Transitional Evolution News - Ancient Baleen Whales with Teeth!

Aetiocetus weltoni

Ancient Baleen Whales Had a Mouthful | NewsCenter | SDSU|

You can quite understand why Creationists never read scientific papers and have had to devise all sorts of mental exercises for dismissing them out of hand as the work of liars and conspirators out to fool people, when there is a veritable tsunami of papers like this one that refute their dogmas with simple facts.

Here again we have another example of one of those transitions that Creationists need to believe never happened, because some Bronze Age hill farmers didn't know how life came to be the way it was then, and still is today, and guessed it must have all been the result of magic. This time it is evidence of the transition between the toothed whales (the common ancestors of all the whales had teeth) and the baleen whales.

The research also resolves another piece of embarrassment for Creationists - the fact that baleen whales like blue whales, humpback whales and grey whales, all start to develop teeth as embryos, then lose them again before birth. This an atavistic remnant of the fact that they all once had teeth. There is no reason at all for an intelligent designer to give embryo baleen whales teeth, especially since they are never going to need them as adults.

This evidence was discovered by biologist, Eric Ekdale, of San Diego State University and palaeontologist, Thomas Deméré, of the San Diego Natural History Museum, when they examined a 25 million year-old fossil whale skull of Aetiocetus weltoni, an evolutionary “cousin” of today’s baleen whales (Mysticeti), loaned to them by the University of California, Berkeley. They examined the skull using high-resolution computed tomography (CT) and discovered that it had teeth as well as baleen.

Since baleen is composed of keratin, like hair and fingernails, it does not normally preserve long enough to become fossilized, so the team used the CT scans to find evidence of grooves and holes on the roof of the mouth that connect internally to a vascular canal, consistent with the same structures in living baleen whales.

We have found evidence that supports a co-occurrence of teeth and baleen, indicating the tooth-to-baleen transition occurred in a stepwise manner from just teeth, to teeth and baleen, to only baleen.

Our study provides tangible fossil evidence of a major shift in feeding behavior from a raptorial carnivorous feeding mode to a bulk filter-feeding mode for obtaining food, among the largest animals that have ever lived in earth’s oceans. Krill are around 1/600th the size of blue whales. That’s like us humans eating nothing larger than sesame seeds floating in a pool.

Eric G. Ekdale, Lead author.
Department of Biology
San Diego State University,
San Diego, CA, USA

This also showed that the blood vessels that supply the baleen in modern whales is a modification of the blood supply to teeth.

The research was published two days ago in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society of London:

Abstract

Extant baleen whales (Mysticeti) have a deciduous foetal dentition, but are edentulous at birth. Fossils reveal that the earliest mysticetes possessed an adult dentition. Aetiocetids, a diverse clade of Oligocene toothed mysticetes, have a series of small palatal foramina and associated sulci medial to the postcanine dentition. The openings have been homologized with lateral palatal foramina that transmit neurovascular structures to baleen in extant mysticetes, thereby implying a co-occurrence of teeth and baleen in aetiocetids. However, homology of the foramina and sulci have been questioned. Using CT-imaging, we report that the lateral palatal foramina of Aetiocetus weltoni are connected internally to the superior alveolar canal, which transmits neurovascular structures to baleen in extant mysticetes and to teeth in extant odontocetes. Furthermore, the lateral palatal foramina of Aetiocetus are separate from the more medially positioned canals for the greater palatine arterial system. These results provide critical evidence to support the hypothesis that the superior alveolar neurovasculature was co-opted in aetiocetids and later diverging mysticetes to serve a new function associated with baleen. We evaluate competing hypotheses for the transition from teeth to baleen, and explore the transition from raptorial feeding in early mysticetes to filter-feeding in extant species.

Ekdale, Eric G; Deméré, Thomas A
Neurovascular evidence for a co-occurrence of teeth and baleen in an Oligocene mysticete and the transition to filter-feeding in baleen whales
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2021;, zlab017, doi: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlab017

Copyright: © 2021 The Linnean Society of London
Open Access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0)

And so another transitional form is added to Creationism's list of fossils they have to pretend don't exist. It must be so tiresome for Creationists having to remember which fossils to ignore, what scientific evidence should never be looked at and which questions you don't want answers too in case an imaginary magic, mind-reading sky thug notices and adds your name to his list of people to burn alive, but such is the power of parental child abuse and brainwashing.

Unintelligent Designer News - Fixing the Designer's Incompetence

Rubisco in every green cell.
Compensating with quantity for what it lacks in quality

Rubisco proton production can enhance CO2 acquisition | RIPE

Scientists working on the Illinois-based Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) project are trying to improve Earth's food production capability by improving on probably the most abundant protein enzyme on Earth, Rubisco.

The reason you rarely hear an intelligent [sic] design Creationist talking about Rubisco, apart from the fact that few of them know enough biology to know anything about it, is that, for the few who do understand it, it is a major embarrassment.

Quite simply, as an example of sheer incompetence in design, Rubisco, or to give it its full name, ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, is hard to beat. It is the key enzyme involved in photosynthesis so is at the basis of almost all life on Earth, and is probably the most abundant protein on Earth, being in all the photosynthesising cells of every green plant. And it is probably the least efficient of all enzymes, being only capable of about 4 reactions per second, against the hundreds or thousands of reactions for most enzymes. Indeed, the reason it is so abundant, is probably because it is so inefficient. Green plants need lots of it to compensate with quantity what it lacks in quantity.

It is responsible for fixing CO₂ in the initial stages of converting CO₂ and water into glucose. The problem is, it finds it hard to distinguish between CO₂ and O₂, so it wastes about 20% of its time doing something destructive that costs the plant energy that could be used to increase the glucose yield.

In evolutionary terms, this is easily explained because evolution is utilitarian and builds on what is there. Once living organisms evolved a Rubisco, it had an advantage over organisms that couldn't utilise CO₂, so this put all their descendants on an evolutionary path in which they were dependent on an inefficient enzyme but could not scrap the design and start again - something that would have been no problem for an intelligent designer. Also, since photosynthesis is the source of O₂, Rubisco evolved in an environment in which molecular oxygen was a rarity, so its inability to differentiate between CO₂ and O₂ was not the problem it later became. Again, an intelligent designer, who should have foreseen that his design was going to produced lots of O₂, should have foreseen the problem it would become.

Unintelligent Designer News - Correcting Its Blunder with even More Complexity

Superficial Relationship: Enzymes Protect the Skin by Ignoring Microbes and Viruses

As an example of incompetent design, this mechanism, discovered by researchers based at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Medical School, takes some beating. As an example of what a mindless, utilitarian, natural process would come up with, it is entirely understandable, even predictable.

The mechanism in question is that for protecting us from the harmful organisms Creationism's putative intelligent [sic] designer reputedly designed to make us sick. As though that added and unnecessary level of complexity wasn't bad enough, it has had to be switched off to prevent the skin being constantly inflamed, with yet more complexity.

It might sound like a good idea to have a mechanism for stopping your skin being constantly inflamed, but not when you consider the reason it was necessary in the first place. It is the equivalent of a car maker designing iron cladding on the car's rubber tyres to prevent them being punctured by the tacks and spikes he built into the surface of the roads to puncture the rubber tyres, then inventing another rubber tyre to cover the iron cladding to stop the car shaking to pieces - an act of sheer malevolence for which he had to invent a solution, followed by more malevolence and yet another layer of added complexity to compensate for it!

Evolution News - Great Tits Evolving to Suit City Living

Great tit, Parus major, adapting to city life

Photo: Caroline Isaksson

A stressful life in the city affects birds' genes | Lund University

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given what we know of the way the environment drives evolution, a group of researchers from Lund University, Sweden, have found that the genome of the common European great tit, Parus major, living in European cities is different to those living in the countryside. What was surprising perhaps, was the very clear evidence of this urban selection in a widespread but genetically very similar European population.

This is probably true for all European cities. Whether Milan, Malmö or Madrid the genetic changes were similar, showing a high degree of convergence on the same solutions to the same environmental factors. At least, this was true for the diverse selection of cities on which the team chose to concentrate their efforts.

They found that the changes involved genes that regulate cognition, aggression and circadian rhythms, all of which are important in a high-stress environment like a city with

This indicates that these behaviours, and cognition, are very important in order to live in urban environments with a lot of stress in the form of noise pollution, lights at night, air pollution and constant proximity to people.

We have analysed more than half a million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (snips) spread over the entire genome. There were a handful of genes that had clearly changed in response to the urban environment.

That we see such a clear urban selection across the board, in an otherwise genetically similar European great tit, is surprising.

Caroline Isaksson, Lead author
Senior Lecturer
Department of Biology
Lund University, Lund, Sweden

high levels of pollution, night-time lighting, noise and the proximity to people.

A total of, 192 great tits were examined from populations in Malmö, Gothenburg, Madrid, Munich, Paris, Barcelona, Glasgow, Lisbon and Milan. For each urban population, there was a control group of great tits living on a nearby rural environment. Blood samples have been taken from all of the birds and analysed genetically.

The research is published, open access in the journal, Nature Communications:

Abstract

Urbanisation is increasing worldwide, and there is now ample evidence of phenotypic changes in wild organisms in response to this novel environment. Yet, the genetic changes and genomic architecture underlying these adaptations are poorly understood. Here, we genotype 192 great tits (Parus major) from nine European cities, each paired with an adjacent rural site, to address this major knowledge gap in our understanding of wildlife urban adaptation. We find that a combination of polygenic allele frequency shifts and recurrent selective sweeps are associated with the adaptation of great tits to urban environments. While haplotypes

My Books Now Available in Hard Cover

USA


United Kingdom


Also available in Germany, France, Spain and Italy (so far)

Amazon Kindle Direct are now publishing laminated, hard-cover versions of books, so several of my tiles will soon be available in that format in addition to the paperback and ebook for Kindle formats. The titles so far available are shown in the panel.

This is a new (beta) service from Amazon so there may be a few problems still to be resolved. Although having greater durability than paperback books, hard cover books are more expensive to produce, so this is reflected in the price, nevertheless, in my opinion, they still represent very good value for money.

A history of Ireland: How Religion Poisoned Everything covers the period from the first appearance of humans on the island of Ireland to the present day and shows how religion shaped the culture of the people and eventually divided them into two mutually hostile and at times warring factions, one based in the strongly independent, predominantly Catholic Republic and the other in the staunchly Protestant, 'Loyalist' Ulster, culminating in a period of 'Trouble' in Northern Ireland which cost an estimated 3000 lives, and the subsequent peace deal, the 'Good Friday Agreement'.

What Makes You So Special: From the Big Bang to YOU. How did you come to be here, now? This book takes the reader 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. It is written for a lay readership with little formal education in the sciences and is intended as an introduction and a spur to further learning.

Other titles currently in preparation for hard-cover format are:

• Ten Reasons to Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It.
• The Unintelligent Designer: Refuting the Intelligent Design Hoax.
• The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good.
• The Light Of Reason: And Other Atheist Writing - The Full Set.

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Evolution News - How a Changing Environment Caused Wall Lizards to Speciate

Ibiza wall lizard

Ibiza wall lizard

New species formed when the Mediterranean dried up | Lund University

In an entirely unsurprising finding, a group of researchers led by Professor Tobias Uller of Lund University, Sweden, believe they have explained the present range and diversity of wall lizards in the Mediterranean region as the result of major environmental changes caused by changes in the climate and sea-level about 6 million years ago.

This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the way a changing environment is the main driver of evolution and diversification.

This is also an example of how the TOE is supported by different strands of science, since it predicts that periods of significant evolution will be accompanied by periods of significant environmental change.

According to the Lund University news item:

Northern Ireland - Loony DUP Leader Already Looking for Martyrdom

Edwin Poots, made a brief statement to the press but refused to answer questions

Ian Paisley accuses BBC of mocking Edwin Poots' faith - The Irish News

Taking offence and playing the martyr seems to come naturally to religious fundamentalist and Creationists like the new leader of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, Edwin Poots.

Poot's long-time political ally on the extreme right of the party, Ian Paisley Jnr. has already started complaining that the BBC mocked Poots for his fundamentalist beliefs when it told viewers that Poots is a Free Presbyterian Young-Earth Creationist, who believes Earth is only 6000 years old. Apparently, telling the truth about the bible-literalist beliefs of fundamentalist Christians is a form of mockery. But perhaps Paisley is sensitive about the matter, realising as he must, how ludicrous those beliefs sound in the rest of the UK, where they are regarded as more than a little deranged and the opinions of loopy religious nut-jobs and people with whom you wouldn't want your children left alone.

With so many questions following from his election, his refusal to answer them from the assembled journalists outside Stormont can only attract more ridicule. What is he running away from? What about his opinions is he ashamed of or embarrassed by?

Talibangelical News - Trump's Right-Wing SCOTUS to be Given a Chance to Overturn Roe v Wade

The US Supreme Court.
Hearing a challenge to Roe v Wade this autumn.

Supreme Court to Review Anti-Choice Law Designed by Alliance Defending Freedom to Overturn Roe | Right Wing Watch

The extreme Christian right in the USA have been keen to exploit their new-found dominance in the Supreme Court ever since Donald Trump supplied them with it in return for them turning a blind eye to his very un-Christian behaviour and giving him their unconditional and uncritical support. And now, thanks to Mississippi Talibangelicals, who have passed a blatantly illegal and unconstitutional bill to restrict women's right to abortions, they may get to use it to roll back 39 years of social progress.

Trumpanzee Talibangelical News - Planning Voter-Suppression Laws

Talibangelical, Mike Huckabee,
Hon. President My Faith Votes

Religious-Right Group My Faith Votes Backs GOP Voter Suppression Campaign | Right Wing Watch

If you want to see what it would be like living in a Christian theocracy, look no further than Mike Huckabee's My Faith Votes campaigning organization which has thrown itself squarely behind the current GOP voter-suppression measures.

These moves are a direct reaction to the shock of losing both the 2020 presidential election and the 2021 Georgia run-off vote which they felt entitled to win. Clearly, people turning out in large numbers to vote for the 'wrong' candidates is a serious fault that needs urgent correction, so GOP-run states are rushing to amend their election laws to make it more difficult for Democrat supporter to vote. These laws include making it illegal to give food or water to those waiting in line to vote, so that the long delays caused by the interminable identity and citizenship checks before voting will result in a large number of voters giving up and going home.

Covidiot News - Catholics to Try Magic Spells and Chants to End the Coronavirus Pandemic

Photo credit:Thérèse Westby/Unsplash (CC BY)

Pope Francis invites faithful to monthlong rosary marathon for end of pandemic.

Inspired no doubt by the singular lack of success with praying to make the coronavirus pandemic go away, the Pope has announced a month-long period for Catholics to try praying to make the coronavirus pandemic to go away. They are to do this ritually, while chanting short prayers in a strict order as predetermined by a string of magic beads, known as a rosary and bearing a strong resemblance to the 'worry beads' which are popular in Arab countries.

The belief is that ancient dead people will be alerted to the human requests and tell God about them. At the moment, God is not aware that the virus it created to make us sick is making us sick, or if he is aware of the success of his plan in that regard, he doesn't realise it's wrong. Having been so informed by his long-dead advisors, the belief is, he will see the error of his ways and stop his virus from working the way it was designed to work.

Sound like a plan?

Apparently, the Pope thinks so. According to this report in Religion News Service:

In this month of May, led by the shrines scattered throughout the world, we are reciting the rosary to pray for the end of the pandemic and for the resumption of social activity and work.

Pope Francis
5 May, 2021

Thirty sanctuaries located all over the world and dedicated to the Virgin Mary will take part in reciting the rosary in unison, each one in turn leading the prayer. From Poland to Nigeria to South Korea, faithful Catholics will join together with special intentions for those who have been affected the most by COVID-19.

This period of spell-casting by millions of Catholics will achieve more than medical science has so far with its vaccines which are reducing the seriousness of the Covid-19 illness the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes and reducing the rate of transmission from person to person.

Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results

Atrib. Albert Einstein
(Probably wrongly)

The spell-casting began on Wednesday, 5th May in South Korea at 'The Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary' in Namyang. Over the next few days, more spell-casting took place at various shrines across the world, from the shrine of ' Our Lady of Lujan', in Argentina, 'The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Knock', Ireland and various other Marian shrines including 'Our Lady of Health', India and 'Our Lady of Lourdes', Myanmar, culminating is a special spell-casting ritual at 'The National shrine of the Immaculate Conception' in Washington, D.C., USA. where special spells will be cast to protect "all world leaders and for all heads of international organizations". This is expected to bring about:

...the end of the pandemic and the resumption of our social and economic life.

Despite this period of spell-casting, either no-one was listening or the dead remains of the legendary mother of Jesus either didn't ask God to change his perfect plan for mankind, or God declined to do so, since nothing whatsoever happened in terms of reduced transmissions or reduced mortality rates from Covid-19, which could not be directly attributed to the success of the vaccination and social distancing campaigns.

Last December, Pope Francis braved the rain to cast special anti-coronavirus spells at the 'Shrine of the Immaculate Conception' near the Spanish Steps in Rome, just as another, more serious, wave of infections was taking off over most of Europe and elsewhere.

It made no discernible difference whatsoever.

So, inspired by this spectacular failure, and following his policy of backing both horses in a two-horse race, Pope Francis then announced that he had asked the same dead person to ask God to divert the money intended for military purposes to medical research to prevent God from repeating his success with another similar virus or similar natural catastrophe.

Will this succeed? Don't hold your breath - if God's special virus isn't preventing you from breathing normally.

The only change so far seems to be the design of a new, more contagious variant, the 'Indian variant', that is threatening the tentative moves to lift the restrictions.

A Young-Earth Creationist Loon to Lead Northern Ireland Assembly!

Edwin Poots, Democratic Unionist Party leader and Young-Earth Creationist
"Earth was created in about 4 BCE!"

Edwin Poots: Who is the new leader of the DUP? - BBC News

The Democratic Unionist Party, founded by Ian Paisley, has elected Edwin Poots, a fundamentalist Presbyterian Creationist, as its leader. As the leader of the largest party in the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly, he could, subject to formal approval by the Legislative Assembly, become First Minister in the power-sharing Executive in which, in line with the Good Friday Agreement, the leader of the second largest party, currently Sinn Féin's Michelle O'Neill, is Deputy First Minister.

However, in what would be a break with tradition, Poots has indicated that he wishes to separate the roles of First Minister and leader of the DUP, so may nominate a First Minister from amongst his colleagues. If so, as leader of the DUP, he will retain considerable political power and influence in the Province.

As so often in Irish politics, religion is set to poison the political process in Northern Ireland and threaten the Good Friday agreement and the peace and stability of the province, hastened in that process by the idiotic vote in 2016 to leave the European Union.

Poots, despite being an educated adult, is on record as saying he believes Earth is a little over 6,000 years old. He believes this because this date was once calculated by Bishop Ussher of Armagh, from his reading of the Bible. It is not based on any scientific data, all of which shows Earth to be about 3.8 billion years old. Presumably, on the same basis, Poots believes in a literal 6-day creation, Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark. He gets this from a book which endores slavery and second-class status for women, the authors of which thought Earth was small and flat, had a dome over it, and was at the centre of a Universe which ran on magic!

He first became prominent in Northern Ireland politics when, as the DUP member of the Stormont Parliament for Lagan Valley, he opposed the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, but accepted a ministerial post as Minister for Culture and Arts, in the newly-formed power-sharing Executive under Ian Paisley with Martin McGuiness for Sinn Féin as Deputy First Minister. He also opposed reform of the then highly politicised Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), to form the officially politically non-aligned Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) - regarded as a key reform to allow policing in the province to be with the consent of both communities.

As a proud socially-conservative fundamentalist Christian, he opposes a woman's right to choose, gay couples adopting children and, as Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety he banned gay men from donating blood. He also expressed a desire to ban blood donations from anyone who had had sex with an African.

He is also strongly opposed to coronavirus lockdowns and restrictions and, without presenting any evidence, claimed transmission rates were six times higher in Nationalist (predominantly Catholic) areas of Northern Ireland than in Unionist (predominantly Protestant) areas. There is in fact no evidence to support that claim since data in infections is not collated on the basis of religion or political persuasion.

He is also strongly opposed to the Brexit arrangements under which there is a de facto customs border down the Irish Sea, with different customs rules for Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, keeping NI in a de facto customs union with the Republic and the rest of the EU. This was the issue that prompted Arlene Foster's resignation when she lost the confidence of DUP MLA colleagues who felt she had been too compliant over the Brexit arrangements Boris Johnson had signed up to. In February this year, as Minister for Agriculture and the Environment, Poots withdrew the staff carrying out the Brexit checks at the port of Larne as part of these customs arrangements. The alternative to the border down the Irish Sea is border posts and checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic - a breach of international law under the Anglo-Irish Treaty as part of the Good Friday Agreement, under which goods, capital and people can move freely across the border.

In the 2016 referendum, Northern Ireland voted by a large majority to remain within the European Union while the DUP was in favour of leaving.

Poots is no stranger to the charge of corruption, of which his predecessor, Arlene Foster was also no stranger. Foster famously arranged a Renewable Energy Scheme when Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, with minimal cost controls, under which anyone could install a wood-burning heater in, for example, an out-house or barn, and claim huge sums of money to buy fuel for it - far in excess of the actual cost of the wood-pellet fuel - a generous facility under the guise of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, from which very many Unionist-supporting land-owners made small fortunes at NI taxpayers' expense.

This was the issue, and Foster's refusal to allow an enquiry into the scandal, that cause the previous Executive to collapse when Martin McGuiness resigned as Deputy First minister after an election had put the DUP within one seat of losing their majority in the Legislative Assembly. Under the Good Friday Agreement, Foster was also required to resign and the Power-Sharing executive collapsed. Fearful of an election they they could well have lost, Foster refused to call another election and Westminster re-imposed direct rule on the province.

Poots had been lobbying Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council, on which his son, Luke, was a councillor, in support of planning applications by friends and associates. Luke Poots voted on these applications without declaring an interest, when he should have absented himself from any votes related to the applications. In effect, Poots Snr. was acting as a conduit for paid-for favours with Poots Jnr. delivering the favours. Luke Poots did not seek re-election to the council in 2019. Both he and Edwin Poots, like Foster before them, deny any breach of the rules or abuses of power.

Together with the Brexit debacle and the dwindling of support for the old sectarian and casually corrupt politics of the DUP, there is now a distinct possibility that the regressive Protestant majority in the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly could fall to a progressive Sinn Féin-led coalition in a future election, followed by a referendum on re-union with the Republic, for which there is growing popular support.

Come that day, the 1920's creation of the British Conservative and Unionist Party and the Protestant Orange Lodges under Carson of "A Protestant State for a Protestant People", for long the slogan of Ulster Unionism, will finally be laid to rest. The selection as DUP leader of someone who apparently find it difficult to assimilate scientific evidence and base his policies on that evidence, can only hasten that day, especially as the Republic simultaneously turns its back on religion and becomes increasingly secular and progressive, and where Sinn Féin now has the same number of seats in the Dáil (37) as Fianna Fáil and is the leading party in the governing coalition.

Hopefully, Poots, or whoever he nominates to be First Minister on his behalf, will be the last Protestant leader of Carson's Protestant State and the island of Ireland will become a Secular State for a Secular People.

Survey Reveals Repuglican/Evangelical Gullibility

The “Big Lie”: Most Republicans Believe the 2020 Election was Stolen | PRRI

Amazingly, despite not a single piece of corroborating evidence that would stand up in court of widespread voter fraud ever being found, 66% of republicans and 61% of white evangelical Christians still believe Donald Trump's lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by the Democrats.

By contrast, only 4% of Democrats and 27% of Independents believe the lie.

A Talibangelical False Prophet for Trump is Now Lying About the Bible.

False prophet Hank Kunneman, One Voice Ministries, Nebraska
"God Sez, only his prophets can judge me!"

Self-Proclaimed ‘Prophet’ Hank Kunneman Says Only Other ‘Prophets’ Have the Authority to Question Him | Right Wing Watch

Stung by conservative Christian complaints that the Trumpanzee Talibangelical 'prophets' who guaranteed, on God's authority, that Trump would win in November 2020, are harming the church by refusing to admit they were wrong, leading denialist and right-wing Talibangelical loon, Hank Kunneman has trawled through his hand-book of excuses and come up with a way to dismiss this criticism with the wave of his hand.

His critics have no right to criticise him, because God has allegedly only given that right to other prophets!

And apparently, he believes his credulous dupes will fall for that one!

Unintelligent Designer News - How the Stupid Designer's Blunders Gave Us Mustard

Phylogeny and diversity.

A chronogram of both Brassicales families (Upper) and Pierinae butterfly genera (Lower), showing species numbers and identification of clades in the adjacent table. A common temporal scale is provided between the two chronograms. The branches in the Brassicales phylogeny are colored to indicate the origin of indolic glucosinolates (purple), methionine derived glucosinolates (green), and novel structural elaborations to glucosinolates unique to the core Brassicaceae lineage (orange). Vertical dashed lines also indicate the origin of these novel chemical groups. Primary host–plant associations of various Pierinae lineages are similarly colored: orange (Brassicaceae), green (Capparaceae or Cleomaceae), orange-green (mixture of previous), purple (more basal Brassicales that synthesize indolic glucosinolates), blue (non-Brassicales feeding) and gray (unknown). The phylogenetic positions for the At-α and At-β WGDs are depicted with white diamond symbols, and significant net diversification rate shifts with red star symbols.

Source: Edgar, P.P, et al (2015)

Scientists uncover how caterpillars created condiments

While researching for my previous blog post about the unintelligent design in the horseradish flea beetle, I noticed I failed to write about this beautiful piece of research from 2015, despite having referenced it and wrote about the discovery in my popular book, Unintelligent Design: Refuting the Intelligent Design Hoax

I'm referring to the paper published in PNAS in June 2015, entitled The butterfly plant arms-race escalated by gene and genome duplications, now freely available under PNAS' open access option, the work of a large international team of scientists including biologists from The University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA, The Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany, and the Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland, UK.

This work confirmed the conclusions made 50 years earlier by two now-renowned biologists, Peter Raven and Paul Erhlich, who introduced the concept of co-evolution, where two species influence the evolution of each other, by showing how gene duplication, and subsequent repurposing of the spare genes produced, was responsible for plants evolving a defence against the caterpillars of butterflies and how, beginning about the same time as the extinction of the large dinosaurs in the mass extinction at the KT boundary, this gave rise over several million years to the co-evolutionary diversification of brassica-eating butterfly species and the brassicas, in an ultimately pointless arms race. Raven and Erhlich had even used the brassicales and cabbage butterflies as examples (A case of a prediction of the Theory of Evolution being proved correct, 50 years later!)
.
The result of this arms race was the tangy taste we call mustard, produced by glucosinolates - chemicals which are toxic to butterfly caterpillars and other leaf-eating insects - the large number of brassicales and a large number of brassica-eating butterflies.

The blunder by Creationism's putative intelligent [sic] designer, if you believe that nonsense, is that it apparently thought it was good design to create species to eat the leaves of plants, then redesign the plants to prevent them being eaten, then redesign the plant-eating insects to overcome the toxins intended to stop them eating the plants. An example there of the designer's right hand not knowing what its left hand was doing!

Unintelligent Designer News - Overcoming the Defences It Designed

The horseradish flea beetle Phyllotreta armoraciae is capable of accumulating large amounts of mustard oil glucosides (glucosinolates) in its body, making itself unpalatable to predators. Glucosinolates are defense substances of mustard, rapeseed, horseradish and other plants of the cabbage family. Crucial to the sequestration of glucosinolates in the beetle are special transporters localized in the excretory organ. These transporters prevent glucosinolates that have been absorbed into the body from being excreted.

Photo: Anna Schroll

Horseradish flea beetle: Protected with the weapons of its food plant | MPI CE

One of the more idiotic aspects of intelligent [sic] design Creationism is the way its advocates ignore the evidence that for there to have been a single sentient designer (as required by the central dogmas of Christianity and Islam), this designer would have to be incredibly stupid or amnesiac.

As research like this shows, there are very many cases in nature of a defence being 'designed' then a workaround for that defence also being designed in a predator or parasite, as though the 'designer' treated its solution for one species as a problem to be overcome - a problem of its own creation!

Quite simply, this is not an intelligent act. Nor is it a characteristic of good design, let alone intelligent design.

However, it is a predictable outcome for a mindless, undirected, natural process like evolution, where the randomly mutating genes will be naturally selected for whichever mutation results in the most copies of themselves appearing in the next generation, with no concern for the genes of another species. Hence, we have abundant examples of arms races in nature and arms races are themselves a major driver of evolution.

How Religions Cause Divisions

'Healing' crystals

Photo credit: Hasan Can Devsir/Unsplash (CC-BY)

Pagan 'metaphysical' shops navigate threats from Christian critics

An example here of how religion divides communities through bigotry and intolerance and by reacting to competition in the market place of gullible fools to exploit.

In fact, the latter could be seen as an example of how religions control their victims in order to prevent hybridization with other wackadoodle cults, in the same way genes control diverging gene pools to set up barriers to hybridization and so cause speciation to go to completion. Religions are acting like meme pools in a Darwinian competition, and so tending to cause divisions and barriers to social peace and harmony.

This example is that of Heron Michelle, a purveyor of 'pagan metaphysical' objects such as crystals, jewellery and herbs allegedly with mystical properties, from a shop, The Sojourner Whole Earth Provisions, in Uptown Greenville, North Carolina. She and her shop have attracted the hostile attention of the local fundamentalist Christians. Ironically, the trouble came to a head after a festival on the last day of April, ostensibly organized to bring the whole community together following the Covid-19 lockdown.

As part of the festival, Heron set up a table outside her shop and offered to do tarot readings for anyone interested in that sort of thing. Fairly soon though, she had a visit from two young men dressed in identical green t-shirts who wanted to 'share the Gospel of Jesus' with her. She explained that she already knew about Jesus and had been baptised into three different Christian faiths but found none of them 'took'. She now believes she has found the 'love that Jesus was trying to bring to the world' outside of Christianity. She also told them that in her faith, proselytizing was regarded as a cardinal sin.

After patronising her with more preaching, the pair eventually left to re-join their large group who had been moving through the festival talking to other shop keepers and festival-goers, trying to win recruits for their cult. Afraid of what was going to happen next, Heron folded up her table and stopped offering tarot readings.

After the festival was over, things turned ugly and menacing. The entire green t-shirted mob of fundamentalists turned up outside her shop physically blocking the entrance and standing and staring at her through the windows.

This is not the first time that Heron has faced crowds of hostile Christians. When she first opened her shop in 2008, the local church organized a boycott and a crowd of women vandalized her shop by paining crosses on the windows. They then stood outside chanting about demons.

In 2017, Philip Brown, a local street preacher who travels around preaching through a bullhorn and harassing other metaphysical stores, set up outside her shop and began preaching, so she engaged him in a discussion about the Gospels. It was soon obvious that she knew them better than he did. Nevertheless he posted his recording of his 'work for Jesus' on You Tube.

According to this report in Religion News Service, these attacks by fundamentalist Christians on metaphysical stores are commonplace:

Vandalism, protests, harassment and regular proselytizing are not uncommon for metaphysical shops. In 2010, Rondell Gonzalez, the owner of Pye’Wackets, south of Anchorage, Alaska, found a 7-foot cross attached to her store’s sign. In 2015, someone tossed a gasoline bomb through the storefront window at Shooting for the Moon Spiritual Development Center, in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. (It failed to explode, and the attackers were never identified.)

In Minnesota in 2016, metaphysical shop owner Bonnie Gurney filed a cease-and-desist order to stop a local woman from posting protests on her store’s social media page, publicly burning store fliers, blocking the shop entrance and harassing patrons, telling them to “repent.” In 2019, a newly opened metaphysical shop in Staunton, Virginia, was shut down, reportedly after the property owner belatedly realized his renter was a metaphysical shop.

Clearly, fundamentalists who go to these lengths to suppress any alternative superstitions, have something to fear from them. Their own faith in the truth of their beliefs must be on shaky ground for them to fear alternative views. It's not just Atheists whom they fear but anyone who might put them in danger of wondering if they could be wrong.

This was found, in a piece of research by Cory L Cook, Florette Cohen and Sheldon Solomon, published in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science, entitled What If They’re Right About the Afterlife? Evidence of the Role of Existential Threat on Anti-Atheist Prejudice. Human knowledge of death gives ris to:

...potentially paralyzing terror that is assuaged by embracing cultural worldviews that provide a sense that one is a valuable participant in a meaningful universe.

Anything which might cause a believer in one of these worldviews carries the risk that their terror will reassert itself, so hostility to other religions is a simple matter of terror management in response to an existential threat. In their research, which focussed on the relationship between believers and Atheists, the authors found that thinking about death made the believers more hostile to Atheism and thinking about Atheism made them more aware of the issue of death. It seems that any other set of ideas that don't include some sort of hope of survival after death, is an existential threat to fundamentalist Christians and evokes the same terror management response.

As these attacks on alternative metaphysical beliefs show, it's not just Atheists who attract the hostile attention of fundamentalist Christians. The worst thing you can do to a fundamentalist is make them wonder if they could be wrong and the response is often aggression. This is why they have developed all manner of mental gymnastics for rejecting any evidence, or logical reasoning you can offer them that might cause them to have self-doubt, and why they are so susceptible to frauds and charlatans who sell them cosy platitudes and disinformation intended to reinforce their cosy certainties and comforting freedom from their terror of death.

This tendency, in Christianity especially, to build barriers to shut out alternative ideas and to divide society up into mutually hostile camps, each distrusting the others, has resulted in over 30,000 different Christian churches in the USA alone.

Truly a house built on sand and a faith standing on the shaky ground of absent evidence and a book full of internal inconsistences and contradictions. No wonder so many fundamentalist Christians are also gun nuts, opposed to any restrictions on their right to carry weapons of mass destruction. And no wonder the USA with its very large evangelical Christian population is also the most violent, divided and intolerant of all developed economies, in contrast to the countries of Europe with their large and growing populations of non-believers and rapidly falling numbers of believers.

In Darwinian terms, what these cultural memeplexes are doing is ensuring their survival in the human meme pool by rigorously excluding any potential rivals for the human resource they all depend on and preventing any dilution of their dogmas with which they recruit and retain members who are themselves looking for a means to manage their potentially paralyzing fear of death.

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Humanism is Slowly Civilising Christianity

Bishop-elect Megan Rohrer of the Sierra Pacific synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. The San Francisco pastor is the first transgender person to be elected bishop in the denomination or in any of the U.S.'s major Christian faiths.

Lutherans elect Megan Rohrer first transgender bishop

In an example of how Humanist egalitarian ideas have penetrated even the more fundamentalist, historically misogynistic and macho flavours of Christianity, the American Lutherans have elected their first transgender bishop.

In the early days of Luther's Protestant Reformation, women were expected to be married 'as ordained by God' and had a strict role within the marriage of motherhood and subservience to her husband.

Nunneries were suppressed and the former nuns were expected to marry, as remaining unmarried was considered to be a defiance against God's ordinance. Indeed, one such nun, Katharina von Bora, having been helped escape the nunnery by Luther himself who sent a cart with barrels of herring for her and 8 other nuns to hide behind, made her way to Wittenberg and married Martin Luther and dutifully bore him several children.

Lutheran reformers established matrimonial and moral courts to enforce Luther's Bible-based ideas of gender roles within a marriage. Adultery is now strictly prohibited and both genders must make their bodies available for “conjugal duties”. Women now have one role and one role only - they are to be professional mothers - to bear children and raise them in the 'one true faith'. There is no role for women outside of marriage and subservience to her husband, because God has ordered it thus.

Women should remain at home, sit still, keep house and bear and bring up children… If a woman grows weary and at least dies from child bearing, it matters not. Let her die from bearing - she is there to do it.

Women have narrow shoulders and wide hips, therefore they ought to be domestic; their very physique is a sign from their Creator that he intended them to limit their activity to the home.

Martin Luther

And, they have a book which says so!

For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

1 Corinthians 33-35

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Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

Ephesians 5:22-24

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Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.

Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.

1 Peter 3:1-7

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Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

1 Timothy 2:11-12

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The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

Titus 2:3-5

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And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.

Ephesians 5:21-22

These 'Orders from God' reputedly inspired St Augustine of Hippo - considered one of Christianity's greatest thinkers - to declare:

Any woman who acts in such a way that she cannot give birth to as many children as she is capable of, makes herself guilty of that many murders.

St Augustine of Hippo

This obsessive repression and subjugation of women reaches its peak in the teachings of the Swiss Lutheran, Johannes Calvin, founder of the misogynistic Presbyterians, who can scarcely conceal his loathing of women:

John Calvin

We take nothing from the womb but pure filth [meras sordes]. The seething spring of sin is so deep and abundant that vices are always bubbling up from it to bespatter and stain what is otherwise pure.... We should remember that we are not guilty of one offense only but are buried in innumerable impurities.... all human works, if judged according to their own worth, are nothing but filth and defilement.... they are always spattered and befouled with many stains.... it is certain that there is no one who is not covered with infinite filth.

In John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait, 1989,
William J. Bouwsma, Oxford University Press, USA, p. 36.

The modern manifestation of this Lutheran misogyny was of course the allotted role of women in Nazi Germany as expressed in the slogan - Kinder, Küche, Kirche (Chidren, Kitchen, Church). These "3K's" were originally 4 K's in the Lutheran German Proverb by Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander:

Vier Ks sind Voraussetzung für eine fromme Frau, nämlich dass sie Rücksicht auf Kirche, Kammer, Küche, Kinder nimmt. (Four K's are requisite of a pious woman, namely, that she keeps regard for church, bedroom, kitchen, children.)

It's a sign of just how far decent Humanist ideas of full human rights for all, regardless of gender, sexuality, skin colour, ethnic origin, social class or ability have penetrated the once deeply misogynistic Lutheran church that they are now prepared to allow not just a woman but a transgender woman to be anything other than silent in church and confine herself to the home in dutiful submission to her 'superior' husband.

At this rate of progress, there will be little of these old, outmoded religions left in a generation or two, although it's hard to imagine how some of the more fundamentalist flavours of Christianity can abandon their fundamental, institutionalised hatred of others and still claim to be Christian. The one hope is that, if the American Lutherans can manage it, the others can too.

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Evolution News - Refuting More Creationist Dogmas With Real-World Evidence

Illustration of a tree representing the legume family tree with branches representing the six subfamilies. On each branch are flowers or pods of species belonging to the subfamilies.The lines extending from the nutrient bag on the upper left corner indicate the positions of some of the proposed whole-genome duplications.

Credit: Yiyong Zhao, Chien-Hsun Huang, and Hong Ma

Massive molecular study uncovers clues to the evolution and diversification of essential plant family | Eberly College of Science

Every so often a piece of research is published that so devastates yet another Creationist dogma that it's difficult to think it wasn't through a deliberate attempt to refute Creationism.

Yet here we have another one which does that comprehensively without the least effort or intention on the part of the research team. It does it of course by revealing real-world evidence that could not exist if Creationist dogmas were based on real-world evidence.

This time it was a group of researchers from Penn State University Eberly College of science, and the Department of Biology, The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, PA, USA, the Center of Evolutionary Biology, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, and the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China, who did the work. Their findings were published last February in Molecular Plant sadly behind a paywall. However the article by Sam Sholtis in Penn State Eberly College of Science News has the details:

Covidiot News - Faith-Based Covid Vaccination Rejection

A faith-based coronavirus super-spreader event, (December 2020)

Religious Identities and the Race Against the Virus: Engaging Faith Communities on COVID-19 Vaccination | PRRI

A survey published a few days ago shows how people of faith are taking their information about the efficacy and safety of the anti-covid vaccines not from science but from their cult's leadership.

The same survey also confirms the findings of other polls that those least concerned about the welfare of other people, even those in their own community, are the white evangelical Christians - the very same people who are most likely to:

• Support Donald Trump.
• Support white supremacist organizations.
• Be right-leaning Repugnicans.
• Be Creationists.
• Oppose restrictions on gun ownership.
• Be pro-life, anti-choice, mysogynists.
• Believe the ludicrous, pro-Trump, antisemitic, Dominionist QAnon conspiracy hoax.
• Believe that Trump won the 2020 election by a landslide.
• Think Earth is just a few thousand years old and probably flat, with the sun orbiting it.

The main findings, listed in the Executive Summary to the report by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) are:

Malevolent Designer News - Getting Even Sneakier with SARS-CoV-2

Lab studies of genetically engineered human cells suggest the RNA (blue) of SARS-CoV-2 could convert to DNA in infected people and slip into their chromosomes.

Credit: CLAUS LUNAU/SCIENCE SOURCE

Further evidence supports controversial claim that SARS-CoV-2 genes can integrate with human DNA | Science | AAAS

In an open access paper published in PNAS today, a group of scientists have repeated their claim that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can act like a retrovirus and hide inside our genome even after we've recovered from an infection. If this is true, people could remain potentially infectious for months or years without realising it, although the team say this is unlikely.

Basically, RNA retroviruses perform this neat little trick by reversing the transcription process which normally converts lengths of DNA to RNA in preparation for making the protein for which it is the template. To do this they use an enzyme known as reverse transcriptase. The resulting length of the DNA template for the viral RNA is then inserted into the normal DNA of an infected cell and replicates with it as the cell replicates normally. The resulting daughter cells then all carry the DNA for making new viral RNA and our immune system has no way of recognising it as foreign. To all intents and purposes, it becomes part of our genome.

Evolution News - Putting the Pieces of The Puzzle Together

Extant and fossil ape distribution.

Extant apes live in (or nearby) densely forested areas around the equator in Africa and Southeast Asia. Except for the recently recognized tapanuli orangutan (which may represent a subspecies of the Sumatran orangutan), each of the three extant great ape genera presently has two geographically separated species. The Congo River (highlighted in dark blue) acts as the current barrier between common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus). Red stars indicate regions with Miocene sediments (spanning ~23 to 5.3 Ma) where fossil apes have been uncovered. (Some regions may contain more than one site; contiguous regions are indicated with different stars if they extend over more than one political zone.) It is possible that modern great ape habitats do not represent the ancestral environments where the great ape and human clade evolved. Paleontologically, the vast majority of Africa, west of the Rift Valley, remains highly unexplored. Extant ape ranges were taken from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN Red List).

Background image sources: Esri, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, i-cubed, USDA FSA, USGS, AEX, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, swisstopo, and the GIS user community.

Review: Human Origins Stories Incompatible with Known Fossils | AMNH

Reconstructing the evolutionary history of a species often resembles creating the picture in a jigsaw puzzle from only a few pieces. The many gaps will be inevitable and there is no real certainty about the resulting picture.

This is especially true of the evolutionary history of the hominins, for example. But one thing is certain: none of it makes any sense other than as the picture of an evolutionary process, as this review of the known evidence by researchers from the American Museum of Natural History show in their paper published in Science today shows.

Although the evidence is far from complete, nowhere is there evidence of that forlorn Creationist lie that the TOE is a theory in crisis, about to be replaced by magic creationism, as the first ever scientific theory to be replaced by evidence-free supernaturalism with a god and god-magic inserted in every conceivable gap.

Paradoxically, the picture is often made more complicated and uncertain, not less, with the discovery of more fossils of 'transitional' species, because it is often not obvious just how this or that latest find fits in with the overall picture (we do not have a picture on the lid to follow). Despite the false claims of Creationist frauds that science doesn't have any 'transitional' species (is it only human evolution that worries them?) science actually has so many it's difficult to know what to do with them all, so far as fitting them into a coherent, evidence-based narrative goes.

This is made clear in the opening paragraph of the press release from AMNH:

In the 150 years since Charles Darwin speculated that humans originated in Africa, the number of species in the human family tree has exploded, but so has the level of dispute concerning early human evolution. Fossil apes are often at the center of the debate, with some scientists dismissing their importance to the origins of the human lineage (the “hominins”), and others conferring them starring evolutionary roles. A new review out on May 7 in the journal Science looks at the major discoveries in hominin origins since Darwin’s works and argues that fossil apes can inform us about essential aspects of ape and human evolution, including the nature of our last common ancestor.

When you look at the narrative for hominin origins, it’s just a big mess—there’s no consensus whatsoever. People are working under completely different paradigms, and that’s something that I don’t see happening in other fields of science.

Sergio Almécija, Lead author
Senior research scientist
Division of Anthropology
American Museum of Natural History.

Humans diverged from apes—specifically, the chimpanzee lineage—at some point between about 9.3 million and 6.5 million years ago, towards the end of the Miocene epoch. To understand hominin origins, paleoanthropologists aim to reconstruct the physical characteristics, behavior, and environment of the last common ancestor of humans and chimps.

[...]

There are two major approaches to resolving the human origins problem: “Top-down,” which relies on analysis of living apes, especially chimpanzees; and “bottom-up,” which puts importance on the larger tree of mostly extinct apes. For example, some scientists assume that hominins originated from a chimp-like knuckle-walking ancestor. Others argue that the human lineage originated from an ancestor more closely resembling, in some features, some of the strange Miocene apes.

In The Descent of Man in 1871, Darwin speculated that humans originated in Africa from an ancestor different from any living species. However, he remained cautious given the scarcity of fossils at the time. One hundred fifty years later, possible hominins—approaching the time of the human-chimpanzee divergence—have been found in eastern and central Africa, and some claim even in Europe. In addition, more than 50 fossil ape genera are now documented across Africa and Eurasia. However, many of these fossils show mosaic combinations of features that do not match expectations for ancient representatives of the modern ape and human lineages. As a consequence, there is no scientific consensus on the evolutionary role played by these fossil apes.

Current disparate theories regarding ape and human evolution would be much more informed if, together with early hominins and living apes, Miocene apes were also included in the equation. In other words, fossil apes are essential to reconstruct the ‘starting point’ from which humans and chimpanzees evolved.

Sergio Almécija

But there is no problem per se with having two major approaches as both are capable of producing results and neither approach produces a complete answer, as the rest of the press release explains:

In reviewing the studies surrounding these diverging approaches, Almécija and colleagues with expertise ranging from paleontology to functional morphology and phylogenetics discuss the limitations of relying exclusively on one of these opposing approaches to the hominin origins problem. “Top-down” studies sometimes ignore the reality that living apes (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and hylobatids) are just the survivors of a much larger, and now mostly extinct, group. On the other hand, studies based on the “bottom-up” approach are prone to giving individual fossil apes an important evolutionary role that fits a preexisting narrative.

“In The Descent of Man in 1871, Darwin speculated that humans originated in Africa from an ancestor different from any living species. However, he remained cautious given the scarcity of fossils at the time,” Almécija said. “One hundred fifty years later, possible hominins—approaching the time of the human-chimpanzee divergence—have been found in eastern and central Africa, and some claim even in Europe. In addition, more than 50 fossil ape genera are now documented across Africa and Eurasia. However, many of these fossils show mosaic combinations of features that do not match expectations for ancient representatives of the modern ape and human lineages. As a consequence, there is no scientific consensus on the evolutionary role played by these fossil apes.”

Living ape species are specialized species, relicts of a much larger group of now extinct apes. When we consider all evidence—that is, both living and fossil apes and hominins—it is clear that a human evolutionary story based on the few ape species currently alive is missing much of the bigger picture.

Ashley Hammond, Co-author
Assistant curator
Division of Anthropology
American Museum of Natural History.

Overall, the researchers found that most stories of human origins are not compatible with the fossils that we have today.

“Living ape species are specialized species, relicts of a much larger group of now extinct apes. When we consider all evidence—that is, both living and fossil apes and hominins—it is clear that a human evolutionary story based on the few ape species currently alive is missing much of the bigger picture.

Kelsey Pugh, a Museum postdoctoral fellow and study co-author adds, “The unique and sometimes unexpected features and combinations of features observed among fossil apes, which often differ from those of living apes, are

The unique and sometimes unexpected features and combinations of features observed among fossil apes, which often differ from those of living apes, are necessary to untangle which features hominins inherited from our ape ancestors and which are unique to our lineage.

Kelsey Pugh, Co-author
Postdoctoral fellow
American Museum of Natural History

necessary to untangle which features hominins inherited from our ape ancestors and which are unique to our lineage.”

Living apes alone, the authors conclude, offer insufficient evidence. “Current disparate theories regarding ape and human evolution would be much more informed if, together with early hominins and living apes, Miocene apes were also included in the equation,” says Almécija. “In other words, fossil apes are essential to reconstruct the ‘starting point’ from which humans and chimpanzees evolved.”

More detail is given in the structured abstract to their paper in Nature:

Structured Abstract

BACKGROUND

Ever since the writings of Darwin and Huxley, humans’ place in nature relative to apes (nonhuman hominoids) and the geographic origins of the human lineage (hominins) have been heavily debated. Humans diverged from apes [specifically, the chimpanzee lineage (Pan)] at some point between ~9.3 million and ~6.5 million years ago (Ma), and habitual bipedalism evolved early in hominins (accompanied by enhanced manipulation and, later on, cognition). To understand the selective pressures surrounding hominin origins, it is necessary to reconstruct the morphology, behavior, and environment of the Pan-Homo last common ancestor (LCA). “Top-down” approaches have relied on living apes (especially chimpanzees) to reconstruct hominin origins. However, “bottom-up” perspectives from the fossil record suggest that modern hominoids represent a decimated and biased sample of a larger ancient radiation and present alternative possibilities for the morphology and geography of the Pan-Homo LCA. Reconciling these two views remains at the core of the human origins problem.

ADVANCES

There is no consensus on the phylogenetic positions of the diverse and widely distributed Miocene apes. Besides their fragmentary record, disagreements are due to the complexity of interpreting fossil morphologies that present mosaics of primitive and derived features, likely because of parallel evolution (i.e., homoplasy). This has led some authors to exclude known Miocene apes from the modern hominoid radiation. However, most researchers identify some fossil apes as either stem or crown members of the hominid clade [i.e., preceding the divergence between orangutans (pongines) and African great apes and humans (hominines), or as a part of the modern great ape radiation]. European Miocene apes have prominently figured in discussions about the geographic origin of hominines. “Kenyapith” apes dispersed from Africa into Eurasia ~16 to 14 Ma, and some of them likely gave rise to the European “dryopith” apes and the Asian pongines before 12.5 Ma. Some authors interpret dryopiths as stem hominines and support their back-to-Africa dispersal in the latest Miocene, subsequently evolving into modern African apes and hominins. Others interpret dryopiths as broadly ancestral to hominids or an evolutionary dead end.

Increased habitat fragmentation during the late Miocene in Africa might explain the evolution of African ape knuckle walking and hominin bipedalism from an orthograde arboreal ancestor. Bipedalism might have allowed humans to escape the great ape “specialization trap“—an adaptive feedback loop between diet, specialized arboreal locomotion, cognition, and life history. However, understanding the different selection pressures that underlie knuckle walking and bipedalism is hindered by locomotor uncertainties about the Pan-Homo LCA and its Miocene forebears. In turn, the functional interpretation of Miocene ape mosaic morphologies is challenging because it depends on the relevance of primitive features. Furthermore, adaptive complexes can be co-opted to perform new functions during evolution. For instance, features that are functionally related to quadrupedalism or orthogrady can be misinterpreted as bipedal adaptations. Miocene apes show that the orthograde body plan, which predates below-branch suspension, is likely an adaptation for vertical climbing that was subsequently co-opted for other orthograde behaviors, including habitual bipedalism.

The evolutionary history of apes and humans is largely incomplete.

Whereas the phylogenetic relationships among living species can be retrieved using genetic data, the position of most extinct species remains contentious. Surprisingly, complete-enough fossils that can be attributed to the gorilla and chimpanzee lineages remain to be discovered. Assuming different positions of available fossil apes (or ignoring them owing to uncertainty) markedly affects reconstructions of key ancestral nodes, such as that of the chimpanzee-human LCA.

OUTLOOK

Future research efforts on hominin origins should focus on (i) fieldwork in unexplored areas where Miocene apes have yet to be found, (ii) methodological advances in morphology-based phylogenetics and paleoproteomics to retrieve molecular data beyond ancient DNA limits, and (iii) modeling driven by experimental data that integrates morphological and biomechanical information, to test locomotor inferences for extinct taxa. It is also imperative to stop assigning a starring role to each new fossil discovery to fit evolutionary scenarios that are not based on testable hypotheses.

Early hominins likely originated in Africa from a Miocene LCA that does not match any living ape (e.g., it might not have been adapted specifically for suspension or knuckle walking). Despite phylogenetic uncertainties, fossil apes remain essential to reconstruct the “starting point” from which humans and chimpanzees evolved.

Abstract

Humans diverged from apes (chimpanzees, specifically) toward the end of the Miocene ~9.3 million to 6.5 million years ago. Understanding the origins of the human lineage (hominins) requires reconstructing the morphology, behavior, and environment of the chimpanzee-human last common ancestor. Modern hominoids (that is, humans and apes) share multiple features (for example, an orthograde body plan facilitating upright positional behaviors). However, the fossil record indicates that living hominoids constitute narrow representatives of an ancient radiation of more widely distributed, diverse species, none of which exhibit the entire suite of locomotor adaptations present in the extant relatives. Hence, some modern ape similarities might have evolved in parallel in response to similar selection pressures. Current evidence suggests that hominins originated in Africa from Miocene ape ancestors unlike any living species.

Almécija, Sergio; Hammond, Ashley S.; Thompson, Nathan E.; Pugh, Kelsey D.; Moyà-Solà, Salvador; Alba, David M.
Fossil apes and human evolution
Science 07 May 2021: Vol. 372, Issue 6542, eabb4363; DOI: 10.1126/science.abb4363

© 2021 The American Association for the Advancement of Science
Reprinted with kind permission under licence #5063530209822

So, given what these experts say about the fossil evidence for humun evolution from a common ancestor with the other African apes and how best to use it, would any creationist like to explain why this shows evidence for Creationism and a 'theory in crisis' as Creationist frauds like Ken Ham, Michael Behe, et al. continue to insist? If not, from where do these frauds get the evidence for their claims?