Creationism in Crisis - 'Lucy' Was More Human Than we First Thought

First hominin muscle reconstruction shows 3.2 million-year-old ‘Lucy’ could stand as erect as we can | University of Cambridge

Australopithecus afarensis (artist's impression)

Illustration by Maurice Wilson

News today that 'Lucy' was more human than we thought should increase the hatred creationists have for her.

Creationists hate the fossil nicknamed by her discoverers, 'Lucy' because 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' by the Beatles was riding high in the pop charts at the time. Her scientific name is Australopithecus afarensis, so named because she was discovered in the Afar region of Ethiopia in East Africa. Their hatred comes from the fact that her existence refutes just about every creationist superstition, so, rather thn change their minds (something no self-respecting creationist can ever do), creationists try to change the facts or shout abuse at them till they go away.

So concerned are creationist frauds such as Ken Ham and Kent Hovind that they routinely lie about her and how she was discovered, claiming, amongst other things that it is the skeleton of a deformed chimpanzee and that the scientists constructed it out of the fossils of different animals from multiple locations, so it should be regarded as a forgery. Neither of these are true, of course.

Facial reconstructions of what the early hominin (human relative) Australopithecus afarensis may have looked like

Left image: © by Ellywa (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Right image: by Daderot (CC0 1.0)

Australopithecus afarensis is an extinct hominin species that lived between approximately 3.9 and 2.9 million years ago. The most famous specimen of Australopithecus afarensis is "Lucy," a remarkably complete skeleton discovered in 1974 in the Afar region of Ethiopia. The discovery of Lucy and other A. afarensis fossils has provided significant insights into the story of human evolution.

Lucy's discovery was led by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and his team. Her fossilized remains consisted of about 40% of her skeleton, making it an incredibly important find. The age of the fossils and their unique characteristics shed light on a crucial period in human evolution.

Australopithecus afarensis is significant because it is believed to be one of the earliest hominin species to exhibit a combination of ape-like and human-like features. It walked upright on two legs, like modern humans, but also possessed some primitive traits, such as a small brain size and long arms.

The discovery of A. afarensis fossils challenged previous assumptions about the course of human evolution. Prior to this discovery, the prevailing view was that early humans developed large brains before adopting a bipedal, or upright, walking style. However, A. afarensis presented evidence that bipedalism evolved before significant increases in brain size.

The existence of A. afarensis suggests that upright walking was a critical adaptation for our early ancestors. Bipedalism freed the hands for tool use, allowed for greater efficiency in movement across open landscapes, and may have played a role in the development of other characteristics associated with humans, such as increased social cooperation.

Additionally, the discovery of A. afarensis and subsequent research have helped bridge the gap between our common ancestry with other primates and the emergence of the Homo genus, which includes modern humans. It provides valuable evidence of our evolutionary journey and allows scientists to study the changes and adaptations that occurred over millions of years.

In summary, the discovery of Australopithecus afarensis, particularly the famous specimen Lucy, has been instrumental in understanding the early stages of human evolution. It has contributed to our knowledge of bipedalism, the timeline of brain development, and the evolutionary transitions that eventually led to the emergence of modern humans.

ChatGPT "What information do you have about the discovery of Australopithecus afarensis, and its significance for the story of human evolution?"[Response to user question]
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Reference:

1. Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey, "Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind"
2. Ann Gibbons, "The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors"

The most complete specimen is known to science as AL 288-1 which comprises about 40% of the complete skeleton.

Homo

↑

Australopiths

How exactly she fits into the human evolutionary tree is still the subject of debates with some placing her immediately on the Australopithecus side of what is an artificial line dividing Australopithecines from Hominins and so making her directly ancestral to the Homo genus, which includes modern humans and some placing her in a side branch, making her a sister species of our immediate Australopithecine ancestor.

The line dividing the Australopiths from the hominins is of course arbitrary because a slowly-evolving species does not cross an imaginary line at a defined time; in reality there is a smooth transition, as in the box on the right, but the reason 'Lucy' is not universally accepted as our direct ancestor is because there are other species competing for that position from South Africa - Homo naledi and Australopithecus sediba for example, and, given the tendency of hominid species to interbreed, it is always possible that the ancestor of the stem Homo could have been two or more Australopiths, and we will probably never know for sure.

But the story was given a little twist yesterday with the publication in Royal Society Open Science of the results of a new study which shows that 'Lucy' was fully bipedal, that is, she walked upright like we do.

The work was carried out by Dr Ashleigh L. A. Wiseman, of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. A Cambridge University news release explains his research:

Digital modelling of legendary fossil’s soft tissue suggests Australopithecus afarensis had powerful leg and pelvic muscles suited to tree dwelling, but knee muscles that allowed fully erect walking.

Lucy’s muscles suggest that she was as proficient at bipedalism as we are

Dr Ashleigh L. A. Wiseman McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK.

A Cambridge University researcher has digitally reconstructed the missing soft tissue of an early human ancestor – or hominin – for the first time, revealing a capability to stand as erect as we do today.

Dr Ashleigh Wiseman has 3D-modelled the leg and pelvis muscles of the hominin Australopithecus afarensis using scans of ‘Lucy’: the famous fossil specimen discovered in Ethiopia in the mid-1970s.

Australopithecus afarensis was an early human species that lived in East Africa over three million years ago. Shorter than us, with an ape-like face and smaller brain, but able to walk on two legs, it adapted to both tree and savannah dwelling – helping the species survive for almost a million years.

Named for the Beatles classic ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, Lucy is one of the most complete examples to be unearthed of any type of Australopithecus – with 40% of her skeleton recovered.

Lucy’s ability to walk upright can only be known by reconstructing the path and space that a muscle occupies within the body. We are now the only animal that can stand upright with straight knees. Lucy’s muscles suggest that she was as proficient at bipedalism as we are, while possibly also being at home in the trees. Lucy likely walked and moved in a way that we do not see in any living species today.

Australopithecus afarensis would have roamed areas of open wooded grassland as well as more dense forests in East Africa around 3 to 4 million years ago. These reconstructions of Lucy’s muscles suggest that she would have been able to exploit both habitats effectively.

Without open access science, this research would not have been possible.

Muscle reconstructions have already been used to gauge running speeds of a T-Rex, for example. By applying similar techniques to ancestral humans, we want to reveal the spectrum of physical movement that propelled our evolution – including those capabilities we have lost.

Dr Ashleigh L. A. Wiseman.

Wiseman was able to use recently published open source data on the Lucy fossil to create a digital model of the 3.2 million-year-old hominin’s lower body muscle structure. The study is published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

The research recreated 36 muscles in each leg, most of which were much larger in Lucy and occupied greater space in the legs compared to modern humans.

For example, major muscles in Lucy’s calves and thighs were over twice the size of those in modern humans, as we have a much higher fat to muscle ratio. Muscles made up 74% of the total mass in Lucy’s thigh, compared to just 50% in humans.

Paleoanthropologists agree that Lucy was bipedal, but disagree on how she walked. Some have argued that she moved in a crouching waddle, similar to chimpanzees – our common ancestor – when they walk on two legs. Others believe that her movement was closer to our own upright bipedalism.

Research in the last 20 years have seen a consensus begin to emerge for fully erect walking, and Wiseman’s work adds further weight to this. Lucy’s knee extensor muscles, and the leverage they would allow, confirm an ability to straighten the knee joints as much as a healthy person can today.

Lucy was a young adult, who stood at just over one metre tall and probably weighed around 28kg. Lucy’s brain would have been roughly a third of the size of ours.

To recreate the muscles of this hominin, Wiseman started with some living humans. Using MRI and CT scans of the muscle and bone structures of a modern woman and man, she was able to map the “muscle paths” and build a digital musculoskeletal model.

Wiseman then used existing virtual models of Lucy’s skeleton to 'rearticulate' the joints – that is, put the skeleton back together. This work defined the axis from which each joint was able to move and rotate, replicating how they moved during life.

Finally, muscles were layered on top, based on pathways from modern human muscle maps, as well as what little “muscle scarring” was discernible (the traces of muscle connection detectable on the fossilised bones).

These reconstructions can now help scientists understand how this human ancestor walked.

Dr Wiseman's paper is published open access:

Abstract

To understand how an extinct species may have moved, we first need to reconstruct the missing soft tissues of the skeleton, which rarely preserve, with an understanding of segmental volume and muscular composition within the body. The Australopithecus afarensis specimen AL 288-1 is one of the most complete hominin skeletons. Despite 40+ years of research, the frequency and efficiency of bipedal movement in this specimen is still debated. Here, 36 muscles of the pelvis and lower limb were reconstructed using three-dimensional polygonal modelling, guided by imaging scan data and muscle scarring. Reconstructed muscle masses and configurations guided musculoskeletal modelling of the lower limb in comparison with a modern human. Results show that the moment arms of both species were comparable, hinting towards similar limb functionality. Moving forward, the polygonal muscle modelling approach has demonstrated promise for reconstructing the soft tissues of hominins and providing information on muscle configuration and space filling. This method demonstrates that volumetric reconstructions are required to know where space must be occupied by muscles and thus where lines of action might not be feasible due to interference with another muscle. This approach is effective for reconstructing muscle volumes in extinct hominins for which musculature is unknown.

Wiseman, Ashleigh L. A. 2023
Three-dimensional volumetric muscle reconstruction of the Australopithecus afarensis pelvis and limb, with estimations of limb leverage
R. Soc. open sci.10230356230356. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.230356

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by the Royal Society. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Figure 1.

Workflow diagram outlining the process for the current study. Comparative data were collected from a male human, in which MRI data from [22] were used to guide muscle LoAs, segmental and inertial properties. The bone geometries were poor quality, necessitating these parameters to be scaled to high-quality CT data (data from [11,47]). For both the human and AL 288-1, joint centres and axes were created. A convex hull was created of each body segment of AL 288-1, of which the centre of mass and inertial properties was corrected following Coatham et al. [48]. A polygonal muscle approach was implemented [18], producing muscle LoAs which were implemented into the biomechanical model of AL 288-1. Note: while [22] included the M. psoas major (visualized here), it was excluded from the current study due to uncertainty over thorax reconstructions. LAR, long-axis rotation; FE, flexion/extension; ABAD, abduction/adduction. *[22]; **[11,48].

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Figure 2.

Here, Brassey et al. [27] reconstructed pelvis (shown in purple) was modified (shown in grey), in which the sacroiliac and pubic joints were rearticulated. Specifically, the distance between the ischiopubic ramus was reduced and both Os coxae were internally rotated, thus improving sacroiliac articulation.

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Figure 3.

Completed views (ventral, dorsal, lateral and medial) of the polygonal muscle modelling approach in AL 288-1, in which 36 muscles were created per lower limb—this total does not differentiate between muscles composed of multiple heads (i.e. the M. extensor digitorum longus). The polygonal muscles of AL 288-1 are shown in comparison to three-dimensional muscles of the human which were segmented from MRI scan data. Intrinsic muscles of the foot were not modelled; rather, only ‘foot' muscles which crossed the ankle joint were included due to the sparsity of preserved foot material. See electronic supplementary material, S2 for a diagram illustrating muscle origin and insertions in which the colours correspond to the muscle colours used here. Full muscle configurations shown here, refer to electronic supplementary material, S3 to visualize deep musculature.

The significance of this, and something creationists will need to dismiss for whatever reason they can settle on, is that it shows full bipedalism had evolved in an Australopithecine before the Homo genus was on the scene. This means one of two things: either it had evolved in a common ancestor from which A. afarensis and the Homo genus evolved, or A. afarensis is the ancestor of Homo.

Of course, this doesn't settle the question of exactly where A. afarensis fits in the ancestry of Homo sapiens but is does help understand how and when what is now a uniquely human trait evolved.

And of course, Dr Wiseman shows no doubt at all that his findings have an explanation in the Theory of Evolution or that it requires a supernatural magician to explain it. And all this evolution took place millions of years before creationists believe Earth existed.

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Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Believe They Have Found Evidence That Reptiles Came Before Eggs

Creationism in Crisis

Scientists Believe They Have Found Evidence That Reptiles Came Before Eggs

Boyde's Forest dragon, Lophosaurus boydii

Source: pixabay

The amniotic egg, showing the semipermeable shell and the extraembryonic membranes

Image credit: Michael Benton

June: Earliest reptiles may have borne live young | News and features | University of Bristol

On of the more infantile creationist "Gotcha!"s is to ask which came first; the chicken or the egg, in blissful ignorance of the fact that eggs predate chickens by tens of millions of years and hens evolved from egg-laying ancestors, so the real question is, when did eggs evolve as a reproductive strategy in multicellular organisms? But of course, that would give the scientific answer; what creationists want is a superstitious answer - "God made the first chicken and designed it to lay eggs!"

Sadly for creationists, the fossil evidence flatly contradicts that superstition, but, since creationism is a counter-factual superstition, mere evidence is ignored if it isn't what the cult wants its dupes to believe.

Since the evolution of the amniotes, which includes all reptiles, mammals and birds, there have been several instances of the evolution of extended embryo retention (EER), most notably in all the mammals, but also in some reptiles such as lizards and snakes, although not in birds.

And now a combined team of researchers from Bristol University, UK and Nanjing University, China, led by Professor Baoyu Jiang, of the State Key Laboratory for Mineral Deposits Research, School of Earth Sciences and Engineering and Frontiers Science Center for Critical Earth Material Cycling, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, have discovered fossil evidence the a reptilian common ancestor of mammals and bird had evolved EER and had become viviparous.

Skeleton of a baby chorisodere, Ikechuosaurus, from the Early Cretaceous of China, found curled up inside the remnants of a parchment-shelled egg.

Image Credit: Baoyu Jiang, Nanjing University.

As the Bristol University news release explains:

The earliest reptiles, birds and mammals may have borne live young, researchers from Nanjing University and University of Bristol have revealed.

Until now, the hard-shelled egg was thought to be the key to the success of the amniotes - a group of vertebrates that undergo embryonic or foetal development within an amnion, a protective membrane inside the egg.

However, a fresh study of 51 fossil species and 29 living species which could be categorised as oviparous (laying hard or soft-shelled eggs) or viviparous (giving birth to live young) suggests otherwise.

Creationism in Crisis - Remains of Earliest Eukaryote Organisms From 1.0 - 1.6 Billion Years Ago

Creationism in Crisis

Remains of Earliest Eukaryote Organisms
From 1.0 - 1.6 Billion Years Ago

Artist’s imagination of what a planktonic stem group eukaryote of the ‘Protosterol Biota’ may have looked like. Based on molecular fossils, organisms of the Protosterol Biota inhabited the oceans about 1.6 to 1.0 billion years ago and are our earliest known ancestors.

Image: Orchestrated in MidJourney by TA 2023

Artist's reconstruction of early eukaryotes on marine sediment.

Remains of an extinct world of organisms discovered: GFZ

The great thing about the Theory of Evolution or descent with modification, is that it predicts simpler ancestry as you go further back into archaeological history, and this is just what we find as we dig down into the geological column. Creationists have never managed to come to terms with that evidence other than the almost unbelievably childish notion that the more advanced species could run faster so got higher up the mountains as the encroaching genocidal flood grew deeper.

Which of course doesn't explain why fossilised shellfish are found on tops of mountains.

And nor does it explain why the fossils are arranged so neatly in sedimentary strata that creationists also claim was all produced by that single global flood event, since dead bodies would float away from the mountainsides where they supposedly drowned.

And, of course it doesn't explain the arrangement of the species which don't run away from a flood, like marine species and single-celled organisms, and yet, there they are in the geological column, looking for all the world as though the simpler, more primitive organisms got buried below the more advanced forms.

And now we have the spectacular discovery that strata laid down between 1.6 and 1.0 billion years ago contains molecular fossils produced by the earliest (and simplest) single-celled eukaryote organisms, just where and when the TOE predicts they should be!

The chemical fossils are in the form of "protosteroids", i.e., intermediate stages in the production of sterols such as cholesterol that almost all modern eukaryotes produce. These intermediate may have been the end product in these early eukaryotes in which the modern metabolic pathways were still evolving, but the fact that they were being produced by these early eukaryotes suggests that amongst them was the stem species from which all later eukaryotes have descended.

The discovery was announced a few days ago in the journal Nature, by an international team of researchers, including GFZ geochemist Christian Hallmann of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany, and a news release from GFZ:

Newly discovered biomarker signatures point to a whole range of previously unknown organisms that dominated complex life on Earth about a billion years ago. They differed from complex eukaryotic life as we know it, such as animals, plants and algae in their cell structure and likely metabolism, which was adapted to a world that had far less oxygen in the atmosphere than today. An international team of researchers, including GFZ geochemist Christian Hallmann, now reports on this breakthrough for the field of evolutionary geobiology in the journal Nature.

The previously unknown “protosteroids” were shown to be surprisingly abundant throughout Earth´s Middle Ages. The primordial molecules were produced at an earlier stage of eukaryotic complexity — extending the current record of fossil steroids beyond 800 and up to 1,600 million years ago. Eukaryotes is the term for a kingdom of life including all animals, plants and algae and set apart from bacteria by having a complex cell structure that includes a nucleus, as well as a more complex molecular machinery.

The highlight of this finding is not just the extension of the current molecular record of eukaryotes. Given that the last common ancestor of all modern eukaryotes, including us humans, was likely capable of producing ‘regular’ modern sterols, chances are high that the eukaryotes responsible for these rare signatures belonged to the stem of the phylogenetic tree.

Christian Hallmann, co-author
GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences
Potsdam, Germany

Unprecedented glimpse of a lost world

This “stem” represents the common ancestral lineage that was a precursor to all still living branches of eukaryotes. Its representatives are long extinct, yet details of their nature may shed more light on the conditions surrounding the evolution of complex life. Although more research is needed to evaluate what percentage of protosteroids may have had a rare bacterial source, the discovery of these new molecules not only reconciles the geological record of traditional fossils with that of fossil lipid molecules, but yields a rare and unprecedented glimpse of a lost world of ancient life. The competitive demise of stem group eukaryotes, marked by the first appearance of modern fossil steroids some 800 Million years ago, may reflect one of the most incisive events in the evolution of increasingly complex life.

Almost all eukaryotes biosynthesise steroids, such as cholesterol that is produced by humans and most other animals. Due to potentially adverse health effects of elevated cholesterol levels in humans, cholesterol doesn’t have the best reputation from a medical perspective. However, these lipid molecules are integral parts of eukaryotic cell membranes where they aid in a variety of physiological functions. By searching for fossilised steroids in ancient rocks, we can trace the evolution of increasingly complex life.

Benjamin J. Nettersheim, co-first author
Research School of Earth Sciences
The Australian National University
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
And MARUM–Center for Marine Environmental Sciences and Faculty of Geosciences
University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

What the Nobel laureate thought impossible...

Nobel laureate Konrad Bloch had already speculated about such a biomarker in an essay almost 30 years ago. Bloch suggested that short-lived intermediates in the modern biosynthesis of steroids may not always have been intermediates. He believed that lipid biosynthesis evolved in parallel with changing environmental conditions throughout Earth history. In contrast to Bloch, who did not believe that these ancient intermediates could ever be found, Nettersheim started searching for protosteroids in ancient rocks that were deposited at a time when those intermediates could actually have been the final product.

But how to find such molecules in ancient rocks?

We employed a combination of techniques to first convert various modern steroids to their fossilised equivalent; otherwise we wouldn’t have even known wat to look for.

“Once we knew our target, we discovered that dozens of other rocks, taken from billion-year-old waterways across the world, were oozing with similar fossil molecules.

Profess Jochen J. Brocks, co-first author
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT, Australia

Scientists had overlooked these molecules for decades because they do not conform to typical molecular search images.

One of the most profound ecological turning points in our planet’s history

The oldest samples with the biomarker are from the Barney Creek Formation in Australia and are 1.64 billion years old. The rock record of the next 800 Million years only yields fossil molecules of primordial eukaryotes before molecular signatures of modern eukaryotes first appear in the Tonian period.

…the Tonian Transformation emerges as one of the most profound ecological turning points in our planet’s history. Both primordial stem groups and modern eukaryotic representatives such as red algae may have lived side by side for many hundreds of millions of years.

Christian Hallmann.

During this time, however, the Earth's atmosphere became increasingly enriched with oxygen — a metabolic product of cyanobacteria and of the first eukaryotic algae that would have been toxic to many other organisms. Later, global "Snowball Earth” glaciations occurred and the protosterol communities largely died out. The last common ancestor of all living eukaryotes may have lived 1.2 to 1.8 billion years ago. Its descendants were likely better able to survive heat and cold as well as UV radiation and displaced their primordial relatives.

Since all stem group eukaryotes are long extinct, we will never know for certain how most of our early relatives looked like, but artistic efforts have created tentative visualisations (see pictures attached), while the primordial steroids may eventually shed more light on their biochemistry and lifestyle.

Earth was a microbial world for much of its history and left few traces.

Benjamin J. Nettersheim.

Research at ANU, MARUM and GFZ continues to pursue tracing the roots of our existence — the discovery of protosterols now brings us one step closer to understanding how our earliest ancestors lived and evolved.

Title of the original study: Jochen J. Brocks, Benjamin J. Nettersheim et al.: Lost world of complex life and the late rise of the eukaryotic crown. In: Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06170-w

Sadly, the team's paper in Nature is behind an expensive paywall but the abstract is available.

Abstract

Eukaryotic life appears to have flourished surprisingly late in the history of our planet. This view is based on the low diversity of diagnostic eukaryotic fossils in marine sediments of mid-Proterozoic age (around 1,600 to 800 million years ago) and an absence of steranes, the molecular fossils of eukaryotic membrane sterols1,2. This scarcity of eukaryotic remains is difficult to reconcile with molecular clocks that suggest that the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA) had already emerged between around 1,200 and more than 1,800 million years ago. LECA, in turn, must have been preceded by stem-group eukaryotic forms by several hundred million years3. Here we report the discovery of abundant protosteroids in sedimentary rocks of mid-Proterozoic age. These primordial compounds had previously remained unnoticed because their structures represent early intermediates of the modern sterol biosynthetic pathway, as predicted by Konrad Bloch4. The protosteroids reveal an ecologically prominent ‘protosterol biota’ that was widespread and abundant in aquatic environments from at least 1,640 to around 800 million years ago and that probably comprised ancient protosterol-producing bacteria and deep-branching stem-group eukaryotes. Modern eukaryotes started to appear in the Tonian period (1,000 to 720 million years ago), fuelled by the proliferation of red algae (rhodophytes) by around 800 million years ago. This ‘Tonian transformation’ emerges as one of the most profound ecological turning points in the Earth’s history.

Brocks, J.J., Nettersheim, B.J., Adam, P. et al.
Lost world of complex life and the late rise of the eukaryotic crown.
Nature (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06170-w

© 2023 Springer Nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

In summary, the presence of these chemical fossils was predicted 30 years ago by a Noble Prize-winning scientist, using the Theory of Evolution. They have now been found in abundance, exactly when and where the theory predicted, and it all took place on an Earth that is many orders of magnitude older than creations claim.

In other words, yet another casual refutation of creationism by scientists who simply revealed the truth.

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Creationism in Crisis - Are Red Kangaroos Evolving in the Absence of Dingoes?

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

Red kangaroos, Osphranter rufus
Evolving in the absence of dingoes?

'An exciting possibility': scientists discover markedly different kangaroos on either side of Australia's dingo fence

If you change an organism's environment, the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection (TOE) predicts that the organism will evolve to fit into that changed environment. One such change could be the removal of an apex predator, as happened when humans erected the 'dingo fence', stretching more than 5,600 Km (about 3,500 miles) across Australia in the 1950, but was in a state of disrepair until 1975, which is thus the effective start of environmental isolation southeast of the fence.

The purpose of the fence was to protect domestic sheep from dingoes, Canis dingo, the wild Australian canid and only Australian placental mammal other than bats. Dingoes have been Australia's apex predator for some 10,000 years, maybe longer, so have been an important part of the ecosystem and the main, if not only, predator on red kangaroos, Osphranter rufus since then.

So, when wildlife to the southeast of the 'dingo fence' had their apex predator removed, the TOE predicts that there should be observable evolutionary change, and this is what a team of scientist led by Dr Rex Mitchel of the College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia may have found when they studied the Red Kangaroos either side of the fence. Although, as they point out, evolutionary change in about 45 years, or about 17 red kangaroo generations, would be unusual and, with a limited dataset more work is needed to check that other factors are not the cause of the observed changes, for example, reduced stress in the protected area.

Four of the team: Vera Weisbecker, Associate Professor, Flinders University; Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University; Frédérik Saltré, Research Fellow in Ecology for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University, and Dr D Rex Mitchell, have written about their research in The Conversation.

Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Published: May 31, 2023 9.07pm BST

‘An exciting possibility’: scientists discover markedly different kangaroos on either side of Australia’s dingo fence

Image source: Shutterstock

Vera Weisbecker, Flinders University; Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Flinders University; Frédérik Saltré, Flinders University, and Rex Mitchell, Flinders University

Australia’s dingo fence is an internationally renowned mega-structure. Stretching more than 5,600 kilometres, it was completed in the 1950s to keep sheep safe from dingoes. But it also inadvertently protects some native species.

This makes the fence an unintentional experiment in the relationship between predators and prey. Our new research examined how the fence affects a favourite prey of the dingo: red kangaroos.

We found young kangaroos on the side exposed to dingoes grew more quickly than their protected counterparts. This has potentially big repercussions for the health of these juveniles.

The merits of the dingo fence are hotly debated, and there have been calls to pull it down or move it. That’s why we must seek a better understanding of how the fence affects the animals that live along it.

Australia’s dingo fence runs for more than 5,600 kilometres.

Image source: Shutterstock

‘Stressful’ lives

The dingo fence, formally known as the “wild dog barrier fence”, runs through Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia. It protects sheep and cattle to the southeast.

Extensive fencing can fragment habitats and disrupt ecosystems. Maintaining the fence costs about A$10 million per year. For these and other reasons, some have suggested the fence be pulled down.

But how would removing the fence affect kangaroos that have lived without dingoes for up to 70 years? Our research sought to answer this question.

We assessed 166 red kangaroos from two isolated populations on either side of the fence in far northwest NSW. We did this using data collected as part of a licensed shooting program. We compared population size, age structure, sex ratio, growth rate and skull shape.

We expected kangaroos north of the fence – those hunted by dingoes – to differ from their dingo-free cousins to the south. That’s because their lives are more stressful, especially for young kangaroos and females that are killed by dingoes more often than adult males.

Killing dingoes is the only way to protect livestock, right? Nope

Female and young red kangaroos are targeted by dingoes.

Image source: Shutterstock

What we found

As anticipated, we found more young and female kangaroos in the dingo-protected population south of the fence. But the story is more complex than that.

Young kangaroos south of the fence, up to about the age of four years, grew more slowly than those in the north. They were substantially smaller and lighter than their dingo-exposed counterparts.

This raises an exciting possibility: that the growth of kangaroos south of the fence has slowed in the absence of the dingo threat.

But maybe there was just more plant food available in the north, where there are fewer kangaroos compared to the south. Was this the reason the northern kangaroos grew more quickly?

As it turns out, no. We assessed the vegetation on each side of the fence using a decade of satellite measurements. We found there was probably less, not more, food overall for kangaroos in the north compared to the south.

More detailed investigation is needed into whether the types of plants differed on each side of the fence. But our results suggest the different growth rates were driven by predators, not food availability.

The dingo fence from space: satellite images show how these top predators alter the desert

There was probably less vegetation north of the dingo fence than in the south

Image source: Shutterstock

This raises important questions

The differences between populations are even more striking considering the dingo fence in the area we studied was in disrepair until 1975. Before then, dingoes and kangaroos probably moved freely. So the changes we observed could have come about in as little as 17 kangaroo generations.

This would be unusually fast for an evolutionary adaptation. Instead, we suspect it’s the result of a more immediate response to the absence of dingoes, such as lower concentrations of stress-related hormones. These affect the health of mammals, and might have affected kangaroo growth rates in this case.

After about the age of four, the protected kangaroos had caught up and were the same size as their unprotected counterparts. But the unprotected kangaroos would have invested a lot more bodily resources into growing so quickly.

This would have left less energy for the animals to develop important functions such as their immune or reproductive systems. Or they might have had less fat reserves.

Conversely, protected kangaroos might have been healthier, or more fertile, because of their slower growth rates.

New DNA testing shatters 'wild dog' myth: most dingoes are pure

The research raises questions about how mammals respond to changes such as the absence of dingoes.

Image source: Shutterstock

Understanding the mammal response

Our study involved only a single sample at one point in time. But it’s the first to comprehensively assess differences in a dingo prey species on either side of a fence.

Our results provide an insight into how prey populations might fare if the dingo fence is removed. But the implications are potentially even broader.

We must now investigate whether other native mammal species share similar differences across the fence. If so, this could help us predict how animals elsewhere in Australia are coping with rapid environmental change.
Vera Weisbecker, Associate Professor, Flinders University; Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University; Frédérik Saltré, Research Fellow in Ecology for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University, and Rex Mitchell, Postdoctoral Fellow, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Published by The Conversation.
Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

The researchers' findings are published, open access in the Journal of Mammology:

Abstract

Decommissioning the dingo barrier fence has been suggested to reduce destructive dingo control and encourage a free transfer of biota between environments in Australia. Yet the potential impacts that over a century of predator exclusion might have had on the population dynamics and developmental biology of prey populations has not been assessed. We here combine demographic data and both linear and geometric morphometrics to assess differences in populations among 166 red kangaroos (Osphranter rufus)—a primary prey species of the dingo—from two isolated populations on either side of the fence. We also quantified the differences in aboveground vegetation biomass for the last 10 years on either side of the fence. We found that the age structure and growth patterns, but not cranial shape, differed between the two kangaroo populations. In the population living with a higher density of dingoes, there were relatively fewer females and juveniles. These individuals were larger for a given age, despite what seems to be lower vegetation biomass. However, how much of this biomass represented kangaroo forage is uncertain and requires further on-site assessments. We also identified unexpected differences in the ontogenetic trajectories in relative pes length between the sexes for the whole sample, possibly associated with male competition or differential weight-bearing mechanics. We discuss potential mechanisms behind our findings and suggest that the impacts of contrasting predation pressures across the fence, for red kangaroos and other species, merit further investigation.

Mitchell, D Rex; Cairns, Stuart C; Körtner, Gerhard; Bradshaw, Corey J A; Saltré, Frédérik; Weisbecker, Vera (2023)
Differential developmental rates and demographics in Red Kangaroo (Osphranter rufus) populations separated by the dingo barrier fence
Journal of Mammology, gyad053. DOI: 10.1093/jmammal/gyad053

Copyright: © 2023 The authors.
Published by Oxford University Press. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Fig 1.

The dingo barrier fence extends from southeast Queensland to the Great Australian Bight in South Australia. The study location (black rectangle): Quinyambie and Mulyungarie stations are adjacent properties located on the western side of the South Australia–New South Wales border (black dotted line) and separated by the fence.

Mitchell, et. al,(2023)

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Fig 4.

Changes in cranial shape throughout ontogeny in Osphranter rufus. Orbs represent cranial shape predicted for younger individuals. Mesh represents shape predicted for older individuals. Relative braincase size and incisor size become smaller during growth.

Mitchell, et. al,(2023)

What is now needed is detailed DNA analysis of the two populations because any differences would be definitive evolutionary change.

That should be a small crumb of comfort for creationists who must continue to hope that no such differences are found in red Kangaroos or other wildlife either side if the dingo fence, but I wonder how many of them would be prepared to bet their house on the probability of none being found.

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Creationism in Crisis - Extinct Australian Species Continue to Haunt Creationists

Creationism in Crisis

Extinct Australian Species Continue to Haunt Creationists

Reconstruction of an Australian pterosaur

Peter Trusler

Study finds 107-million-year-old pterosaur bones are oldest in Australia - News at Curtin | Curtin University, Perth, Australia

The subject of my previous blog post was from 3.5 million years ago (a mere 875 times longer than creationists believe Earth has existed). The next article stretches that to 26,750 times longer, with the discovery of the oldest pterosaur ever found in Australia from 107 million years ago - before even the common ancestor of the marsupials and other mammals had evolved.

The discovery was made by a team of palaeontologists from Curtin University's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, led by PhD student Adele Pentland. Her team's work is described in a Curtain University press release by Lauren Sydoruk:

Creationism in Crisis - Extinct Australian Species Haunt Creationists

Ambulator keanei (reconstruction)

Credit: Jacob D. van Zoelen, Aaron B. Camens, Trevor H. Worthy and Gavin J. Prideaux.
(CC BY 4.0)

Newly described enormous marsupial wandered great distances across Australia 3.5 million years ago

In some ways, I almost feel sorry for creationists the way science keeps refuting their beliefs, if only they weren't so arrogant as to assume that their ignorance makes them more expert than the experts and so qualified to pronounce the best-supported theory in science, wrong, for the simple, reason that they don't like it.

Well, for that reason, I have the great pleasure in pricking their pomposity and reporting the first of two more scientific papers that refute them, not that they will read them, or understand them if they do.

The second paper will be the subject of my next blog post.

This one concerns the finding that there were giant marsupials in Australia nearly 3.5 million years before creationists believe Earth was created by magic out of nothing.

This comes in the form of an open access paper by four Australian scientists, published in the Royal Society Open Science journal, three of whom, Jacob van Zoelen, PhD Candidate, Aaron Camens, Lecturer in Palaeontology, and Professor Gavin Prideaux, all of Flinders University, have written about their research in The Conversation. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism in Crisis - That's Blown It! Bone Flutes from 8,000 Years Before Earth Was Created!

Creationism in Crisis

That's Blown It! Bone Flutes from 8,000 Years Before Earth Was Created!

The first prehistoric wind instruments discovered in the Levant | CNRS

This is beginning to look like another bad week for creationist frauds.

Close on the news that archaeologists have discovered how agriculturalists and pastoralists migrated into what is now Morocco, thousands of years before Earth was created by magic out of nothing, according to what they tell their dupes, comes news that a Franco-Israeli team have unearthed musical instruments that are some three time older than creationist fools are told Earth is.

The normal creationist tactic for coping with the cognitive dissonance the scientific evidence keeps on producing in their minds, is to:

• Ignore it and hope it'll go away if ignored for long enough.
• Dismiss it as a conspiracy - the scientists are lying because they want to turn you away from God (Oops! gave away the fact that creationism is religion, not science, there, but needs must...!)
• Claim the dating methods are wrong so the flutes must be much younger.
• Claim that 'historical science' is all speculation because no-one was there to see it - aka. the "My great grandparents never had sex. Prove me wrong!", argument.
• Assert that the facts must be wrong because they don't agree with the Bible narrative, which must be true because it says it is in the Bible.
• Shout at it and stamp their foot to make the facts behave and comply with their requirements.

Sadly for creationists though, none of those tactics have worked, and the evidence is still that people in the Middle East were making musical instruments 12,000 years ago. Even more embarrassingly for creationists who believe humans have always believed in their god and are all descended from a couple it created without ancestors and from a handful of related survivors of a genocidal flood a few thousand years ago, there is evidence that these Bronze Age people, like the Egyptian, Indians and Chinese (to name but a few) had a religion that appears to have had nothing to do with the religion of the Bible. The flutes may have had some ceremonial role in that early religion.

To add insult to injury, this discovery was made in the part of the world where creationists like to image the tales in the Bible were set and yet the Bible has no mention of people having a religion involving birds and rituals involving bone flutes. It's exactly like the authors knew nothing of their own history.

The findings are described in a news release from Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS):

Creationism in Crisis - Migrants Took Agriculture to North Africa 3,000 Years Before Creationists Claim Earth was 'Created' out of Nothing.

Creationism in Crisis

Migrants Took Agriculture to North Africa 3,000 Years Before Creationists Claim Earth was Created out of Nothing.

View of the site Kaf Taht el-Ghar (KTG).

Photograph: Juan Carlos Vera

The Maghreb in North-West Africa

Farming lifestyle in northwestern Africa was ignited by oversea-migrant - Uppsala University, Sweden

A research team from Sweden, Spain and Morocco have found genomic evidence that two waves of migrants took agriculture to North Africa in about 5400 BCE where it was adopted by the local population. One wave came along the north Mediterranean coast and through Iberia, and the second a short time later, from the Levant along the south Mediterranean coat.

For the previous 8,000 years and maybe even longer, the people of the western end of the Maghreb had been more or less isolated and lived as hunter-gatherers. Genetic evidence from 15,000 year old fossils shows that the population were intermediate between the people of the Levant and sub-Saharan Africans, and then, about 7,400 years ago, there was an ingression of Eurasia genes and culture from Spain as agriculturalists migrated to the Maghreb to live alongside the indigenous population, followed about a hundred years later, by a second wave of pastoralists from the Eastern end of the Mediterranean migrating along the North African coast, bringing a third population into the mix.

Later, in the Neolithic, these groups had merged into a single population.

It almost goes without saying that the team found no evidence of the population being exterminated in a flood, to be replaced after about 2000 BCE by a population from the Middle East, all descended from a small, incestuous band of eight related individuals, as they would have been if creationist fairy-tales were real history.

The News release from Uppsala University explains the study:

Creationism in Crisis - How Our Neanderthal Genes are Making us What We Are

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

Homo sapiens skull (left) and Neanderthal skull (right)

Lingering effects of Neanderthal DNA found in modern humans | Cornell Chronicle

As modern humans migrated out of Africa, they came into contact with the descendants of an earlier hominin migration - Neanderthals and their cousins the Denisovans. This period of interbreeding probably lasted about 10,000 years until the last Neanderthals disappeared about 40,000 years ago.

Some have recently proposed that interbreeding may have resulted in the relatively small population of Neanderthals being absorbed into the larger and growing population of Homo sapiens. Proponents of this idea have pointed out that there is more Neanderthal DNA around nowadays, in the form of 1-4% of the genome of people of non-African origins, than ever existed when Neanderthals were alive.

According to recent research by a team of scientists from several institutions, including Cornell, some of those genes are still active and influencing human traits including several with a significant influence on the immune system.

The study and its findings are the subject of a press release by Cornell, and an open access paper in eLife:

Creationism in Crisis - Why Masturbation Evolved Naturally

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

Why we’re searching for the evolutionary origins of masturbation – and the results so far

Far from being created separately, without ancestors and then all being descended from 8 survivors of a global genocide, as creationists believe, there is a growing body of scientific evidence that humans are not only part of the large tree of life but evolved from a common ancestor.

And, no doubt to the embarrassment of smugly sanctimonious theists who believe that masturbation is wrong, although they almost certainly indulge in it in private (and of course, many religious clerics also indulge in it with the child victims, while condemning those who do it without a victim as 'sinners') there is now evidence that masturbation is a natural, evolved activity, common to many other animals, and probably has some evolutionary benefits.

Creationists might like to ignore or wave aside the evidence that the scientists who investigated it had no doubts that the Theory of Evolution is the perfect model for explaining the observable evidence, as usual, and also that they regard it as evidence of common origin for the primates, including humans.

These findings come from the work of a team led by Dr. Matilda Brindle, of the Department of Anthropology, University College London (UCL), London, UK and The Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, Regent's Park, London, UK.

We discovered that masturbation is an ancient behaviour within primates, and concluded that the ancestor of all monkeys and apes, including humans, probably masturbated. It’s unlikely masturbation is a habit that different species of monkeys and apes have picked up along the way.

Dr. Matilda Brindle

Dr Brindle has written about her group's work in The Conversation. Her article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism in Crisis - Genetic Research is Showing How Humans Evolved as Part of the Primate Family Tree

Creationism in Crisis

Genetic Research is Showing How Humans Evolved as Part of the Primate Family Tree

Baboon in western Tanzania, here at Mahale Mountains National Park, have received genetic input from three lineages.

Photo: Yvonne de Jong and Tom Butynski

Juvenile golden snubnosed monkey at Shennongjia National Park, Central China.

Photo: Julia Ostner

Deutsches Primatenzentrum: Genomes of 233 primate species sequenced

If their dupes understood them, a number of papers published recently in a special 'Primate Genomes' edition of science would be giving creationist cult leaders panic attacks, because they all show how deeply embedded the Theory of Evolution is in modern biology as the explanation for the observable evidence, and it also shows how human evolution fits completely into the science of primate evolution.

The papers are the result of studies by a large international team of researchers including scientists from the German Primate Center - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, (Deutsches Primatenzentrum - DPZ). These studies analysed the genomes of 809 individuals from 233 primate species, generating the most complete catalog of genomic information about our closest relatives to date.

It shows, amongst other things that, like the modern humans species, Homo sapiens, which is the result of several periods of diversification then ingression of genes from related species by interbreeding, such as that between H. sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans and others inside and outside Africa, some modern baboons also had an ingression of genes from related species.

As the DPZ news release explains:

Unintelligent Design - How Badly Designed DNA Replication can Cause Cancer - Incompetence or Malevolence?

Tiny circles of DNA (small rings) upend conventional genetic principles that govern inheritance of genes on chromosomes (oblongs). The large blue circles are cell nuclei.

Paul Mischel lab

Extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA), DNA circles carrying cancer-associated genes, play a critical role in cancer development, according to new research led by Stanford Medicine. These DNA circles can be found in precancerous cells, and their presence accelerates the transformation to a cancerous state. This discovery paves the way for potential early diagnosis and intervention methods in cancer treatment.

Tiny DNA circles are key drivers of cancer, Stanford Medicine-led international study finds | News Center | Stanford Medicine

Here's a conundrum for creationists to avoid or blame on 'The Fall' - so showing creationism is Christian fundamentalism, not science.

It's the finding by scientists at Stanford Medical Centre, that errors in DNA replication can cause small circles of extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) to form and that these can lead to the formation of cancers. ecDNAs have been found before and the suggestion was that they are produced by cancerous cells as the DNA replication becomes increasingly botched, but this new study shows they can arise in pre-cancerous cells and may well be the cause of the cell becoming cancerous.

The ecDNA contains genes that deliver a super-charged growth signal that can override a cell’s natural programming. They also contain genes likely to dampen the immune system’s response to a nascent cancer.

Creationists, of course, insist that the process of DNA replication was designed by their putative intelligent [sic] omniscient designer. An intelligent, omniscient designer will know in advance exactly what it's design will do, so this raises several questions:

1. If this was the work of an intelligent designer, why should it not be regarded as malevolent and responsible for designing a process that deliberately causes cancers and so increases the suffering in the world?
2. If this was not the intended outcome, why should the designer not be regarded an incompetent?
3. If it was incompetent, why didn't it change its design once it realised what the outcome was? Is it either ignorant of what its design does, or doesn't it care?

Anyway, those are problems for advocates of the childish notion of design by a magic, supernatural magician, believed by those who want easy answers and the pretense of superior knowledge to that of scientists, while avoiding the bother of learning.

The problem for science is how to use this knowledge to reduce the pain and suffering in the world, because medical science, unlike creationism's supposed god is actually moral and seeks to reduce the pain and suffering in the world, and so fights a continuous battle with whatever force is tending to increase it - in this case, as any intelligent person can understand, the force is that of evolutionary arms races and the self-interest of mindless genes.

So, how did the Stanford Medical School scientists make this discovery? The Stanford Medical news release by Krista Conger, explains:

Creationism in Crisis - Rapid Evolution of Codfish Caused by Human Predation

Creationism in Crisis

Rapid Evolution of Codfish Caused by Human Predation

Codfish drying in Lofoten, Norway, illustrating the region's classical long-term fishing tradition. Scientists collected historical and contemporary genetic samples at Lofoten for a study on evolutionary changes in codfish.

Giada Ferrari

Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua

Overfishing Linked to Rapid Evolution of Codfish | Rutgers University

Just as the theory of evolution predicts, codfish have evolved under the selection pressure of human predation, and this evolution has occurred over the second half of the 20th century when the policy had been to only take cod over an agreed size to allow stocks to replenish from younger fish.

So, codfish have responded to this selection pressure by becoming sexually mature earlier before reaching the size at which they would previously have become sexually mature. Under this intense selection pressure, evolution that would normally be expected to take hundreds of thousands or millions of years, has occurred in a few decades.

This discovery was made by Brendan N. Reid, and Malin L. Pinsky of the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources, Rutgers University, NJ, USA, and Bastiaan Star of the Center for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Norway, using new techniques that enabled them to extract DNA from codfish caught more than 110 years ago, and analyse it with sufficient sensitivity to detect subtle changes over time when compared with that of recent samples.

It transpired that the evolution involved changed to multiple genes, and these changes were seen in fish from both sides of the Atlantic.

As the Rutgers University news release explains:

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Refute Two More Creationist Lies - New Information Arises Naturally and Mutations are not all Deleterious

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

Geneticists discover hidden “whole genome duplication” that may explain why some species survived mass extinctions - News & Events | Trinity College Dublin

When a mass extinction some 200 million years ago wiped out related species along with very many others, there was some reason why the common ancestor of the sturgeon and the paddle fish survived and went on to diverge into the 28 species of sturgeon (Acipenseridae) and the 2 extant and 6 extinct species of paddlefish (Acipenseridae).

Now reserchers led by Professor Aoife McLysaght and Dr Anthony Redmond from Trinity College Dublin’s School of Genetics and Microbiology, believe they have found the reason.

It was probably all due to whole genome duplication, followed by rediploidation, which gave the common ancestor an advantage in being able to evolve rapidly in the rapidly changing conditions. Genome duplication provides a spare copy of a gene which is then free to mutate without any loss of the function of the original gene. This is a natural way in which new information can arise in a genome. Gene duplication is a common feature of the evolutionary history of most species but whole genome duplication is unusual.

First a bit of background biology: