Creationism in Crisis - Something For Creationists to Squawk About - Parrot-Like Dinosaurs from 67 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artist’s depiction of Eoneophron infernalis (top left), MOR 752 (bottom left), and Anzu wyliei (right) in the Hell Creek Formation.

Illustration by Zubin Erik Dutta
Atkins-Weltman et al., 2024, PLOS One,
CC-BY 4.0

OSU-CHS student discovers new dinosaur species, publishes findings | Oklahoma State University

Between about 67 and 66 million years ago, during a period that geologists call the Maastrichtian, there was a thriving ecosystem of dinosaurs in what is now the Hell Creek formation which spans parts of Montana, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota. We know this because their remains are frequently found in this fossil-rich formation known as the Hell Creek Formation.

The great thing about this formation is the way, as the layers built up, nearby volcanoes periodically spread a layer of ash (or tufa) over it forming neat bands that can be accurately dated using one of the most accurate radiometric dating methods - Uranium-Lead (U-Pb) in zircons. This gives a maximum and minimum age of the fossils found between these layers of tufa.

I wrote about U-Pb dating in a recent blogpost, but for the sake of creationists who are about to squawk "Radiometric dating is false!", I'll expand on what I said here:

Creationism in Crisis - A Multicellular Organism 1.63 Billion Years Before 'Creation Week'

1.63-billion-year-old multicellular fossils from North China
The oldest record of a multicellular eukaryotes

(Artist’s concept.)
Credit: SciTechDaily.com

Fig. 1. Transmitted-light (TL) photomicrographs of Q. magnifica from the Chuanlinggou Formation.
(A to D and K) Filaments with cells of varying length and width. (E) Four-celled filament with hemispherical terminal cell. (F and G) Filament with notably decreasing cell width toward one end. Note that (F) and (G) represent the same specimen; (F) lost the narrowest part of the filament as shown in (G). (H to J) Filaments displaying more uniformity of cell dimensions. (L) Two-celled filament with ovoid terminal cell. All specimens were handpicked from organic residues of acid maceration and photographed in wet mounts, except for (K), which was photographed from a permanent strew mount. Solid and empty gray triangles in (A), (C), and (K) indicate the longest and the shortest cells, respectively, within single filaments. tb, transverse band (interpreted as cross wall); tr, transverse ring (interpreted as partially preserved cross wall). Scale bar, 50 μm [(A) to (E), (I), (J), and (L)] and 100 μm [(F) to (H) and (K)].

Fossils from North China indicate eukaryotes first acquired multicellularity by at 1.63 billion years ago---- Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology Chinese Academy of Sciences

As though the abundant evidence of life on earth before about 10,000 years ago wasn't bad enough for creationists who believe the Universe and everything in it were was magicked out of nothing in 6 days around about then, a team of scientists led by led by Professor ZHU Maoyan from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NGIPAS), has now pushed the date of oldest-known multicellular, eukaryote organism back another 70 million years to a whapping 1.63 billion years before the supposed 'Creation Week'.

This would mean, if their superstition had any merit that creationists believe Earth has been around for just the last 0.0006% of the time that multicellular eukaryotes have existed on it.

And they wonder why people laugh!

The fossils were discovered in the Yanshan area of North China in the late Paleoproterozoic Chuanlinggou shale Formation which is about 1,635 million years old. The age of the fossils is constrained by a layer of volcanic ash ~40 m above the fossil horizon in the Kuancheng area, which has yielded a U-Pb zircon age of 1634.8 ± 6.9 Ma (23).

All complex life on Earth, including diverse animals, land plants, macroscopic fungi and seaweeds, are multicellular eukaryotes. Therefore, multicellularity is key for eukaryotes to acquire organismal complexity and large size, and often regarded as one major transition in Earth’s life history by scientists. However, it is still poorly understood when eukaryotes first evolved this innovation in their deep evolutionary history.

Fossil records with convincing evidence show that eukaryotes with simple multicellularity already appeared at 1.05 billion years ago, including red and green algae, and putative fungi. Older records claimed to be multicellular eukaryotes, but most of them are controversial due to their simple morphology and lack of cellular structure.

Creationism in Crisis - Evolution In Progress As a Tiny Ant Changes The Ecosystem.

'Big headed' ant, Pheidole megacephala (soldier cast).

Tiny ant species disrupts lion’s hunting behavior - News - University of Florida

As well as species evolving, there is another form of biological evolution that is often not recognised as such - the evolution of ecosystems as the populations of species that exist within it changes.

Environmental change is the prerequisite of evolutionary change on the classic Darwinian evolution by natural selection model, so we would expect to see an evolutionary change to significant environmental change, given time, but changes to delicately-balanced ecosystems can occur very quickly - in a matter of years or even months, whereas evolutionary change in the species gene pool will normally take many generations to occur, and that slow response to ecosystem change often results in extinction or sometimes, in favourable conditions, a population boom.

And one such ecosystem change is currently underway in Africa due to a small, invasive species of ant, as Professor Todd Palmer, an ecologist and professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Florida, with colleagues including University of Wyoming doctoral candidate and Kenyan scientist Douglas Kamaru, Jake Goheen, from the University of Wyoming, and Corinna Riginos, with The Nature Conservancy reported recently in Science.

I have remarked several times elsewhere how, because the giraffe's long neck and legs have evolved in an arms race with acacia trees, if acacia trees disappeared what is now an advantage to giraffes, would become a handicap as they find drinking difficult and are vulnerable to predation by lions and leopards as they drink because they can't raise their heads up rapidly without a dangerous fall in blood pressure to their brain and that, together their spread-eagled legs, mean they can't suddenly get up and run. Their long necks and legs only make sense in the presence of acacia trees.

And acacia trees have also been evolving in this expensive -do-or-die arms race with giraffes and other browsing species, in which the massive cost of producing enough sugar to build such a tall trunk would also be a handicap in the absence of giraffes. But, in one of those serendipitous turns of good fortune, acacia trees have an ally in this arms race in the form of vicious ants of the Pseudomyrmex and Crematogaster genera that take up residence in swellings at the base of thorns in the crown of the tree. These ants vigorously defend the trees against not only giraffes, but also elephants which can reach to lower branches with their trunks and will even push them over to get at the leaves.

The close interdependence of acacia trees and these ants is an example of co-evolved mutualism:

Creationism in Crisis - Flying Reptiles In The Mendip Hills - 200 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artist’s impression of a gliding reptile Kuehneosaurus

Credit: Mike Cawthorne

Showing partial skeleton of gliding reptile Kuehneosaurus on rock from Emborough.

Credit: David Whiteside

January: Ancient flying reptiles | News and features | University of Bristol

200 million years, give or take a few thousand years, before creationists believe Earth and life on it were all created by magic from nothing in a week, gliding lizard-like reptiles related to ancestral crocodiles, were gliding from tree to tree, and probably hunting flying insects, in what is now the Mendip Hills, near Bristol, UK. The area around Bristol was then an archipelago of islands in a sub-tropical, shallow sea.

Fossil remains of these reptiles were found by University of Bristol Masters student Mike Cawthorne, researching numerous reptile fossils from limestone quarries, in what was then the biggest sub-tropical island at the time, called the Mendip Palaeo-island.

As the Bristol University press release explains:

The study, published today in Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, also records the presence of reptiles with complex teeth, the trilophosaur Variodens and the aquatic Pachystropheus that probably lived similarly to a modern-day otter likely eating shrimps and small fish.

The animals either fell or their bones were washed into caves and cracks in the limestone.

“All the beasts were small,” said Mike. “I had hoped to find some dinosaur bones, or even their isolated teeth, but in fact I found everything else but dinosaurs.

“The collections I studied had been made in the 1940s and 1950s when the quarries were still active, and palaeontologists were able to visit and see fresh rock faces and speak to the quarrymen.”

Professor Mike Benton, from Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences, explained: “It took a lot of work identifying the fossil bones, most of which were separate and not in a skeleton.

“However, we have a lot of comparative material, and Mike Cawthorne was able to compare the isolated jaws and other bones with more complete specimens from the other sites around Bristol.

“He has shown that the Mendip Palaeo-island, which extended from Frome in the east to Weston-super-Mare in the west, nearly 30 km long, was home to diverse small reptiles feeding on the plants and insects.

“He didn’t find any dinosaur bones, but it’s likely that they were there because we have found dinosaur bones in other locations of the same geological age around Bristol.”

The area around Bristol 200 million years ago in the Late Triassic was an archipelago of small islands set in a warm sub-tropical sea.

Bristol’s Dr David Whiteside added: “The bones were collected by some great fossil finders in the 1940s and 1950s including Tom Fry, an amateur collector working for Bristol University and who generally cycled to the quarries and returned laden with heavy bags of rocks.

“The other collectors were the gifted researchers Walter Kühne, a German who was imprisoned in Great Britain in the 2nd world war, and Pamela L. Robinson from University College London. They gave their specimens to the Natural History Museum in London and the Geological collections of the University of Bristol.”

Abstract

During the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic, the area around Bristol and South Wales was an archipelago of islands occupied by diverse small-sized tetrapods. The largest of these palaeo-islands was Mendip Island, now forming the Mendip Hills, and the location of some famous fossiliferous sites. These sites have not been described in detail before, and we present new data on three of them. Highcroft has yielded only sparse remains of rhynchocephalians, and Batscombe famously the gliding reptile Kuehneosuchus latissimus. Emborough yielded the richest fauna of the three, abundant pseudosuchians including crocodylomorphs as well as the gliding reptile Kuehneosaurus latus, rare trilophosaurs, a probable thalattosaur, rhynchocephalians, and the mammal Kuehneotherium. These include some of the last known taxa of clades that died out in the end-Triassic mass extinction. We report a new taxon of sphenosuchid crocodylomorph similar to Saltoposuchus and a find of Pachystropheus, an aquatic reptile shared with Holwell and the bedded Rhaetian at Blue Anchor Point, Aust and Westbury Garden Cliff. The discovery of a fish vertebra strengthens the model of Emborough fissure filling in a marginal marine location. The Emborough fauna differs from coeval assemblages from Cromhall, Tytherington and Ruthin in the scarcity of sphenodontians and the absence or great rarity of procolophonids as well as the abundance of kuehneosaurids and crocodylomorphs.

1. Introduction

The Triassic (252–201 Ma) was a crucial time in the recovery, restructuring and diversification of vertebrate life (Benton and Wu, 2022). Many modern groups including lissamphibians, turtles, lizards, crocodiles, and mammals originated or diversified in the Late Triassic, part of the process of the recovery of life from the end-Permian mass extinction, but stimulated by the Carnian Pluvial Episode 233–232 Ma, following which climates became more arid, and the new groups, including dinosaurs, had opportunities to diversify (Brusatte et al., 2010; Chen and Benton, 2012; Benton et al., 2014; Bernardi et al., 2018; Dal Corso et al., 2020; Benton 2021; Benton and Wu, 2022).

The end-Triassic mass extinction (ETME), 201 Ma, was probably caused by sharp warming from greenhouse gases erupted by the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP), associated with the beginning of rifting and opening of the North Atlantic (Blackburn et al., 2013). The environmental crisis led to widespread extinctions of many tetrapod clades including procolophonids, placodonts, kuehneosaurids, thalattosaurs, allokotosaurians and phytosaurs. Many pseudosuchians such as the rauisuchids also became extinct but the Crocodylomorpha survived leading to the modern living crocodilians. Whether the ETME was a single crisis at the end of the Triassic or began minimally 100 ka before the earliest known eruptions (Davies et al., 2017) is debated. Indeed, there is good evidence for several earlier events, one at the Norian–Rhaetian boundary (Rigo et al., 2020.1) and one equivalent to the middle of the Cotham Member in the British Rhaetian succession (Wignall and Atkinson, 2020.2), both marked by carbon isotope excursions and evidence for substantial loss of marine species. The spacing of these events is entirely dependent on estimates of the duration of the Rhaetian, with its beginning variously dated at 205.7 Ma and 201.7 Ma, making the stage either 4.2 or 0.2 Myr in duration (Maron et al., 2015; Ruhl et al., 2020.3).

These considerations around the importance of the Triassic as a whole, and the Late Triassic in particular, in documenting the origin of modern ecosystems on land and in the sea, as well as the evidence for phased bursts of extinction through the Rhaetian, place fresh importance on understanding the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic fossil faunas found bordering the Bristol Channel, around Bristol and in South Wales. These faunas are preserved across a sub-tropical archipelago (Fig. 1) in fissure fillings, deposits of soil and other debris accumulated in karstic cave systems (Whiteside et al., 2016; Lovegrove et al., 2021.1). First finds were isolated bones of the sauropodomorph dinosaur Thecodontosaurus in the Worrall Road Quarries in Bristol (Riley and Stutchbury, 1836, Riley and Stutchbury, 1840; Ballell et al., 2020.4) and then mammal remains at Holwell Quarry (Moore, 1859), and later recognition by Charles Moore that these were Mesozoic-aged fissures eroded into Carboniferous limestone. The study of the fissures began again in the late 1930s and the 1940s with the work of Walter Kühne and his discoveries of mammal remains at Holwell and elsewhere (Kühne, 1949; Savage, 1993; Whiteside and Duffin, 2017.1; Benton et al., 2024).

Fig. 1. The Bristol palaeo-archipelago, showing island locations in the latest Triassic (early Rhaetian). Overview of the whole area, showing the Mendip Palaeoisland. The blue shallow seas between the islands are areas with deposition of the Westbury beds. Fissure fill localities are marked in red, bone beds in orange. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Map from Lovegrove et al. (2021.1).

The fissure faunas have been reviewed several times (Robinson, 1957a; Fraser, 1994; Whiteside et al., 2016), and one of the key land masses was the Mendip Palaeoisland (Lovegrove et al., 2021.1), the site of five fossiliferous fissure sites, namely Emborough, Batscombe, Highcroft, Holwell, and Windsor Hill (Fig. 1). These sites have been reported before (Robinson, 1957a; Fraser, 1994) although not extensively, but Emborough has been featured in several publications (Robinson, 1957a, Robinson, 1957.1b, Robinson, 1962) because of the remarkable specimens of kuehneosaurids, also abundantly represented at Batscombe. These unique finds, however, are not replicated at other fossiliferous fissure sites on the Mendip Island, even at Highcroft and Holwell (Fig. 1). Likewise, although Emborough has produced abundant remains of archosauromorphs, these are very rare at Holwell.

Our aim is to document three of the five Mendip Island fissure localities, Emborough, Batscombe, and Highcroft, whose terrestrial assemblages have not been published in detail before, and to present data on geology and taphonomy as well, to allow comparison with the other Late Triassic fissure faunas around Bristol and in South Wales.

Anatomical abbreviations. a, anterior; ac, anterior condyle; ace, acetabulum; amafe, anterior margin of antorbital fenestra; amp, amphicoelous; ampl, amphyplatyan; an, angular; ap, anterior projection; ar, articulation(s); artf, facet for the articular bone; at, attachment; bic, bicapitate; bs, basipterygoid; c capitulum; ca, capitelum; ce, centrum; cfo, coracoid foramen; cn, canal; co, condyle; cx, convex (surface); di, diapophysis; dis, distal; desf, surface contacting dentary; dpc, deltopectoral crest; dor, dorsal; ec, ectopterygoid; ect, ectepicondyle; ent, entepicondyle; er, erupting; fc, fibular contact; fcp, facial process; fct, facet; fl, flat surface; fla, flange; fo, foramen; fos, fossa; gl, glenoid; gr, groove; hd, head; itfe, inferior temporal fenestra; l, lateral; ls, ligament scar; mc, medial condyle; mk, meckelian; ml, midline; ms, muscle scar; ne, neural; palf, facet for the palatine; pc, pleuracrodont; pco, posterior condyle; pozy, postzygapophysis; pr, process; prz, prezygapophysis; pm, prominance; po, posterior; pp, parapophysis; prx, proximal; rid, ridge(s); saf, surangular facet; sar, sacral rib; sc, supinator crest; ser, serrations; sf, surface; sh, shallow; slf, shelf; sp, spine; spl, splenial; stfe, superior temporal fenestra; sut, suture; t tuberculum; th, tooth (teeth); tb, tubercle; tc, trochlear groove; tcn, tibia contact; tr, trochanter; tv, transverse; ven, ventral; vmaf, ventral margin for adductor fossa; wr, wear; zy, zygapophysis.

Institutional acronyms. AMNH, American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA; BRSMG, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol; BRSUG, University of Bristol, Geology Collection; NHMUK, Natural History Museum, London; SMNS, State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, Germany; TTU, Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock; UCMP, University of California Museum of Palaeontology; UNC, Department of Geological Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Cawthorne, Michael; Whiteside, David I.; Benton, Michael J.
Latest Triassic terrestrial microvertebrate assemblages from caves on the Mendip palaeoisland, S.W. England, at Emborough, Batscombe and Highcroft Quarries
Proceedings of the Geologists' Association (2024) S0016787823000998. DOI:10.1016/j.pgeola.2023.12.003

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

But then what did the authors of Genesis know about the climate in, and location of, what is now south-east England 200 million years earlier, when they didn't even know about Europe and thought Earth was small, flat and just a few thousand years old? This is why so much of it is now having to be reclassified as 'allegorical' or 'metaphorical' by mainstream Christians, leaving only a dwindling cult of fruitloop fanatics still believe it is the inerrant word of an omniscient creator god, laughable though that demonstrably absurd, childish notion is.

---

Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It

This book explains why faith is a fallacy and serves no useful purpose other than providing an excuse for pretending to know things that are unknown. It also explains how losing faith liberates former sufferers from fear, delusion and the control of others, freeing them to see the world in a different light, to recognise the injustices that religions cause and to accept people for who they are, not which group they happened to be born in. A society based on atheist, Humanist principles would be a less divided, more inclusive, more peaceful society and one more appreciative of the one opportunity that life gives us to enjoy and wonder at the world we live in.

Available in Hardcover, Paperback or ebook for Kindle

What Makes You So Special? From The Big Bang To You

How did you come to be here, now? This books takes you from the Big Bang to the evolution of modern humans and the history of human cultures, showing that science is an adventure of discovery and a source of limitless wonder, giving us richer and more rewarding appreciation of the phenomenal privilege of merely being alive and able to begin to understand it all.

Available in Hardcover, Paperback or ebook for Kindle

Thank you for sharing!

Tweet Link

How Science Works - Correcting A Mistake About Megalodons - But Still Biting A Chunk Out Of Creationism

The Megalodon may have neem slimmer but longer than this illustration shows.

Catmando/Shutterstock

The Megalodon was less mega than previously believed | News

A scientific principle that creationists seem to find baffling, is based on the intellectually honest position that opinion must be guided by evidence. It is that scientific opinion is always provisional and subject to change if the evidence changes, so evidence is frequently re-examined and reassesses, and scientific opinion is adjusted accordingly. This is why science textbooks are revised periodically and new editions produced, incorporating the newer thinking,

A simple analogy is that of driving to an airport to catch an important flight. You might check the expected driving time by checking in an old route planner from the 1950's, which might tell you the journey, in the days before traffic congestion, would take about 90 minutes, then you might check a few days before the flight, using an online route planner and learn that the journey will take about 2 hours at that time of day.

Do you just regard the 1950's version as an indisputable fact and plan your journey accordingly? How about the one a few days ago? No! A sensible person, regards both those as provisional pending more up-to-date information, and checks again on the day, when they might discover that there is a road closure and a diversion in place, or there is a serious incident on the motorway, reducing the traffic to a slow crawl for 20 miles, so the journey will now take 3 hours. Was the first estimate wrong? Which is the best estimate to go with now? The old ones based on information available at that time, which might have caused you to miss your flight, or the new one based on updated information?

On that analogy, creationists are in the position of using information not from the 1950s, but from the Bronze Age, some of it from a time before even the wheel was invented, let alone air-transport, motor cars or motorways!

In 2022, based on very scant information (a tooth and some vertebrae), a team of researchers estimated the size of an extinct shark, the megalodon (big tooth) shark, Otodus megalodon, to be at least 50 feet long, and possibly as much as 65 feet. This was based in the assumption that O. megalodon was like a scaled up great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias, so its dimensions could be estimated by comparing what they had with those of C. carcharias.

Now a team or researchers co-led by biologist, Phillip Sternes of the University of California Riverside (UCR), and DePaul University paleobiology, Professor Kenshu Shimada, have reassessed the evidence and concludes that O. megalodon was slimmer than the great white but probably considerably longer than the earlier estimate. This greater length would probably have meant a more efficient digestive system having longer to digest food and extract nutrients from it, so its hunting and predation would have had less impact on the ecosystem than first thought. It would still have been an apex predator but maybe not as voracious as first thought.

Their research is published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica, an explained in a UCR news release:

Creationism in Crisis - An Early Mammal Was Preying On Dinosaurs 125 Million Years Before Earth Existed (According To Creationists)

Illustration showing Repenomamus robustus as it attacks Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis before a volcanic debris flow buries them both, ca. 125 million years ago.

Fossil: Mammal attacks dinosaur - Canadian Museum of Nature

The fossil sowing the entangled skeletons of the dinosaur (Psittacosaurus) and the mammal (Repenomamus). Scale bar equals 10 cm.

125 years before Earth was magicked out of nothing, according to creationists, there were early mammals preying on dinosaurs in Canada. The problem creationist have is that they get all their information from tales made up by primitive people who knew nothing of Canada, dinosaurs or early mammals and though Earth was created by magic just a few years earlier.

This is how we can tell that their favourite source book is worthless as an account of real science, biology, geography and history. It is quite simply demonstrably and unarguably so wrong about just about everything, as we now know, that it's laughable that grown adults believe any of it.

Q: How do we know that early mammals were preying on dinosaurs 125 million years ago?

A: Because we have the evidence.

It comes in the form of a fossil of an early mammal attacking a dinosaur, dated to 125 million years old, as described in a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. The fossil shows a (smaller) mammal in the process of attacking or maybe even eating alive, a (larger) dinosaur. The pair were suddenly engulfed in a volcanic debris flow.

As a news release from the Canadian Museum of Nature explains:

Creationism in Crisis - Sturgeons in Alberta 72 million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Credit: University of Alberta

72-million-year-old sturgeon discovered in Edmonton is a fossil first | Folio

Once upon a time, just a few thousand years ago, a magic man made of nothing appeared from nowhere and said some magic words that magicked a whole universe out of nothing. Right in the middle of that universe he made a small flat planet and put a dome over it to keep the water above the sky out, then he magicked some people, some plants and some animals and this took him nearly a whole week. Even though he did it all with a few magic words, this made him so tired he needed a day off.

After a while he decided he didn't like what he had made because he had given the people free will and they were using it, so he drowned them all apart from a few, then started again without changing his original design, hoping things would turn out differently this time.

What he hadn't realised was that he had only gone and created this imaginary world in a small part of a really big Universe that had been there for billions of years and already had a planet with lots of animals on it, so, although he had started off 'going down' to chat to the humans he had magicked, he promptly disappeared, never to be seen again, almost as though he had gone back to being nothing. Meanwhile, the real planet in the real universe carried on the way it had always done, as though no magician had ever done anything magical.

One of those animals on the real planet was a fish called a sturgeon which lived in what is now Alberta, Canada, 75 million years before 'Creation Week', which is why scientist were able to find a fossil of it in rocks known to be between 84 and 72 million years old. It's little clues like this, and the complete lack of any evidence of magic, that tells us the story of that fantasy creation was wrong and made up by ignorant people who didn't know any better.

The discovery of the fossil sturgeon was announced in a paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology last August and announced to the press in a news release just a couple of days ago:

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Have Worked Out How The Vertebrate Head Evolved - It wasn't Created By Magic

Laser scanning images of stage 24

Figure 3
Dynamics of head mesoderm cell clusters during individualization of the head muscles See also Figures S4 and S5.

(A–L) 3D reconstructions and laser scanning images of stage 24 (A–D), 25 (E–H), and 26 (I–L) lamprey embryos. The area enclosed by the white dotted line in (K) indicates velum mesoderm. Pink, mesoderm; light blue, dorsal inner mandibular mesoderm; green, ventral mandibular arch mesoderm; yellow, cavity in the mandibular mesoderm. Images show sagittal views.

(M) Comparison of rosettes and head mesoderm cell clusters in lamprey and amphioxus embryos. Right blue, somite rosette; blue, distinct head mesodermal cell clusters. DIMM, dorsal inner mandibular mesoderm; EOM, extraocular muscle; GS, gill slit; GV, ganglion trigeminal; HyAM, hyoid arch mesoderm; HyM, hyoid mesoderm; LLM, lower lip mesoderm; LPM, lateral plate mesoderm; MM, mandibular mesoderm; NHP, nasohypophyseal plate; Op, optic vesicle; OPM, oropharyngeal membrane; OV, otic vesicle; PHM, pharyngeal mesoderm; PMM, premandibular mesoderm; PP, pharyngeal pouch; S, somite; ULM, upper lip mesoderm; Vel, velum; VMAM, ventral mandibular arch mesoderm.

Onai, Takayuki et al. (2023)

Study on Lamprey Embryos Sheds Light on the Evolutionary Origin of Vertebrate Head ｜ UNIVERSITY OF FUKUI

Despite the almost daily claims in the social media by creationist dupes that mainstream biologists are abandoning the Theory of Evolution (TOE) in favour of creationism because it doesn't explain the facts, there is no sign whatsoever in the scientific literature of that happening. No serious biologist has ever published a peer-reviewed paper proposing that magic by a supernatural designer better explains the facts than the TOE.

Instead, just about every paper dealing with origins and development of species and their relationship to other species, has evolution firmly and inextricably embedded within it and the conclusions only ever make sense as the result of an evolutionary process. The belief that the TOE has been or is in the process of being, overthrown by creationism is a lie promulgated by the Deception Institute to claim success for the 'Wedge Strategy', which has been a monumental failure as fewer Americans now believe in creationism than did at the start of the campaign.

The paper recently published with open access in iScience illustrates just have firmly embedded the TOE is in biology. It concerns the early development of the vertebrate head, which has been a matter of conjecture in biology:

Some believe that the vertebrate head has developed as a result of modification of the segmental elements of the trunk, such as the vertebrae and somites. On the other hand, others believe that the vertebrate head has evolved as a new, unsegment body part, unrelated to other widely observed embryonic segments somites. Interestingly, previous studies on embryos have revealed the presence of some vestiges of somites in the head mesoderm (e.g., head cavities and somitomeres). However, homology between trunk somites and such head segments has been controversial.

Note the complete absence of any notion of magic creation in the controversy. The issue is over which tissues evolved into the beginnings of the vertebrate head.

The paper, by Japanese scientists led by Assistant Professor Takayuki Onai, of the Department of Anatomy, University of Fukui, School of Medical Sciences, Fukui, Japan, resolves that controversy by showing how the head of a lamprey embryo develops.

As the University of Fukui news release explains:

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.