The discovery and dating (of which more later) of hominin remains in a Moroccan quarry, reported recently in Nature, has provided further confirmation that the origin of Homo sapiens lies in Africa, not Eurasia, contrary to an alternative hypothesis that has occasionally been proposed. The material consists of mandibles and other fragmentary remains, and also sheds light on the evolutionary origins of Neanderthals and Denisovans.
That is not to say that any serious palaeoanthropologists believed humans evolved wholly in Eurasia. Rather, some suggested that the final stages of Homo sapiens evolution may have occurred there, derived from descendants of earlier African migrants such as H. erectus, H. rhodesiensis, or H. antecessor. Others have argued that the so-called ‘muddle in the middle’ of the hominin family tree may represent a single, widely distributed species exhibiting regional variation across both Africa and Eurasia.
However, the Moroccan specimens display a clear mosaic of primitive and derived features — precisely the pattern that creationists call ‘transitional species’ and insist don't exist. These fossils combine traits seen in African sister lineages with features associated with H. antecessor, a pre-Neanderthal/Denisovan European species whose remains are being excavated at the Sima de los Huesos (Cave of Bones) site at Atapuerca, Spain.
The fossils are also exceptionally valuable for palaeoanthropology for another reason. The sediments in which they were found preserve the unmistakable signature of the Matuyama–Brunhes geomagnetic reversal, which occurred around 773,000 years ago when Earth’s magnetic poles flipped. This provides an unusually robust chronological anchor, as the timing of this reversal has been independently verified from multiple, entirely separate lines of evidence.
There is therefore a great deal here for creationists to attempt to dismiss. First, there is the mosaic of primitive and derived features that identify these fossils as genuinely transitional — something creationism insists does not exist. Second, there is the age of the material, securely dated to approximately 763,000 years (±4,000 years) before creationists insist Earth was magicked out of nothing, placing ancestral hominins hundreds of thousands of years before the Bronze Age biblical story of a single, ancestor-free human couple. Finally, and perhaps most inconveniently of all, the dating does not rely on radiometric methods at all, but on geomagnetic reversal stratigraphy, verified beyond any reasonable doubt. The biblical timeline is therefore wrong by many orders of magnitude.
We are only three days into 2026 and already creationism is facing an avalanche of new evidence against it and in favour of evolution on an ancient Earth in a vastly older Universe — directly contradicting the Bronze Age origin myths that creationists cling to with the desperation of a drunk clutching a lamppost.
The latest blow comes from the New York University Department of Anthropology, where a team of researchers led by Associate Professor Scott Williams, working with colleagues from the University of Washington, Chaffey College, and the University of Chicago, have carried out a detailed re-examination of fossil remains attributed to Sahelanthropus tchadensis. Their analysis provides strong evidence that this species was bipedal and shared several key skeletal characteristics with later bipedal hominins, including the australopithecines and members of the genus Homo.
Sahelanthropus tchadensis was discovered in the early 2000s, and its place in human evolution has been debated ever since. Some researchers argued it might represent an extinct ape rather than a stem hominin. Evidence for habitual bipedalism, however, strongly favours the latter interpretation, making S. tchadensis the earliest known human ancestor currently identified in the fossil record.
As such, it becomes yet another example of the transitional species that creationists continue to insist do not exist, often under the mistaken belief that Charles Darwin — whom they treat as the final authority on all matters evolutionary — admitted that the absence of transitional forms was a serious problem for his theory. In reality, Darwin explicitly predicted that such fossils would eventually be found, and the subsequent century and a half of palaeontology has repeatedly confirmed that prediction.
The discovery is of a point of attachment on the femur of a ligament only found in bipedal hominins. The importance of bipedalism in human evolution cannot be overstated. Habitual upright walking is one of the defining characteristics that separates hominins from other apes, reflecting a fundamental shift in anatomy, locomotion, and behaviour. It requires extensive reorganisation of the skeleton, including changes to the position of the foramen magnum, the curvature of the spine, the shape of the pelvis, the proportions of the limbs, and the structure of the feet. Because these adaptations are complex, interdependent, and leave clear signatures in fossilised bones, bipedalism is not a trivial or ambiguous trait. Evidence for it in Sahelanthropus tchadensis therefore places this species firmly on the human lineage and pushes the origin of upright walking — and with it the human evolutionary trajectory — back far earlier than creationist models allow.
2026 is shaping up to be yet another dreadful year for the creationist cult, as palaeontology, archaeology, geochronology, and genetics continue to uncover facts that do not merely show creationism to be a divinely inspired allegory or metaphor, but demonstrate that it is simply and unequivocally wrong at every level.
At times it seems like an unfair contest between myths invented by Bronze Age pastoralists—without the slightest benefit of scientific understanding—and the cumulative output of modern science. It is rather like a chess match between a pigeon and a powerful computer, in which the pigeon’s concept of chess is to knock the pieces over, then strut about on the board declaring victory. This tactic is known in creationist circles as “debate”, and everywhere else as “pigeon chess”.
As usual, the closing months of the year have brought yet more palaeontological evidence that creationism cannot accommodate. This latest find dates to around 37 million years before creationists believe Earth was magicked into existence, bears the unmistakable fingerprints of one of those supposedly “non-existent” transitional forms, and displays the familiar mosaic of archaic and modern features that are commonplace in the fossil record. It also fits precisely into the established timeline of reptilian evolution and was discovered in southern England, in deposits that align exactly with the known geological and climatological history of the region.
The fossil was discovered in 1981 at Hordle Cliff, England, and donated to the Natural History Museum in London, where it has now been identified as a new species. The identification was made by Professor Georgios L. Georgalis of the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kraków, currently a visiting researcher at the Natural History Museum. His paper, co-authored with Dr Marc E. H. Jones, curator of fossil reptiles and amphibians, has recently been published open access in Comptes Rendus Palevol.
Hordle Cliff, Geology.
Hordle Cliff is one of the most important and intensively studied fossil-bearing coastal exposures in southern England. Its significance lies in the exceptional sequence of Eocene marine sediments exposed by continual coastal erosion along the western Solent.
Geological setting
Hordle Cliff lies on the coast of Hampshire, west of Milford-on-Sea, forming part of the Hampshire Basin, a large sedimentary basin that accumulated marine and marginal-marine deposits during the early Cenozoic. The strata exposed here date mainly to the Late Eocene, approximately 41–34 million years ago, a time when southern England lay beneath a warm, shallow sea.
Stratigraphy
The cliff exposes a classic succession of Eocene formations, including:
Barton Group (upper Eocene)
Dominated by clays, silts, and fine sands
Deposited in shallow marine conditions
Exceptionally fossil-rich
Barton Clay Formation
The most famous unit at Hordle Cliff
Known for abundant molluscs, sharks’ teeth, rays, fish remains, turtles, crocodilians, birds, and reptiles (including snakes)
Indicates warm, subtropical seas with nearby coastal and estuarine environments
These sediments accumulated gradually, layer upon layer, in calm marine settings—exactly the opposite of the chaotic, high-energy deposition required by flood-geology models.
Depositional environment
During the Late Eocene, this region experienced:
**Warm greenhouse climates
High sea levels
Low-energy marine sedimentation
Fine-grained clays settled slowly out of suspension, allowing delicate fossils to be preserved intact. Many beds show bioturbation, shell beds, and orderly fossil assemblages—clear evidence of stable ecosystems persisting over long periods.
Fossil significance
Hordle Cliff is internationally important because it preserves:
Highly diverse faunas spanning multiple ecological niches
Mosaic evolutionary forms, including transitional reptiles
Fossils preserved in situ, not reworked or mixed from different ages
This makes the site particularly valuable for reconstructing Eocene ecosystems and tracing evolutionary change through time.
Structural and erosional features
The cliffs themselves are relatively soft and unstable:
Frequent slumping and landslips continually expose fresh material
Ongoing erosion has made Hordle Cliff productive for over two centuries
The geology is simple and undisturbed, with gently dipping strata—no folding, overturning, or tectonic chaos
Why this matters for creationist claims
The geology of Hordle Cliff presents multiple, independent problems for young-Earth creationism:
The sediments record millions of years of gradual deposition
Fossils are ordered, local, and ecological, not globally mixed
Climatic signals match global Eocene warming trends
The strata fit seamlessly into the wider regional and global geological record
There is no evidence whatsoever of rapid, catastrophic deposition, let alone a single global flood. Instead, Hordle Cliff is a textbook example of slow geological processes operating exactly as modern geology predicts.
“Weird” new species of ancient fossil snake discovered in southern EnglandAn extinct snake has slithered its way out of obscurity over four decades after its discovery.
The newly described species of reptile, Paradoxophidion richardoweni, is offering new clues in the search for the origin of ‘advanced’ snakes.
In 1981, the backbones of an ancient snake were uncovered at Hordle Cliff on England’s south coast. They’ve now been revealed as the remnants of a previously unknown species.
Research published in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol has identified that the vertebrae belong to a new species named Paradoxophidion richardoweni. This animal would have lived around 37 million years ago, when England was home to a much wider range of snakes than it is now.
While little is known about this animal’s life, it could shed light on the early evolution of biggest group of modern snakes. This is because Paradoxophidion represents an early-branching member of the caenophidians, the group containing the vast majority of living snakes.
The new species is so early in the evolution of the caenophidians that it has a peculiar mix of characteristics now found in different snakes throughout this group. This mosaic of features is summed up in its genus name, with Paradoxophidion meaning ‘paradox snake’ in Greek.
Its species name, meanwhile, honours Sir Richard Owen. Not only did he name the first fossil snakes found at Hordle Cliff, but this scientist was also instrumental in establishing what’s now the Natural History Museum where the fossils are cared for, giving the name multiple layers of meaning.
Lead author Dr Georgios Georgalis, from the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow, says that being able to describe a new species from our collections was ‘a dream come true’.
It was my childhood dream to be able to visit the Natural History Museum, let alone do research there, so, when I saw these very weird vertebrae in the collection and knew that they were something new, it was a fantastic feeling. It’s especially exciting to have described an early diverging caenophidian snake, as there’s not that much evidence about how they emerged. Paradoxophidion brings us closer to understanding how this happened.
Dr Georgios Georgalis, lead author
Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals
Polish Academy of Sciences
Krakow, Poland.
The most commonly found bones of fossil snakes are their vertebrae, which contain traits that scientists can use to identify the species.
Hordle Cliff, near Christchurch on England’s south coast, provides a window into a period of Earth’s history known as the Eocene that lasted from around 56 to 34 million years ago.
Dr Marc Jones, our curator of fossil reptiles and amphibians who co-authored the research, says that this epoch saw dramatic climatic changes around the world.
Around 37 million years ago, England was much warmer than it is now, though the Sun was very slightly dimmer, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide were much higher. England was also slightly closer to the equator, meaning that it received more heat from the Sun year round.
Dr Marc E.H. Jones, co-author
Curator of fossil reptiles and amphibians.
Natural History Museum
London, UK.
Since then, a variety of fossil turtles, lizards and mammals have also been uncovered at Hordle Cliff. There are also abundant snake fossils, including some particularly important species.
The fossil snakes found at Hordle Cliff were some of the first to be recognised when Richard Owen studied them in the mid-nineteenth century. They include Paleryx, the first named constrictor snake in the fossil record. Smaller snakes from this site, however, haven’t been as well investigated. Paradoxophidion’s vertebrae are just a few millimetres long, so historically they’ve not had a lot of attention.
Dr Georgios Georgalis.
To get a better look at these fossils, Marc and Georgios took CT scans of the bones. In total, they identified 31 vertebrae from different parts of the spine of Paradoxophidion.
We used these CT scans to make three dimensional models of the fossils. These provide a digital record of the specimen which we’ve shared online so that they can be studied by anyone, not just people who can come to the museum and use our microscopes.
Dr Marc E.H. Jones.
The scans show that the fossils are all slightly different shapes and sizes, as the snake’s spine bones gradually taper from head to tail. However, they share some features that show they all belong to one species.
Georgios estimates that Paradoxophidion would have been less than a metre long, but other details about this animal’s life are hard to say. The lack of a skull makes it difficult to know what it ate, while the vertebrae don’t have any sign of being adapted for a specialised lifestyle, such as burrowing.
The backbones of Paradoxophidion are surprisingly similar to those of Acrochordus snakes.
Though the vertebrae don’t give much away about Paradoxophidion’s lifestyle, they are strikingly similar to a group of snakes known as the Acrochordids. These reptiles are known as elephant trunk snakes due to their unusually baggy skin.
Today, only a few species of these snakes can be found living in southeast Asia and northern Australia. But they’re among the earliest branches of the caenophidian family tree, with a fossil record extending back over 20 million years.
As Paradoxophidion is really similar to the acrochordids, it’s possible that this snake could be the oldest known member of this family. If it was, then it could mean that it was an aquatic species, as all Acrochordids are aquatic. On the other hand, it might belong to a completely different group of caenophidians. There’s just not enough evidence at the moment to prove how this snake might have lived, or which family it belongs to.
Dr Georgios Georgalis.
Finding out more about Paradoxophidion and the early evolution of the caenophidians means that more fossils will need to be studied. Georgios hopes to continue his work in our fossil reptile collections in the near future, where he believes more new species might be waiting.
I’m planning to study a variety of snake fossils in the collection, including those originally studied by Richard Owen. These include the remains of the giant aquatic snake Palaeophis, which were first found in England in the nineteenth century. There are also several bones with differing morphology that haven’t been investigated before that I’m interested in looking at. These might represent new taxa and offer additional clues about snake evolution.
A novel caenophidian serpent (Serpentes) peculiar to early divergence from the late Eocene of Hordle Cliff, England
We describe here a new genus and species of snake, based on several trunk and caudal vertebrae, from the late Eocene (MP 17a) of Hordle Cliff, England. We studied the fossil material using both visual microscopy and computed tomography (μCT), focusing on its intracolumnar variation and comparing it extensively with other Paleogene snake taxa from England and continental Europe. The new small taxon is characterized by a set of bizarre and distinctive vertebral features that may differentiate it from all other snakes. Its morphology is somewhat similar to that of russellophiids; however, some of its anatomical features are radically different from those seen in the latter group and thus defy such placement at the family level. Furthermore, the new English taxon bears a striking resemblance to extant acrochordids, particularly the species Acrochordus granulatus (Schneider, 1799). Consequently, we consider the new taxon to most likely represent an early divergent caenophid, possibly even a member of the Acrochordidae Bonaparte, 1831, well outside the stratigraphic and geographic distribution known to date for the latter group. It further adds to the astonishing diversity of vertebral morphologies in European Paleogene snakes.
Appendix 1. — Flythrough video of the μCT of the holotype trunk vertebra NHMUK PV R 10795.
Appendix 2. — Flythrough video of the μCT of the caudal vertebra NHMUK PV R 10796.
Taken together, the geology of Hordle Cliff leaves no room for creationist evasions. The sediments accumulated slowly in warm, shallow Eocene seas, preserving stable marine ecosystems over millions of years. The fossils are local, ordered, and ecologically coherent, embedded within undisturbed strata that fit seamlessly into the wider geological history of southern England and the global Eocene record. None of this resembles the chaotic aftermath of a recent global catastrophe; all of it is exactly what conventional geology predicts.
The newly identified fossil from this site simply adds to the embarrassment. It is neither out of place nor out of time, but sits precisely where evolutionary theory says it should—both stratigraphically and anatomically—displaying the familiar mosaic of ancestral and derived features that creationists insist do not exist. Hordle Cliff has been yielding such transitional forms for over two centuries, and every one of them tells the same story.
For creationism, this presents a recurring and insoluble problem. Each new discovery must be dismissed, distorted, or ignored, not because it is anomalous, but because it fits too well. Hordle Cliff is not an exception to the rule; it is the rule itself—one more quietly devastating reminder that the natural world records its own history with remarkable consistency, and that history bears no resemblance whatsoever to a Bronze Age flood myth.
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Human evolution isn’t a tidy staircase; it’s a branching, tangled tree full of transitional forms. And now, cutting-edge protein analysis from two-million-year-old teeth has revealed that Paranthropus robustus — one of our distant cousins — carried mixed ancestry, adding powerful new evidence to the evolutionary story creationists work so hard to deny.
If there is anything guaranteed to send a creationist into a fit of denial — desperately trying to redefine basic terms such as “transitional”, “species”, and “evolution”, and, as a last resort, claiming palaeontologists must have faked the evidence — it is the discovery of a transitional species in human evolutionary history.
But the hominin fossil record, like the evolutionary record for most living species, is absolutely packed with transitional forms. In fact, there are so many in human palaeontology that it can be difficult to single out one that is clearly more ‘transitional’ than the rest, because they form a fairly smooth continuum from the australopiths through to the genus Homo, just as we would expect of a slow process unfolding over tens of thousands or millions of years.
However, one species, Paranthropus robustus, stands out for its mosaic of features consistent with a lineage intermediate between the common ancestor of chimpanzees and hominins and the australopiths that followed.
And this mosaic has now been expanded to include genetic-level evidence, thanks to advances in palaeoproteomics. Proteins can persist far longer than DNA, yet they retain a direct correspondence to DNA via RNA, which encodes their amino-acid sequences. Once ancient proteins have been recovered and analysed, researchers can work backwards to reconstruct the RNA, and therefore the DNA, that produced them.
Using proteins extracted from the tooth enamel of four P. robustus fossils, researchers led by the University of Copenhagen have shown that these individuals themselves had mixed ancestry — indicating interbreeding with contemporaneous relatives, just as we now know happened among later hominin species, and almost certainly among the australopiths too.
Two new papers announced today will have creationists scratching their heads as they try to decide which technique for dismissing them will meet with the most approval from their fellow cultists.
The first, in Nature, concerns yet another of those supposedly non-existent transitional fossils which, because Charles Darwin predicted they would be found, must be dismissed at all costs. It comes in the form of an 86-million-year-old dinosaur fossil from Mongolia that is intermediate between the small, fleet-footed predatory dinosaurs and the larger apex predators — the tyrannosaurs.
The usual creationist response is to declare that these intermediate fossils are “not transitional; they are fully formed, created species.” Of course, that doesn’t explain why species that are intermediate between ancestral and descendant species show a mosaic of features from both. Presumably, given their parody of evolution — in which evolution is imagined as a single event where one species suddenly turns into another — they expect an intermediate to be half one and half the other: the equivalent of the “crocoduck” or a chimpanzee with a human head. In reality, this discovery shows exactly what we would expect from the fossil record of tyrannosaur evolution 86 million years ago.
It's also important to creationism that the so-called 'missing link' stays missing. It is only ever referred to in the singular and refers to some supposed link between apes and humans, and it is definitely not one of the many archaic African hominins. But of course, every fossil is the 'link' or transitional form between its parents and its offspring because evolution is a process, not the parody event of creationism, evolving species form a continuum, and this discovery from Mongolia is no exception.
An artistic rendering of an evening approximately 252 million years ago during the late Permian in the Luangwa Basin of Zambia. The scene includes several saber-toothed gorgonopsians and beaked dicynodonts.
Gabriel Ugueto
Another day, and another clutch of transitional fossils from millions of years before “Creation Week” for creationists to lie about, misrepresent, or simply ignore in order to cope with the resulting cognitive dissonance. This time, it’s not just a single research paper, but a series of 14 published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The fossils are the result of 15 years of excavation at three sites in Africa and cover the 47-million-year Permian era, which ended with the “Great Dying” 252 million years ago — the mass extinction at the end of the Permian in which an estimated 70% of species became extinct. Not only is that timeline fatal to those creationists who like to imagine the Earth and life on it are just 6,000 to 10,000 years old, but the fact of a mass extinction raises insurmountable problems for intelligent design advocates. They would need to explain the intelligence behind designing species only to have them wiped out by a climate catastrophe — one which should have been anticipated by an omniscient designer and could have been prevented by an omnipotent god.
And of course, another problem for creationists is the abundance of these transitional fossils, which, according to creationist dogma, should not exist at all.
A student palaeontologist, Sofia Patrocínio, from the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of Lisbon (Nova FCT), has identified a fossil tooth as belonging to a docodontan – a group of mammaliform vertebrates considered close relatives and ancestors of true mammals. This discovery pushes back the known origin of this group by a further 40 million years.
This is the sort of find that often prompts headlines seemingly designed to play into the hands of anti-science groups such as creationists, with claims like *“The science books will need to be rewritten”* or *“Everything you thought you knew about evolution was wrong!”* These sensationalist lines risk creating the false impression that scientists are constantly realising they were “wrong all along”.
In reality – as in this case – what has happened is that a gap in our knowledge has been filled. Our understanding is now slightly more complete than before. Rather than overturning evolutionary theory, this discovery fits perfectly within it, supporting what was already known: there was a gradual transition from small reptiles to early mammals. The main uncertainty was *when* certain steps in that transition occurred.
Creationists who seize on such discoveries to claim scientists are forever changing their minds overlook an inconvenient detail – the timeline. Nearly all of these fossil finds involve organisms that lived hundreds of thousands, even millions of years before creationists believe the Earth and life began. If anything needs rewriting, it’s the creationist books that peddle disinformation to those willing to pay for material that reassures them their preconceived beliefs are correct – even when the evidence says otherwise.
Sofia Patrocínio and her colleagues have recently published their findings in the journal of the Palaeontological Association, Papers in Palaeontology. The discovery is also covered in a news article from Nova FCT, published in Almadense.
What Were Docodontans?
Docodontans were small, extinct mammaliforms that lived during the Jurassic period, between about 201 and 145 million years ago. Although not true mammals, they were close relatives and part of the larger group from which mammals evolved.
They are best known from their distinctive teeth, which had complex cusps adapted for an omnivorous diet of insects, plants, and other small food sources. Fossils suggest docodontans were shrew-like in size and appearance, with some adapted to specialised habitats – including burrowing, climbing, and even semi-aquatic lifestyles.
The group is important to palaeontologists because their anatomy preserves key stages in the evolution from reptile-like synapsids to the first true mammals. Discoveries like the one by Sofia Patrocínio help refine our understanding of when and how early mammal traits emerged.
Nova FCT student identified a new ancestor of mammals from a two-millimeter toothThe fossil measures less than seven millimeters in total and is partially hidden in a rock. However, meticulous work has identified a new species that combines the name of a goddess with that of a constellation. The new species pushes back the emergence of this group of animals by 40 million years.
After several years of researching a molar tooth from an animal that might resemble a mouse and several months until she was able to publish the scientific article, Sofia Patrocínio "closed" this cycle on Friday, June 13, 2025. The result presented in the scientific journal Papers in Palaeontology owes nothing to bad luck, but it does have its share of incidents, as the paleontologist told ALMADENSE.
"There's a funny story from high school: I had to do a project on paleontology and got a failing grade; I was so upset I said it wouldn't happen again," she says in a relaxed conversation, while admitting that she loves what she does. And she does a lot of things, even though many of them aren't even paid. "Paleontology isn't seen as a serious profession." Something she's determined to change.
Sofia Patrocínio is from Cartaxo and graduated in Environmental Education and Nature Tourism. It's been more than half a dozen years since she enrolled in the program, but the price of student housing elsewhere was unaffordable (then, as it is now) , and it was one of the factors that forced her to stay closer to home and enroll at the Polytechnic Institute of Santarém. After that, she interned at Dino Parque da Lourinhã and stayed on to work there.
It was impossible to remove the fossil from the rock due to the risk of damaging it. In the center of the image, the yellowish structure corresponds to the dentary (mandible), and the dark structure is the partially visible molar.
Photo: Sofia Patrocínio
“It was them [my colleagues at Dino Parque] who encouraged me to do a master's degree in Paleontology at Nova; they said I had a knack for it,” he says, referring to the course at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Lisbon (Nova FCT), which has a campus in the parish of Caparica, Almada.
In one of her master's degree courses, Vertebrate Paleontology, Sofia Patrocínio and her colleagues were challenged to prepare and describe fossils, some from the Lourinhã Museum collection and some from an excavation in Greenland. The then-master's student worked with needles and a microscope to remove the sediments still clinging to the fossil, which was less than seven millimeters long —even so, she was unable to free the entire piece, as we will see.
She then described the fossil in detail and attempted to identify its group and its phylogenetic relationships with other animal groups—in other words, she attempted to place the animal in its proper position on the tree of life. "It had similarities with several groups, but didn't seem to belong to any. It was most likely a new species," says the researcher. "I had so much study material that I could have continued [with the same topic] for my master's degree."
How does a tooth allow us to identify a new species?
The first step was to include the species in the order Docodonta, a group of mammaliforms—the evolutionary predecessors of mammals—with very distinctive molars. To put it simply, the molars were long and low, with a characteristic cusp pattern. (Cusps are the conical protrusions on molars, which we also have.) But this particular tooth had characteristics that didn't fit into any of the previously known genera or species within docodonts.
Docodont fossils are very rare, but there are fossils with entire jaws, which allowed comparison with the available material and ruled out a tooth with a small defect. "If it were just a change in the tooth's morphology, there might be doubt, but I counted five to seven differences," explains Sofia Patrocínio. Among these differences was a cusp facing the tongue.
While the tooth's original pattern allowed it to be classified as a new species, the layer in which it was found offers another new discovery. To determine the age of fossils, paleontologists "measure" the age of rocks found in the same layer. In this case, the fossil would have formed about 200 million years ago, during the transition between the Triassic and Jurassic periods (the period in which a wide variety of easily recognizable dinosaurs emerged). Even more interesting is that this species would have appeared 40 million years before the oldest known docodont species.
A new species at the transition between pre-docodont mammals and docodonts adds another piece to the puzzle of mammalian evolution, particularly the order Docodonta, which diversified and occupied various environments at the same time as large dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Furthermore, this fossil places the origin of docodonts in Greenland and Europe—connected before the continents separated into their current positions—rather than Russia and Asia as previously thought.
The layers of soil containing the fossils are like shelves in a bookcase, each corresponding to a period of time. By exploring each shelf as if reading the books stored there, the scientists were able to date the layer and the fossils—among them a new species of dinosaur, Plateosaurus trossingensis, identified by a fellow student in Sofia's master's program — and also describe the environment. The fossils were found in an ancient lake, with little oxygen in the water and which served as a passageway for many animals.
200 million years ago, when the 'Nujalikodon cassiopeiae' fossil is believed to have formed, what are now Greenland and Europe were connected, and also in contact with the continental plates of North America and Asia.
Adapted from: Patrocínio et al. (2025) Papers in Paleontology
A goddess tooth named after a constellation
Now 25, Sofia Patrocínio boasts the identification of a new species on her resume. "It's strange; it seems like it hasn't sunk in yet." Whoever discovers a new species can give it a name, naturally following the rules used by the scientific community. A species always has two Latin names (first the genus name, which functions almost like our surnames, and then the "proper name" that conveys the distinctive characteristic), as defined by the scientist Carlos Linnaeus in the mid-18th century.
This new docodont was named Nujalikodon cassiopeiae . Nujalik is the goddess of the earth hunt in Inuit mythology—the indigenous population of the Arctic regions of Canada, Alaska, and Greenland—and "nujalikodon" means "Nujalik's tooth." The specific epithet cassiopeiae owes its name to the constellation Cassiopeia, whose five stars appear to form a W, like the cusps of the molar Sofia Patrocínio studied.
The 831 photographs taken by the scan allowed a three-dimensional reconstruction of the fossil measuring just seven millimeters.
Adapted from Patrocínio et al. (2025) Papers in Paleontology
Naming the species requires all the prior work of studying fossils, in this case a complete molar, the piece of bone that housed the tooth, and the broken roots of a second tooth. But a large portion of the fossil was not visible; it was still embedded within the rock, and removing it could irreparably damage the tooth. Furthermore, it was extremely small, the molar measuring only two millimeters. Therefore, a scan of the fossil was necessary—a kind of CT scan for very small objects—which was very difficult to achieve, says the researcher. "But without the scan, it was impossible to move forward, nor to submit the article for publication." Then, using the 831 photographs from the scan—as if the fossil had been cut into very thin slices—a three-dimensional model was created on the computer, allowing us to see the details hidden within the rock.
Sofia Patrocínio's work was supported by her advisors, Vicente Crespo, a paleontologist at Nova FCT, and Elsa Panciroli, a researcher at the National Museum of Scotland, and involved collaboration with other researchers. The work was funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology, as part of the GeoBioTec project.
Having completed this stage, the paleontologist hopes to continue studying the evolution of mammalian ancestors with a doctorate from the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon. This time, she will study the inner ear—but she will continue to observe bones and very small structures. In the meantime, she will participate in paleontological excavations, collaborate with a fossil database in Portugal, and, in the activities she organizes for Ciência Viva, try to spark children's interest in paleontology.
ABSTRACT
The first mammaliaforms emerged in the Late Triassic, but their exact origins remain unclear due to the scarcity of fossils from this period. One of the earliest diverging mammaliaform groups, the order Docodonta, became unusually ecomorphologically diverse compared with other early mammals, and this may be connected to the possession of complex molar cusp morphology. The specimen described here, found in the Rhætelv Formation of the Kap Stewart Group (Rhaetian–Sinemurian) of central East Greenland, provides novel information on docodontan origins and evolution, as well as key biogeographic insights into early mammal dispersal. Nujalikodon cassiopeiae gen. et sp. nov. is the first mammaliaform found in the Rhætelv Formation, and is likely to be Early Jurassic (Hettangian) in age. Comprising an incomplete dentary with a single preserved molar, it was visualized using micro-computed tomography; the molar bears similarities to the putative early docodontan Delsatia, and docodontan Dobunnodon. Phylogenetic analysis places Nujalikodon cassiopeiae as a basal member of Docodonta or a close sister taxon, making it one of the oldest definitive docodontans and pushing the origin of the group back to at least the Early Jurassic. It provides insights into the development of docodontan dental complexity, a key factor in their ecological diversification during the Middle to Late Jurassic. Its presence in Greenland supports the hypothesis that docodontans originated in the region now comprising Europe and Greenland before dispersing across the rest of Laurasia.
This fossil tooth extends the known existence of docodontans by around 40 million years, placing them much earlier in the evolutionary timeline than previously documented. This is significant because:
It strengthens the fossil record for the transition from reptile-like synapsids to early mammals, filling a critical gap rather than overturning existing theory.
It confirms evolutionary predictions — that mammaliforms had already diversified long before the rise of true mammals, in line with phylogenetic models.
It demonstrates the self-correcting nature of science — evidence leads to refinements in understanding, not wholesale abandonment of established frameworks. When the evidence changes, scientists change their minds, unlike theologians who try to change the evidence.
For creationism, the problem is twofold: the fossil is tens of millions of years older than the 6,000–10,000-year timeline central to young-Earth creationist belief, and docodontans are transitional, exhibiting a mosaic of traits bridging reptiles and mammals, exactly the kind of “missing links” creationists claim do not exist.
Rather than undermining evolution, this discovery is yet another piece of independent evidence that fits perfectly into its framework — and yet another reminder that creationist models fail when confronted with reality.
One of the authors of the study, Professor Aléssio Datovo, poses next to a coelacanth specimen on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (photo: personal archive)
Here is something that will cause creationists to jump for joy – until they read beyond the headline (if they ever do). Scientists have announced that they were wrong about the evolution of the vertebrate skull, including that of mammals.
However, beneath that headline lie some disappointing facts for creationists:
The error was uncovered by re-examining the 400-million-year-old skull of a coelacanth.
The mistake concerns details of how the vertebrate skull evolved – not whether it evolved.
The paper directly contradicts the common creationist claim that scientists are only permitted to publish research that conforms to the scientific consensus. This study openly challenges the prevailing view.
The discovery enhances our understanding of how the vertebrate skull evolved from that of ancestral lobe-finned fishes – precisely the kind of evidence creationists would rather didn’t exist.
Still, creationists can enjoy the headline and may even use it to 'prove' to their audience that science is unreliable because scientists sometimes make mistakes. Of course, they’ll likely ignore the fact that the fossil in question is 400 million years old, and gloss over the reality that – unlike religious dogma – science is a process of continuous refinement. Science allows for doubt, re-examination, and re-evaluation. When the evidence changes, scientists change their minds. In contrast, religious dogma is fixed and unchanging, usually despite the evidence, not because of it, hence the widening gap between what creationists are required to believe and what science reveals.
Upon re-examining the cranial musculature of the African coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), the researchers found that only 13% of the previously identified evolutionary muscle innovations in major vertebrate lineages were accurate. They also identified nine new evolutionary transformations related to innovations in feeding and respiration.
The researchers, Professor Aléssio Datovo from the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil and the late David Johnson from the Smithsonian Institution in the United States, who sadly died when the paper was in review, have just published their findings in Science Advances.
