mix of taller trees and the shrub hazel (Corylus avellana), and grass-dominated open vegetation. (Top right) Early-temperate period: Open, grassy vegetation interspersed with light woodland and bordering closed forest with shade-tolerant trees. (Bottom left) Late-temperate period: Light woodland, denser forest with frequent hornbeam (Carpinus betulus), and some open vegetation (front). (Bottom right) Late-temperate period: Open grass- and sedge-dominated vegetation with free-standing deciduous oaks (Quercus robur), with more closed tree stands in the background.

Illustrator: Brennan Stokkermans.
Pearce, E. A.; Mazier, F.; Normand, S., et al. (2023) (CC BY 4.0)

Europe was not covered by dense forest before the arrival of modern humans

Researchers led by Elena A. Pearce of the Department of Biology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, have looked again at the evidence for the flora and fauna of Europe during the last interglacial period (130,000 -150,000 years ago) and believe they have shown that the previous assumption that Europe was covered in dense woodland prior to the arrival of modern human, may be wrong. Europe was, instead, "full of variation. Importantly, the landscapes harboured large amounts of open and semi-open vegetation with shrubs, light-demanding trees and herbs alongside stands of tall-growing shade trees."

When was the last interglacial period in Europe and what caused it? The last interglacial period in Europe occurred during the Pleistocene epoch, specifically the Eemian interglacial. The Eemian interglacial is estimated to have occurred roughly between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago. It was a relatively warm period when temperatures were higher than during the subsequent Last Glacial Maximum.

The primary cause of glacial-interglacial cycles, including the Eemian interglacial, is believed to be variations in Earth's orbit and axial tilt, collectively known as Milankovitch cycles. These variations influence the amount and distribution of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface. The interplay of these orbital parameters results in periodic changes in climate, leading to alternating glacial and interglacial periods.

During interglacial periods, such as the Eemian, temperatures were warmer, and ice sheets and glaciers retreated. This warmer climate allowed for the expansion of forests and the development of different ecosystems compared to the colder glacial periods. It's important to note that natural climate variability, driven by factors like Milankovitch cycles, played a significant role in past climate changes, but contemporary climate change is also influenced by human activities, particularly the emission of greenhouse gases.

The team arrived at their conclusion after examining pollen grains from soil samples taken from large parts of Europe.

How Science Works - (And Why Religion Doesn't) - Checking and Reassessing the Evidence

Scratch marks on the Rising Star Cave wall. Did Homo naledi really make them?

Homo naledi. A South African hominin with the cranial capacity of a chimpanzee.

No scientific evidence Homo naledi was advanced, News, La Trobe University

The great strength of science is the inbuilt fact-checking mechanism that is an integral part of the scientific method - a method derived from the fact that scientific opinion is always evidence-based and only ever provisional. If new evidence is found or previous evidence is shown to be not what was thought, then scientific opinion changes accordingly.

Religion's great weakness is that it is never evidence-based, so there is nothing to check and reassess. If it was, there would only be one religion and it would be a division of science.

For these reasons, science, for which the facts are a neutral referee, tends to converge on a single explanation, whilst religions tend to diverge and schism into different competing ideologies with no facts to referee the competition and no ultimate winners or truth to converge on, so we end up with about 40,000 Christian sects alone, all claiming to be the one true faith, and condemning the followers of all the others to an eternity of torment.

A case in point, so far as science is concerned, is the recent publication of a reassessment of the evidence behind the claim that the fossil hominin, Homo naledi was a culturally advanced species that made artistic patterns on the cave walls, made fire and buried their dead in prepared graves. The evidence for those claims was that the remains of three individuals were found deep in the cave system, to where it was thought they must have been carried deliberately, and were apparently buried in prepared graves, one with a stone tool close to its hand. There was also what looked like evidence of fire and fire would have been needed to light the way to carry the bodies deep into the cave system.

The finds were something of an enigma because, while having the body of a human, H. naledi had a cranial capacity nearer to that of a chimpanzee, so to have developed a relatively advanced culture with a brain that size would have been surprising. The other surprising thing is that the fossils were dated to around 300,000 years ago, which would have made it contemporaneous with much more advanced hominins such as H. erectus and even early H. sapiens. That was a problem for theories of human evolution that had the savannahs of East and South Africa as the environment in which evolving humans had evolved a large brain, and yet here was H. naledi in the same environment with a brain the size not much larger than that of the hominin-chimpanzee common ancestor.

Creationism in Crisis - Complex Life Evolved 2.4 Billion Years Before The Mythical 'Creation Week' - And Another Gap Closes...

Nodules of microfossilierous black chert are scattered throughout a rock outcrop.

Credit: Provided by Erica Barlow.
All Rights Reserved.

Microfossils are contained within black chert like the ones seen here.

Credit: Professor Erica V. Barlow. All Rights Reserved.

Window to the past: New microfossils suggest earlier rise in complex life | Penn State University

In that vast passage of time before the mythical "Creation Week" when 99.97% of Earth History occurred, some events that were highly significant for the evolution of life on Earth were happening. One of these was the Great Oxidation Event or GOE, which was to change the course of evolutionary history and put it on a trajectory that led to the evolution of multicellularity and to all the biodiversity of multicellular plants, fungi and animals that we see today.

The GOE happened when proliferating cyanobacteria, which had been evolving for a billion years or more, started using photosynthesis to create sugar from carbon dioxide, water and solar energy, and pollute the atmosphere with their toxic waste, oxygen. It was a major environmental change, causing Earth's first mass extinction. To anyone who understands the link between environmental change and evolution, it won't come as a surprise to learn that it was accompanied by a major evolutionary change in living organisms - the change from prokaryote to eukaryote cells.

What and when was the Great Oxidation Event in Earth's history, and what were its consequences for life on Earth? The Great Oxidation Event, often abbreviated as GOE, was a significant period in Earth's history during which there was a substantial increase in atmospheric oxygen levels. It is estimated to have occurred approximately 2.4 billion to 2.3 billion years ago, in the Proterozoic Eon, specifically during the Paleoproterozoic era. The consequences of the Great Oxidation Event for life on Earth were profound and multifaceted:

Creationism in Crisis - 160-Million-Year-Old Predatory Lampreys Makes Suckers of Creationists

Artist’s impression of Yanliaomyzon ingensdentes, one of two newly discovered species of flesh-eating lamprey found in 160-million-year-old rocks.

Heming Zhang

Yanliaomyzon ingensdentes (artist's impression)

Heming Zhang

Jawless ‘Bite’ from the Past: Jurassic Fossils Shed Light on Lamprey Evolution--Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology

Way back in that long spell before 'Creation Week', the creation cult's date when the Universe was created, when 99.97% of Earth's history happened, there were two large, flesh-eating lampreys looking for victims to bore into. Unlike their blood-sucking modern relatives, which latch onto fish and suck their blood and body fluids, these ancient species probably ate the flesh of their victims.

These rare fossils were discovered in 160-million-year-old rocks in North China and are part of the Yanliao Biota, which is found in rock formations that are proving to be a valuable Lagerstätte.

Rosa Rubicondior, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good, Chapter 4: Parasitic Vertebrates. pp. 106-107

Creationism in Crisis - Why Science Works (And Creationism Fails) - Rethinking Shark Evolution

Sharks’ non-bony skeletons were thought to be the template before bony internal skeletons evolved, but a new fossil discovery suggests otherwise.

Minjinia turgenensis, evolved before sharks.

Ancient bony fish forces rethink of how sharks evolved | Imperial News | Imperial College London

On of the great strengths of science, apart from its rigorous fact-checking and peer-review process, is the way scientists constantly reassesses what they thought they knew and change their mind when the facts demand it.

Unlike creationism, there are no sacred truths or dogmas that must never be questioned in science, and the best way to make a name for yourself in science is to overthrow an established consensus, just as Einstein overthrew Newtonian physics and Darwin overthrew the teleological thinking that had dominated biological science.

Creationism, by contrast, have a form of 'Morton's Demon' that filters all information and only allows information that supports and reinforces creationism to enter their world view.

An example of science reassessing the evidence is this paper by an international group of scientists led by Dr. Martin D. Brazeau of the Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Ascot, UK, and the Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK. It reassesses the evidence for the origin of sharks, which were assumed to have evolved from the cartilaginous fish that preceded the boney fish, and suggests that they may in fact originate in the bony fish and have since reverted to a cartilaginous skeleton.

Creationism in Crisis - Disastrous Sea Level And Climate Changes - 385 Million Years Ago.

The Malvinoxhosan biota were a group of marine animals that thrived in cooler waters

2023-10 - Ancient sea level and climate changes led to major extinctions around South Africa - Wits University

A planet designed by a loving, omniscient designer would be stable and not subject to periodic bouts of mass extinction because the life on it couldn't cope with a massive environmental change.

And yet new research by Dr Cameron Penn-Clarke from the University of the Witwatersrand and Professor David Harper from Durham University has shown that a catastrophic environmental change in the Early Devonian caused the mass extinction of the Malvinoxhosan biota. This was in the 99.97% of Earth's history that occurred before the Universe was created out of nothing by magic, according to creationists.

The term 'Malvinoxhosan biota' foxed ChatGPT3.5:

Creationism in Crisis - What Is a 170-Million-Year-Old Pliosaur Doing on a 10,000-Year-Old Earth?

The oldest megapredatory pliosaur, Lorrainosaurus, in the ancient Middle Jurassic sea that covered what is today northern France 170 million years ago.

Artwork by Joschua Knüppe (Germany).

Model of the head of Lorrainosaurus keileni.

Model By 10 Tons

Ancient sea monster remains reveal oldest mega-predatory pliosaur | Uppsala University

Q. What is a 170-Million-Year-Old Pliosaur Doing on a 10,000-Year-Old Earth?

A. Refuting Creationism and showing it to be a childish counter-factual superstition, of course, like everything else that exited in the 99.97% of Earth's history that occurred before 'creation week'.

These fossils of this predatory marine reptile from the Mesozoic Era were recovered in 1983 from a road cutting near Metz, Loraine, France and have now been examined by an international team of palaeontologists from the Naturkunde-Museum Bielefeld in Germany, the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland, the Natural History Museum in Luxembourg and The Museum of Evolution at Uppsala University in Sweden, co-led by Sven Sachs of Naturkunde-Museum Bielefeld, Germany and Daniel Madzia of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

They have shown them to be of a new pliosaur genus: Lorrainosaurus.

Creationism in Crisis - A 50 Million-Year-Old Bat Skull - And Another Gap Closes

Most bats use echolocation - using sound emitted from their mouths or noses - to sense their surroundings.

Photo: Getty Images

Holy bat skull! Fossil adds vital piece to bat evolution puzzle | UNSW Newsroom

Earlier this week I predicted that there would soon be more science papers which casually refute creationism - an easy prediction to make, since just about every serious science paper does exactly that. This is a prediction I'm beginning to regret as they are coming so thick and fast that it's difficult to keep up with them!

This time, it's a paper describing a near-perfect fossil bat skull from 50 million years ago that closes one of creationism’s beloved gaps in the fossil record. Of course, like almost all archaeology, geology and palaeontology, it deals with the 99.97% of the history of Earth that occurred before creationist dogma says the universe was created out of nothing by magic.

The evolutionary history of bats suffers from a lack of fossil evidence, probably because bat skeletons are generally small and thin and bat lifestyle doesn't predispose them to formation of fossils when they die. They mostly roost in caves where dead bats are rapidly consumed by a whole ecosystem of creatures that live on their droppings on the cave floor.

However, this latest find is of a near perfect skull and shows evidence that echolocation may have evolved earlier than previously thought, soon after or parallel with the evolution of powered flight.

First, some AI background:

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Have Shown How Mosquitoes Evolved in Another Casual Refutation of Creationism With Facts

Researchers scoured academic literature and used new genomic techniques to create the mosquito family tree.

Photo credit: Matt Bertone, NC State University.

Aedes eagypti

Anopheles stephensi

Anopheles albimanus

Ochlerotatus notoscriptus

Study Elucidates Evolution of Mosquitoes and Their Hosts | NC State News

It's proving to be another terrible week for the creation cult with yet another science paper that casually, and without any intention on the part of the authors, utterly refutes some basic creationist cult dogmas.

This paper deal with the evolution of the mosquitoes and the parasite-host relationship that refute intelligent design ideas with their arms races, needless complexity and prolific waste, in addition to their refutation of the notion of an omnibenevolent designer.

And of course, as we've come to expect, almost all that evolutionary history occurred millions of years before creationists think the Universe was magically created out of nothing by a magic man made of nothing who popped up from nowhere, in the days when nothing was something that existed. This magic, invisible man then allegedly created every living thing without ancestors, pretty much as we find it today, but on a flat Earth with a dome over it to keep the water above the sky out. Seriously!

The point has already been made by others many times before: creationism is not a problem for science; science is a problem for creationism; and this paper is just one more drop in the tsunami engulfing the cult.

First, a little AI background on mosquitoes:

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Reconstruct the Skull of a 12 Million-Year-Old Ancestral Primate

Virtual reconstruction of the face and cranium of Pierolapithecus catalaunicus using CT scans of the original fossil

© Kelsey Pugh

Artist's impression of the face of Pierolapithecus catalaunicus

Credit: Meike Köhler

Extinct Ape Gets a Facelift, 12 Million Years Later | AMNH

No sooner do I write a blog-post in which I predict that it won't be long before yet more scientific papers which quite incidentally refute creationism are published, than along come another one, right on cue.

Of course, since almost all papers dealing with archaeology, paleontology and geology deal with the 99.97% of Earth's history that occurred before 'Creation Week' according to creationist dogma, this is a simple prediction to make. It is actually harder to find a serious science paper dealing with those subjects that doesn't casually refute creationism.

This paper would be embarrassing for creationists on a number of different levels, if they weren’t careful to remain proudly ignorant of it or at least had a strategy for ignoring inconvenient truths. It is a paper on the reconstruction of the face and cranium of an extinct primate that lived about 12 million years ago and which is believed to be close to if not directly ancestral to all the great apes, including humans.

So, we have another of those supposedly missing 'links' this time between the Hominidae and the other primates, and a fossil that is multiple times older than the Universe, according to the creationist creation myths. And yet the creation cult manages to stagger on regardless of all the evidence against it.

The skull is that of Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, which was discovered in Catalunya, Spain, early this century:

Creationism in Crisis - Neanderthals Were Hunting Cave Lions in Europe 40,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'.

[left caption]

[Right caption/credit]

Artists impression of a Eurasian cave lion, Panthera leo spelaea

Neanderthals hunted dangerous cave lions study shows - University of Reading

In the third of this week's scientific papers that casually refute creationism by reporting on 'pre-creation' events of which Earth's history is 99.97% composed, we learn that Neanderthals in Europe were hunting cave lions for food and their pelts, 50,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic Age - which came to an end when, bizarrely, creationists believe the Universe was created.

There may well be more papers yet to appear, in what is turning out to be a week of which most creationists will want to remain ignorant, if they haven't already worked out a strategy for coping with the inevitable cognitive dissonance by dismissing the unwanted evidence. To creationists, it must feel at times that science is against them. It is, of course, but that's a problem for creationists, not science. It’s not compulsory to adopt counter-factual beliefs.

The scientific paper is published open access in Scientific Reports and is accompanied by a news release from Reading University. The discovery was made by lead author, PHD student, Gabriele Russo, of Universität Tübingen in Germany, together with a team of colleagues which included archaeologist Dr Annemieke Milks, of the University of Reading.

The skeleton of the cave lion dates to around 50,000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic, at a time when anatomically-modern Homo sapiens were just beginning to appear in Eurasia, and Neanderthals had western Eurasia pretty much to themselves.

Creationism in Crisis - This Fossil Marsupial is Thirteen Thousand Times Older Than The Universe, According to Creationists

The three species of the family Thylacosmilidae on the South American continent: Anachlysictis gracilis (left, above), Thylacosmilus atrox (right) and Patagosmilus goini (left, below)

Credit: Jorge Blanco.

Anachlysictis gracilis stalking its prey in the La Venta area of Colombia, 13 million years ago. (artists impression)

Credit: Juan Giraldo

Prehistoric predator | Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Scientists have unearthed the fossilised remains of a predatory sabre-toothed marsupial that lived in what is now Columbia in northwestern South America, 13 million years ago, during the Cenozoic, the period which followed the extinction of the dinosaurs, which cleared the way for a rapid diversification of mammals.

The fossil is of Anachlysictis gracilis, one of the family of predatory marsupial known as the Thylacosmilidae.