Covidiots Are Missing More Than Just Brain Cells

Electron micrograph of a single SARS-CoV-2 particle with its spike proteins (blue) clearly visible. The inset is a 3D model of the spike protein — the portion of the COVID-19 virus that currently available mRNA vaccines recognize. A recent Johns Hopkins Medicine study suggests that T lymphocytes — immune system cells that target the spike protein and direct antibodies against the COVID-19 virus — persist six months after vaccination and help protect against the delta variant of the virus.

Credit:
Graphic: M.E. Newman, Johns Hopkins Medicine, using public domain images.
Micrograph: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
SARS-CoV-2 spike protein 3D model: National Institutes of Health

Study Shows Immune Cells Against Covid-19 Stay High in Number Six Months After Vaccination

A Recent study by scientists at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, published recently by Oxford University Press in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, shows just what the covidiots who are refusing to get vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus are missing in addition to the ability to make rational decisions and think for themselves. The study shows how people vaccinated with either of the mRNA vaccines still have high levels of t-lymphocytes circulating in their blood 6 months after immunisation and that these levels have only declined slightly from the initial levels.

In other words, people who have been vaccinated with the mRNA vaccines have specialised, pre-programmed cells active and ready to fight the virus by destroying infected cells and preventing them producing more virus particles in addition to the antibodies that identify and attack virus particles that get into the body.

If Ever You're Feeling Really Stupid - 20 Absurdities That Some Adults Believe

1. That Earth is flat and has a dome over it to keep the water above the sky out. The moon and sun are lamps hung on this dome so we can tell day from night and the stars stuck to it can shake loose and fall to earth during earthquakes.
2. That a magic man designed himself before he existed then self-assemble out of nothing with enough information to create a Universe out of nothing and micromanage it to the minutest level.
3. That a hundred-year-old man built a wooden boat and rounded up two or seven of every species in the world to live together for a year sealed in that boat with only one small window for air, then they left the boat onto a sterile planet on which all living things had been destroyed, including the plants, but still found enough to eat so everything alive today is descended from those few survivors.
4. That just five generations after the survivors left the boat in 2, there were enough people to support a massive civil engineering project to build a tower up to Heaven, which in those days was just above the sky over the Middle East, and that all the languages on Earth are the result of this population each being magically made to speak languages that non-one else could understand, because the project alarmed an omniscient, omnipotent god who lived in the Heaven.

Evolution News - Amazon Rainforest Birds Evolving Due to Climate Change

Above the Amazon rainforest canopy where birds have become smaller and their wings have become longer over several generations, indicating a response to the shifting environmental conditions that may include new physiological or nutritional challenges.

Photo credit: Vitek Jirinec, LSU

Amazon Rainforest Birds’ Bodies Transform Due to Climate Change

A study by a combined team from the USA, Brazil and Portugal, led by Vitek Jirinec of Louisiana State University's School of Renewable Natural Resources, has found evidence that climate change is causing birds of the Amazon Rainforest to evolve smaller bodies and longer wings, even in the areas of the forest where human activity is minimal.

They arrived at this conclusion by examining data from measuring over 15,000 birds over a period of 40 years from a wide range of sites. Over that time the body mass of individuals has reduced by about 2% per decade, so that a bird species with an average body weight of 30 grams in 1980 would now have an average weight of 27.6 grams. These changes are not confined to specific areas, so eliminating local factors. In other words, the changes are being produced by a pervasive environmental change.

The team have published their findings, open access a few days ago, in Science Advances.

These birds don’t vary that much in size. They are fairly fine-tuned, so when everyone in the population is a couple of grams smaller, it’s significant.

This is undoubtedly happening all over and probably not just with birds...If you look out your window, and consider what you’re seeing out there, the conditions are not what they were 40 years ago and it’s very likely plants and animals are responding to those changes as well. We have this idea that the things we see are fixed in time; but if these birds aren’t fixed in time, that may not be true.

Professor Philip Stouffer, co-author
Lee F. Mason Professor
School of Renewable Natural Resources
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

Where there was a significant difference, however, was related to the level in the forest that the species normally inhabits, from the forest floor to the canopy. The change was most marked in those which occupy the higher levels, where climate change has had the biggest impact making it drier and hotter. This has created an environment which favour lighter bodies with longer wings, both of which improve flight efficiency so making it easier to tolerate higher temperatures.

In the abstract to their open access paper, published in Science Advances, the authors say:

Abstract

Warming from climate change is expected to reduce body size of endotherms, but studies from temperate systems have produced equivocal results. Over four decades, we collected morphometric data on a nonmigratory understory bird community within Amazonian primary rainforest that is experiencing increasingly extreme climate. All 77

species showed lower mean mass since the early 1980s—nearly half with 95% confidence. A third of species concomitantly increased wing length, driving a decrease in mass:wing ratio for 69% of species. Seasonal precipitation patterns were generally better than temperature at explaining morphological variation. Short-term climatic conditions affected all metrics, but time trends in wing and mass:wing remained robust even after controlling for annual seasonal conditions. We attribute these results to pressures to increase resource economy under warming. Both seasonal and long-term morphological shifts suggest response to climate change and highlight its pervasive consequences, even in the heart of the world’s largest rainforest.

Jirinec Vitek; Burner Ryan C.; Amaral Bruna R.; Bierregaard Richard O.; Fernández-Arellano Gilberto; Hernández-Palma Angélica; Johnson Erik I.; Lovejoy Thomas E.; Powell Luke L.; Rutt Cameron L.; Wolfe Jared D.; Stouffer Philip C (2021)
Morphological consequences of climate change for resident birds in intact Amazonian rainforest
Science Advances 7(46); eabk1743. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abk1743

Copyright: 2021 The authors. Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0)

This is a clear example, not only of the effects of climate change but of how significant environmental change can influence the evolution of species as the environment selects for those characteristics which give greater fitness. It's a beautiful example of how science quite incidentally and with no intention on the part of the authors to do so, casually refutes Creationism by revealing the facts and so confirming once gain how evolution by natural selection works in practice. Significant morphological changes have occurred in these species over a defined time period and that change is proportional to the impact of a pervasive, measurable environmental change in different ecological niches.

Trumpanzee Talibangelical 'Prophets' are Becoming Even More Confused

Talibangelical false prophets.
Left: Nathan French of Nathan French Ministries
Right: Robin Bullock of Youth Force Ministries Church International Inc.

'Donald Trump, Call Me': Robin Bullock Says Trump Must Listen to the Prophets, Not His Political Advisers | Right Wing Watch

'Prophet' Nathan French Says God Must Restore Trump to Office to Silence Those 'Trying to Discredit the Prophetic Community' | Right Wing Watch

Judging by two recent items in Right Wing Watch, American Talibangelical, Trumpanzee 'Prophets of God' are becoming increasingly confused by their long litany of abject failures about what exactly God it trying to tell them. Firstly, to a man (or woman) they prophesied that their idol, Donald Trump, would win last November by a landslide, claiming God himself had assured them he would arrange it.

Then, when that prophesy proved false they searched around for ever-more creative and unlikely ways to explain their failure as a success, claiming the landslide would all be revealed once Trump had been returned to the Oval Office - which God had assured them was imminent - with an ever-shifting deadline - Before inauguration day, before February, by April, er… June… or July… At least one announced that God had told him Trump had secretly declared a state of emergency and declared martial law, so a military government, answerable to Trump, was now running the USA. They would soon be releasing the evidence of electoral fraud and arresting Biden and his fellow 'conspirators', including Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama! None of that was true either.

God's promise of electoral victory had turned instead into God's promise of a military coup to overturn the result that God had proved powerless to deliver, if we are to believe God's (false) prophets.

But with the anniversary of Biden's victory come and gone, and not a single successful attempt to prove electoral fraud in court, no attempt to find any evidence being successful, and no sign of the prophesied military coup or the arrest of leading Democrats, they have some explaining still to do.

One of the leading loons, Nathan French of Nathan French Ministries, is beginning to realise that his continuing failures is damaging him and his fellow frauds and threatening their tax-free income streams. He has even started demanding that Trump be reinstated to save their reputations because people are understandably losing faith in prophets who continue to prove themselves to be frauds.

Appearing on the ElijahStreams You Tube channel, he told host Steve Schultz:

If somebody gives a word that, ‘Hey, on this date, this person is going to be in office,’ and it doesn’t come to pass, then it was a false word. It wasn’t true. But if they give that word and the date that they gave hasn’t yet come to pass, you can’t call him a liar or [say] that they were wrong because the time hasn’t happened yet. If somebody doesn’t give a date and God gives a word and speaks through the voice of his prophets—which he’s doing on the Earth right now because there’s still prophets today. … There’s a whole bunch of people on the planet that don’t believe that there are still prophets on the Earth. And so they scripturally are trying to resolve that, and they’re teaching people that prophets no longer exist.

At least he got that part right. False prophets are of course, people like Nathan French who make prophesies that don't come true. The clue is in the name 'false prophet'. Had Nathan French not been a false prophet, Trump would have been restored to the White House last April.

Robin Bullock, on the other hand, is still prophesying a reversal of last November's result. The problem is that Trump is listening to his political advisers and not to Robin Bullock. He told the extreme conservative program, Flyover Conservatives:

[God said, Trump was] anointed from the day you were born to be president.

Get in touch with me, and I can tell you some of these things. Donald Trump, call me. Call me. … Listen to the prophets. Don’t let them tell you to not listen to the prophets. … I heard these people talking, and they told the president—I’m talking about President Trump. The president. I’m not talking about the jackal who barks over the desk of the Oval Office. I’m talking about the president—I was listening to this conversation and they said, ‘Don’t listen to the prophets.'

But the Lord said, ‘Don’t listen to your advisers about that because they have their own agenda in mind, and it does not include you. Operate in the power of God, and let him pave your way. [Take] one step toward your position, and God will open the way all the way back. After I gave a word similar to that, a very important person called me and said, ‘You have no idea how right you are.’ He said, ‘I know one of his close advisers, and they told him, “Don’t run in 2024. Don’t run again. You’ll mess it up for all of us.”‘ I heard the conversation. I heard them talking. And I’m going to tell the president something: Donald John Trump, you were anointed from the day you were born to be president, and you were brought on the scene for such a time as this.

From that forlorn please, it looks like even Bullock has now accepted that Biden is there until at least November 2024 and that his 'prophesy' of Trump's restoration will only come true if he stands and wins in a rerun against Biden. No coup, no revealed evidence of electoral fraud, no heavenly intervention to reverse a democratic vote… nothing. Just the normal operation of the democratic process he so despises when it doesn't produce the result he feels entitled to.

Just imagine if these frauds ever gained the political power they came close to obtaining under Trump's corrupt and incompetent leadership!

Malevolent Designer News - Creating a More Dangerous Breast Cancer

Counterintuitive relationship between PIK3CA genotype and transcriptomic stemness and PI3K signalling scores in human breast cancer.

Graphical Summary

In a paper published today, Ralitsa Madsen of University College London and colleagues show just how devious any designer of one of the more aggressive forms of breast cancer would have to have been, if in fact breast cancer had been designed, as Creationists believe.

The secret to their design is that a mutation makes the cells behave more like stem cells, i.e., cells which have had their epigenetics reset to make them more like the cells from which other, specialist, cells develop during embryonic development. This has been known about for some time but what is new in this research is that there is not one mutation but two or more in the more aggressive cancers and those with a poorer prognosis whereas a single mutation decreases the aggressiveness of the resulting cancer.

The PLOS press release accompanying the open access publication in PLOS Genetics explains:

Malevolent Designer News - Another Stunning Blow by Medical Science.

A new antiviral dramatically reduced the number of people newly diagnosed with COVID-19 who needed hospitalization.

Credit: Rory Doyle/The New York Times

Pfizer antiviral slashes COVID-19 hospitalizations | Science | AAAS

Creationist mode:

Scientists have landed another significant blow in their arms race with Creationism's beloved malevolence over the infectivity and morbidity associated with the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19. This development is almost on a par with the development of the mRNA anti-COVID vaccines and it is based on a treatment originally developed in the fight against another of the malevolent designer's nasty little organism - HIV.

The treatment, developed by Pfizer who developed one of the first anti-COVID vaccines to be approved, involves giving patients a protease inhibitor within the first few days of infection. The early results of the randomised, double blind clinical trial were so marked that the external regulator stopped the trial so that those volunteers taking the placebo could benefit from the treatment. It had resulted in an 89% reduction in those who received the treatment within 3 days of the onset of symptoms needing hospitalisation, with a similar reduction in those starting treatment within 5 days of onset of symptoms. There were no deaths in the experimental group over the trial period. Only 0.8% of the trial group needed hospitalisation compared to 7% of the control group. 7 of the control group died.

In addition to reducing the severity of symptoms, the treatment should help victims clear the virus more quickly, so reducing the transmission of the virus to others.

Evolution News - How Brains Evolved From Sponges' Stomachs

Sponge neuroid cell (orange) extends arms that enwrap the feeding apparatus of a sponge digestive cell (green) to create a link for targeted communication. The image was taken using electron microscopy.

Credit: Jacob Musser, Giulia Mizzon, Constantin Pape, Nicole Schieber/EMBL

More than a gut reaction - EMBL.

Brain cells, all 86 billion of them, communicate with one another across microscopic gaps between them called synapses. Communication across this gap is via neurotransmitter substances such as acetyl choline. A similar process is involved at the neuromuscular junction between nerves and muscle cells. This has been well understood for some time but what was a mystery was how this system evolved.

Certainly it happened early in the evolutionary history of multicellularity because all but the most primitive multicellular organisms such as sponges have a nervous system of some sort.

This is the sort of mystery that Creationists latch onto to fool their dupes with the false dichotomy that if science hasn't explained it, the locally popular god must have created it, leaving their scientifically illiterate targets to assume that if science hasn't explained something then science can't explain it and never will.

Now though, scientists working for EMBL have discovered that this method of cell communication evolved in just those primitive organisms, sponges, for an entirely different function - an example of something Creationists hate - evolutionary repurposing, or exaptation, of an existing process or structure for a new function. This is, of course, how apparently irreducibly complex processes and systems such as flagella evolve.

In so doing, the scientists have also solved another mystery - why do sponges have the genes for synaptic control when they don't have a nervous system?

The EMBL news release explains:

Malevolent Designer News - How Creationism's Favourite Malevolence Created a More Dangerous SARS-CoV-2 Virus.

Creative rendition of SARS-COV-2 virus particles with spike proteins dotting their surfaces. Image not to scale.

Credit: NIAID

NIH scientists identify mechanism that may influence infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 variants | National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Creationist mode:

News today of how Creationism's beloved malevolence found a way to get round the human body's defence mechanism against the SARS-CoV-2 virus - the mechanism it designed to protect us from the organisms it makes to kill and make us sick - and so get the maximum impact of the virus on human health.

The problem was that there is a process in the cells that would normally limit the infectivity of viruses like SARS-CoV-2, so, starting with the α variant and continuing with the δ variant, the intelligent [sic] designer included some modifications, or mutations as scientists call them, which overcome this cell process and so make the variants much more infective.

Confirmed cases

Data source: gov.uk

The great success of these modifications can be seen in the daily record of the number of cases in the UK, where we saw a massive spike in cases last winter as the α variant became the dominant variant in the UK, followed by another huge spike of cases which started.

The intelligent designer is currently mopping up those covidiots who have fallen for the antivaxxer lies being promulgated by the extreme Trumpanzee right for political ends, while using them as a resource for developing an even more infective variant which can also overcome the stunning success of medical science in creating the vaccines against the virus.

Creationist mode:

Now back in the real world, the NIH news release explains the discovery:

Evolution News - Kind and Caring Bonobos Show us How Morality Evolved

Esake, photographed at the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019, was rescued from a hunter who killed her mom.

Credit: Ley Uwera for NPR. Source.

Bonobo Mothers Adopt Babies That Look Different | Psychology Today

Baby bonobos are so cute! Wouldn't you just love to hold one and give it a loving cuddle, and protect and care for it? And not just because it looks so human with forward-looking eyes, but because it looks so vulnerable! Just adorable! No?

But why that response rather than treating it as a threat who'll take your food and give nothing back, or even as potential food?

The answer is because we share a great deal in common with bonobos, having evolved from a common ancestor.

Just in case there a still a few Creationists left who believe that the TOE is a theory in crisis that is about to be abandoned by science, or are still under the impression that humans were given their morals by a god, and didn't evolve them as their cultures evolved, here is an article in Psychology Today by Temma Ehrenfeld, which explains how we appear to have inherited at least some of our basic morality, the kinder, nicer side, from a common ancestor with the bonobo.

Covid Vaccination News - mRNA Vaccines 5 Times More Effective Than 'Natural' Antibodies From Infection.

COVID vaccines 5 times more effective at protecting against COVID-related hospitalization than prior infection alone

A large-scale study by the VISION network of the US CDC has shown that protection against the SARS-CoV-2 virus provided by the mRNA vaccines is 5 times more effective at preventing hospitalizations that any protection produced by infection with the virus. Whilst neither is 100% effective at preventing infection, by far the best protection against becoming seriously ill is provided by the vaccinations developed by medical science.

In the over 65 age-group, this differential rises to 20 times more effective that previous infection!

This data provides powerful evidence that vaccinations offer superior protection against COVID-19 than relying on natural immunity alone. Many have been asking if they should get vaccinated if they’ve already been infected – this research shows the answer is yes.

Dr Shaun Grannis, M.D., M.S.
Vice president for data and analytics, Regenstrief Institute
Professor of family medicine
Indiana University School of Medicine.

According to the press release by the Regenstrife Institute, who analysed the data provided by the VISION Network:

Researchers from the CDC’s VISION Network gathered data from more than 201,000 hospitalizations in nine different states. About 7,000 people in that group fit the criteria for this study. The research team analyzed the number of unvaccinated individuals who had a positive COVID-19 test more than three months before being hospitalized for the virus as well as the number of individuals who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine and were not diagnosed with COVID prior to being admitted to the hospital. The research team found that overall, unvaccinated adults with a previous COVID-19 infection were about five times more likely to be hospitalized than those who were vaccinated.

The data analysis also found among adults older than 65, overall mRNA vaccines were nearly 20 times more effective at protecting against hospitalizations than prior infection alone.

[…]

The study findings are consistent with laboratory evidence that mRNA vaccines create high levels of antibodies, whereas those who recover from COVID-19 have varying levels of antibodies, especially if they experienced mild symptoms or were asymptomatic.

The findings are published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortaility Weekly Report (MMWR):

Summary

What is already known about this topic?

Previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 vaccination can provide immunity and protection against subsequent SARS-CoV-2 infection and illness.

What is added by this report?

Among COVID-19–like illness hospitalizations among adults aged ≥18 years whose previous infection or vaccination occurred 90–179 days earlier, the adjusted odds of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 among unvaccinated adults with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection were 5.49-fold higher than the odds among fully vaccinated recipients of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine who had no previous documented infection (95% confidence interval = 2.75–10.99).

What are the implications for public health practice?

All eligible persons should be vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as possible, including unvaccinated persons previously infected with SARS-CoV-2.

Bozio CH, Grannis SJ, Naleway AL, et al.
Laboratory-Confirmed COVID-19 Among Adults Hospitalized with COVID-19–Like Illness with Infection-Induced or mRNA Vaccine-Induced SARS-CoV-2 Immunity — Nine States, January–September 2021.
MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. ePub: 29 October 2021. DOI: 10.15585/mmwr.mm7044e1

So, it's a no-brainer. Get vaccinated and get the booster when available, unless, of course, you want to end up on a ventilator. It won't guarantee you don't get infected or even need hospital treatment, but it will significantly reduce your chances of doing so.

The sad thing is that a simple no-brainer is beyond the wit of those covidiots who have fallen for the antivaxxer hoax being promulgated by fruitloop extremists, often with a pro-Trump, political agenda.

Unintelligent Design - The Human Curved Birth Canal and Foetal Welfare

Relationship between pelvic depth (i.e. AP length of the pelvis) and spinal curvature as documented in the orthopaedic literature. The pelvis and spine are shown schematically in sagittal view. A Normal spinopelvic relationship where the centre of mass (indicated by the vertical dashed line through the last cervical vertebra, the so-called C7 plumbline) is positioned sagittally above both the hip joints and the superior endplate of the sacrum. B In an anteroposteriorly elongated pelvis (as indicated by the red double arrow) without spinal adjustment, the centre of mass is located behind the hip joints, which compromises the structural stability of upright posture. C To bring the centre of mass back above the hip joints in this elongated pelvis, the sacrum needs to be tilted forward. This leads to an overall increased curvature of the spine, particularly an increased lumbar lordosis and a deviation of the centre of mass from the sacral endplate. Increased lumbar lordosis is associated with multiple orthopaedic disorders, such as spondylolisthesis and disc herniation

Why do humans possess a twisted birth canal? | Universität Wien

A team led by Katya Stansfield from the University of Vienna has shown how the human birth canal evolved as a compromise and was not intelligently designed by an omniscient designer god to be the best solution to the design problem. In fact, it is a shoddy compromise made necessary because the basic human skeleton is an adaptation of the basic quadrupedal vertebrate skeleton and was never designed from the ground up for bipedalism as we would expect of a structure intelligently designed, rather than one evolved from earlier common ancestors with the other great apes and before that, a quadrupedal vertebrate with a horizontal spinal column.

One of the trade-offs was the welfare and survival of the foetus during the birth process. This was put at increased risk in order to ensure the long-term survival of the mother. Creationists might like to think about that as they try to force fit this into their religion with a putative designer god to whom all human life is sacred…

As the University of Vienna press release explains:

Evolution News - Here Be Dragonflies!

1 of 6

Aeshna cyanea

Source: Wikipedia

2 of 6

Aeshna grandis

Source: Wikipedia

3 of 6

Anax junius

Source: Wikipedia

4 of 6

Ischnura senegalensis

Source: Wikipedia

5 of 6

Libellula quadrimaculata

Source: Wikipedia

6 of 6

Sympetrum flaveolum

Source: Wikipedia

Linking the Past and Present: Reconstructing the Dragonfly and Damselfly Family Tree - University of Tsukuba

Scientist from Japan have succeeded in doing what Creationists insist is impossible because it doesn't happen. They have shown the evolution and relationships between the different members of the insect order, Odonata, which includes all living and extinct dragonflies and damselflies, surely amongst the most beautiful of insects. For those unsure of the difference, damselflies tend to be smaller and more dainty and rest with their wings together over their backs, while dragonflies are generally larger, more robust and faster flying, and hold their wings horizontally, like those of an aeroplane when at rest. They are the only insects capable of flying backwards.

The scientists constructed a fanily tree for the order Odorata, by conducting a detailed analysis of the transcriptome - the collection of RNA in cells which are transcriptions of the functional DNA and mapping this onto the fossil record. Because this technique indirectly analyses only the active DNA, it gives a better evolutionary relationship between species and allows detailed timing of species divergence to be estimated.

As the University of Tsukuba research news item explains:

Evolution News - A Newly-Named Species of Archaic Hominin Clarifies our Evolutionary Picture

Artist's rendering of Homo bodoensis

Credit: Ettore Mazza

Experts name new species of human ancestor | University of Winnipeg News

Far from there being no transitional fossils showing the evolution of modern humans from archaic ancestors, as Creationists traditionally claim, there are so many of them that they tend to confuse rather than clarify the picture

Fossils are, of course, an irregular and infrequent snapshot of an evolving species over time, so palaeontologists always have a problem of slotting a new species into existing classifications because there is never a sharp delineation between an ancestral form and a descendant one. It's a bit like trying to determine exactly where one colour changes to another in a rainbow.

Where does the colour change?

So, the tendency has been to name a new find which is significantly different to any others, as a new species, with a name often derived from the place where they were discovered - the scientific equivalent of naming it 'Heidelberg Man' or 'Rhodesia Man'. This is even more problematic if the species is widespread and subject to regional variation, consequently, definitions can be fuzzy and confusing as newer finds are slotted into pre-existing types, each new type broadening and blurring the definition of that species.

Talking about human evolution during this time period became impossible due to the lack of proper terminology that acknowledges human geographic variation.

Naming a new species is a big deal, as the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature allows name changes only under very strictly defined rules.

Dr Mirjana Roksandic, co-first author
Palaeoanthropologist
Winnipeg University, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

This international team led by Dr. Mirjana Roksandic from Winnipeg University, Canada has clarified and simplified this muddle in the middle based on latest research and DNA analysis where DNA has been recovered and analysed. They looked especially at specimens that had been classified as Homo heidelbergensis or H. rhodesiensis, both of which carried multiple, often contradictory definitions. European specimens previously classified as H. heidelbergensis have been shown by DNA analysis to be early H. neanderthalensis, while H. rhodesiensis, named when Zimbabwe was still a British colony called Southern Rhodesia, has a name which is too closely associated with Cecil Rhodes and some of the more despicable and brutal aspects of Britain's former imperialism in Africa.

As the Winnipeg University news release explains:

Malevolent Designer News - How Creationism's Beloved Malevolence Could Have Made 'Friendly' Acne But Chose Not To.

Acne. Another of the malevolent designer's creations?

Not all acne is equal: scientists reveal strains of C. acnes that promote skin health — Osaka City University

For any teenage Creationist suffering from acne or carrying the facial scars of it, it will come as no comfort at all that their favourite pestilential malevolence, the 'creator' god of the Bible and Qur'an, could have just as easily given them a strain of the bacteria that causes it, Cutibacterium acnes, that not only doesn't cause acne, but which might even protect the skin from another pathogen, Staphylococcus aureus.

It will also come as no comfort to those who have fallen for the Deception Institute's intelligent [sic] design hoax, that a discovery by a Japanese team of scientists from Osaka City University and Okayama University shows how muddled and stupid any intelligence who designed the complex ecosystem that is the human skin and its commensal organisms, would have been.

Using a novel approach where a nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans, was used as a proxy for human skin, the team showed that certain strains, or ribotypes (RT), of C. acnes, based on clades of their ribosomal RNA (rRNA), not only do not cause acne but actually protect the nematode from infection with S. aureus and so possibly help to maintain a healthy skin. RT4 and 8, which are associated with acne also shorten the life of Ce. elegans, while RT6, found on healthy skin, does not.

From the Osaka University News release:

Creationism and Woolly Thinking

The European Mouflon or Mufflon, Ovis orientalis.

Credit: Jörg Hempel, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons

---

Modern Merino sheep

Credit: Cgoodwin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

According to the Bible, God created all animals for mankind, as 'an helpmeet' for Adam (Genesis 2:18-19). Given that this creator god is supposedly omniscient and omnipotent, you would expect any animals so created to be perfectly fitted for purpose and exactly what mankind needs. Yet the reality is that not a single domesticated animal (or plant) has remained unchanged from its wild ancestor. Every single domesticated animal has been improved by selective breeding, to make them bigger, stronger or more productive, or as a food, better flavoured, more versatile or easier to store!

Why would this be? Did this allegedly all-knowing creator not know what mankind would use these animals for or was it just not very good at designing things for a specific purpose?

Many domesticated animals and plants have been so highly modified that their wild ancestors, where these still exist, are barely recognisable as the ancestors of their domestic descendants. Take as an example, the different breeds of domestic sheep, farmed for their wool as well as for their meat. They are believed to be descended from the mufflon, also spelled 'Mouflon', (Ovis orientalis). Once indigenous to Eastern Europe and Western Asia it is now only common in the Caucasus, Anatolia, northern Iraq and north-western Iran. It is also found on the Mediterranean islands of Elba, Sardinia, Corsica and Cyprus but these may be the descendants of feral forms of early domestic sheep, introduced in the Bronze Age.

Evolution News - Yet another of Those Pesky 'Non-Existent' Transitional Forms!

Close-up of ventral carapace.

Photos by L.X.

Cretapsara athanata Luque gen. et sp. nov., a modern-looking eubrachyuran crab in Burmese amber.(A to D) Holotype LYAM-9. (A) Whole amber sample with crab inclusion in ventral view. (B) Close-up of ventral carapace. (C) Whole amber sample with crab inclusion in dorsal view. (D) Close-up of dorsal carapace. White arrows in (B) and (D) indicate the detached left fifth leg or pereopod.

Photos by L.X. Figure by J.L.

International team of researchers discover first dinosaur era crab fully preserved in amber | Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

Another favourite Creationist article of faith was shattered again today with the publication of an open access article in Science Advances by a Chinese team of researchers, describing a Cretaceous crab that shows incomplete transition between an aquatic and a terrestrial existence.

The crab is beautifully preserved in amber and shows an amazing level of detail of soft tissues that are rarely fossilised, even down to the fine hairs on its mouth-parts. It has the gills of an aquatic crab, and lacks the lung-like adaptations of gills characteristic of terrestrial crabs, yet it is clearly terrestrial hence becoming trapped in amber. It thus represents a transition between marine and terrestrial crabs.

The team used micro-CT technology to examine the crab, Cretapsara athanata. At 100 million years old it is the oldest modern-looking crab ever described and is from the Cretaceous era when crabs were diversifying - the so-called Cretaceous Crab Revolution - when the modern crabs originated. According to the Harvard University Department of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology (OEB) press release:

The specimen is spectacular, it is one of a kind. It’s absolutely complete and is not missing a single hair on the body, which is remarkable. The more we studied the fossil, the more we realized that this animal was very special in many ways.

Now we were dealing with an animal that is likely not marine, but also not fully terrestrial. In the fossil record, nonmarine crabs evolved 50 million years ago, but this animal is twice that age.

Dr Javier Luque, Lead author
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology,
Harvard University.

True crabs, or Brachyura, are an iconic group of crustaceans whose remarkable diversity of forms, species richness, and economic importance have inspired celebrations and festivals worldwide. They’ve even earned a special role in the pantheon of social media. True crabs are found all around the world, from the depths of the oceans, to coral reefs, beaches, rivers, caves, and even in trees as true crabs are among the few animal groups that have conquered land and freshwater multiple times.

The crab fossil record extends back into the early Jurassic, more than 200 million years ago. Unfortunately, fossils of nonmarine crabs are sparse and largely restricted to bits and pieces of the animal's carapace – claws and legs found in sedimentary rocks. That is until now with the discovery of Cretapsara athanata…

3D mesh of Cretapsara athanata Luque gen. et sp. nov. holotype LYAM-9.(A to E) 3D mesh extracted from reconstructed micro-CT data in VGSTUDIO MAX, remeshed in MeshLab, and visualized using Autodesk Maya: (A) dorsal, (B) ventral, (C) right lateral, (D) oblique postero-dorsal, (E) oblique antero-ventral views, showing the claws of equal size and four pairs of slender legs similar in shape and size, with P5 slightly smaller than the other legs. (F and G) Details of the dorsal (F) and ventral (G) carapace, showing details of the large eyes and orbits, small antennae, and a small, acute outer orbital spine [(F) thick arrow], two small anterolateral spines (F, thin arrows), a posterolateral margin bearing at least four small and equidistant tubercles (F, small arrows), straight posterior margin, slender coxae of the pereopods, a typical heterotreme eubrachyuran sternum (G), and a reduced and folded pleon with the first pleonites dorsally exposed. Left fifth pereopod digitally reattached. bcg, branchiocardiac groove; ca, carpus; cg, cervical groove; cx, coxa; da, dactylus; ib, ischiobasis; ma, manus or palm of claw; P1, claws or chelipeds; P2 to P5, pereopods or walking legs 2 to 5; po, pollex or fixed finger cheliped propodus; pr, propodus.

Images by E.G.C. Figure by J.L.

A group of scientists led by co-lead author Lida Xing, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, made micro CT scans of the fossil, which is housed in the Longyin Amber Museum in Yunnan, China. The scans created a full three-dimensional reconstruction of the exquisite preservation of the animal allowing Luque, Xing, and their team to see the complete body of the animal including delicate tissues, like the antennae and mouthparts lined with fine hairs. Shockingly they discovered the animal also had gills…

Cretapsara is remarkably modern-looking – superficially resembling some shore crabs found today – unlike most crabs during the mid-Cretaceous era which looked quite different from modern crabs. Yet, the animal was entombed in Cretaceous amber and the presence of well-developed gills indicated an aquatic to semi-aquatic animal. Aquatic animals are rarely preserved in tree resins that become amber. Crabs previously found in amber are by the handful and belong to a living group of tropical land and tree-dwelling crabs known as Sesarmidae from the Miocene (15 million years ago). How then, the researchers asked, did a 100 million year old aquatic animal become preserved in tree amber, which normally houses land-dwelling specimens?

Gills allow aquatic animals to breathe in water. But crabs have successfully and independently conquered land, brackish water, and fresh water at least twelve times since the dinosaur era. In doing so their gills evolved to include lung-like tissue allowing them to breathe both in and out of the water. Cretapsara however, had no lung tissue, only well-developed gills indicating the animal was not completely land dwelling.

The team’s phylogenetic studies show that carcinization (the evolution of true crab-looking forms) had actually already occurred in the most recent common ancestor shared by all modern crabs more than 100 million years ago. Cretapsara bridges the gap in the fossil record and confirms that crabs actually invaded land and fresh water during the dinosaur era, not during the mammal era, pushing the evolution of nonmarine crabs much further back in time.

In their open access paper published in Science Advances the authors say:

Abstract

Amber fossils provide snapshots of the anatomy, biology, and ecology of extinct organisms that are otherwise inaccessible. The best-known fossils in amber are terrestrial arthropods—principally insects—whereas aquatic organisms are rarely represented. Here, we present the first record of true crabs (Brachyura) in amber—from the Cretaceous of Myanmar [~100 to 99 million years (Ma)]. The new fossil preserves large compound eyes, delicate mouthparts, and even gills. This modern-looking crab is nested within crown Eubrachyura, or “higher” true crabs, which includes the majority of brachyuran species living today. The fossil appears to have been trapped in a brackish or freshwater setting near a coastal to fluvio-estuarine environment, bridging the gap between the predicted molecular divergence of nonmarine crabs (~130 Ma) and their younger fossil record (latest Cretaceous and Paleogene, ~75 to 50 Ma) while providing a reliable calibration point for molecular divergence time estimates for higher crown eubrachyurans.

J. Luque, L. Xing, D. E. G. Briggs, E. G. Clark, A. Duque, J. Hui, H. Mai, R. C. McKellar
Crab in amber reveals an early colonization of nonmarine environments during the Cretaceous.
Science Advances. 7, eabj5689 (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abj5689

Copyright: © 2021 The authors. Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

The great thing about these frequent transitional forms and so incidental refutations of a basic article of faith of the Creationist cult, is the way Creationists and the frauds who live off their gullibility, studiously ignore them and continue to insist they don't exist. It's as though they live in some sort of weird parallel Universe in which reality obediently conforms to their requirements.

Evolution News - The Difference Between Information and Meaning

I. sakaiensis grown on poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) accumulates poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB).

How a bacterium may help solve the plastic pollution crisis｜NARA Institute of Science and Technology

One key concept in genetic evolution that Creationists, either wilfully, or because of genuinely limited critical thinking ability, find hard to grasp, is the difference between genetic information and the meaning of that information in the context of the prevailing environment. This makes them especially susceptible to professional frauds in the Deception Institute and others in the Creation Industry, to false claims about mutation always involving a loss of information, when what changes in most forms of mutation is simply a change in the meaning of the information.

Certain bacteria harbor the necessary enzymes to degrade PET, the most problematic plastic environmentally. Our research has shown that the bacterium Ideonella sakaiensis converts PET into poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB), a type of poly(hydroxyalkanoate) (PHA) plastic that is biodegradable.

We believe that this discovery could be significant in tackling plastic pollution, as we show that the PET-degradation and PHB-synthesis pathways are functionally linked in I. sakaiensis. This might provide a novel pathway where a single bacterial species breaks down difficult-to-recycle PET plastics and uses the products to make biodegradable PHA plastics.

Shosuke Yoshida, senior author
Institute for Research Initiatives,
Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan

This is illustrated neatly by the discovery that the 201-F6 strain of the bacterium Ideonella sakaiensis can not only degrade petroleum-based plastics but can also sustainably produce biodegradable plastics from otherwise non-biodegradable poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET), a plastic widely used for disposable containers such as drinks bottles as well as textiles and food wrappers. This discovery was made by scientists at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Kansai Science City, Japan. Their findings are published, open access, in Scientific Reports.

This ability depends on the presence of two enzymes, PET hydrolase (PETase) and mono(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalic acid (MHET) hydrolase (MHETase) which together hydrolyse PET into terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG) monomers, both of which are readily biodegraded by other organisms.

In this strain of bacteria, genetic information has mutated to produce these two enzymes which, in the context of an environment highly polluted by man-made plastics, has given them the ability to exploit an abundant food source, unlike their ancestral form. Had this mutation arisen in pre-plastic times, it would have been utterly useless and might even have been detrimental in taking up resources to produce useless enzymes. In other words, the change in information now has a highly beneficial meaning in the context of a modern Earth, where once it had none.

In their paper published a few days ago in Scientific Reports the team say:

Abstract

Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) is a widely used plastic in bottles and fibers; its waste products pollute the environment owing to its remarkable durability. Recently, Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6 was isolated as a unique bacterium that can degrade and assimilate PET, thus paving the way for the bioremediation and bioconversion of PET waste. We found that this strain harbors a poly(hydroxyalkanoate) (PHA) synthesis gene cluster, which is highly homologous with that of Cupriavidus necator, an efficient PHA producer. Cells grown on PET accumulated intracellular PHA at high levels. Collectively, our findings in this study demonstrate that I. sakaiensis can mediate the direct conversion of non-biodegradable PET into environment-friendly plastic, providing a new approach for PET recycling.

Fujiwara, Ryoga; Sanuki, Rikako; Ajiro, Hiroharu; Fukui, Toshiaki; Yoshida, Shosuke
Direct fermentative conversion of poly(ethylene terephthalate) into poly(hydroxyalkanoate) by Ideonella sakaiensis
Scientific Reports 11, 19991 (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-99528-x

Copyright: © 2021 The authors. Published by Springer Nature Ltd.
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

What has changed in not the quantity of genetic information but the contextual meaning of it and that meaning has changed over time with the invention, use and environmental accumulation of vast quantities of non-biodegradable man-made plastic.

Evolution News - Observed Rapid Evolution in African Elephants

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Female elephants in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique evolved to be tuskless in response to intense hunting.

Credit: Joyce Poole/ElephantVoices. Source: Science

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Elephants in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique, declined by 90% during the 20-year civil war because of ivory poaching. This spurred the rapid evolution of tuskless females, such as this female Loxodonta africana.

Credit: ElephantVoices. Source: Science

Civil war drove these elephants to lose their tusks—through evolution | Science | AAAS

Since evolution by natural selection is driven primarily by the selecting environment, rapid change in the environment can produce rapid evolution. If the selection pressure is strong enough, this intense selection can also result in a linked deleterious gene increasing in the population by being dragged up the fitness landscape by a strongly advantageous gene to which it is linked by close proximity on a chromosome.

This was the case in Mozambique, where during a 15-year-long civil war when there was intense poaching of elephants for their ivory to finance the armies of both sides and because any wild-life protection was largely absent or non-functional. In the Gorongosa National Park for example, the elephant population fell by 90% in 20 years with predation heavily selecting against those with tusks. Consequently, the gene for tusklessness in females increased in the population. Over a period of 28 years which included the 15 years of civil war, the proportion of tuskless females increased from 18.5% (n = 52) to 50.9% (n = 108), but so did the proportion of females in the population and the pre-term deaths of male calves!

This was due to an increase in the genes AMELX and MEP1a, which are associated in mammals with normal tooth formation. AMELX is linked by its proximity on the X chromosome to a dominant male-lethal syndrome in humans that also diminishes the growth of maxillary lateral incisors (homologous to elephant tusks). In other words, as AMELX increases in the population, so does a male-lethal gene that also reduces the growth of tusks in elephants. The result is an absolute increase in the proportion of live births of females and of tuskless females in particular.

In the abstract to their recent paper, a team led by Princeton scientists Shane C. Campbell-Staton of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Brian J. Arnold of Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA. said:

Abstract

Understanding the evolutionary consequences of wildlife exploitation is increasingly important as harvesting becomes more efficient. We examined the impacts of ivory poaching during the Mozambican Civil War (1977 to 1992) on the evolution of African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) in Gorongosa National Park. Poaching resulted in strong selection that favored tusklessness amid a rapid population decline. Survey data revealed tusk-inheritance patterns consistent with an X chromosome–linked dominant, male-lethal trait. Whole-genome scans implicated two candidate genes with known roles in mammalian tooth development (AMELX and MEP1a), including the formation of enamel, dentin, cementum, and the periodontium. One of these loci (AMELX) is associated with an X-linked dominant, male-lethal syndrome in humans that diminishes the growth of maxillary lateral incisors (homologous to elephant tusks). This study provides evidence for rapid, poaching-mediated selection for the loss of a prominent anatomical trait in a keystone species.

Campbell-Staton Shane C.; Arnold Brian J.; Gonçalves Dominique; Granli Petter; Poole Joyce; Long Ryan A.; Pringle Robert M.
Ivory poaching and the rapid evolution of tusklessness in African elephants
Science, (2021), 483-487, 374(6566). DOI: 10.1126/science.abe7389

Over the short term, this attrition of males is not overly detrimental to elephants because herds are matriarchal with a single male able to serve multiple females and 'spare' males forming non-breeding 'batchelor' herds, so the population can remain stable or even increase with relatively few males.

What we can observe in this population then is a rapid evolution of a strong advantageous gene, in that tusklessness makes females less likely to be poached, with the 'opportunistic' increase in a deleterious gene which kills pre-term male calves by being linked physically to a strongly advantageous one, the deleterious effect in the population being more than compensated for by the overall advantageous effect.

Over the longer term, and with control of poaching, whatever environmental pressures led to the evolution of tusks in females originally is likely to reassert itself and the balance should shift back towards tusked females and more male live births. An beautiful example of how a changing environment changes the meaning of the same genetic information without any change in that information itself. And no magic deities involved anywhere in that process.

Evolution News - Savana Chimpanzees are Showing us How Humans Evolved

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Chimpanzees walking in the savanna of Fongoli (Senegal).

Photo: U. Villalobos-Flores.

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Savanna chimpanzees in a cave in Sabe (Guinea).

Photo: Jane Goodall Institute Spain and Senegal.

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Chimpanzees at Fongoli in Senegal drink polluted water in mining pits.

Photo: J. Pruetz.

savanna chimpanzees, a model for the understanding of human evolution - Universitat de Barcelona

An international group of primatologists, co-directed by Adriana Hernández, of the University of Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain and Stacy Lindshield of Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, has studied the behaviour of savanna chimpanzees as a model for how the chimpanzee ancestors of hominids would have behaved at a key stage in their diversification from their common ancestor.

Although savanna chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are genetically identical to their forest-dwelling counterparts, they have several cultural differences that have enabled them to survive in a savanna environment which it hotter, drier and more seasonal than a forest environment. These are exactly the environmental challenges that early pre-hominid apes would have had to cope with in south and east Africa as climate change firstly isolated them in diminishing forests then stranded them in a relatively treeless landscape in which only those able to adapt would survive.

Like their modern counterparts, at least a substantial part of that adaptation was to evolve cultures which enabled them to adopt survival strategies. This in turn would then have facilitated the genetic changes which now distinguish us from our close cousins.
From the Barcelona University news release:

The study of chimpanzees in the savanna and what we call the effect of the savanna environment has important implications in reconstructing the behavior of the first humans who lived in similar habitats and therefore helps us to better understand our own evolution.

We know that early hominins adapted to savanna environments similar to those found by chimpanzees, and it is thought that savanna conditions caused adaptations in our ancestors, such as brain expansion or tolerance to high temperatures, therefore, understanding how our genetically closest relatives adapt to a dry, hot, seasonal and open environment, very similar to those where early hominins lived, helps us to analyze how our ancestors might have adapted and how the characteristics that define us as humans could have emerged.

Understanding how they cope with the heat can help us understand how the strategies that humans have to cope with the heat came about. Some are probably the same for chimpanzees and hominins, such as using caves or diving into water to cool off.

The early hominins also had to face water shortages for part of the year.

R. Adriana Hernández, Co-senior author
Department of Social Psychology and Quantitative Psychology
Faculty of Psychology
University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

According to the researchers, the environmental conditions of these places would provoke a specific type of behaviors and physiological responses in these chimpanzees - such as resting in caves or digging to extract water - that do not occur in those of their congeners that live in wooded areas, where they do not they face such extreme environmental conditions.

[…]

The closest living genetically evolutionary relative to humans

Chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) are the closest living evolutionary relatives of our species, sharing 98.7% of their DNA with humans and sharing an ancestor with them that lived approximately 4.5 to 6 million years ago. years. Despite this closeness, they lack some of the biological and cultural traits that humans possess to adapt to extreme heat, such as the numerous eccrine sweat glands, the relative lack of hair, or the ability to create artifacts such as containers of water. and sun hats that mitigate dehydration and heat stroke.

Chimpanzees that live in the savanna are taxonomically indistinguishable from other chimpanzees. For this reason, comparisons of behavior, morphology and ecology with those living in more forested landscapes provide key information for generating hypotheses or testing theories about how early humans were able to adapt millions of years ago as forests Africans were retreating and giving way to the savannas.

[…]

Strategies to adapt to high temperatures

Among the characteristics collected by the study, the strategies of savanna chimpanzees to tolerate high temperatures stand out… Another example that the researcher highlights are the ways in which these chimpanzees try to hydrate during the late dry season, such as digging for water when it is reduced to only a few points on the ground.

Geographic distribution of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)⁵⁴ in savanna and forest landscapes across Africa relative to the minimum threshold of annual rainfall (Worldclim)^{11, 54, 264}, and indicating potential new sites for future research on savanna chimpanzees.

Modified from Reference 11 under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

As well as adapting their behaviour to cope with high temperatures and seasonal water supplies, there is another adaptive cultural change. Instead of living in small bands occupying a relatively small, densely-populated territory where essential resources are in good supply, the savanna chimpanzees have had to expand their territory from the usual 3-30 km² to about 100 km² with a much lower population density. Larger territories are naturally harder to defend.

The group's findings are published, open access, in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology.

Abstract

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are the only great apes that inhabit hot, dry, and open savannas. We review the environmental pressures of savannas on chimpanzees, such as food and water scarcity, and the evidence for chimpanzees' behavioral responses to these landscapes. In our analysis, savannas were generally associated with low chimpanzee population densities and large home ranges. In addition, thermoregulatory behaviors that likely reduce hyperthermia risk, such as cave use, were frequently observed in the hottest and driest savanna landscapes. We hypothesize that such responses are evidence of a “savanna landscape effect” in chimpanzees and offer pathways for future research to understand its evolutionary processes and mechanisms. We conclude by discussing the significance of research on savanna chimpanzees to modeling the evolution of early hominin traits and informing conservation programs for these endangered apes.

Lindshield, S .; Hernandez-Aguilar, RA; Korstjens, AH; Marchant, LF; Narat, V .; Ndiaye, PI; Ogawa, H .; Skin, AK; Pruetz, JD; Stewart, FA; Van Leeuwen, KL; Wessling, EG, and Yoshikawa, M.
Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in savanna landscapes.
Evolutionary Anthropology , September 2021. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21924

Copyright: © 2021 The authors. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Once again, we see biomedical scientists in no doubt that the difference between modern and ancient hominins, and how we diversified from our common ancestor with the modern chimpanzees, has an evolutionary explanation, with no hint whatsoever of a loss of confidence in the TOE to explain the processes involved in this transition that Creationists fantasise over. Consequently, we can observe bands of chimpanzees, subject to the same environmental forces that shaped our remote ancestors several million years ago and put hominins on the path that eventually led to Homo sapiens, and draw conclusions based on those observations. Also, what we can observer here is the beginnings of gene-meme co-evolution which has been a major factor in the evolution of modern humans.

Malevolent Designer News - Another Blow for Creationism

Bacteriophage caspids can carry extra DNA that the virus can tinker with.

Credit: Kristina Dukart/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Viruses are both the villains and heroes of life as we know it

Here is an article by Ivan Erill, associate professor of Biological Sciences, University of Maryland, in The Conversation, that would have those few intelligent [sic] design Creationists who have found the courage to read a scientific article punching the air with joy - until they read on and find it contradicts all they think they know about how their divine creative malevolence works.

The problem for these Creationists is, as I have repeatedly pointed out in this blog and in my popular, illustrated book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good, that whilst they continue to insist that only their putative designer god is capable of designing things like viruses and bacterial pathogens and bringing about change in its creations, they are portraying it as a pestilential, sadistic monster obsessively determined to make its creations suffer in ever more imaginative ways. A case in point being the SARS-CoV-2 virus that, at the time of writing, according to Johns Hopkins University has killed nearly 5 million people, made almost a quarter of a billion sick and is wrecking economies worldwide.

So, it will come as a relief to those Creationists who can understand this problem, that there is at least one scientist who can see a positive benefit in at least some viruses, particularly bacteriophage viruses or phages for short - until they discover that this benefit is in how it can help humans defend themselves against some of the nastier of their beloved malevolence's creations. To make matters worse for Creationists, the science, because it's written by a biologist, not a theologian who is mostly ignorant of this subject, is of course based on evolutionary biology, not Bronze Age superstition. He says:

Evolution News - How Lizard's Teeth Fatally Bite Creationism

3D reconstruction of the skull of an Amazon racerunner (Ameiva ameiva) captured through an X-ray micro-CT scan. Complex teeth with multiple tips ("cusps") are visible on the jaws. This feature—also seen in the dentition of early mammals—evolved many times in independent lizard groups.

Image: Fabien Lafuma

Plant-eating lizards on the cusp of tooth evolution | University of Helsinki

A couple of Creationist articles of faith have taken a beating with another biology paper that refutes them without even trying, as usual. This time it is the evidence of transition from simple to complex teeth in multiple lineages of lizard in response to the advantages that a vegetarian diet had over an insectivorous diet, and then the evidence that this evolution towards increasing complexity sometimes went into reverse.

This reversal is contrary to creationist dogma that says evolution always involve increasing complexity and new information and that any loss of information (and so loss of complexity) is invariably detrimental.

The paper is by a team of researchers from the Universities of Helsinki and Lyon and the Geological Survey of Finland, led by associate professor, Nicolas Di-Poï of the Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki, and is published open access in Nature Communications. The Helsinki University news release explains: