Creationism in Crisis - A Marine Reptile From 246 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artist's impression of Nothosaurs off the ancient southern polar coast of what is now New Zealand around 246 million years ago

Artwork by
Stavros Kundromichalis.

Reconstruction of the oldest sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere. Nothosaurs swimming along the ancient southern polar coast of what is now New Zealand around 246 million years ago.

Artwork by Stavros Kundromichalis.

Ancient polar sea reptile fossil is oldest ever found in Southern Hemisphere - Uppsala University

Sometimes, it must seem as though everything that happened on Earth happened before creationists believe the Universe was created. The simple reason is that this is precisely so, since about 99.9975% of time has existed between when Earth formed out of an accretion disk around the sun and when creationists believe their magic creator god created a universe as a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, 10,000 years ago.

For example, by about 246 million years ago, life had evolved to the point where terrestrial reptiles were returning to the sea where they evolved into large, marine predators - the apex predators of their day. This means that there was plenty of other life in the seas for them to predate upon, and the fossilised remains of one of them has recently been found in rocks on the southern coast of New Zealand, making it the oldest marine reptile fossil ever found in the southern hemisphere.

Creationism in Crisis - A Tiny Bird Refutes Creationism - Again

Titipounamu, Acanthisitta chloris

Photo: Dr. Kristal Cain.

Titipounamu, Acanthisitta chloris

Photo: Dr. Kristal Cain.

Tiniest bird delivers evolution lesson - The University of Auckland

In case any creationists are still under the delusion that mainstream biologists are abandoning the scientific Theory of Evolution (TOE) in favour of their childish magical story involving a magic man made of nothing who magicked everything into existence out of nothing with some magic words, here is an example of how the TOE is used to understand and make sense of the observable facts.

It addresses the question of how the ability to learn and imitate sounds evolved in birds.

Basically, ornithologists had thought that birds could be divided into two groups - those which can learn sounds (parrots, songbirds, and hummingbirds) and those which can’t - and that this ability in the former group had evolved sometime after modern birds had diversified from their avian dinosaur ancestors, but the fact that a small New Zealand bird, the titipounamu or rifleman, Acanthisitta chloris, has the rudiments of this ability suggests it may have been present in the common ancestor of both groups.

In other words, the ability to learn and imitate sounds may be evidence of common descent.

Alphons Mucha - Slav Patriot, Mystic and Art Nouveau Master

After the Battle of Grunwald

Alphons Mucha (1924)

The Celebration of Svantovit on Rügen (1912)

Alphonse Mucha and Art Nouveau: 100 years after its creation, his work is still a balm for a world in upheaval

Some readers might have been surprised to see me posting an article about an acknowledged mystic who saw a close relationship between Slav nationalism and religion, but to me Alphons Mucha is very much like the Irish patriots who identified Catholicism with Irish nationalism, not because they believed in Papal authority and the divine right of priests to meddle in national affairs but because Catholicism was a part of the identity of the Celtic Irish. So, Mucha saw the struggle for Slav self-determination as closely tied to the struggles against Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity and later Germanic Protestantism.

Like Irish History, Slav history too can be seen as an illustration of how religion poisons everything, as the Czech people seem to have realised, since they are now second only to France in the proportion of the population who openly self-identify as Atheists.

So, it's interesting to read the following article by Will Visconti, a member of the teaching staff in the Department of Art History, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia, introducing an exhibition of Alphons Macha's work in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. I've reproduced it here under a Creative Commons license as a sort of sequel to my earlier article om Mucha's Slav Epic. The article is reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism in Crisis - How Homo Sapiens Helped Bonelli's Eagle Extend Its Range - 40,000 Years Before Creation Week

Bonelli's Eagle, Aquila fasciata

F. David Carmona

Bonelli's Eagle, Aquila fasciata

F. David Carmona

Early "Homo sapiens" facilitated the establishment of the Bonelli's eagle in the Mediterranean 50,000 years ago - Canal UGR

Not only is there no sign at all that the conversion of leading biologists to creationism's childish fairy tale in place of the scientific Theory of Evolution, that creationist cult leaders have been assuring their dupes is imminent - and has been for the last 50 years or so - it's as though they've never even heard of it. They still keep finding evidence of events that happened ten of thousand, even tens of millions of years before the Universe existed, according to the ludicrous creation myths they are supposedly about to adopt. And those events are frequently evidence of evolution or recent human history.

Imagine a serious, grown-up scientist who has been through university, with so much contrary information at his or her fingertips believing that account of magic creation 10,000 years ago written by ignorant Bronze Age pastoralists yet belonging to the creation cult requires fools to believe such an absurdity.

About 9 months ago while on holidat near Bezier, France, we were driving to Carcassonnes when, about a mile apart, we saw two majestic eagles that neither of us recognised. I now know they were Bonelli's eagles, and I probably have the activities of early Homo sapiens about 40,000 years ago to thank for them being there.

A study led by scientists from the University of Granada (UGR), Spain, shows how the activities of early Homo sapiens in the Iberian Peninsula, 40,000 years before creationists think their god created a universe consisting of a small, flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, may well have facilitated the expansion of the range of Bonelli's Eagle, Aquila fasciata, north of the Mediterranean Basin.

Creationism in Crisis - How The Human Heart Evolved As Humans Adapted To An Active Life-Style

Study on architecture of heart offers new understanding of human evolution - Swansea University

According to research by an international team from Swansea University, Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales and the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Canada, there is evidence that the human heart has evolved to facilitate the more active life-style of humans compared to their closest relatives, as they diversified.

Humans typically have a much more active life-style with a higher resting metabolic rate compared to chimpanzees. We also have larger brains. As hunter-gatherers, we typically walked and ran far more often and for much longer than do the other apes and we needed to lose the excess body heat this activity generated, so we needed a more hemodynamic heart able to meet those needs, which meant adaptations to changes in the twisting of the left ventricle (LV) - the chamber which pumps oxygenated blood around the body - during systole, and this meant a change in the degree of trabeculation inside the LV.

In the context of heart ventricles, what are trabeculae and what is their function? Trabeculae (also known as trabeculae carneae) are irregular ridges of muscle found on the inner walls of the ventricles of the heart. They play several important roles in the function of the heart:

1. Structural Support: Trabeculae carneae help reinforce the ventricular walls. Their irregular structure provides additional strength and prevents the walls from sticking together during contraction, thereby maintaining the heart's shape and integrity.
2. Facilitation of Blood Flow: The trabeculae carneae create a more turbulent flow of blood within the ventricles, which can help with the efficient mixing of blood and ensure a more thorough contraction and expulsion of blood from the ventricles during systole.
3. Conduction System: Some trabeculae carneae are involved in the conduction system of the heart. For example, the moderator band (a type of trabecula) in the right ventricle contains part of the right bundle branch of the bundle of His. This helps coordinate the contraction of the right ventricle by ensuring that the electrical impulses are transmitted efficiently.
4. Reduction of Blood Stagnation: By creating a complex surface within the ventricles, trabeculae carneae reduce the likelihood of blood stagnation, which can prevent clot formation and improve overall blood flow dynamics.

In summary, trabeculae carneae serve to strengthen the ventricular walls, enhance blood flow, support the heart's electrical conduction system, and reduce the risk of blood clots by preventing blood from pooling in the ventricles.

What is meant by 'ventricular twist'?

'Ventricular twist' refers to the complex motion of the heart's ventricles during the cardiac cycle, particularly during the contraction (systole) and relaxation (diastole) phases. This twisting motion is also known as 'ventricular torsion' or 'ventricular rotation.' Here’s a more detailed explanation:

Mechanics of Ventricular Twist

1. Twisting Motion During Systole: During systole, the ventricles contract to pump blood out of the heart. The base (the top part of the ventricles, near the atria) of the heart rotates in a counterclockwise direction (when viewed from the apex), while the apex (the bottom tip of the heart) rotates in a clockwise direction. This results in a wringing motion, similar to wringing out a wet towel.
2. Untwisting Motion During Diastole: During diastole, the ventricles relax and fill with blood. The previously twisted ventricles now untwist, helping to create a suction effect that aids in the efficient filling of the ventricles with blood.

Significance of Ventricular Twist

1. Efficient Blood Ejection: The twisting motion enhances the efficiency of the heart’s pumping action. By adding a rotational component to the contraction, the heart can expel blood more forcefully and completely.
2. Diastolic Suction: The untwisting or recoil of the ventricles during diastole contributes to the rapid filling phase. This elastic recoil generates a negative pressure that helps draw blood into the ventricles more efficiently.
3. Mechanical Synchrony: The coordinated twisting and untwisting ensure that the contraction and relaxation phases are well-synchronized, promoting optimal cardiac function and maintaining a steady and efficient blood flow throughout the body.
4. Clinical Relevance: Abnormalities in ventricular twist mechanics can be indicative of various cardiac pathologies, such as heart failure, myocardial infarction, or cardiomyopathies. Therefore, measuring and analyzing ventricular twist can provide valuable diagnostic and prognostic information.

Measurement of Ventricular Twist
Ventricular twist can be assessed using advanced imaging techniques such as speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) or cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). These techniques allow for detailed visualization and quantification of the rotational mechanics of the heart.

In summary, ventricular twist is a crucial aspect of the heart’s mechanics, contributing to the efficient ejection and filling of blood in the ventricles. It is essential for maintaining optimal cardiac function and can be an important parameter in the assessment of heart health.

The team has shown there is a negative correlation between the degree of trabeculation and LV systolic twist. The inner wall of the LV of a healthy human heart is comparatively smooth. Their results are published in the journal Communications Biology and explained in a Swansea University News release:

An international research team from Swansea University and UBC Okanagan (UBCO) has uncovered a new insight into human evolution by comparing humans’ hearts with those of other great apes.

Despite humans and non-human great apes having a common ancestor, the former has evolved larger brains and the ability to walk or run upright on two feet to travel long distances, likely to hunt.

Now, through a new comparative study of the form and function of the heart, published in Communications Biology, researchers believe they have discovered another piece of the evolutionary puzzle.

The team compared the human heart with those of our closest evolutionary relatives, including chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, and bonobos cared for at wildlife sanctuaries in Africa and zoos throughout Europe.

During these great apes' routine veterinary procedures, the team used echocardiography—a cardiac ultrasound—to produce images of the left ventricle, the chamber of the heart that pumps blood around the body. Within the non-human great ape's left ventricle, bundles of muscle extend into the chamber, called trabeculations.

The left ventricle of a healthy human is relatively smooth, with predominantly compact muscle compared to the more trabeculated, mesh-like network in the non-human great apes. The difference is most pronounced at the apex, the bottom of the heart, where we found approximately four times the trabeculation in non-human great apes compared to humans.

Bryony Curry, first author
Centre for Heart, Lung and Vascular Health
School of Health and Exercise Sciences
University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada.

The team also measured the heart's movement and velocities using speckle-tracking echocardiography, an imaging technique that traces the pattern of the cardiac muscle as it contracts and relaxes.

We found that the degree of trabeculation in the heart was related to the amount of deformation, rotation and twist. In other words, in humans, who have the least trabeculation, we observed comparatively greater cardiac function. This finding supports our hypothesis that the human heart may have evolved away from the structure of other non-human great apes to meet the higher demands of humans’ unique ecological niche.

Bryony Curry.

A human’s larger brain and greater physical activity compared to other great apes can also be linked to higher metabolic demand, which requires a heart that can pump a greater volume of blood to the body.

Similarly, Higher blood flow contributes to humans’ ability to cool down, as blood vessels close to the skin dilate—observed as flushing of the skin—and lose heat to the air.

In evolutionary terms, our findings may suggest selective pressure was placed on the human heart to adapt to meet the demands of walking upright and managing thermal stress.

What remains unclear is how the more trabeculated hearts of non-human great apes may be adaptive to their own ecological niches. Perhaps it’s a remaining structure of the ancestral heart, though, in nature, form most often serves a function.

Dr Aimee Drane, co-corresponding author
International Primate Heart Project
Cardiff Metropolitan University, Cardiff, UK
And Faculty of Medicine
Health and Life Sciences
Swansea University, Swansea, UK

The research team is grateful to the staff and volunteers who care for the animals in the study, including the teams at Tchimpounga Wildlife Sanctuary (Congo), Chimfunshi Wildlife Sanctuary (Zambia), Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary (Sierra Leone), Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rescue and Rehabilitation Center (Borneo), the Zoological Society of London (UK), Paignton Zoo (UK), Bristol Zoo Gardens (UK), Burgers’ Zoo (Netherlands) and Wilhelma Zoo (Germany).

Abstract
Although the gross morphology of the heart is conserved across mammals, subtle interspecific variations exist in the cardiac phenotype, which may reflect evolutionary divergence among closely-related species. Here, we compare the left ventricle (LV) across all extant members of the Hominidae taxon, using 2D echocardiography, to gain insight into the evolution of the human heart. We present compelling evidence that the human LV has diverged away from a more trabeculated phenotype present in all other great apes, towards a ventricular wall with proportionally greater compact myocardium, which was corroborated by post-mortem chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) hearts. Speckle-tracking echocardiographic analyses identified a negative curvilinear relationship between the degree of trabeculation and LV systolic twist, revealing lower rotational mechanics in the trabeculated non-human great ape LV. This divergent evolution of the human heart may have facilitated the augmentation of cardiac output to support the metabolic and thermoregulatory demands of the human ecological niche.

Introduction
Mammals are a remarkably diverse class of vertebrates, capable of inhabiting every major biome on the planet. This diversity is associated with a vast range of environmental stressors and interspecific differences in posture and locomotion, creating very different hemodynamic challenges. Despite this remarkable diversity, the gross structure of the mammalian heart is highly conserved across species; retaining four chambers and a complete interatrial and interventricular septum¹.

Although the gross structure of the mammalian heart is conserved, interspecific features exist. For example, heart shape varies considerably across species, from broad and flat in whales to long and narrow in terrestrial ungulates2. Variation in the cardiac phenotype is also present among closely-related mammals², indicative of evolutionary divergence. While comprehensive data examining cardiac structure and function across the entire Hominidae taxon do not exist, preliminary work suggests that the left ventricle (LV) of adult male chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) may be morphologically distinct from that of humans³. Prominent myocardial trabeculations, characterized by protrusions of the endocardium into the LV cavity with intertrabecular recesses, were previously observed in adult male chimpanzees³. This trabeculated phenotype differs from the relatively smoother ventricular wall typically observed in healthy humans⁴, suggesting that there may have been species-specific selective pressures on the heart during the evolution of Hominidae³.

Cardiac morphology and function are closely linked⁵; therefore, the discrete structural attributes of the chimpanzee and human LV likely coincide with differences in systolic and diastolic ventricular function. Such interspecific cardiac phenotypes may be the result of selection for the hemodynamic demands associated with each species’ ecological niche (i.e., the habitat and the role a species plays within an ecosystem). Indeed, previous data has shown that resting metabolic rate⁶, physical activity and daily locomotion⁷ are far greater in humans in comparison with other great apes, and so it is not surprising that cardiac output is also comparatively higher in humans³. The larger cardiac output in humans is likely supported by comparatively greater LV systolic and diastolic function (e.g., myocardial rotation and deformation), including LV twist³. LV twist, which is dependent upon the helical angulation of the aggregated cardiomyocytes^8,9,10, is characterized by counter-directional rotation of the LV base and apex during systole. Together with the velocity of LV untwisting during diastole, LV twist helps facilitate efficient filling and ejection of the ventricle, especially during periods of heightened metabolic and thermoregulatory demand^11,12.

The functional advantages associated with a LV capable of greater twist and untwisting velocity, combined with the preliminary data in adult male chimpanzees³, prompt the hypothesis that the human heart has diverged from a trabeculated ancestral phenotype to support the specific metabolic and thermoregulatory demands of the human niche. To test this hypothesis, we compared LV structure across all extant great apes using 2D echocardiography and further explored trabeculation in a subset of post-mortem chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) hearts. We then compared LV rotation and deformation between human and non-human great apes to explore whether the trabeculated phenotype is associated with differences in LV systolic and diastolic functional mechanics. Our findings point to evolutionary divergence of the human LV away from the phenotype of all other non-human great apes, which may have had important implications for cardiac function in early humans.

Discussion (part of)

[…]

Collectively, the findings of this study support evolutionary divergence of the human LV away from a trabeculated ancestral phenotype, towards a ventricular wall with a proportionately greater compact myocardium. We propose that this adaptive evolution occurred to support the requirements of the human ecological niche, including an augmented cardiac output to facilitate sustained bipedal physical activity, a larger brain, and the associated metabolic and thermoregulatory demands.

Fig. 1: Comparison of left ventricular trabeculation in great apes.

The bullseye plots represent the trabecular:compact (T:C) ratio for each segment of the left ventricle. The outer layer of the bullseye plots represents the basal segments, the middle and innermost layers represent the midpapillary and apical segments of the left ventricle, respectively. Red segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of >2; orange segments correspond to an average T:C ratio >1.5–2; yellow segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of >1–1.5; green segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of >0.5–1; blue segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of <0.05. Echocardiographic images of the parasternal short-axis at the apex are shown at end-diastole. *No data were available for the basal or midpapillary segments in the orangutans due to artifact from laryngeal air sacs. †These T:C ratios compare favorably with other reports in healthy human cohorts, ranging from 0.2 to 0.9^65,66. ‡Anatomical labels have been provided in accordance with the conventional guidelines for cardiac chamber quantification by the American Society of Echocardiography and European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging⁵². However, we note that this clinical convention does not align with the recognized anatomical approach and may result in confusion across disciplines—see ref. ⁶⁷ for further clarification.

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Fig. 2: Graphical representation of the trabecular:compact (T:C) ratio for each segment of the left ventricle in chimpanzees.

The outer layer of the bullseye plots represents the basal segments, the middle and innermost layers represent the midpapillary and apical segments of the left ventricle, respectively. Red segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of >2; orange segments correspond to an average T:C ratio >1.5–2; yellow segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of >1–1.5; green segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of >0.5–1; blue segments correspond to an average T:C ratio of <0.05. Infant age class includes individuals of ≤4 years of age, juveniles between 5–7 years of age, sub-adults between 8-11 years of age and adults ≥12 years of age.

---

Fig. 3: Comparison of left ventricular morphology and mechanical indices of ventricular function between chimpanzees and humans.

Shortening along the long axis of the left ventricle (i.e., longitudinal strain) and deformation at the apex (i.e., apical circumferential and apical radial strain) were averaged across a mixed-sex, adult cohort of chimpanzees (n = 136) and represented in maroon. Blue reflects the deformation patterns of a mixed-sex, adult human cohort (n = 34). Dashed line represents aortic valve closure. Gray shading to the left of dashed line represents systole and white represents diastole.

---

Fig. 4: Relationship between markers of left ventricular (LV) function and apical trabeculation in the extant Hominidae taxon.

a Peak LV systolic apical rotation, shown in red, in a mixed-sex, adult cohort of humans (male n = 18, female n = 16), chimpanzees (male n = 59, female n = 51), bonobos (male n = 2, female n = 4), gorillas (male n = 4, female n = 6) and orangutans (male n = 10, female n = 6). b Peak LV systolic twist, shown in green, and (c) peak diastolic untwisting velocity, shown in blue, in a cohort of humans (male n = 18, female n = 16), chimpanzees (male n = 47, female n = 43), bonobos (male n = 1, female n = 3) and gorillas (male n = 4, female n = 5). Analyses of LV twist and untwisting velocity were not possible in all individuals, nor any of the orangutans due to artifacts from laryngeal air sacs, hence the reduced sample size. The exponential plateau curve is shown, with the 95% confidence bands represented by the dotted line. The mean and standard error are shown in black for each species.

Curry, B.A., Drane, A.L., Atencia, R. et al.
Left ventricular trabeculation in Hominidae: divergence of the human cardiac phenotype. Commun Biol 7, 682 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06280-9

Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

No crumbs of comfort there for creationists as the authors attribute everything to evolution by natural selection as humans diverged from the other great apes, nor is there any hint of a doubt that such an evolutionary divergence occurred.

The interesting thing from a biologists point of view is how the changes to the human heart reflect changes in our life-style as we adopted an upright gait and a hunter-gatherer life-style, necessitating running and walking long distances with additional demands on our heart to cope with the additional oxygen required and to dissipate the excess heat these activities generated, in addition to the increased demands our large brains were already imposing on our circulatory and thermoregulatory systems.

More work is now needed to understand whether the retention of this degree of trabeculation in the other apes has a benefit or whether it has simply been retained from a common ancestor. If the former, what evolutionary trade-off has there been for humans in losing these benefits?

Creationism in Crisis - A New Genus of Fish - From 18 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

 †Simpsonigobius nerimanae

All scale bars = 2 mm.

†Simpsonigobius nerimanae gen. et sp. nov. A, holotype, BSPG 1980X1030a; B, paratype, BSPG 1980X1013(2); C, paratype, BSPG 1980X1019a; D, paratype, BSPG 1980X992a. All scale bars = 2 mm.

Dirnberger, M., Bauer, E., & Reichenbacher, B. (2024).

Paleontology: new fossil fish genus discovered - LMU Munich

Today's casual refutation of creationism come in the form of an open access paper in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology in which a team of researchers from the master program ‘Geobiology and Paleobiology’ led by Bettina Reichenbacher, professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Germany.

In it, the team of three explain how they have identified a new genus of the Gobi family of fishes and so provided critical insight into the evolution of this group of fish.

The fossil of the Simpsonigobius genus was found in 18-million-year-old rocks in Turkey. The significance of their discovery is explained in a Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) press release:

Religion Provides Excuses for People Who Need Excuses - Human Sacrifice At Chichén Itzá

El Castillo (the Temple of Kukulcan), Chichén Itzá

© Johannes Krause

El Castillo, also known as the Temple of Kukulcan, is among the largest structures at Chichén Itzá and its architecture reflects its far-flung political connections.

© Johannes Krause

Ancient Maya genomes reveal ritual sacrifice at Chichén Itzá | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

When priests succeed in sowing superstition and fear into the minds of their victims, and fool them into believe they know the mind of their god and what he requires them to do, there is probably no depth of depravity they can't descend to, with the excuse of religion to fall back on, especially when it's backed up by threats of eternal pain and suffering in some assumed life after death, for non-compliance.

For example, Christians have been persuaded that their god needed a blood sacrifice so it could forgive them for something of which it had arbitrarily declared them to be guilty, and that there was a sense in which impregnating a young woman without her consent, then having her baby killed to satiate its lust for blood, was something to be admired.

Now detach those acts from religion and the belief that a god had sanctioned them and imagine them, being the subject of a court case in which the defendant explained that he had to rape the girl so she could have his baby, so he could then kill her child, because he was angry about something that someone once did hundreds of years ago, and would otherwise make people suffer in unimaginably horrible ways.

Which jury would declare him to be not guilty of any crime and free to go, assuming he was considered fit to plead? After appropriate psychiatric assessment, he would most likely be found to be a dangerous psychopath with a narcissistic personality disorder, who should probably be kept under lock and key for the sake of society.

And yet Christians sing songs in this monster's praise and tell their children to look to it for moral guidance, and pass on to their children the superstition and fear that caused them to lose their moral judgement, believing this to be the right and proper way to bring up children!

Something has caused them to lose moral judgement because priests say a god did it, so they can distance themselves from the brutality.

It's hardly surprising then that there has been so much death, destruction and human misery caused by religions, or rather caused by people who had been told a god wanted them to go out and cause it.

And it's hardly surprising that an international team of researchers from institutions including the Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig) and Geoanthropology (Jena), the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH, Mexico City), the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH-Yucatan, Mérida), and Harvard University (Cambridge) have found evidence of regular barbaric ritual child sacrifice, carried out by the Mayan's at Chichén Itzá.

And in another discovery, the same team provide evidence, if any were needed, of how a population's genome can be changed by intense selection pressure such as an epidemic, resulting in the evolution of the population in response to this environmental change, in a classic example of Darwinian evolution by natural selection.

In this case, an outbreak of Salmonella enterica in 1545 (the cocoliztli pandemic) has resulted in an increased frequency of HLA-DR4 alleles which provide greater resistance to Salmonella enterica infection. Clearly, those better able to resist the infection left more descendants than those who succumbed to it.

An account of their findings is given in an open access paper in Nature and in a Max Planck Institute News release:

Malevolent Designer News - How a Special Gene Helps Cancer Spread Throughout The Body

Mass General Cancer Center Researchers Identify Gene That Helps Cancer Cells Spread Throughout the Body

According to creationists, genes don't evolve but are intelligently designed, so presumably their intelligent designer should be given the credit for designing a gene which has been shown to help cancer cells disseminate and set up colonies of secondaries throughout the body. The gene, Gstt1, is responsible for 90% of cancer-related deaths.

Gstt1 has a key role in eliminating toxins from the body so blocking it as a prophylactic treatment to prevent cancer metastases may not be a straightforward option.

The gene's role in helping cancer to metastasize was discovered by a team of investigators from the Massachusetts General Cancer Center, Boston, USA, who have just published their findings in the journal Nature Cell Biology and explained it in a press release from Massachusetts General Hospital:

Creationism in Crisis - A 'Missing' Fossil From 550 Million Years Ago - And Another Gap Is Filled

Helicolocellus cantori

NIGP-176531

Virginia Tech geobiologist Shuhai Xiao with a 550 million-year-old sea sponge fossil, filling in a gap in the evolutionary family tree of one of the earliest animals.

Photo by Spencer Coppage for Virginia Tech.

Virginia Tech researcher's team discovers 'missing' sea sponges | Virginia Tech News | Virginia Tech

That mountain of evidence against creationism just grows and grows!

Today, we have evidence of multicellular life in the form of an early sponge from about 550 million years before creationism's 'Creation Week' when they believe everything was magicked into existence in 6 days from nothing by some magic words spoken by a magic man made of nothing.

And it gets even worse.

Creationists also like to pretend the so-called 'Cambrian Explosion' when a lot of different multicellular body plans appear in the geological record, was an actual explosive creation as a single event, so the organisms in the Cambrian biota had no ancestors. It wasn't, of course; it lasted some 6-10 million years during which there are recognizable phases with characteristic organisms in each phase showing clear evolutionary progress - and it was preceded by the Ediacaran biota when some of the earliest multicellular organisms are found in the geological column.

Creationism in Crisis - History Of The Human Malaria Parasite in 4,500 Years

Plasmodium falciparum

Plasmodium vivax

Photo Credit: CDC/ Steven Glenn, Laboratory & Consultation Division
via Wikipedia (Public domain)

Ancient Genomes reveal origin and spread of malaria | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Sometimes, I can almost feel sorry for creationists, if only most of them weren't such arrogant, obnoxious liars, more interested in winning more simpletons for their cult than in truth.

It must be difficult when none of the available real-world evidence can be shoehorned successfully into the absurd mythology they want to teach to school children at tax-payers' expense as a prelude to establishing a self-appointing theocracy unaccountable to no-one but themselves.

I have written many of articles in this blog, and will no doubt write a great many more, detailing events in the history of the universe and of life on Earth in the long period of time before creationist superstition says the Universe was created in 6 days of a mythical 'Creation Week'.

I also write regular articles showing how, if life is intelligently designed, the only conclusion must be that the designer is an incompetent idiot and a sadistic, pestilential malevolence with so many parasites seemingly designed to cause suffering in the world. Creationists have been taught to blame the latter, indeed all the nasty stuff in the Universe, on 'The Fall' and 'sin', and have even been given some scientifically nonsensical but sciencey-sounding parrot squawks, 'Genetic entropy' and 'devolution' to throw in at the appropriate time.

The problem there, apart from giving away the fact that creationism is a religious cult, not a science, is the fact that if that had even a slight degree of merit, parasitism should have begun at this mythical 'Fall'.

Admittedly, the Bible is vague about the timing but the clear impression of the Adam & Eve legend it that it happen within weeks, or months, maybe a year or so after 'Creation Week', and before they had any children to inherit it, but certainly not 4,500 years later, unless Adam & Eve were ancient beyond belief when they decided to 'sin'.

And yet, here we have clear scientific evidence that two of the nasty little family of parasites of the Plasmodium genus that cause so much human death and suffering in the form of malaria, weren't around until about 5,500 years ago - some 4,500 years after the alleged 'Fall'.

And creationists shouldn't forget how their guru, Michael J Behe, denied them the opportunity to blame 'Sin' and his other scientifically nonsensical 'explanations', by using what he falsely claimed could not have evolved, being 'irreducibly complex' - anti-malarial drug resistance in P. falciparum - as evidence that their god created it.

Covidiot News - Feeling Rough After A Covid Booster Not A Reason To Refuse One

Feeling Rough After Your COVID Shot? Congrats, It’s Working! | UC San Francisco

Despite a continuing high death toll from COVID-19 - 23,000 so far this year in the USA - only 25% of Americans had the booster last Autumn. This year, so far in the UK under 60% of 75+ age group invited have taken up the offer of a booster.

One of the reasons often cited is that the boosters make you feel rough for a day or two with flu-like symptoms of headache, aches and pains and general malaise, although, speaking from personal experience, I have never had anything like that, and I have had every booster offered. The worst I've had has been a slightly sore arm for a day or two with a little stiffness which is only there when I think about it. However, even the reported adverse reactions pass within a day or two. Now a new study has shown that this is a good sign because it shows the vaccine is working well to produce a high yield of antibodies.

The study, led by UC San Francisco, has found that the symptoms indicate a robust immune response that is likely to lessen the chances of infection. The findings, explained in a UC San Franciso press release, are published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Creationism in Crisis - Elephants Know One Another by Name - Just Like Humans

Researchers found that elephants have arbitrary vocal labels for each other, similar to human names.

Credit: George Wittemyer

Elephants have names for each other like people do, new study shows - Warner College of Natural Resources

It's an article of faith in creationist cults that humans are a special creation, materially different to other animals and the evidence for this is that we have unique characteristics, ignoring for the moment that every species has unique characteristics, which is what makes them distinct species. And the list of 'uniquely human' characteristics which by creationist circular logic is 'evidence' of human uniqueness, includes language, culture, intelligence, the ability to make and use tools, a sense of self-identity, compassion, empathy, and love and affection.

The problem is, the items on this list keep on being found to not be unique to humans after all, but to be characteristic of lots of other species.

Malevolent Designer - How A Dangerous Pathogen Is Designed to Infect Our Lungs

Pseudomonas aeruginosa

The pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa breaching through the respiratory epithelia of a human lung microtissue model, captured via Scanning Electron Microscopy.

Image: Benoit Laventie, Biozentrum, University of Basel.

Lung organoids unveil secret: How pathogens infect human lung tissue | University of Basel

A team at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel have shown how a dangerous pathogen gains access to tissues in the lungs, the better to infect them.

To an intelligent [sic] design creationist, there can only be one explanation for this - intelligent design.

To quickly dispense with the traditional excuse offered for this evidence of malevolence, if you subscribe to the intelligent design nonsense - to blame 'Sin' which was caused by 'The Fall', oblivious of the fact that this exposes the intelligent design argument as fundamentalist religion in disguise. Even given a spurious gloss of sciencey-sounding gibberish by Michael J Behe, with his 'genetic entropy' and 'scientifically nonsensical 'devolution' from some assumed created perfection, makes no sense and fails abysmally to rescue creationism from its obvious religious fundamentalism.

No mutation which conveys an advantage, and so progresses to fixation in the species gene pool, can possibly be regarded as 'devolutionary' or less perfect than what went before it, and of course, postulating some assumed initial created perfection simply underlines the religious fundamentalist and the intellectual contortions needed to try to shoehorn the facts into the superstition inherent in the notion.

So, we are left with malevolent intent as the only conclusion, if we subscribe to the intelligent design notion.

Bible Blunder - Or How We Know The Bible Was Written By Ignorant People

Supernovae circled in blue

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JADES Collaboration

The JADES Deep Field uses observations taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) as part of the JADES (JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey) program. A team of astronomers studying JADES data identified about 80 objects (circled in green) that changed in brightness over time. Most of these objects, known as transients, are the result of exploding stars or supernovae. Prior to this survey, only a handful of supernovae had been found above a redshift of 2, which corresponds to when the universe was only 3.3 billion years old — just 25% of its current age. The JADES sample contains many supernovae that exploded even further in the past, when the universe was less than 2 billion years old. It includes the farthest one ever spectroscopically confirmed, at a redshift of 3.6. Its progenitor star exploded when the universe was only 1.8 billion years old.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JADES Collaboration.

NASA’s Webb Opens New Window on Supernova Science - NASA Science

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continues to allow scientists to witness events almost at the beginning of time - at least when the Universe was just 1.8 billion years old. This comes in the form of supernovae or exploding stars, the light from which has just reached the JWST's detectors, having taken some 12 billion years to get there.

How long does it take light to travel 2 meters? To determine how long it takes light to travel 2 meters, you can use the speed of light in a vacuum, which is approximately \( 299,792,458 \) meters per second. The formula to calculate the time it takes for light to travel a certain distance is: \[ \text{Time} = \frac{\text{Distance}}{\text{Speed}} \] Plugging in the values: \[ \text{Time} = \frac{2 \, \text{meters}}{299,792,458 \, \text{meters/second}} \] Let's calculate this: \[ \text{Time} \approx 6.67 \times 10^{-9} \, \text{seconds} \] So, it takes approximately 6.67 nanoseconds for light to travel 2 meters.

I have previously explained how witnessing an event, the information about which has taken billions of years to arrive is no less witnessing that event than witnessing an event in the same room, information about which took a few nanoseconds to reach us.

And what the cosmologists have seen is far more supernovae than was previously thought.

The recent press release from NASA explains how these events were seen:

‘A Supernova Discovery Machine’

To make these discoveries, the team analyzed imaging data obtained as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) program. Webb is ideal for finding extremely distant supernovae because their light is stretched into longer wavelengths — a phenomenon known as cosmological redshift.

Prior to Webb’s launch, only a handful of supernovae had been found above a redshift of 2, which corresponds to when the universe was only 3.3 billion years old — just 25% of its current age. The JADES sample contains many supernovae that exploded even further in the past, when the universe was less than 2 billion years old.

Previously, researchers used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to view supernovae from when the universe was in the "young adult" stage. With JADES, scientists are seeing supernovae when the universe was in its “teens” or “pre-teens.” In the future, they hope to look back to the “toddler” or “infant” phase of the universe.

To discover the supernovae, the team compared multiple images taken up to one year apart and looked for sources that disappeared or appeared in those images. These objects that vary in observed brightness over time are called transients, and supernovae are a type of transient. In all, the JADES Transient Survey Sample team uncovered about 80 supernovae in a patch of sky only about the thickness of a grain of rice held at arm’s length. [my highlight]

Creationism in Crisis - How Hominoid Apes Co-Existed in Germany 12 million Years Before 'Creation Week'.

The 12-million-year-old Buronius tooth

Second great ape species discovered at Hammerschmiede fossil site | University of Tübingen

Teeth of Buronius manfredschmidi found in the Hammerschmiede.
Upper row: second upper molar. Bottom row: second lower premolar (from different angles). Scale bar corresponds to 10 mm.

Scientists have discovered the 11.6-million-year-old fossilised remains of a second hominoid ape in Germany, showing that at least two species of archaic ape were contemporaneous in the same habitat in Miocene Europe.

To give you some idea of how much history of Earth and life on it happened before creationists think it existed, spread your arms wide and imagine time, from the moment Earth formed in the accretion disk around the young sun at the tip of the middle finger of your left hand to the tip of the middle finger of your right hand. On that analogy, the whole of recorded human history would be wiped away with a single stroke of a nail-file on the nail of your right-hand middle finger!

In that tiny fraction of time, everyone you ever knew, everyone you ever heard of, indeed every person that has ever existed during the past 3-4,000 years lived their lives.

According to creationists, taking a book written in the fearful infancy of our species by ignorant people who knew only the few square miles they lived their entire lives in, as accurate history and real science, that tiny fragment of time is just under half of all that has ever existed. So, it is hardly surprising then that almost all of history and almost all of the evolution of life on Earth, happened in the time before creationists think there was a universe for it to happen in.

Creationism in Crisis - Parasitic Nematodes From Tens of Millions of Years Before 'Creation Week' and the Legendary 'Fall'!

False scorpion in Baltic amber
Arrows mark nematode parasites

Photo by George Poinar Jr.

False scorpion embedded in Baltic amber

Photo by George Poinar Jr.

Tiny roundworms carve out unique parasitic niche inside pseudoscorpion’s protective covering | Oregon State University

In their eagerness for simplistic answers and in line with their belief in never questioning those who supply them, creationists have swallowed the nonsense that somehow the notion of 'Sin' and 'The Fall', made to sound nice and sciencey with Michael J Behe's scientifically nonsensical notions of 'devolution' from an assumed initial perfection and 'genetic entropy', can explain parasites.

Parasites are, of course, entirely inconsistent with the notion of creation by an omnibenevolent, intelligent designer who wishes only to reduce the suffering in the world.

The problem for them is that they've also swallowed the nonsensical idea that is on a par with flatearthism - that Earth is only a few thousand years old and was created in 6 days in 'Creation Week' (although the exact dating and duration of that 'event' is as elastic as need be to explain the contradictory evidence).

But what then of the evidence that parasites existed way before this legendary 'Creation Week' and much earlier than the equally legendary 'Fall'?

In fact, as major environmental drivers of evolution, parasites are probably almost as old as the first cells and certainly, if we class predators as parasites on their prey, almost certainly account for the biodiversity seen in the Cambrian biota as predator and prey were the results of arms races.

And now, a scientist at Oregan State University, George Poinar Jr, has found that a group of arthropods known as false scorpions, were subjected to parasitism by a nematode worm. The victims and parasites were trapped in Baltic amber about 30 million years ago (The actual age is difficult to establish exactly for various reasons - see the panel on the right, but none of the geochronology techniques come anywhere near to 10,000 years.).

Unintelligent Design - A Tiny Fern With A Record-Breaking Genome

Tmesipteris oblanceolata

Genome over 50 times larger than a human genome

Record breaker: This tiny fern has the largest genome of any organism on Earth | Kew

Creationists know little of genetics or biology in general, so they are easy prey for frauds who lead their cult and take their money while fooling them into believing their ignorance makes them more expert than the experts and fully qualified to tell millions of working biomedical scientists that they've got it all wrong.

And one of the ideas they've been fooled with is the evolution is a process of increasing complexity and increasing genetic information. This is useful to the frauds who then sell them the idiotic notion that new genetic information can't arise because the Second Law of Thermodynamics [sic] makes it impossible. They also present complexity as evidence of intelligent design, which is also nonsensical, of course, because good intelligent, design is minimally complex.

So, many creationists believe the humans are the most complex organisms because they are the pinnacle of evolution, which is a again nonsensical because there is no such pinnacle; all species are equally well-adapted to their given environment and have been evolving, aimlessly, for the same period of time.

So, the logic of their misconception should be the assumption that humans should have at least one of the largest and most complex genomes of all living organisms or at least that genome size should equate to complexity and complexity to the ranking position in some sort of living hierarchy.

It might come as a shock then to discover that not only do humans have a fairly average size genome, far smaller than some 'primitive' salamanders, for instance, and certainly much small than some plants (e.g., the Norwegian spruce of Christmas tree). But the record genome size goes to a humble miniature fern from the French overseas territor of New Caledonia, Tmesipteris oblanceolata, with a genome size of 148.89 Gbp, or a little over 50 times the size of a human genome!

Creationism in Crisis - How The Nile Was Changing Its Course - During Creationism's Legendary Global Flood

The River Nile at Luxor (Ancient Thebes)

Crucial shift in River Nile’s evolution during ancient Egypt discovered | University of Southampton

The beautiful and timeless river Nile at Luxor, cradle of civilisation, where we spend a wonderful ten days some years ago having completed a river cruise from Luxor to Aswan and been driven back to our hotel in Luxor in a high-speed convoy with military escorts - for me, the high-point of the holiday; for my partner, not so much, especially when our driver insisted on stopping in the middle of nowhere to relieve himself behind a rock, leaving us alone in the car with our guardian soldier escort fingering his sub machine gun nervously.

But the lovely old River Nile has not always flowed in its present bed. From before, during and after creationism's legendary global flood through which Egyptian society appears to have come without harm and without leaving a single record, not even a hint of sediment in the Nile floodplain, the Nile has changed its course multiple times, according to recent research by an international team of archaeologists, which included researchers from Southampton University, England.

Creationism in Crisis - Darwinian Evolution in Giraffes Confirmed

Three giraffes in Masai Mara National Park.

Credit: Byrdyak/Wikimedia Commons.
All Rights Reserved.

Female Giraffe, Giraffa camelopardalis, browsing

Credit: Bernard DUPONT via Wikimedia (CC SA-2.0)

Food, not sex, drove the evolution of giraffes’ long neck, new study finds | Penn State University

In a nice illustration of how science works, there had been conflicting explanations for how the Giraffe evolved its long neck, but before creationists get over-excited neither of them were alternatives to evolution; the debate was about the precise drivers of evolution. That the giraffe's neck evolved from a shorter neck of a common ancestor with the related okapi was never in dispute.

One school of thought was the standard Darwinian view that it was the result of an arms race between giraffes and their preferred food plants; the other was slightly more complex, involving female sex selection and the way male giraffes use their necks against rival males with longer neck being a distinct advantage and the winner winning the favours of the females. Since the length of the neck is not strictly sex-linked, meaning it is mostly coded for by genes located on autosomes, rather than on the Y sex chromosome, both males and females benefit from this sex-selection, or so the second school of thought ran.

Now, a team of scientists led by Penn State biologists believe they have resolved this dispute buy, in the time-honoured scientific way, by examining the evidence and letting it speak for itself. What they found was that females actually have proportionately longer necks than males, so sex selection is unlikely to be the driver. However, what they observed was that females are better able to reach leaves in the crowns of trees and so get the more nutritious food, with obvious benefits for their offspring

The team have published their work, another incidental refutation of creationism that comes from revealing scientific facts, open access, in the journal Mammalian Biology. It is also explained in a Penn State University News release:

Liar! - UK General Election - How Sunak Lied To Us

Trust me, Gov!

Would I lie to you?

How Sunak came up with disputed Labour tax figures – and what’s wrong with them

When Rishi Sunak lied for his party he showed us two things:

• He knows the Tory Party depends on fools who'll believe falsehoods.
• He is in politics, not for the he can do for us with power but for what power can do for him.

Qualities of the spiv and conman, which, of course, endeared him to the Tory MPs, who chose him when Liz Truss crashed and burned both the economy and her career.

The lie of course, repeated by Penny Mordaunt last night, even though it had been refuted by the very Treasury civil servant they were pretending had calculated the figure, was that Labour's plans will cost the average household £2,000. (Note: not £2,000 a year, as was implied, but £2,000 over 4 years!).

But, as, Treasury permanent secretary James Bowler, revealed, the figure was based on costings supplied not by the Labour Party, or independent experts, but on notional figures dreamed up by Tory Party paid advisors who started with the £2,000 and calculated backwards, so the Treasury civil service came up with the required figure. He had warned that ministers should not present the figure as provided by the Treasury based on their estimated costings.

How Sunak's Tories tried this blatant lie as the opening salvo in his forlorn reelection campaign, is explained by Steve Schifferes, Honorary Research Fellow, City Political Economy Research Centre, City, University of London in an article in The Conversation. His article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Creationism in Crisis - How Marine Worms Caused a Burst in Biodiversity - 480 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Marine worm

Getty Images

The Ordovician Biota

Johns Hopkins scientists pinpoint an unlikely hero in evolution: Worms | Hub

Creationists often try to misrepresent the so-called 'Cambrian Explosion' - the relatively rapid radiation of different taxa over a period of some 6 million years when the first hard body parts evolved and by the end of which all the progenitors of the main modern taxa had appeared - as a sudden event, happening almost overnight, where major taxons suddenly appeared without ancestors, as some sort of evidence of intelligent design.

This is nonsense of course, as the 'explosion' took some 6-10 million years and was preceded by the Ediacaran biota, but what they don't seem to realise is that this period was followed fairly soon after by another period of rapid evolution and increased biodiversity in the 'Ordovician Explosion' or the 'Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event' (GOBE) when the same basic forces that produced the Cambrian explosion continued for another 25 million years.

Creationism in Crisis - A Giant Pterosaur From Oxfordshire - About 155 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

Artwork of a Jurassic pterosaur by University of Portsmouth student

Hamzah Imran

Gigantic Jurassic pterosaur fossil unearthed in Oxfordshire | University of Portsmouth

Part of a left wing first phalanx. The fossil was broken into three pieces but is still well-preserved

During the immense passage of time before 'Creation Week' as creationists call the legendary creation of a small universe consisting of a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East, giant pterosaurs were in the sky over what is now the Vale of the White Horse in Oxfordshire.

The body of one of these monsters ended up buried in Kimmeridge Clay before that too became buried beneath alluvial gravel deposits forming in the proto-Thames valley around my adopted hometown of Abingdon.

Part of the fossilised skeleton, in the form of a partial left wing first phalanx (finger), was recovered in 2022 when a pit was being dug in the clay to form a sump and bank enclosure to replace the removed gravel in an open-cast gravel pit a few miles south of Abingdon. This has now been identified as an adult ctenochasmatoid - a group of pterosaurs known for their long, slender wings, long jaws and fine bristle-like teeth - by experts from Portsmouth and Leicester Universities.

How it came to be recovered and its significance, is the subject of a brief news release from the University of Portsmouth: