Creationism in Crisis - Exploding the Myth of the Cambrian and Ordovician 'Explosions'

Slideshow code developed in collaboration with ChatGPT3 at https://chat.openai.com/

Fossils from the Lower Cambrian Yu'anshan Formation at Mafang (Figs. A-K) and Ercaicun (Fig. L) near Haikou, Kunming. All bar scales 10 mm except: C, I, 5 mm; L, 1 mm. Abbreviations: an, antenna; ap, appendage; as, axial spine; ex, exopodite; eye, compound eye; fc, free cheek; hs, head shield; leg, tentacle-like leg; te, trunk end. A) Three lobopodians (arrowed separately in different colors) of Microdictyon sinicum coexisting with their host Eldonia eumorpha (RCCBYU 10414). B) Fuxianhuia protensa (RCCBYU 10192), an adult with three juveniles (arrows). C) Eoredlichia intermedia with one free cheek detached (RCCBYU 10199). D) Four laterally compressed Leanchoilia illecebrosa (RCCBYU 10193). E) Concentration of exoskeletons of Yunnanocephalus yunnanensis (RCCBYU 10366). F) Dense accumulation of Yunnanozoon lividum (RCCBYU 10418). G) Eoredlichia intermedia (RCCBYU 10190). H) Xandarella spectaculum (RCCBYU 10191), with head shield, antennae and appendages preserved in separate laminae. I) Naraoia longicaudata (RCCBYN 10367) with nonsymmetry gut fillings (arrow). J) Dorsoventrally compressed Leanchoilia illecebrosa (RCCBYU 10194). K) Paucipodia inermis (RCCBYU 10186) preserved across two thin layers marked by the dark shadow. L) Kunmingella douvillei (RCCBYU 10196) with outstretched appendages and trunk.

Zhang, Xi-Guang & HOU, X.-G (2007)

No (Cambrian) explosion and no (Ordovician) event: A single long-term radiation in the early Palaeozoic - ScienceDirect

The bad news for creationism continues with the publication of yet another paper refuting one of their central dogmas - the lie that the so-called 'Cambrian Explosion' was a sudden creation of all the basic body plans of the major phyla, without ancestors, in a single act of magical design and creation.

The creationist argument of course depends on a deliberate misrepresentation of the metaphorical use of the word 'explosion' in this context, which is used in biology to describe a relatively rapid radiation of new taxa such as frequently happens when the potential evolutionary landscape changes due either to a major geological/cosmological event, or due to the evolution of new capabilities such as air-breathing and terrestrial existence or flight, or, in plants, new methods of fertilisation such as pollen, resulting in the explosive radiation of flowering plants.

Creationist frauds pretend it is used literally, to mean a sudden single event.

There was a lesser-known but similar 'explosive' increase in biodiversity during the Ordovician (approximately 485 to 443 million years ago) - the Great Ordovician Biodiversification ‘Event’ (GOBE).

The Cambrian explosion is a term used to describe a rapid diversification of animal life that occurred approximately 541 million years ago during the Cambrian Period. It is considered to be one of the most significant events in the history of life on Earth, as it marked the appearance of the first complex animal forms

The Cambrian Period, which lasted from approximately 541 to 485 million years ago, was characterized by a rapid increase in biodiversity, with the emergence of a wide variety of animal phyla. Fossil evidence from this period shows the appearance of many new body plans, including those of arthropods, mollusks, echinoderms, and chordates. The diversification of these groups was likely driven by a combination of environmental and evolutionary factors, including the availability of new ecological niches and the evolution of new genetic and developmental pathways.

Creationism in Crisis - What We Can Learn About Evolution From a Single Individual's Genome

Slideshow code developed in collaboration with ChatGPT3 at https://chat.openai.com/

Comparing Genes of 240 Mammal Species—and One Famous Dog—Offers New Insights in Biology, Evolutionary History | HHMI

Still more evidence against creationism is being revealed by data provided by the Zonomia Consortium.

In a series of 11 papers published recently, is one by Professor Beth Shapiro, HHMI Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) and director of evolutionary genomics at the UCSC Genomics Institute. In this work Professor Shapiro and her team analysed the genome of the famous sled dog, Balto, the hero of the 1925 'Serum run' to Nome, Alaska:

Creationism in Crisis - How Human and Other Mammalian Immune Systems Evolved

Slideshow code developed in collaboration with CHATGPT3 at https://chat.openai.com/

White blood cell

Source: La Jolla Institute for Immunology

Genomes from 240 mammal species explain human disease risks - Uppsala University, Sweden

My recent article about the evolution of mammals was based on research by the Zonomia Consortium which would be spreading despondency throughout the creationist cult if only they weren't so well rehearsed at avoiding and dismissing any information that threatens their superstition.

Another area of research coming out of the data supplied by the Zonomia Consortium is the evolution of the human and other mammalian immune system, and how it has led to some of the diseases currently associated with it.

Creationists who have fallen for the intelligent design hoax and who believe the putative intelligent designer is one and the same as the Abrahamic god, might like to consider why a supposedly omnibenevolent designer would design an immune system that causes suffering. Is that through malevolence or incompetence? The same applies to those creationists who believe a god magically guided evolution, usually to comply with their arrogant, anthropocentric belief that the purpose of evolution was to create modern humans, and them in particular.

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Have Worked Out The Time Scale for the Evolution of Placental Mammals

Creationism in Crisis

Scientists Have Worked Out The Time Scale for the Evolution of Placental Mammals

Slideshow code developed in collaboration with CHATGPT3 at https://chat.openai.com/

A genomic timescale for placental mammal evolution | Science

It's another dreadful day for creationism as scientists involved in the Zoonomia Project publish yet another paper that refutes creationist dogma and the disinformation that is used to recruit more scientifically illiterate dupes into the money-making and extremist political cult.

This paper, published in Science concerns the gaps in the palaeontological record of the diversification of mammals from a single stem species. The gaps are filled with genetic evidence, made possible by the systematic comparison of 241 whole genomes from different existing mammals.

To make matters worse for creationism, the major periods of diversification coincides with major environmental changes as evidenced from geology and show changes over several millions of years - on an Earth that creationists believe is only a few thousand years old!

The work was made possible by the work of the Zoonomia Consortium, which should be keeping creationist cult leaders awake at night, if they grasped the significance of the work:

The Zoonomia Consortium was formed in 2015 by a group of scientists from several institutions, including the University of California, Davis, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The goal of the consortium was to develop a comprehensive database of animal genomes that could be used to study and compare the genetic basis of traits across different species.

In 2020, the Zoonomia Consortium published a paper in the journal Nature describing the results of their work. The paper, entitled "Zoonomia Consortium, A comparative genomics multitool for scientific discovery and conservation," provides an overview of the consortium's approach and the tools they developed.

The Zoonomia database includes genomic data from over 100 species of animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish. The database is freely available to researchers and includes a variety of tools for analyzing and comparing genomic data, such as genome browsers, alignment tools, and gene expression analysis tools.

The Zoonomia Consortium's work has significant implications for conservation biology, as it allows researchers to compare the genetic basis of traits across different species and identify genetic factors that may be important for species survival. For example, researchers could use the Zoonomia database to identify genes that are associated with disease resistance or tolerance to environmental stressors, which could inform conservation efforts.

Reference:

Lewin, H.A., Robinson, G.E., Kress, W.J. et al. Zoonomia Consortium, A comparative genomics multitool for scientific discovery and conservation. Nature 587, 240–245 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2876-6

Tell me about the Zonomia Consortium, please

According to the international team of scientists, led by William J Murphy, of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, Texas A&M University:

Creationism in Crisis - Evolution by Loss of Genetic Information, or What Made us Human

Creationism in Crisis

Evolution by Loss of Genetic Information, or What Made us Human

Illustration by Michael S. Helfenbein

‘Deletions’ from the human genome may be what made us human | YaleNews

A trio of papers out recently should make creationists feel even more despondent, if only they could find the courage to read them, and if they could understand their contents. I'll write about them over the next couple of days, time willing.

The first, published yesterday in Science, concerns a new study led by researchers at Yale and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, which has shown that, in addition to gaining some new genes that allowed us to speak, for example, what also differentiates us from chimpanzees is about 10,000 lost pieces of DNA, some as small as a few base pairs.

This of course, flies in the face of creationist dogma which says loss of genetic information is always deleterious and so can't contribute to evolution. It's something that creationist guru Michael J. Behe ludicrously calls 'devolution', which is a nonsense term, since there is no mechanism by which deleterious mutations can accumulate in the species gene pool, unless, rarely, they are closely linked to a strongly beneficial mutation.

But then Behe is writing primarily for a readership that doesn't understand what evolution is or the processes that cause it and who have no intention of ever finding out. Instead, they tell themselves that 'evolutionists' believe a mutation can turn a one species into another as a single event. As we've come to expect, creationist dogma is counter-factual because it's based on deliberate misinformation.

These are the same people who have boon fooled into believing that mainstream biologists are turning against the Theory of Evolution and turning to their childish superstition with its magic and an unevidenced supernatural magician. Another creationists delusion refuted by this research paper.

That this is not a case of chimpanzees gaining something that their common ancestor with humans did not have is evidenced by the fact that the genetic information chimpanzees still have is also in the genome of many other mammals. The probability of multiple species all gaining the same small fragments of DNA are incalculably small.

So, what benefits did these deletions convey? That they did so is concluded from the fact that they are present in all humans so must have given a common ancestor and advantage early in. As the Yale News article by Bill Hathaway explains:

Creationism in Crisis - A Large Trove of 'Transitional' Fossil Fish Shows How Jawed, Tetrapod Vertebrates Evolved

Creationism in Crisis

A Large Trove of 'Transitional' Fossil Fish Shows How Jawed, Tetrapod Vertebrates Evolved

Fish Fossils Rewrite Evolutionary History----Chinese Academy of Sciences

According to a series of news items from the Chinese Academy of Sciences last September, which somehow passed beneath my radar, two huge collections of fossils in southwestern Chongqing municipality and Guizhou province, in China, in strata which have been dated to the Silurian Period that began around 440 million years ago, are providing new information about the evolution of fishes and the jawed vertebrates that eventually evolved into terrestrial tetrapods. These were direct ancestors of today’s amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds.

These finds resulted in four articles in Nature which sadly lie behind paywalls, but according to one of the news releases:

…Chinese researchers reported finding fish fossils that provided the "missing link" about the origin of the jaw, a key trait that gave rise to 99.8 percent of all vertebrate species living on Earth today, from giant whales to humans.

It is the first time for China to publish this many studies by one research team in a single issue of the prestigious journal, which stands as a testament to the importance of the findings and for China's global recognition as a powerhouse in paleontology, experts said.

Deng Tao, the director of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the recent breakthroughs represented China's original contribution to the basic sciences regarding evolution.

Creationism in Crisis - So What 'Kind' is This Strange Thing?

Creationism in Crisis

So What 'Kind' is This Strange Thing?

George, Emma E., et al.(2023)

Evolutionary oddball has seven genomes inside a single cell | New Scientist

The Bible that creationists turn to for a source of scientific information, is of course, as hopelessly muddled and simplistic about biology as it is about cosmology, morality and medicine. For example, this is how it tries to classify the birds that it is forbidden to eat under the irrational food taboos it mandates for believers:

And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray, and the vulture, and the kite after his kind; every raven after his kind; and the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind; the little owl, and the great owl, and the swan, and the pelican, and the gier eagle, and the cormorant; and the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.

Leviticus 11:13-19

Not surprisingly, and not just because of the hilarious gaff of including 'the bat' in a list of birds, and the muddle over the different 'kinds' of owl, biologists soon realised how hopelessly inadequate the Biblical notion of 'kinds' is as a means of classifying biological taxons, so had the devise the modern classification system.

And, presumably because the authors didn't realise that plants are alive because they don't breath like vertebrates do, there is no attempt to classify plants. In fact, the author's show their muddle over plants by this strange piece from Genesis:

Then God said, 'Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it. ' And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it.

Genesis 1:11-12

Clearly the Bible's authors thought there were only angiosperms (the most advances plants) since they are the only ones mentioned. Incidentally, more of their muddle is illustrated by the fact that this creation of green plants occurs before the sun is created, showing the authors knew nothing of photosynthesis.

And of course, there is no hint that the authors were even aware of single-celled micro-organisms, otherwise they might have mentioned germ theory, of which there is not a single word. Imaging how many lives could have been saved and how much suffering would have been avoided if God had thought to mention bacteria and viruses and how to avoid being infected by them, assuming it didn't know what it had created them for in the first place...

But that's an aside. The real muddle comes with the authors attempt to come up with a classification system, as Bible-literalist creationists assume that's what they were trying to do.

So, here is a curveball inadvertently thrown to creationists by researchers led by Emma E. George, now of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Integrative Oceanography Division, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA, when working at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Her team have discovered single-celled algae that are not single organisms at all, but a complex community of seven different organisms, each with its own genome, and each playing a part in a complex relationship within the algal cell body.

Figure 3
Microscopy of Cryptomonas gyropyrenoidosa SAG 25.80 with bacterial endosymbionts.

(A) DIC; (B) DAPI; (C) FISH-M. polyxenophila probe; (D) FISH-G. numerosa probe; (E) overlay of (C) and (D); (F) endosymbionts clustered in the host cytoplasm, including endosymbionts with virus-like particles (Sv); (G) endosymbiont with virus-like particles within the bacterial cytoplasm and attached to the bacterial cell’s surface (arrowhead); and (H) bacterial endosymbionts and a membrane-like structure (i.e., putative autolysosome vacuole) that potentially contains virus-like particles (arrowhead). See also Figures S4A and S4C and Table S2.

George, Emma E., et al.(2023)

Creationism in Crisis - How a Complex Process Evolved From Simplicity. It's Those Blinking Mudskippers Again

Creationism in Crisis

How a Complex Process Evolved From Simplicity.
It's Those Blinking Mudskippers Again

Mudskippers Could Be Key to Understanding Evolution of Blinking | Research

Indian mudskipper, Periophthalmodon septemradiatus

Mudskippers are the thing of nightmares for creationists because, although not directly ancestral to terrestrial tetrapods, they show how fish left the water and moved onto land, to become the terrestrial vertebrates - amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds - we have today.

Another thing creationists dread is evidence of complexity evolving naturally from simplicity, because that conflicts with another of their counter-factual dogmas.

So, news today that simple beginnings of the evolution of blinking can be seen in the way mudskippers keep their eyes clean when out of water, will need to be rigorously ignored or misrepresented by creationists who are too afraid to consider that they could be wrong.

The news comes in the form of an open access research paper published a couple of days ago in the online journal PNAS by researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology, Seton Hill University, and Pennsylvania State University, and an accompanying news release from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech):

Creationism in Crisis - Stuff The Bible's Scientifically illiterate Authors Never Imagined

Creationism in Crisis

Stuff The Bible's Scientifically illiterate Authors Never Imagined

Figure 1: Illustration of gravitational lensing by a galaxy. Light from a more distant and reddish galaxy is bent by a more nearby and bluish galaxy, which acts like a natural cosmic telescope to magnify the more distant galaxy. In this instance, multiple images of the reddish galaxy are created, forming a reddish ring-like feature referred to as an Einstein ring around the bluish galaxy.

Image credit: ALMA, L Calcada, Y. Hezaveh et al.

Howe the authors of Genesis saw the Universe

HKU Astrophysicists Reveal the Nature of Dark Matter through the Study of Crinkles in Spacetime - All News - Media - HKU

Back in the bronze Age, in the days that Christopher Hitchens described as 'the fearful infancy of our species', before we had even invented the wheel and isolated tribes still thought Earth was flat, the best explanation they could think of for where everything came from was the result of some magic spells cast by an invisible magician who lived above the sky. Agency in all things and magic, were assumed to be behind everything, just as they are today by creationists.

So, imagine these ignorant hill farmers, who thought stars were hanging from a dome over a flat Earth, struggling to come to terms with concepts such as deep space where celestial bodies are millions of light years apart and most of it is composed of invisible matter?

Magic and agency in all things
(Bible moralisée, French, 13th century)

How on Earth were these simple, ignorant people going to guess at an accurate description of the cosmos and its origins?

They weren’t of course. The best they could do was to describe a world which ran on magic and give magical explanations for everything they didn't understand, confident that those who were going to read their guesses were equally ignorant.

Contrast that situation about 3000 years ago with today's astrophysicist trying to make sense of what can be observed.

Having abandoned magic and supernatural agency as an explanation for anything, about 200 years ago, modern scientists have to rely on what can be observed, either directly or indirectly, and one of their observations is that the Universe has far more mass in it than can be accounted for by observation of that which can be seen. In other words, the observable universe has a lot of stuff that can't be seen but which is giving it mass.

How then do we know about it? Because we now understand the relationship between mass and gravity, so we can observe dark matter indirectly by observing the effect its gravity has on things we can see, such as galaxies.

You wouldn't expect the simple-minded hill farmers who wrote Genesis to have any inkling that such substance even existed, let alone come up with an explanation of what this 'dark matter' is, other than the product of magic words, of course.

This is why there is no mention, not even the tiniest hint, of dark matter in the Bible, or even that the universe is as massive as it is. In the ignorant minds of the authors, 'stars' (whether galaxies or suns) were points of light stuck on the underside of the dome that kept the water above the sky out. Of course, you wouldn't expect scientifically illiterate and ignorant people to describe and explain the origins of dark matter, but you WOULD expect any creator god who filled the Universe with dark matter to be able to describe and explain it.

Creationism in Crisis - What Internet Creationists Tell us About Creationists

Creationism in Crisis

What Internet Creationists Tell Us About Creationists

Listening to creationists can strengthen our understanding of evolution

Back in the 1980,s in the early days of the Internet, I was what was known as a 'SysOp' for a few CompuServe fora. I first got involved in the old UK Medical forum because of my interest in medical science as an Ambulance paramedic, then I joined a couple more fora - UK Forum and UK Current Affairs. Each forum had several sections for which particular SysOps were responsible. UK Forum, for example, had sections on Religion and Science as well as Politics. UK Current Affairs had sections on NHS, Northern Ireland, Economics, UK Constitution, etc. I also joined SciMath, a US-based forum.

It was in one of those fora that I first encountered American Creationists and Bible literalists, in addition to run-of-the-mill fundamentalists.

At first, I assumed they were joking, as it was hard to believe the childishness and scientific ignorance being displayed. As a child, we used, 'He/she still believes in Noah's Ark', to call someone childish and believing in fairy stories. In due course, we also stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy and Santa.

No-one I knew took the Bible literally anymore and no-one believed Earth was just a few thousand years old, any more so than they believed the sun orbits Earth, or the Earth is flat, or that we really are all descended from Adam and Eve. Sure, they were in the Bible, which some people still took seriously as a historical document, but it was generally assumed that the creation stories in Genesis were some sort of metaphor or allegory, although no-one seemed entirely sure for what. The tales, like those of Noah and Lot's wife, were so patently counter-factual that they must have had some deeper meaning...

So, it was amazing to discover that in America, the most advanced of countries and 'leader of the Free World', there really were a large number of people who still believed what our grandparents once believed, and who knew so little of science, geology and history that they couldn't see any flaws in the arguments they were putting forward.

But what that did for me at the time was to spur me on to learn, to understand their arguments and more importantly, to refute them with scientific facts. In short, it was debating with creationists that convinced me more and more that not only were they wrong, but that they were deluded victims of fraud who came from a culture that made them believe they could only be important enough if they had a close personal relationship with the creator of the universe who made it all with them in mind.

And the more I learned about science the more obvious it became why their cults expend so much energy trying to rubbish it, and why you can never get a creationist to read primary science sources, preferring to stick to their safe echo-chambers. To them, science is toxic.

So, what else can we learn from creationists?

Creationism in Crisis - How to Expose a Creationist's Scientific Illiteracy in Online Debate

Creationism in Crisis

How to Expose a Creationist's Scientific Illiteracy in Online Debate

How to slam dunk creationists when it comes to the theory of evolution

I find that the easiest way to expose creationists in online debate as gullible, scientifically illiterate dupes who have been fooled by other creationist frauds, is to let them expose themselves. Just give them a platform for them to perform on, shine a spotlight on them and away they go.

Don't try to win over the creationists; this would men them having to consider being wrong, and most creationists will never do that because to them the prospect of being wrong is too terrifying to even contemplate. Treat them as an asset to win over the audience for you.

The only problem with that tactic is that it only works on an audience who already understand even basic science so will understand the meaning of 'Theory' used as a scientific term and will know that the distinction between 'micro-' and 'macro-' evolution is illusory and meaningless since they both have the same underlying mechanism.

Anyone with a grasp of analytical reasoning will understand why there are gaps in the scientific record, and will understand that evolution is usually, with very few exceptions, a slow process that takes hundreds or thousands of generations, not an event that can be easily witnessed.

Most people with the intellect of a normal adult will understand why a hypothesis that includes magic and unproven supernatural entities, is not a scientific hypothesis, or what an assertion made without evidence is a claim that can be dismissed without evidence.

And most people will readily understand that an unsupported claim does not default to true unless disproved and creationism does not win by default if you prove a scientific hypothesis wrong. Fallacies like the false dichotomy fallacy, God of the gaps fallacy, ad hominem fallacy and special pleading fallacy are not hard to understand as fallacious arguments, and most honest people will recognise confirmation bias when they see it used to support a claim.

The weakness of my approach is that creationists in the audience, who have probably already been fooled by those fallacies and misinformation, will regard it as a win for the creationist because they lack the scientific understanding and critical thinking skill of most normal adults and most of them with have the thinking ability of an arrogant toddler.

Having said all that, the following article is by Professor Paul Braterman Hon. Research Fellow and Professor Emeritus, University of Glasgow, on how to defeat creationists in debate. It is reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Psychology News - New Study Confirms a Negative Correlation Between Intelligence and Religiosity

Psychology News

New Study Confirms a Negative Correlation Between Intelligence and Religiosity

Meta-analysis of 83 studies produces 'very strong' evidence for a negative relationship between intelligence and religiosity

Q. Why are so few scientists religious and why do so many fundamentalists have no understanding of science and poor critical thinking skills?

A. Because learning science and thinking are hard, but religion is easy and requires no analytical skill.

In 2013 a team led by Professor of psychology at Rochester University, Miron Zuckerman, reported finding a negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity from a meta-analysis of 63 studies.

In 2019, with more studies being conducted and because his findings have been challenges, Zuckerman and colleagues repeated the meta-analysis with a larger data set of studies. This larger study has confirmed the earlier finding. showing the correlation between intelligence and religiosity is between -0.20 and -0.23. The correlation tends to be stronger in

For non-statisticians, what is a meta-analysis?

Creationism in Crisis - How Mutations, not Magic, Have Helped Killer Hornets Spread

Creationism in Crisis

How Mutations, not Magic, Have Helped Killer Hornets Spread

Asian Yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina

Newly sequenced hornet genomes could help explain invasion success | UCL News - UCL – University College London

Today's bad news for Creationists is that scientists have analysed the genomes of both the European common hornet and the Asian yellow-legged hornet and found a number of genetic mutations that contribute to the ability of the latter to quickly adapt to new locations, and so become an invasive species in several parts of the world.

The study was led by Dr. Emeline Favreau and Professor Seirian Sumner of the Centre for Biodiversity and Environmental Research, Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London (UCL), London, UK and included scientists from UCL, Spain, Italy, Austria, and New Zealand. Their findings are published, open access, in the journal Scientific Reports. The scientists did not report finding a magical reason for their success or need one to explain how the new genetic information entered the genome; it was those things creationists dread - gene duplication and mutation. Creationist dogma states that no new information can arise without magic and all mutations are deleterious and so can't convey an advantage. Those idiotic and demonstrably false dogmas are both comprehensively refuted by the study, so will almost certainly be ignored, dismissed or misrepresented by creationists.

First a little about the European common hornet, Vespa crabro and the Asian yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina:

Creationism in Crisis - Evolving Cancers - Another Devilish Problem for Creationists

Creationism in Crisis

Evolving Cancers
Another devilish Problem for Creationists

Tasmanian devil, Sarcophilus harrisii

Photo: Max Stammnitz

Tasmanian devil, Sarcophilus harrisii

Evolution of two contagious cancers affecting Tasmanian devils underlines unpredictability of disease threat | University of Cambridge

Scientists have unwittingly thrown creationists another curve-ball, in the form of a genetic analysis of the transmissible facial cancers that are devastating the population of the Tasmanian devil, Sarcophilus harrisii. Some estimates put the decline in population at 80% in some areas.

Tasmanian devils are one of the few mammals known to be affected by transmissible cancers, specifically devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD). DFTD is an aggressive and usually fatal cancer that is spread from animal to animal through biting and other forms of physical contact.

The cancer is believed to have originated in a single Tasmanian devil over 20 years ago and has since spread rapidly throughout the Tasmanian devil population. DFTD is a clonal cancer, meaning that it is composed of cells that are genetically identical to each other and to the original cancer cell.

The spread of DFTD has had a devastating effect on the Tasmanian devil population, with some estimates suggesting that the population has declined by up to 80% in some areas. The disease is considered a significant threat to the survival of the species.

Researchers have been studying DFTD since its discovery in 1996, and there have been many advances in our understanding of the disease. One of the key discoveries has been that the cancer cells evade the immune system of the host animal by downregulating MHC molecules. This allows the cancer cells to avoid detection by the host's immune system, allowing the cancer to spread unchecked.

There have also been efforts to develop treatments and vaccines for DFTD. Some promising results have been obtained in laboratory studies, but there is still much work to be done before these treatments can be applied in the field.

References:

1. Pye RJ, Pemberton D, Tovar C, et al. A second transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2016;113(2):374-379. doi:10.1073/pnas.1519691113.
2. Stammnitz MR, Coorens THH, Gori KC, et al. The origins and vulnerabilities of two transmissible cancers in Tasmanian devils. Cancer Cell. 2018;33(4):607-619.e15. doi:10.1016/j.ccell.2018.03.013.
3. Tovar C, Pye RJ, Kreiss A, et al. Regression of devil facial tumour disease following immunotherapy in immunised Tasmanian devils. Scientific Reports. 2017;7(1):43827. doi:10.1038/srep43827.

Tell me about the transmissible cancers in Tasmanian devils, please, with references

The study, by an international team from the UK, Australia and USA, led by scientists from Cambridge University, UK, has analyzed the DNA of the devils and their two cancers (DFT1 & 2) and worked out how the cancers evolved by the classic evolutionary process of mutation and selection. They have identified that DFT1 arose in a single individual in the 1980 and this individual infected six other adult devils in Northeast Tasmania, which resulted in six different strains and an explosive spread of the disease across the island. The second, DFT2, arose spontaneously shortly before it was first observed in 2014, since when it has spread slowly but is mutating about three times faster than DFT1, probably because it has a faster growth rate.

So, the problem for creationists is that they either accept that evolution works, or, if they insist there was an intelligent agent causing the observed changes, that that agent, who is invariably the same as the Christian and Moslem god, malevolently designed these cancers and is ensuring their perpetuation in the face of any resistance the devils might evolve. And, not content with creating it once about 40 years ago, it repeated the exercise about 30 years later, presumably because killing 80% of the population was not enough.

Quite why it would have chosen such a nasty way to devastate the Tasmanian devil population rather than simply casting a magic spell to wipe out 80%+ of the population, is a matter for creationists to explain.

As the Cambridge University News release explains: