Rosa Rubicondior

Evolution In Progress - How Honey Bees Are Evolving - Another Move In The Arms Race

2026-04-21T21:56:00.004+01:00

Varroa destructor on a honeybee

Jon Gascoyne/Flickr

SoCal honeybees can fend off deadly mites | UCR News | UC Riverside

A new paper in Scientific Reports by Genesis Chong-Echavez and Boris Baer of the University of California, Riverside, casually refutes creationism by showing evolution in progress. It describes how honeybees, Apis mellifera, are evolving to survive in the presence of a serious parasite, the Varroa mite, Varroa destructor. And, no doubt to the consternation of any creationists who understand the implications, it also illustrates how evolutionary arms races are a major driver of adaptation. Both parasites and arms races are deeply embarrassing for creationism because they make little sense as the products of an intelligent designer. Indeed, parasites conform to the Discovery Institute’s supposed “proof” of intelligent design only if that designer is malevolent; yet if parasites are dismissed as evidence of design, creationists are simply abandoning one of their own favourite arguments.

In other words, a parasite-host arms race is a paradox that creationism cannot resolve, whereas evolutionary theory not only explains it, but is strengthened by it. The paper concerns a Southern Californian hybrid population of honeybees with ancestry from Western European, Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and African lineages. These bees are showing resistance to the Varroa mite, a parasite that has played a major role in the catastrophic losses of managed honeybee colonies in the United States, where beekeepers reported losses of up to 62% in 2025.

The researchers monitored 236 colonies over four years and found that the Californian hybrid colonies consistently had lower mite infestation rates than colonies headed by commercial queens. In the UCR summary of the work, the hybrid colonies are described as having about 68% fewer mites on average and as being more than five times less likely to cross the treatment threshold at which chemical control becomes necessary. Laboratory experiments also showed that the mites were less attracted to larvae from these hybrid bees, especially at the stage when mites would normally be most likely to invade brood cells.

The usual creationist response to examples like this is to retreat into a parody definition of evolution involving a change in “kind”, with “kind” carefully left undefined, or to fall back on Bible-literalist theology and explain parasites as the result of “sin”, by some unexplained mechanism against which their creator appears curiously powerless. But the problem of arms races remains. On that view, creationism’s single designer seems to be competing with itself, continually redesigning solutions to problems of its own making, ad infinitum. Evolutionary biology, by contrast, has no such difficulty. It predicts exactly this kind of reciprocal adaptation between parasite and host.

What is the Varroa mite? The Varroa mite, Varroa destructor, is a tiny parasite that helps expose one of creationism’s biggest problems. It is one of the most destructive enemies of honey bees and a major cause of colony collapse worldwide. Originally associated with the Asian honey bee, it successfully switched to the western honey bee, Apis mellifera, where it has become a devastating pest. That is not what intelligent, benevolent design looks like; it is exactly what evolution looks like. [1] Female mites reproduce inside sealed brood cells and hitch rides on adult bees, spreading through and between colonies. Worse still, they do not merely sip a little insect “blood”, as was once thought. They feed mainly on the bee’s fat body tissue, damaging systems essential for immunity, metabolism and survival, while also transmitting dangerous viruses such as deformed wing virus. In other words, this is a parasite exquisitely adapted to exploit and weaken its host — which is awkward for anyone claiming parasites are evidence of a wise designer. [2] As colonies produce more brood, mite populations can explode, sometimes overwhelming and killing the colony if beekeepers do not intervene. So when a population of bees evolves resistance to varroa, what we are seeing is not stasis, not “created kinds”, and certainly not perfection. We are watching natural selection in real time, as hosts and parasites drive one another through an evolutionary arms race that creationism cannot explain, but evolution predicts perfectly. [3]

The discovery by the two University of California, Riverside scientists is the subject of an article in Riverside News by Jules Bernstein:

SoCal honeybees can fend off deadly mites
SoCal honeybees can fend off deadly mites
Southern California is home to a flying black and yellow treasure. While commercial honeybee hives nationwide are collapsing under attack from deadly parasites, a unique hybrid bee found only in this part of the state has demonstrated the ability to survive.

U.S. beekeepers reported losing up to 62% of their managed honeybee colonies in 2025, which threatens our food supply. The losses are driven by a combination of pesticides, climate pressure, habitat loss, and parasites, with the Varroa mite among the most destructive of these factors.

Varroa mites feed on honeybees’ fat body tissue, which weakens their immune systems, reduces their body weight, and shortens their lives. The fat body is an organ in a honeybee that stores energy, helps fight infections, and keeps the bee healthy, similar in some ways to the human liver.

The mites also act as vectors for deadly viruses like Deformed Wing Virus and Acute Bee Paralysis Virus, which they transmit directly into a bee’s bloodstream. Beekeepers rely on chemical treatments for suppression that can lose effectiveness over time.

A new study from UC Riverside published in Scientific Reports is the first to show that a locally adapted population of honeybees can naturally and consistently suppress the mites.

We kept hearing anecdotally that these Californian honeybees were surviving with way fewer treatments. I wanted to test them rigorously and understand the driving force behind what the beekeepers were seeing.

Genesis Chong-Echavez, lead author. Department of Entomology
Center for Integrative Bee Research (CIBER)
University of California, Riverside, CA, USA.

Alongside entomologists from UCR’s Center for Integrative Bee Research (CIBER), Chong-Echavez monitored 236 honeybee colonies between 2019 and 2022.

A Varroa mite on a developing honeybee larva inside a brood cell.

Genesis Chong-Echavez/UCR.

The Californian bees were not entirely immune to the mites. However, colonies headed by locally raised Californian hybrid honeybee queens had about 68% fewer mites on average than colonies headed by commercial honeybee queens. They were also more than five times less likely to cross the threshold at which chemical treatments become necessary.

The bees in the study are not a commercial breed. They come from a genetically mixed population of honeybees established in Southern California, often from feral colonies living in trees. Recent research shows they are a hybrid population with ancestry from at least four honeybee lineages, including African, Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and Western European bees.

To more fully understand the bees’ resistance to the mites, the researchers also ran laboratory experiments with developing honeybee larvae. Varroa mites must enter brood cells to reproduce, so the team tested whether mites were equally drawn to larvae from commercial and Californian hybrid honeybee colonies.

They were not.

Mites were less attracted to the Californian hybrid honeybee larvae, especially at seven days old, the stage when mites are normally most likely to invade. The finding suggests the bees’ secret to fending off mites lies in early development, before any adult worker behaviors might come into play.

What surprised me most was the differences showed up even at the larval stage. This suggests the resistance mechanism may go deeper than some kind of behavior and may be genetically built into the bees themselves.

Genesis Chong-Echavez.

Researchers inspecting honeybee colonies as part of long-term monitoring of Varroa mite infestations.

Genesis Chong-Echavez/UCR.

The findings could have implications beyond Southern California. Honeybees pollinate crops worth billions of dollars and are under growing pressure from multiple environmental stressors. The research suggests that part of the answer to improving honeybee health may lie in the biology of these bees.

Boris Baer, UCR entomology professor and co-author of the study, said the study also highlights the value of listening to working beekeepers.

This question did not start in the lab. It started in conversations with beekeepers. They were not just observers; they helped shape the questions behind this research.

Boris Baer, co-corresponding author.
Department of Entomology
Center for Integrative Bee Research (CIBER)
University of California, Riverside, CA, USA.

At a time when pollinators are facing global decline, this work offers a hopeful message: solutions may already be emerging in the field, and we just need to understand them.

Genesis Chong-Echavez.

The researchers caution that the Californian hybrid honeybees are not entirely mite-free, and they do not suggest abandoning current management practices. Instead, they hope to learn which traits help these honeybees keep mite levels lower, and whether those traits could support future breeding programs or reduce dependence on chemicals.

Next, the team plans to investigate the genetic, behavioral, and chemical signals that may make the larvae less attractive to mites.

Publication:
Chong-Echavez, G., Baer, B.
Varroa mite resistance in a hybrid honey bee (Apis mellifera) population in Southern California. Sci Rep 16, 10952 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-45759-9

Abstract
Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are important ecological and agricultural pollinators. In the United States, beekeepers experience substantial annual colony losses, largely driven by parasites such as the mite Varroa destructor. We studied a Californian hybrid honey bee population in Southern California, a genetic mix of Western European, Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and African lineages. We predicted that these bees would show lower mite infestation levels because they survive and persist without human intervention. To test this, we monitored 236 colonies over a four-year period. We found that Californian hybrid honey bee colonies consistently had lower mite infestation rates compared to colonies headed by queens from a commercial stock. Consequently, they exceeded standard treatment thresholds (≥ 3 mites per 100 worker bees) less frequently and therefore received fewer miticide treatments. We then conducted laboratory-based-choice assays to test whether colony-level differences were reflected at the brood level. Mites were significantly less attracted to seven-day-old larvae of the Californian hybrid genotype compared to commercial larvae, indicating reduced brood attractiveness. Together, our findings indicate that this Californian hybrid population experiences lower Varroa burdens under field conditions and exhibits reduced brood attractiveness to mites under controlled laboratory conditions. This population represents a valuable resource for investigating ecological, genetic, and behavioral mechanisms underlying host resistance.

Chong-Echavez, G., Baer, B.
Varroa mite resistance in a hybrid honey bee (Apis mellifera) population in Southern California. Sci Rep 16, 10952 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-45759-9

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Above all, this study fits the scientific definition of evolution perfectly. Evolution is not some cartoonish transformation from one mythical “kind” into another; it is a change in the genetic composition of a population over generations. That is exactly what is being observed here. A hybrid honey-bee population, drawing on inherited variation from several ancestral lineages, is showing greater resistance to Varroa destructor than standard commercial colonies. In other words, natural selection is favouring gene combinations that help bees survive a deadly parasite. That is evolution, plain and simple.

It also shows why parasites are such powerful engines of evolution. A parasite imposes relentless selection pressure: any host variant that reduces infestation, disrupts the parasite’s life cycle, or better survives infection gains an advantage and becomes more common. The result is an evolutionary arms race, with each side continually shaping the other. Creationism has no coherent explanation for why a supposedly intelligent designer would build such a system of reciprocal suffering and counter-measures, but evolutionary biology not only explains it, it predicts it.

And perhaps most awkwardly for anti-evolution arguments, this adaptation appears to have arisen not by some magical addition of “new information”, but by remixing variation already present in the population. Genes from Western European, Eastern European, Middle Eastern and African honey-bee lineages have been shuffled and selected into combinations that make these hybrid bees less vulnerable to varroa. So here, again, is a real-world example of evolution operating exactly as population genetics says it can: selection acting on existing heritable variation to produce a population better adapted to its environment. No miracle, no mystery, and no refuge at all for creationist wordplay about “kinds”.

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Creationism Refuted - 'Doggerland' Was Lush Forest - Over 6,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

2026-04-21T11:40:00.003+01:00

Southern 'Doggerland' 16,000 years ago.

AI-generated image (ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking).

Warwick Study: Ancient Forests Under North Sea Lost World

More than 16,000 years ago, long before, according to their favourite Bronze Age mythology, creationists' little god created a small flat Earth under a dome centred on the Middle East, people and animals were able to walk from continental Europe into what are now the British Isles. They did so not by walking on water, but across dry land now submerged beneath the North Sea, of which Dogger Bank is one surviving remnant. From this lost landscape, Ice Age fossils such as mammoth teeth and tusks are still regularly dredged up in trawlers' nets.

Whatever hominins left the famous footprints at Happisburgh, Norfolk, almost certainly reached Britain on foot from western Europe, as did, much later, the hominins represented at Swanscombe in Kent and Pontnewydd Cave in Denbighshire, Wales.

Now, evidence presented in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by a team led by Professor Robin G. Allaby of Warwick University's School of Life Sciences shows that southern Doggerland was not a bleak, barren wasteland but supported temperate woodland more than 16,000 years ago. The team reached this conclusion from a detailed analysis of 252 sediment samples from 41 marine cores taken along the prehistoric Southern River in southern Doggerland, where exceptionally well-preserved deposits preserve an environmental record from the Late Pleistocene into the Holocene.

For creationists, the problem is not merely the age of this drowned landscape, awkward though that is for biblical chronology. It is the existence of the evidence itself: well-preserved, datable layers laid down over vast spans of time, preserving a coherent ecological history that can be tested, checked and verified. If biblical mythology were true, those layers should not exist in anything like this form. But they do, and they tell a story utterly at odds with Genesis.

In science, evidence that contradicts a hypothesis counts against it. A theory that repeatedly fails is supposed to be revised or abandoned. Creationism works the other way round. Evidence against it is treated not as a reason to change one's mind, but as a test of faith. By that twisted logic, the more decisively reality refutes it, the more convinced its followers become that they must be right. That is not intellectual strength. It is simply a refusal to let evidence matter.

An interesting aspect to this work, and one that may upset creationists, is the fact that the team used two different, unrelated methods for dating - carbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating which converged on the same dates.

How sedimentary ancient DNA is transforming archaeology. Sedimentary ancient DNA, usually abbreviated to sedaDNA, is DNA preserved not in bones or teeth but in the sediment itself. In archaeological contexts it can come from skin cells, hair, faeces, urine, blood, decayed soft tissue, plant matter, microbes, and other biological traces left behind in a layer. That makes it especially useful because a sediment sample can preserve evidence of organisms that left no recognisable fossil or artefact behind.

The basic method is straightforward in principle, even if technically demanding. Archaeologists take carefully controlled samples from the interior of cores or freshly cleaned stratigraphic sections, avoiding exposed surfaces to reduce contamination. In specialised clean labs, DNA is extracted from the sediment, sequenced, and then identified by comparing the resulting fragments with reference databases. Researchers may use metabarcoding to get a relatively quick picture of which taxa are present, or shotgun sequencing and target capture when they want finer taxonomic resolution or particular groups such as hominins or mammals.

For archaeology, the appeal of sedaDNA is that it can answer questions that traditional methods often miss. It can help reconstruct past environments, identify plants and animals used for food, detect parasites and pathogens, track domestication and land use, and sometimes even reveal the presence of humans or other hominins where no bones survive. The technique has already shown that cave sediments can preserve hominin DNA even in the absence of skeletal remains, and studies at sites such as Denisova Cave and El Mirón Cave have recovered evidence for humans and fauna that was richer than the visible fossil record alone suggested.

Its power, however, comes with important cautions. SedaDNA is highly vulnerable to modern contamination, root intrusion, movement of DNA through sediments, and chemical inhibitors such as humic acids. Authentication therefore matters: researchers look for the characteristic short, damaged fragments expected of ancient DNA, and they interpret the results alongside stratigraphy, dating, pollen, macrofossils, artefacts, and other evidence. Used that way, sedaDNA does not replace conventional archaeology; it adds an exceptionally sensitive new line of evidence, sometimes from layers that look almost biologically silent to the naked eye.

The work of the Warwick-led team, and the significance of this discovery for understanding the landscapes and ecology of Ice Age north-west Europe, is explained in an article by Dr Elena Ramirez.

Unveiling Doggerland: The University of Warwick's Groundbreaking Discovery
The North Sea, a bustling waterway connecting the United Kingdom to continental Europe, hides a profound secret beneath its waves—a vast prehistoric landscape known as Doggerland. Recent research from the University of Warwick has revealed that this submerged realm, often called a 'lost world,' was home to thriving temperate forests more than 16,000 years ago, during the height of the last Ice Age. This finding challenges long-held assumptions about the region's ecology and opens new windows into how life persisted in harsh glacial conditions.
Led by Professor Robin G. Allaby from Warwick's School of Life Sciences, the study analyzed sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA)—genetic material preserved in seabed sediments—from 252 samples across 41 marine cores. These cores were collected along what was once the Southern River in southern Doggerland, a site chosen for its exceptionally well-preserved layers spanning from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene. The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, paint a picture of oak, elm, hazel, and even warmth-loving lime trees flourishing thousands of years earlier than pollen records from mainland Britain suggested.

This revelation not only reshapes our understanding of Ice Age Europe but also highlights the power of innovative techniques like sedaDNA analysis in higher education research. Universities like Warwick are at the forefront, combining molecular biology, geophysics, and computational modeling to unlock submerged histories inaccessible to traditional archaeology.

Doggerland: From Land Bridge to Ecological Heartland

Doggerland was no mere bridge between Britain and Europe; it was a dynamic expanse of rivers, hills, and wetlands that existed until rising sea levels submerged it around 8,000 to 7,000 years ago. Spanning roughly the size of modern-day Denmark and the Netherlands combined, this landmass featured rivers like the Southern River, whose sediments trapped a genetic time capsule of past life.

Previously, scientists envisioned Doggerland as a cold tundra during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, approximately 21,000 to 18,000 years ago), with forests only recolonizing post-glacial warming. Warwick's sedaDNA data upends this, showing temperate woodland from the Late Pleniglacial (>16,000 years ago). Lime trees (Tilia), indicators of milder climates, appeared 2,000 years ahead of British records, while the walnut relative Pterocarya — thought extinct in northwest Europe for 400,000 years—persisted here as a relic population.

These microrefugia, sheltered valleys or riverbanks, allowed species to survive glacial extremes, explaining rapid post-Ice Age forest spread — a puzzle known as Reid's Paradox. For higher education, this underscores interdisciplinary approaches: Warwick's team integrated over 178 radiocarbon and 139 optically stimulated luminescence dates to validate DNA signals, distinguishing local deposition (95-98% in fine silts) from reworked material in coarser sands.

SedaDNA: Warwick's Cutting-Edge Tool for Submerged Pasts

Sedimentary ancient DNA represents a revolution in paleoecology, extracting environmental DNA from sediment layers without relying solely on fragile pollen or macrofossils. Warwick researchers shotgun-sequenced billions of reads using Illumina technology, filtering with a triple-database strategy: broad NCBI scans, targeted references for damage patterns, and whole-genome sequencing for phylogeny.

A novel taphonomic model separated 'secure' signals from fine-grained local deposits from 'insecure' ones in coarser layers prone to reworking, such as from the Storegga tsunami ~8,150 years ago. Plant guilds—groups of co-occurring species—revealed ecological shifts: early willow woodlands gave way to open grasslands, then marine grasses like Zostera as inundation progressed.

This methodology, honed in the European Research Council-funded LOST FRONTIERS project, exemplifies how UK universities drive methodological innovation. LOST FRONTIERS, led by collaborators at the University of Bradford, used archaeo-geophysics and simulations to map Doggerland, but Warwick's molecular expertise provided the ecological depth.

Secure vs. Insecure Signals: Fine silts: 95-98% local DNA; Coarse gravels: 60-70% influxed/reworked.
Biodiversity Peak: ~11,000 years ago, declining post-9,000 years ago.
Faunal DNA: Boars in Pleniglacial, bears and terrapins in Allerød interstadial.
Temperate Trees Defying the Ice: Species and Timeline

The study's star findings are the tree taxa. Oak (Quercus), elm (Ulmus), and hazel (Corylus) DNA dates to over 16,000 years ago, predating expected recolonization by millennia. Lime (Tilia cordata) signals warmer pockets, emerging ~14,000 years ago—earlier than Britain's ~12,000-year record.

Pterocarya stenoptera, a southern European relic, was confirmed via phylogenetic analysis, suggesting Doggerland as a northern stronghold. Guild analysis showed 445 taxa clustered into 56 ecological groups, tracking shifts from forested riverbanks to marshes.

Timeline:

Period Key Features

Late Pleniglacial (>16 ka) Temperate trees (oak, elm, hazel); boar DNA

Allerød (~14-12.7 ka) Lime, bears, terrapins

Younger Dryas (~12.9-11.7 ka) Grassland dominance, no cold-steppe species

Early Holocene (~11-8 ka) Biodiversity peak, Storegga tsunami survival

Mid-Holocene (~8-6 ka) Final inundation, marine transition

This chronology aligns with OSL/radiocarbon dates, validating sedaDNA's power.

Resolving Reid's Paradox: Glacial Refugia in Action

Reid's Paradox questions how trees recolonized northern Europe faster than seed dispersal models predict post-LGM. Doggerland's microrefugia—sheltered river valleys—harbored survivors, seeding rapid spread as ice retreated. Pterocarya's persistence exemplifies relict populations in unglaciated lowlands.

For academia, this validates sedaDNA over pollen, which favors wind-pollinated trees and misses local signals. Warwick's taphonomic model sets a standard for submerged site studies worldwide.

Wildlife and Human Prospects: A Habitable Haven?

Beyond plants, sedaDNA detected boars (Pleniglacial), aurochs, deer, bears (Allerød), suggesting food-rich ecosystems. No direct human DNA, but habitable forests predate Maglemosian culture (~10,300 ya), implying earlier Mesolithic precursors.

Doggerland likely hosted hunter-gatherers, explaining sparse British evidence—flooding erased coastal sites. Fishing trawler finds (tools, bones) support this; future dives could yield more.

Warwick and LOST FRONTIERS: Pioneering Submerged Archaeology

The LOST FRONTIERS project (2016-2022, ERC Horizon 2020) mapped Doggerland via geophysics, simulations, and now sedaDNA. Warwick contributed genomics, Bradford led overall. This collaboration exemplifies UK higher ed's strength in interdisciplinary research.

This is the best evidence Doggerland's wooded environment supported early Mesolithic communities.

Professor Robin G. Allaby, lead author.
Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine
School of Life Sciences
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK.

Doggerland was a heartland of early human settlement, a refuge for plants and animals.

Professor Vincent Gaffney, co-author.
School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences
University of Bradford
Bradford, UK.

Paleoclimate Insights and Modern Parallels

Doggerland's refugia inform climate resilience: species survived LGM via local shelters, mirroring today's biodiversity hotspots. As seas rise, studying submerged pasts aids coastal management. Warwick's press release details modeling.

Publication:
R.G. Allaby, R. Ware, R. Cribdon, T.A. Hansford, T. Kinnaird, D. Hamilton, L. Kistler, P. Murgatroyd, R. Bates, S. Fitch, & V. Gaffney
Early colonization before inundation consistent with northern glacial refugia in Southern Doggerland revealed by sedimentary ancient DNA Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (11) e2508402123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2508402123 (2026).

Period	Key Features
Late Pleniglacial (>16 ka)	Temperate trees (oak, elm, hazel); boar DNA
Allerød (~14-12.7 ka)	Lime, bears, terrapins
Younger Dryas (~12.9-11.7 ka)	Grassland dominance, no cold-steppe species
Early Holocene (~11-8 ka)	Biodiversity peak, Storegga tsunami survival
Mid-Holocene (~8-6 ka)	Final inundation, marine transition

Significance
The Doggerland landmass connected North-Western Europe during the Late Pleistocene (approximately 129 to 11.7 ka) and Early Holocene (approximately 11.7 to 8.2 ka) and was likely a key area for Mesolithic peoples. In this study, we show the early presence of temperate species including a species thought extinct, indicating a likely close proximity of refugia with important resource implications for Mesolithic peoples. We also show that ecological turnover combined with sediment turnover can be used to understand the taphonomic processes leading to sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) deposition and reworking. Using this approach, we show that in alluvial systems fine sediments are associated with secure deposits, but more sandy deposits are at greater risk of giving mixed ecological profiles through reworked sedaDNA.

Abstract
Prior to the formation of the present-day North Sea during the mid-Holocene, North-Western Europe was connected through the Doggerland landmass. While it has been known for the past century that Doggerland was forested, it has not been clear when the onset of forestation occurred or whether the environment was more habitable for humans than surrounding European areas. In this study, we reconstruct the paleoecology of a river system, the Southern River, from the late Late Pleistocene to the late Holocene using sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) from 252 sediment samples from 41 cores spanning the length of the river system and headwater area. We identify secure and insecure sedaDNA signals by integrating sedimentological and sedaDNA data into a taphonomic model. Secure sedaDNA signals are found in silty and fine sand deposits where 95 to 98% originates from local deposition, but coarse sands and gravels are insecure with 60 to 70% of the sedaDNA associated with mixed ecosystem signals from reworked and influxed sediments. Secure sediments reveal the presence of several temperate tree genera such as Quercus, Ulmus, and Corylus over 16,000 y ago in the Late Pleniglacial, and thermal indicator genus Tilia several thousand years earlier than has been recorded for surrounding European areas. In this area, we also detect an anomalous signal of the genus Pterocarya, considered extinct in the region since the Hoxnian Stage (~400 ka). These observations are consistent with colonization from nearby northern glacial refugia, suggesting a favorable environment in which the cultural Mesolithic could develop.

Holocene Doggerland coastline reconstructions in relation to the Southern River. Coastline reconstruction at A. 10000 cal BP, B. 9000 cal BP, C. 8200 cal BP and D. 7000 cal BP. Southern River shown in red. Maximum ice advances shown for 18.4-17.3 ka (dotted line in pink) and 25.8-24.6 ka (dotted line in blue) (14). Figure adapted from Walker et al. 2020 (10).

R.G. Allaby, R. Ware, R. Cribdon, T.A. Hansford, T. Kinnaird, D. Hamilton, L. Kistler, P. Murgatroyd, R. Bates, S. Fitch, & V. Gaffney
Early colonization before inundation consistent with northern glacial refugia in Southern Doggerland revealed by sedimentary ancient DNA Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (11) e2508402123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2508402123 (2026).

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by National Academy of Science of the USA. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

What this discovery adds to the already overwhelming case against creationism is not merely one more awkward date, but an entire vanished world that fits seamlessly into the scientific account of Earth's history and not at all into biblical mythology. A temperate woodland thriving in Doggerland more than 16,000 years ago, complete with layered sediments, preserved DNA, and a recoverable ecological history, is not something that can be squeezed into a worldview that insists the world itself is only a few thousand years old. The evidence is there because the events really happened, over the timescales science describes.

And that is the recurring problem for creationism. It depends on dismissing not just one line of evidence, but geology, archaeology, palaeontology, genetics, and now sedimentary ancient DNA as well. Each discipline, working independently, converges on the same conclusion: the Earth is ancient, landscapes have changed over immense spans of time, and human beings are recent arrivals in a story that began long before the authors of Genesis imagined the universe into existence.

Doggerland is therefore much more than a drowned land bridge beneath the North Sea. It is another chapter in the real history of our planet, recovered from evidence that can be tested, checked, and rechecked. And, as so often happens, that real history turns out to be far richer, far older, and far more interesting than the simplistic myths creationists are committed to defending.

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Creationism Refuted - More Evidence For Creationists To Prove Their Faith is Strong With - By Ignoring It.

2026-04-19T21:12:00.006+01:00

Artistic rendition of Ptychotherates bucculentus.

Illustration by Megan Sodano for Virginia Tech.

Student identifies new meat-eating dinosaur three times older than T. rex | Virginia Tech News | Virginia Tech Another fossil; another piece of awkward evidence for creationists to ignore. This time, it is reported in the journal Papers in Palaeontology.

The fossil is of an ancestral dinosaur from the Late Triassic, about three times older than Tyrannosaurus rex, dating from an era when dinosaurs had not yet risen to dominance and were still competing with the ancestors of crocodiles and mammals. It was the mass extinction at the end of the Triassic that cleared the way for the dinosaurs, just as their own extinction at the end of the Cretaceous later cleared the way for mammals and birds.

For creationists, the fact that all this unfolded over a vast span of time long before the supposed creation of the small, flat world of Biblical mythology is simply one more test of how much evidence they are prepared to ignore. Unlike science, which stands or falls by the evidence, creationism seems to draw strength from defying it. The greater the weight of evidence against it, the more loudly its followers proclaim their faith to be unshaken. So while creationists on social media endlessly demand that science prove its case to an impossible standard, and try to pass misinformation or ignorance off as “proof” of creationism, they routinely dismiss real evidence and treat stubborn refusal to change their minds as a kind of victory. In creationist circles, winning a debate too often seems to mean not changing one’s mind, even when the facts leave no honest alternative.

This latest inconvenience for creationism comes from Virginia Tech, where student Simba Srivastava succeeded in reconstructing fragments of a dinosaur skull embedded in rock from New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch. The fossil had originally been unearthed in 1982, but was later rediscovered in a drawer at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History by palaeontologist Sterling Nesbitt. Back at Virginia Tech, Srivastava used computed tomography scan data to create a 3D print of the skull, revealing that it belonged to a previously unknown species of early dinosaur.

Background^ the end-Triassic mass extinction.

Pangea in the Late Triassic.

© Kunio Kaiho; et al. (2022)

The end-Triassic mass extinction took place about 201.36 million years ago, at the boundary between the Triassic and Jurassic periods. It is generally counted as one of the “Big Five” mass extinctions in the history of complex life and marks one of the great turning points in Earth’s biological history. [1]

The leading explanation is not an asteroid impact, but massive volcanism associated with the **Central Atlantic Magmatic Province** (CAMP), which erupted as the supercontinent Pangaea began to break apart. These eruptions released huge quantities of carbon dioxide and other gases, disrupting the carbon cycle, driving rapid global warming, and triggering severe environmental stress on land and in the oceans. Recent research has also added direct evidence for significant ocean acidification during this crisis. [2]

Marine ecosystems were hit especially hard. Many ammonoids declined sharply, conodonts disappeared altogether, reef systems suffered badly, and large numbers of marine invertebrates were lost. On land, the extinction reshaped ecosystems by removing many of the reptile groups that had been competing with early dinosaurs, especially among the crocodile-line archosaurs. That ecological upheaval helped set the stage for dinosaurs to become dominant in the Jurassic. [3]

Strictly speaking, the end-Triassic extinction did not kill the individual animal from Ghost Ranch, because that fossil predates the event. What it may have done, however, is wipe out its lineage. The new Virginia Tech discovery is important because it suggests that the extinction did not simply eliminate the dinosaurs’ competitors; it may also have finished off some of the oldest dinosaur branches themselves. [4]

The discovery and its significance are explained in a news item from Virginia Tech by Kelly Izlar:

Student identifies new meat-eating dinosaur three times older than T. rex
A fossil skull provides new clues about how dinosaurs ascended to their full Jurassic power.

You want to stick your finger in a dinosaur brain?

Simba Srivastava, co-first author. Department of Geosciences
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.

Surrounded by cabinets full of ancient bones in the paleobiology lab, the Virginia Tech undergraduate student held out a lumpy, pockmarked fossil.

This is a uniquely sucky specimen. It's so bad. Like, if you saw a human skull in this way, you'd throw up.

Simba Srivastava.

Nevertheless, the senior geosciences major spent two years unscrambling the ancient creature and determining its place in the story of evolution. His findings, which were published April 15 in Papers in Palaeontology, shed light on how dinosaurs dominated the Jurassic period.

This is the type of work a long-tenured curator or a late-stage professor would do, but geobiologists Sterling Nesbitt and Michelle Stocker tapped Srivastava when he was a first-year student.

We want undergraduate researchers to experience the whole paleontological research process at Virginia Tech. Simba grabbed the project by the reins.

Sterling Nesbitt, co-first author.
Department of Geosciences
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.

Artistic rendition of Ptychotherates bucculentus.

Illustration by Megan Sodano for Virginia Tech.

Dino domination

The mangled skull was uncovered twice: In 1982, a crew from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History unearthed it from New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch. Thirty-some years later, Nesbitt dug it out of a drawer and eventually brought it back to Blacksburg. Using computed tomography scanning data, Srivastava isolated the specimen digitally and 3D printed a reconstruction.

The skull belonged to a species of meat-eating dinosaur that’s more than three times as old as Tyrannosaurus Rex.

These creatures lived at the end of the Triassic period, which is about 252 million to 201 million years ago. Back then, dinosaurs weren’t the all-powerful apex predators portrayed by Hollywood. They were vying for resources against the forerunners of crocodiles and mammals.

But that all changed drastically when an extinction seemingly wiped out most of the competition. With that, the Triassic ended, and dinosaurs came into their power.

Dinosaurs go from being co-stars to the headliner.

Simba Srivastava.

Clues about how dinosaurs evolved and spread in the succeeding Jurassic period lie buried in the rocks, but well-preserved fossils from the end of the Triassic are rare.

In fact, Srivastava’s squished specimen is the only one of its kind anyone has found so far.

The skull shows that the species had massive cheekbones, a wide braincase, and probably a short, deep snout. It was the first time these characteristics had been seen in early dinosaurs, indicating that they were constantly evolving, according to the study.

Murder muppet’s last stand

The name Srivastava picked for the new species reflects its bizarre proportions and unfortunate condition.

We landed on Ptychotherates bucculentus, which means ‘folded hunter with full cheeks’ in Latin. One paleo-artist said that it looked like a murder muppet.

Simba Srivastava.

After two years of deep research, the Virginia Tech team was able to determine that the skull belonged to one of the last surviving members of one of the earliest-evolving families of carnivorous dinosaurs called Herrerasauria.

Thanks to this fossil, the group made another, somewhat surprising discovery.

Ptychotherates was found in rocks that may date to right before the great extinction at the end of the Triassic period — and no other members of their family was ever seen again, possibly suggesting that this dinosaur group went extinct as a result of that mass extinction.

This forces us to reconsider the impact of the end-Triassic extinction as something that wiped out not just the competitors to dinosaurs, but some long-standing dinosaur lineages themselves.

Simba Srivastava.

12(2 And finally, because no herrerasaurians have been found anywhere else this late in the Triassic, the area that is today the American Southwest may have been where they survived the longest and made their last stand.

Srivastava’s folded hunter is their only spokesperson.

This specimen, it fits in my hands, but it is the only proof that any of these dinosaurs lived this long, lived in these latitudes, the only proof that they evolved to have this skull shape. All these billions of individuals that existed through time are spoken for by this one specimen.

Simba Srivastava.

Publication:
Simba Srivastava, Sterling J. Nesbitt
A new taxon of saurischian dinosaur from the Coelophysis Quarry of New Mexico, USA (Triassic: latest Norian or Rhaetian) highlights herrerasaurian diversity in the latest Triassic
Papers in Palaeontology, 12(2). e70069: DOI: 10.1002/spp2.70069

Abstract
The most complete record of the earliest dinosaur lineages is from the Carnian from the higher latitudes of Pangea (e.g. present-day Brazil, Argentina), but dinosaurian assemblages from the upper stages of the Upper Triassic are better known from the low latitudes of Pangea (present day southwestern USA). How early carnivorous dinosaurian diversity matches or mismatches at various latitudes remains to be documented because of uncertainty around the spatio-temporal ranges and phylogenetic relationships of early dinosaur lineages. We examine low-latitude diversity patterns through the lens of the saurischian dinosaur Tawa hallae and close relatives, including a new species, Ptychotherates bucculentus gen. et sp. nov. The new taxon is known from an incomplete but well-preserved skull (CM 31368) from the uppermost Triassic Coelophysis Quarry in northern New Mexico. The new taxon clearly shares synapomorphies with Tawa hallae, such as distinctive fossae on the quadrate and otoccipital and a dorsoventrally tall and laterally flat jugal. However, the new taxon is distinguishable from all other coeval ornithodirans by a combination of many character states, including the proportionally dorsoventrally deepest jugal known for any Triassic-aged dinosaur. Higher-palaeolatitude ecosystems across Pangea show a complete turnover of carnivorous dinosaurs by neotheropods in the Norian and Rhaetian, but the ‘Chindesaurus–Tawa’ clade (Morphoraptora clade nov.) coexisted with neotheropods possibly until the End-Triassic Extinction Event. This suggests a low-latitude ‘museum’ where early-diverging lineages survived much longer than at higher latitudes, and that the End-Triassic Extinction Event affected dinosaur diversity more than previously hypothesized.

Fig. 1

The holotype skull of Ptychotherates bucculentus (CM 31368). A–B, photograph (A) and interpretative line drawing (B) of dorsal view of skull roof. C–D, photograph (C) and interpretative line drawing (D) of right lateral view of right dentary and maxilla. Abbreviations: l., left; r., right; ar, articular; bo, basioccipital; d, dentary; f, frontal; j, jugal; ls, laterosphenoid; m, maxilla; n, nasal; oo, otoccipital; pa, parietal; pf, prefrontal; po, postorbital; pt, pterygoid; par, prearticular; qu, quadrate; qj, quadratojugal; sa, surangular; so, supraoccipital; sq, squamosal; ?pal, possible palatal elements. Arrow indicates anterior direction relative to the braincase. Stripes indicate broken surfaces, dashed lines show hypothesized element contacts, and light grey represents matrix. Scale bar represents 2 cm.

Fig. 2

The holotype skull of Ptychotherates bucculentus (CM 31368) in left lateral view relative to the left jugal and surangular: A, photograph; B, interpretive line drawing. Abbreviations: l., left; r., right; ar, articular; d, dentary; emf, external mandibular fenestra; f, frontal; itf, infratemporal fenestra; j, jugal; m, maxilla; n, nasal; pf, prefrontal; po, postorbital; pt, pterygoid; qj, quadratojugal; sa, surangular; sq, squamosal; ?pal, possible palatal elements. Arrow indicates anterior direction relative to the braincase. Stripes indicate broken surfaces and light grey represents matrix. Scale bar represents 2 cm.

Fig. 3

The posterior portion of the skull Ptychotherates bucculentus (CM 31368) in posterior view. Abbreviations: ar, articular bo, basioccipital; bt, basituber; f, frontal; fm, foramen magnum; fno, fenestra ovalis; pa, parietal; par, paroccipital process of the otoccipital; mf, metotic foramen; n, nasal; pbs, parabasisphenoid; pf, prefrontal; po, postorbital; ptf, posttemporal fenestra; qj, quadratojugal; qu, quadrate; rap, retroarticular process; so, supraoccipital; sq, squamosal; st, stapes. Crossed circle indicates posterior direction out of page. Scale bar represents 1 cm.

Simba Srivastava, Sterling J. Nesbitt
A new taxon of saurischian dinosaur from the Coelophysis Quarry of New Mexico, USA (Triassic: latest Norian or Rhaetian) highlights herrerasaurian diversity in the latest Triassic
Papers in Palaeontology, 12(2). e70069: DOI: 10.1002/spp2.70069

Copyright: © 20206 The authors.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

What this fossil shows, yet again, is that the history of life is not a neat sequence of separately created “kinds”, but a branching, contingent, and often untidy evolutionary story unfolding over immense spans of time. *Ptychotherates bucculentus* comes from a world long before the age of *Tyrannosaurus rex*, from a phase in dinosaur evolution when their future dominance was by no means guaranteed. It lived in an ecosystem in which early dinosaurs were still only one part of a wider community, and its discovery helps illuminate a stage in their history that was previously obscure.

It also underlines the importance of deep time in explaining the living world. The end-Triassic mass extinction was not some minor local event but a global ecological upheaval that reshaped life on Earth, removing entire lineages and opening ecological opportunities for others. Without that extinction, the subsequent rise of the dinosaurs might have looked very different; without the later end-Cretaceous extinction, mammals and birds would not have inherited the world in the way they did. Evolution works not to a preconceived plan but through descent with modification, constrained by history and repeatedly redirected by changing environments and extinction events.

That, of course, is precisely what makes discoveries like this so awkward for creationism. The fossil record does not reveal a sudden appearance of fixed, separately created forms in a young world. It reveals succession, transition, diversification, extinction, and replacement across millions of years. Each new fossil from the Triassic adds another detail to that picture, and every such detail fits the scientific account of life’s history far better than it fits the simplistic mythology of special creation.

So, another fossil, another fragment of the deep past recovered from stone, and another reminder that reality is under no obligation to conform to Bronze Age stories. Science advances by following the evidence wherever it leads, even when that means revising earlier ideas. Creationism, by contrast, survives only by ignoring that evidence. Fossils such as Ptychotherates bucculentus are valuable not merely because they fill gaps in our knowledge, but because they show, once again, that the real history of life on Earth is vastly older, richer, and more complex than creationist dogma can ever allow.

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Refuting Creationism - Another Gap Shrinks And It's More Bad News For Creationists

2026-04-18T23:26:00.002+01:00

Helicolocellus cantori in an Ediacaran sea

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

Scientists have narrowed another gap in the fossil record and, as usual, no gods were found. The gap concerned the long interval between the time molecular-clock analyses suggest sponges first evolved in the Neoproterozoic, perhaps around 700 million years ago, and the earliest widely accepted sponge fossils from the early Cambrian. That gap has now been pushed back into the Late Ediacaran by Virginia Tech geobiologist a paper in Nature.

Creationists normally delight in gaps in the fossil record because they think Darwin somehow “admitted” that missing links were fatal to his theory. In reality, Darwin was doing what honest scientists do: openly acknowledging the limitations of the evidence available in 1859. The key point is that he was writing about the state of knowledge then, not in 2026. Since Darwin’s day, the Theory of Evolution has not only provided a framework for understanding the history of life; it has also told scientists what sort of evidence to look for and where to look for it. As a result, palaeontologists now have access to vastly more fossils than Darwin could ever have imagined, together with genetic evidence and radiometric dating methods that did not exist in his lifetime. More fossils are being found almost daily and invariably confirm the Theory of Evolution.

And those gaps continue to shrink, almost always to the discomfort of creationists, because they so often concern events hundreds of millions, even billions, of years before the narrow timescale allowed by biblical literalism. This fossil is especially awkward for them because it further undermines the familiar creationist misrepresentation of the Cambrian “Explosion” as a sudden, magical appearance of multiple body plans with no ancestry. Instead, this Late Ediacaran sponge adds to the growing evidence that the Cambrian diversification was preceded by a long evolutionary prelude, in which animals were already emerging and diversifying before the Cambrian began. Far from an abrupt act of creation, the picture is one of gradual evolutionary change over immense spans of time, as the largely sessile Ediacaran world gave way to the more active and ecologically complex Cambrian one.

The Evolution of Sponges.

Sponges (Porifera) are among the earliest-diverging animal lineages. They are simple, sessile filter-feeders with bodies built around pores, canals and choanocyte (“collar”) cells that pump water through the body. They have no nervous system, no gut and no true organs. [1.1]
They are simple, but not “primitive failures”. Their body plan is highly effective for suspension feeding and has remained successful for hundreds of millions of years in marine and freshwater habitats worldwide. [1.1]
Sponges are important because they illuminate the origin of animals. Genetic studies show that many of the molecular systems later used in more complex animals for cell adhesion, signalling and development were already present very early in animal evolution. [2.1]
For years there was a mismatch between genes and fossils. Molecular-clock studies and related evidence suggested sponges evolved well before the Cambrian, but convincing sponge fossils were mostly known from about 540 million years ago, leaving a long gap in the record. [3.1]
The likely reason is that the earliest sponges were soft-bodied. Without hard mineralised spicules or rigid skeletons, early sponges would have been much less likely to fossilise, so their early history was largely hidden. [4.1]
Recent work is narrowing that gap. The Late Ediacaran fossil Helicolocellus cantori, from about 551–539 million years ago, appears to be a crown-group sponge and suggests that early sponges existed before the Cambrian even if they lacked the hard skeletons seen in many later forms. [1.13
The broader picture is now much clearer. Sponges did not suddenly appear in the Cambrian; they were part of a longer pre-Cambrian evolutionary history, showing that the Cambrian diversification had deep roots rather than being a sudden, unexplained event. [4.1]

The discovery and its significance are explained in a Virginia Tech news item by Kelly Izlar.

Virginia Tech researcher's team discovers 'missing' sea sponges
The discovery, published in the journal Nature, opens a new window on early animal evolution.
At first glance, the simple sea sponge is no creature of mystery.

No brain. No gut. No problem dating it back 700 million years. Yet convincing sponge fossils only go back about 540 million years, leaving a 160 million-year gap in the fossil record.

In a paper released June 5 in the journal Nature, Virginia Tech geobiologist Shuhai Xiao and collaborators reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge from the “lost years” and proposed that the earliest sea sponges had not yet developed mineral skeletons, offering new parameters to the search for the missing fossils.

The mystery of the missing sea sponges centered on a paradox.

Molecular clock estimates, which involve measuring the number of genetic mutations that accumulate over time, indicate that sponges must have evolved about 700 million years ago. And yet there had been no convincing sponge fossils found in rocks that old.

For years, this conundrum was the subject of debate among zoologists and paleontologists.

This latest discovery fills in the evolutionary family tree of one of the earliest animals, explaining its apparent absence in older rocks and connecting the dots back to Darwin’s questions about when it evolved.

Xiao, who recently was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, first laid eyes on the fossil five years ago, when a collaborator texted him a picture of a specimen excavated along the Yangtze River in China.

I had never seen anything like it before. Almost immediately, I realized that it was something new.

Shuhai Xiao, co-corresponding author.
Department of Geosciences and Global Change Centre
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA, USA.

Xiao and collaborators from the University of Cambridge and the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology began ruling out possibilities one by one: not a sea squirt, not a sea anemone, not a coral. They wondered, could it be an elusive ancient sea sponge?

In an earlier study published in 2019, Xiao and his team suggested that early sponges left no fossils because they had not evolved the ability to generate the hard needle-like structures, known as spicules, that characterize sea sponges today.

Xiao’s team members traced sponge evolution through the fossil record. As they went further back in time, sponge spicules were increasingly more organic in composition and less mineralized.

If you extrapolate back, then perhaps the first ones were soft-bodied creatures with entirely organic skeletons and no minerals at all. If this was true, they wouldn’t survive fossilization except under very special circumstances where rapid fossilization outcompeted degradation.

Shuhai Xiao.

Later in 2019, Xiao’s international research group found a sponge fossil preserved in just such a circumstance: a thin bed of marine carbonate rocks known to preserve abundant soft-bodied animals, including some of the earliest mobile animals.

Most often, this type of fossil would be lost to the fossil record. The new finding offers a window into early animals before they developed hard parts..

Shuhai Xiao.

The surface of the new sponge fossil is studded with an intricate array of regular boxes, each divided into smaller, identical boxes.

This specific pattern suggests our fossilized sea sponge is most closely related to a certain species of glass sponge.

Dr. Xiaopeng Wang, first-author
State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Nanjing, China.

Another unexpected aspect of the new sponge fossil is its size.

When searching for fossils of early sponges I had expected them to be very small. The new fossil is about 15 inches long with a relatively complex, conical body plan, which challenged many of our expectations for the appearance of early sponges.

Alexander G. Liu, co-author
Department of Earth Sciences
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK.

While the fossil fills in some of the missing years, it also provides researchers with important guidance about how to search for these fossils — which will hopefully extend understanding of early animal evolution further back in time.

The discovery indicates that perhaps the first sponges were spongey but not glassy. We now know that we need to broaden our view when looking for early sponges.

Shuhai Xiao.

Publication:
Wang, X., Liu, A.G., Chen, Z. et al.
A late-Ediacaran crown-group sponge animal.
Nature 630, 905–911 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07520-y

Abstract
Sponges are the most basal metazoan phylum¹ and may have played important roles in modulating the redox architecture of Neoproterozoic oceans². Although molecular clocks predict that sponges diverged in the Neoproterozoic era^3,4, their fossils have not been unequivocally demonstrated before the Cambrian period^5,6,7,8, possibly because Precambrian sponges were aspiculate and non-biomineralized⁹. Here we describe a late-Ediacaran fossil, Helicolocellus cantori gen. et sp. nov., from the Dengying Formation (around 551–539 million years ago) of South China. This fossil is reconstructed as a large, stemmed benthic organism with a goblet-shaped body more than 0.4 m in height, with a body wall consisting of at least three orders of nested grids defined by quadrate fields, resembling a Cantor dust fractal pattern. The resulting lattice is interpreted as an organic skeleton comprising orthogonally arranged cruciform elements, architecturally similar to some hexactinellid sponges, although the latter are built with biomineralized spicules. A Bayesian phylogenetic analysis resolves H. cantori as a crown-group sponge related to the Hexactinellida. H. cantori confirms that sponges diverged and existed in the Precambrian as non-biomineralizing animals with an organic skeleton. Considering that siliceous biomineralization may have evolved independently among sponge classes^10,11,12,13, we question the validity of biomineralized spicules as a necessary criterion for the identification of Precambrian sponge fossils.

Wang, X., Liu, A.G., Chen, Z. et al.
A late-Ediacaran crown-group sponge animal.
Nature 630, 905–911 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07520-y

© 2024 Springer Nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

What finds like this do, yet again, is expose the intellectual bankruptcy of creationism’s dependence on gaps in the evidence. Every time one of those gaps is narrowed or closed, the creationist position is not strengthened but weakened, because its case so often rests not on positive evidence but on the hope that science has not yet found something. That is a fragile strategy when science is a cumulative, self-correcting process that keeps adding new data, refining old ideas, and bringing ever more of life’s history into focus.

This Late Ediacaran sponge is especially damaging to the familiar creationist caricature of the Cambrian “Explosion” as a moment of sudden, inexplicable creation. What the evidence increasingly shows instead is a long prelude: lineages already existed, body plans were already beginning to emerge, and the Cambrian diversification was built on foundations laid millions of years earlier. In other words, the “explosion” was not magic; it was evolution working over deep time.

And deep time is, of course, the real problem here for biblical literalism. Fossils such as these come from a world more than half a billion years old, embedded in geological contexts that cannot be compressed into a 6,000–10,000-year timetable without discarding virtually everything modern geology, palaeontology, physics and geochemistry have discovered. The more we learn about the Ediacaran and Cambrian worlds, the clearer it becomes that Earth’s history is unimaginably older, richer and more complex than the authors of Bronze Age mythology could ever have known.

So, once again, the verdict of the rocks is unequivocal. Life did not appear all at once in its modern forms; it has a deep history, marked by gradual change, branching descent, extinction and innovation across immense spans of time. Each new fossil discovery adds another piece to that picture, and each new piece makes the creationist story look less like an alternative explanation and more like what it has always been: a pre-scientific myth unable to survive contact with the evidence.

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Malevolent Design - Science is Close To Combatting Another Of Creationism's Divine Malevolence's Nasties

2026-04-18T01:19:00.000+01:00

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Scientists develop first-of-its-kind antibody to block Epstein-Barr virus - Fred Hutch

A recent paper in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports Medicine by researchers at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle reports the development of monoclonal antibodies against Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a pathogen carried by an estimated 95% of the global human population. The mere existence of such a virus, together with the fact that human scientists have now produced what looks like a promising way of blocking it, should be acutely embarrassing to any creationist prepared to follow the evidence where it leads.

For devotees of creationism’s putative intelligent designer, EBV is an awkward example of its supposed handiwork. It is superbly adapted for what it does: infecting human cells, evading immune defences, and contributing to a range of diseases, including several cancers. If one were looking for something that appears exquisitely “designed” to do harm, EBV would be a strong candidate.

It is especially effective at finding and entering its target cells. The viral glycoprotein gp350 helps it bind to receptors on human cells, while gp42 helps it fuse with and enter them. In other words, it possesses precisely the sort of functional complexity that Intelligent Design advocates such as William Dembski and Michael Behe habitually point to as evidence of design. By their own argument, a system so finely tuned to perform a specific task should count as “specified complexity” or even “irreducible complexity”. The problem, of course, is that the task in question is the infection of human beings by a cancer-associated virus.

Creationists who lean on these arguments are therefore trapped by them. If complexity and functional integration are proof of a designer, then they must also account for the obvious implication: a designer responsible for EBV would have to be, at best, indifferent to human suffering and, at worst, positively malevolent. To escape that conclusion, they usually have to abandon Intelligent Design’s own logic and retreat instead to the theological fallback of “The Fall” and “sin” from the Abrahamic creation myths. In doing so, they quietly concede that their alleged scientific proof of design proves far more than they want it to.

This paper adds a further layer of discomfort. Human scientists have begun to do what any competent and benevolent designer should have done in the first place: devise antibodies capable of blocking the virus from infecting human cells. The study reports monoclonal antibodies against gp350 and gp42, with one anti-gp42 antibody preventing infection in mice with human immune systems. So the obvious question for intellectually honest creationists is this: if human science can engineer a way to interfere with such a pathogen, why was an all-powerful designer unable, or unwilling, to equip us with protection from the outset?

Predictably, most will not confront that question. They will retreat into the familiar refuge of mystery: “we cannot know the mind of God”. But that is precisely where religion and science part company. Science does not declare a problem solved by calling it unknowable. It treats mysteries as challenges to be investigated, understood and, where possible, overcome. That is exactly what these researchers have done with EBV.

What is Epstein–Barr virus (EBV)?

EBV is an extremely common human virus — also known as human herpesvirus 4. Most people are infected at some point in their lives, often in childhood, and after the initial infection the virus remains latent in the body and can later reactivate. It spreads mainly through saliva. [1]
Many infections cause few or no symptoms, but when primary infection occurs in teenagers or young adults, EBV commonly causes infectious mononucleosis — in the UK usually called glandular fever — with fatigue, fever, sore throat, and swollen lymph nodes. [1]
EBV is more than just a cause of glandular fever. It can also cause complications affecting the liver and spleen, and in some cases the brain, spinal cord and nerves, particularly in people with weakened immune systems. [2]
It is strongly implicated in several cancers. EBV was the first virus shown to be linked to a human cancer, and it is now associated with Burkitt lymphoma, some Hodgkin lymphomas, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, some gastric cancers, and post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorders. [3]
EBV is also implicated in autoimmune disease, although the strength of evidence varies. The clearest current evidence is for EBV as a major trigger of multiple sclerosis. It has also been linked to diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus, but those links are still being worked out in more detail. [4]
Why EBV matters medically: because it infects so many people, persists for life, and is linked not only to an acute illness but also to cancer, immune dysfunction, and serious disease in immunocompromised patients. That is why vaccines, antivirals and antibody-based therapies against it are of such interest. [1]

An account of the scientists’ work is given in a news release from the Fred Hutch Cancer Center:

Scientists develop first-of-its-kind antibody to block Epstein-Barr virus
SEATTLE – February 17, 2026 – Fred Hutch Cancer Center scientists reached a crucial milestone in blocking Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a pathogen estimated to infect 95% of the global population that is linked to multiple types of cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and other chronic health conditions.
Using mice with human antibody genes, the research team developed new genetically human monoclonal antibodies that prevent two key antigens on the surface of the virus from binding to and entering human immune cells. Published in Cell Reports Medicine, the study highlights one of the newly identified monoclonal antibodies that successfully blocked infection in mice with human immune systems when they were challenged with EBV.

Finding human antibodies that block Epstein-Barr virus from infecting our immune cells has been particularly challenging because, unlike other viruses, EBV finds a way to bind to nearly every one of our B cells. We decided to use new technologies to try to fill this knowledge gap and we ended up taking a critical step toward blocking one of the world’s most common viruses.

Dr. Andrew T. McGuire, PhD, corresponding author
Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Seattle, WA, USA.

A new scientific approach yields answers to a puzzling challenge

A key challenge in the study was to pursue human monoclonal antibodies that could successfully halt EBV infection without triggering an anti-drug response to the antibodies themselves, a common response among patients treated with antibodies raised in other animals. The researchers targeted two antigens, gp350, which helps EBV bind to cell receptors, and gp42, which allows EBV to enter and infect human cells through a process called fusion. Using an innovative mouse model carrying human antibody genes, the effort yielded two monoclonal antibodies against gp350 and eight against gp42.

Not only did we identify important antibodies against Epstein-Barr virus, but we also validated an innovative a new approach for discovering protective antibodies against other pathogens. As an early-career scientist, it was an exciting finding and has helped me appreciate how science often leads to unexpected discoveries.

Crystal B. Chhan, first author
Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Seattle, WA, USA.

With help from Fred Hutch’s Antibody Tech Core, further analysis found sites of vulnerability that could be useful in future vaccine development. In the final step of the study, the research team discovered that one of the monoclonal antibodies against gp42 successfully prevented infection of EBV. Another monoclonal antibody against gp350 provided partial protection.

Hope for patients at the highest risk of Epstein-Barr virus

More than 128,000 people in the U.S. undergo solid organ and bone marrow transplant annually. However, there are no specific therapies to prevent EBV from infecting or reactivating in patients undergoing immunosuppression for transplant procedures. Post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorders (PTLD) are an aggressive and sometimes life-threatening lymphoma that can develop after immune suppression and is most often caused by unchecked EBV infection.

Post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorders (PTLD), most of which are EBV-associated lymphomas, are a frequent cause of morbidity and mortality after organ transplantation. Preventing EBV viremia has strong potential to reduce the incidence of PTLD and limit the need to reduce immunosuppression, thereby helping preserve graft function while improving overall patient outcomes. Effective prevention of EBV viremia remains a significant unmet need in transplant medicine.

Associate Professor Rachel Bender Ignacio, MD, MPH
Immunology and Vaccine Development Program
Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Seattle, WA, USA.

Transplant recipients may experience infection if their donor was exposed to EBV and passed on latent virus through the donor cells, or for transplant patients who already have had EBV infection, immunosuppression may cause latent virus in their bodies to replicate unchecked. Children undergoing immunosuppression for transplant could especially benefit from a specific therapy to prevent EBV, as a higher proportion of children have not yet been exposed to EBV.

The next mile

The scientists envision a future therapy in which an infusion of these monoclonal antibodies could prevent PTLD by blocking EBV infection and activation in the patient populations who face the highest risk of EBV-related complications.

Fred Hutch has filed for intellectual property rights covering monoclonal antibodies identified in the study, and McGuire and Chhan are working with scientific collaborators and an industry partner to advance a potential therapy for immunocompromised patients. A potential therapy could be tested for safety in healthy adult volunteers and, if acceptable, proceed to clinical trials in the relevant patient population.
There’s momentum to advance our discovery to a therapy that would make a huge difference for patients undergoing transplant. After many years of searching for a viable way to protect against Epstein-Barr virus, this is a significant stride for the scientific community and the people at the highest risk of complications from this virus.

Dr. Andrew T. McGuire, PhD.

Publication:
Chhan, Crystal B.; Lang, Kevin; Davis, Amelia R.; Wan, Yu-Hsin; Aldridge, Nicholas T.; Kher, Gargi; Scharffenberger, Samuel C.; Hardy, Samantha R.; Iureniev, Roman; Giltiay, Natalia V.; Edwards, Kristina R.; Radtke, Stefan; Kiem, Hans-Peter; Pancera, Marie; McGuire, Andrew T. (2026)
Transgenic mouse-derived human monoclonal antibodies targeting EBV gp350 and gp42 provide basis for therapeutic development
Cell Reports Medicine 7(2), DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2026.102618

Highlights

Transgenic mice were used to make genetically human EBV mAbs against gp350 and gp42
mAbs potently neutralize EBV infection by blocking receptor-ligand interactions
mAbs prevent EBV infection following EBV challenge in humanized mice

Summary
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) causes infectious mononucleosis and contributes to neurodegenerative disorders and malignancies, particularly in immune-compromised hosts. Transplant patients face high risk of post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease, a life-threatening EBV-driven lymphoma. There are no EBV-specific vaccines or treatments; however, neutralizing antibodies against EBV glycoproteins may offer utility as therapeutic agents. EBV entry into B cells involves gp350, which binds complement receptors, and gp42, which engages HLA class II to trigger fusion. Most existing monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against these antigens are non-human, limiting clinical use. Using a transgenic mouse model, we generate two gp350 and eight gp42 genetically human neutralizing mAbs that block receptor binding. Structural analyses reveal extended sites of vulnerability relevant to vaccine development. Delivery of a gp42 mAb protects humanized mice from EBV challenge, while a gp350 mAb provides partial protection. These mAbs highlight the utility of transgenic mice to produce therapeutic mAbs for preventing EBV-driven disease.

Graphical abstract

Chhan, Crystal B.; Lang, Kevin; Davis, Amelia R.; Wan, Yu-Hsin; Aldridge, Nicholas T.; Kher, Gargi; Scharffenberger, Samuel C.; Hardy, Samantha R.; Iureniev, Roman; Giltiay, Natalia V.; Edwards, Kristina R.; Radtke, Stefan; Kiem, Hans-Peter; Pancera, Marie; McGuire, Andrew T. (2026)
Transgenic mouse-derived human monoclonal antibodies targeting EBV gp350 and gp42 provide basis for therapeutic development
Cell Reports Medicine 7(2), DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2026.102618

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Cell Press (Elsevier Inc). Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

So, far from supporting any notion of a benevolent, intelligent designer, EBV does the exact opposite. It is a virus exquisitely adapted to invade human cells, persist for life, and contribute to serious disease, including cancer. If creationists wish to treat functional complexity as evidence of design, then they must also accept the obvious implication: the “designer” of something like EBV would have to be either indifferent to human suffering or actively malevolent. EBV is not a showcase for intelligent design; it is a powerful illustration of why that argument collapses under its own logic.

What this study actually showcases is not divine ingenuity but human ingenuity. By identifying monoclonal antibodies against the viral glycoproteins gp350 and gp42, and showing that at least one anti-gp42 antibody could block infection in mice with human immune systems, the researchers have taken a real, testable step towards preventing or treating an infection carried by most of humanity. That is how science works: not by declaring a mystery sacred and unknowable, but by identifying a problem, understanding its mechanism, and then trying to solve it.

And that is the sharpest contrast of all between science and creationism. Creationist dogma asks people to admire harmful complexity as if it were evidence of supernatural wisdom, then retreat into theology when that claim becomes morally embarrassing. Science does not need such evasions. It explains why viruses like EBV exist, how they work, and how they might be defeated. In that sense, every genuine medical advance is also a quiet refutation of the creationist habit of mistaking ignorance for explanation.

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Refuting Creationism - How Complex Organs Evolve

2026-04-17T11:25:00.001+01:00

Using the placenta to understand how complex organs evolve

Recently, a new creationist member of a Facebook group resorted to the familiar tactic of presenting the placenta as a complex organ that could not possibly have evolved. As so often with creationist arguments, this was little more than an argument from personal incredulity dressed up as a challenge. In place of scientific evidence, he relied on a god-of-the-gaps argument and a false dichotomy, implying that if he could not imagine a natural explanation, the only alternative must be magic performed by his preferred deity.

The new member appears to have left the group soon after replies began to appear in the comments, complete with links to articles and papers explaining exactly how the problem can be approached scientifically.

This paper in Nature by Oliver W. Griffith and Günter P. Wagner of Yale University provides precisely the sort of answer that exposes the weakness of this common creationist tactic on social media. Their argument amounts to little more than: “I do not know how this could have evolved, therefore God did it.” That is not an explanation; it is simply ignorance masquerading as evidence, and tells us more of the parochial ignorance of the creationist than they probably intended. The paper uses the evolution of the placenta to explain some basic principles of how complex organs evolved. Needless to say, no magic is involved anywhere in the process.

One of the authors, Oliver W. Griffith, has also written an article in The Conversation explaining their research and what it tells us about the evolution of complex organs in vertebrates. His article is reproduced here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

First, a short explanation of the role of the placental in placental mammals:

The role of the placenta in pregnancy. The placenta is a temporary organ of pregnancy that forms in the uterus and links the mother’s circulation with that of the developing fetus through the umbilical cord. It acts as the fetus’s life-support system, supplying oxygen and nutrients while removing carbon dioxide and other waste products. Importantly, the mother’s blood and the fetus’s blood normally come into very close contact in the placenta without directly mixing. [1]

Its role is not just passive transport. The placenta is also an active physiological interface, controlling which substances cross from mother to fetus by processes such as diffusion and active transport. In effect, it substitutes for organs that the fetus cannot yet use fully on its own, especially the lungs for gas exchange and, in part, the digestive system for nutrient supply. [2]

The placenta is also an endocrine organ. It produces hormones that help maintain pregnancy and regulate changes in the mother’s body needed to support fetal development. Among these are hormones such as hCG and others involved in sustaining the uterine environment and coordinating maternal physiology during pregnancy. [3]

In addition, the placenta has important immune and protective functions. It helps mediate the complex relationship between mother and fetus, allowing the fetus to develop despite carrying genetic material from the father, while also acting as a selective barrier rather than a simple open conduit. It is therefore a multifunctional organ: respiratory, nutritive, excretory, hormonal and immunological all at once. [3]

In Summary, the placenta:

Connects the fetus to the mother via the umbilical cord. [1]
Delivers oxygen and nutrients to the fetus. [1]
Removes carbon dioxide and other waste products. [1]
Produces hormones that maintain pregnancy. [3]
Helps regulate immune interactions between mother and fetus. [3]

Published: March 23, 2017 2.04pm GMT

Using the placenta to understand how complex organs evolve

Developing lizard embryo beneath placental tissues.

Oliver Griffith, CC BY-ND

Oliver Griffith, Yale University

Considering how different they look from the outside, it might be surprising that all vertebrates – animals with a backbone – share the same, conserved set of organs. Chickens, fish, human beings – all have hearts, livers, brains, kidneys and so on. Each of these organs performs a specialized set of functions.

On the inside, most vertebrates have a similar set of organs, inherited from a common ancestor.

Thomas Wallace. Image of display at the National Zoo., CC BY-ND

How these organs originated and evolved has been a tricky problem to study because of their very ancient origins. The organs we all share must have evolved sometime before the first vertebrates arose on Earth, more than 500 million years ago. And researchers know many of these organs first appeared even earlier. For instance, the nervous system may predate the most recent common ancestor of all animals; it’s been identified in invertebrate comb jellies, which split off from all other animals more than 600 million years ago.

To gain insight into how new organs come to be, my colleague and I decided to focus on one that’s more recently evolved – the placenta. It’s a complex organ that has evolved many times independently. In modern animals we see species with no placenta, species with a complex placenta and myriad species between these extremes. By investigating the evolution of the placenta, my colleague Günter Wagner and I identified several processes that appear fundamental to the evolution of all new organs.

What’s the placenta’s job?

In live-bearing animals, the placenta is the organ in the pregnant mother’s body that gives the unborn offspring the raw materials it needs to grow and develop. Made of both parental and embryonic tissue, it supports the exchange of nutrients and gasses between parent and developing embryo.

The first vertebrates, including early mammals, laid eggs and did not have placentas. But in the ancestor of marsupials and eutherian (formerly called placental) mammals, females evolved to hold their eggs inside the uterus until embryonic development was complete. For an embryo to be maintained inside the mother for the duration of pregnancy, it needs a placenta to supply it with oxygen and nutrients, and take away carbon dioxide and other waste products.

Placental structures have evolved to support pregnancy in most organisms that give birth to live young, totaling more than 100 independent origins across the animal kingdom. It didn’t happen out of the blue – but what are the steps that result in a new organ? Complex biological structures can evolve via simple changes that build up over time. The process depends on the fact that animals can acquire new body parts and body parts can acquire different functions over multiple generations through successive changes to a species’ DNA.

New uses and structures for old tissues Placentas have evolved across animals in various ways, but always by repurposing existing tissues.

Lizards and snakes provide one example. Most of them lay eggs, but live birth has evolved in this group more than 100 times. In all of these cases, the mother retains the eggs in utero until the offspring are fully developed. In these reptiles, placentas form from the uterus and embryonic membranes that ancestrally lined the internal surface of the eggshell. That’s how it works in mammals (like us), too.

Pregnant male seahorse.

Annunako / Pixabay

Live birth happens differently in amphibians and fishes. In guppies, eggs are fertilized and develop inside the ovary before they are ovulated and a placenta is formed from tissues in the ovaries. In seahorses, males develop a brood pouch on their abdomen and eggs are laid directly into this pouch. The placenta arises from the father’s belly skin tissue. In the marsupial frog, a pouch develops on the female’s back and a placenta forms from outgrowths of this back skin.

In each of these cases, placentas form when embryonic tissues come into contact with a parental tissue during development.

While placentas have evolved by repurposing existing body parts, sometimes we also see the evolution of entirely new biological structures within these old body parts. Seahorses’ broodpouches are one example, originating evolutionarily after eggs in an ancestor species attached to the underside of the parent’s belly. New specialized cell types can evolve, too, to perform new functions.

Placentas have evolved many times independently in various animals. They form following the interaction of parental (red) and embryonic (blue) tissues.

Oliver Griffith, CC BY-SA

When tissues take on a new job

So in the case of the placenta, the evolution of a new organ involved repurposing existing tissues. These tissues had functions in the ancestor of the placental animal, some of which have been recruited to support the new organ functions.

One example of this is hormone production in embryonic membranes. In egg-laying terrestrial vertebrates, eggs are lined with a series of membranes. These embryonic membranes produce a diversity of hormones, which are likely important for the growth and development of the fetus. Following the evolution of live birth, the hormones were able to interact with maternal tissues, resulting in the evolution of fetal-maternal communication.

Prior research has shown that signaling between distinct tissues is typically how organ development is initiated in animals. We suspect that this signaling was important not just for the organ’s development, but for how it originated.

If a mutation results in tissues developing alongside each other in a new way, then the signaling dynamics inside these tissues are likely to affect each other’s development. This new signaling can then be an initiator for the development of a new organ.

We think the placenta is just one example of this phenomenon in action. This path may be a general way in which new organs arise in animals.

Pregnancy in eutherian mammals, which include humans, has required the evolution of a new cell type in the uterus.

TC-TORRES / Pixabay

Placenta’s evolution as a case study

Our research suggests that new organs evolved by repurposing existing body parts. Over evolutionary time, organs can evolve new structures and new functions that increase the fitness or reproductive success of the animal. These changes result from genetic alterations that we can identify by comparing living animals.

An individual animal doesn’t all of a sudden have an organ that’s never been seen before. But small genetic changes happen all the time. As they accumulate, eventually, complex biological structures can evolve. Now we’re starting to identify specific types of genetic changes that allow for new complex organs to evolve inside animals.
Oliver Griffith, Postdoctoral Associate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale 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)

Abstract
How organs originate and evolve is a question fundamental to understanding the evolution of complex multicellular life forms. Vertebrates have a relatively standard body plan with more or less the same conserved set of organs. The placenta is a comparatively more recently evolved organ, derived in many lineages independently. Using placentas as a model, we discuss the genetic basis for organ origins. We show that the evolution of placentas occurs by acquiring new functional attributes to existing tissues, changes in the patterning and development of tissues, and the evolution of novel cell types. We argue that a diversity of genomic changes facilitated these physiological transformations and that these changes are likely to have occurred during the evolution of organs more broadly. Finally, we argue that a key aspect to understanding the evolutionary origin of organs is that they are likely to result from novel interactions between distinct cell populations.

Griffith, O., Wagner, G.
The placenta as a model for understanding the origin and evolution of vertebrate organs.
Nat Ecol Evol 1, 0072 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-007

What makes the placenta such a problem for creationism is that, far from appearing as a fully formed, all-or-nothing invention, it bears all the hallmarks of an organ shaped by evolution through modification of what already existed. Comparative biology shows a graded series across mammals, from egg-laying monotremes with no true placenta, through marsupials with simpler and shorter-lived placental structures, to the complex chorioallantoic placenta of eutherian mammals. That is exactly what evolution predicts: not sudden magical appearance, but successive adaptation, elaboration and co-option of existing tissues and genes.

The same is true at the molecular level. The placenta did not require the conjuring of some wholly novel biological principle; it evolved by repurposing ancient genetic pathways, including mechanisms involved in immunity, tissue invasion, nutrient transfer and hormonal signalling. Even elements derived from ancient viral insertions have been recruited into its function. In other words, the placenta is not evidence against evolution at all; it is one more example of evolution’s characteristic way of working with whatever materials happen to be available.

For creationists, this leaves only the familiar refuge of argument from ignorance: to declare that because they do not know how something evolved, it therefore could not have evolved. But ignorance is not evidence, and incredulity is not an argument. The history of science is full of phenomena once declared impossible by the scientifically illiterate, only to be explained in detail once the evidence was examined properly. The placenta belongs firmly in that category.

So, yet again, the choice is not between “evolution or nothing”, but between evidence-based explanation and a superstition inserted into the gaps of understanding. The more we learn about organs such as the placenta, the clearer it becomes that complexity is not a barrier to evolution but one of its most compelling products. Far from pointing to a designer, the placenta points instead to deep ancestry, gradual modification and the untidy, opportunistic ingenuity of natural selection.

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Creationism Refuted - The Transition From Cold-Blooded to Warm-Blooded Mammal Ancestors

2026-04-16T16:49:00.000+01:00

AI-generated image (ChatGPT Latest)

Mystery solved: when mammals’ ancestors became warm-blooded

If the transition from cold-bloodedness to warm-bloodedness is not a change in “kind” in the creationist sense, it is hard to imagine what would qualify. Creationists often try to dismiss major evolutionary transitions as mere “variation within a 'Kind'”, but the shift from ectothermy to endothermy was not some trivial adjustment. It was a profound physiological transformation that allowed animals to maintain a high, stable internal temperature, remain active across a wider range of conditions, and exploit ecological niches closed to their cold-blooded ancestors. Yet, according to creationist mythology, no such transition ever occurred, and there was never a point in time when it began.

Unfortunately for creationists, the evidence says otherwise. An international team of palaeontologists led by Ricardo Araújo of the Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal, Romain David of the Natural History Museum, London, UK, and Kenneth D. Angielczyk of the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, USA, believe they have identified when endothermy arose in the mammalian lineage. Their findings were published in Nature in July 2022. The team concluded that mammalian ancestors became warm-blooded about 233 million years ago, roughly 33 million years before the first true mammals appeared, and at about the same time that other recognisably mammalian traits such as fur and whiskers were evolving. The timing is consistent with evolutionary expectations that major innovations can arise in response to changing environmental pressures. [1.1]

They also concluded that this transition was rapid in geological terms, taking less than a million years rather than unfolding gradually over tens of millions of years, as had often been assumed. [2.1]

The researchers reached these conclusions by examining 3D models of the inner ears of dozens of mammalian ancestors, many from South Africa’s fossil-rich Karoo region. Karoo fossils are especially valuable because they preserve an exceptionally detailed record of synapsid evolution across almost 100 million years, documenting the transition from reptile-like therapsids to mammals. What the team focused on was the shape of the semicircular canals of the inner ear, which form part of the balance system. These canals are filled with endolymph, a fluid whose viscosity changes with temperature. As body temperature rose during the evolution of endothermy, the geometry of the canals had to change to keep the balance organ functioning properly. That gave the researchers a way to infer when warm-bloodedness first evolved in the mammalian line. [2.1]

Four of the authors of the paper in Nature also published an article in The Conversation explaining their results and their significance for understanding mammalian evolution. Their article is reproduced here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

First, information about the Karoo fossils:

The Karoo Fossil Record. South Africa’s Karoo Basin is one of the world’s most important fossil regions because it preserves an exceptionally long and detailed record of life on land from the late Palaeozoic into the early Mesozoic. Spanning roughly 100 million years, it contains a near-continuous sequence of fossil-bearing rocks that allow palaeontologists to trace evolutionary change through time rather than relying on isolated finds.

The Karoo is especially famous for its wealth of therapsid fossils — the synapsid lineage that eventually gave rise to mammals. These fossils document, in remarkable detail, the transition from more reptile-like ancestors to increasingly mammal-like forms, making the region central to our understanding of mammalian origins.

It is also one of the best places on Earth for studying the end-Permian mass extinction and the ecological recovery that followed. The fossils show not only which animals disappeared, but also how new faunas emerged and diversified in the Triassic world that followed.

Because of this rich and orderly sequence, the Karoo provides one of the clearest records of major evolutionary transitions on land. Far from showing fixed, separately created “kinds”, its fossils reveal a long history of gradual change, extinction, adaptation and descent with modification.

Mystery solved: when mammals’ ancestors became warm‑blooded

Tritylodon, a therapsid, reconstructed as a night dwelling warm blooded animal.
Note the steam coming out of its lungs.

Illustrated by Luzia Soares

Julien Benoit, University of the Witwatersrand; Kenneth D. Angielczyk, University of Chicago; Ricardo Miguel Nóbrega Araújo, Universidade de Lisboa , and Romain David, Natural History Museum

Mammals and birds produce their own body heat and control their body temperatures. This process is known as endothermy, or warm-bloodedness, and it may be one of the reasons why mammals tend to dominate almost every global ecosystem. Warm-blooded animals are more active during both days and nights than their cold-blooded counterparts and they reproduce faster.

But until now it hasn’t been known exactly when endothermy originated in mammalian ancestry. Our new study, just published in Nature, changes that. A combination of scientists’ intuition, fossils from South Africa’s Karoo region and cutting-edge technology has provided the answer: endothermy developed in mammalian ancestors about 233 million years ago during the Late Triassic period.

The origin of mammalian endothermy has been one of the great unsolved mysteries of palaeontology. Many different approaches have been used to try to pinpoint the answer but they have often given vague or conflicting results. We think our method shows real promise because it has been validated using a very large number of modern species. It suggests that endothermy evolved at a time when many other features of the mammalian body plan were also falling into place.

Warm-bloodedness is the key to what makes mammals what they are today. Endothermy was likely the starting point where mammalness evolved: the acquisition of an insulating fur coat; the evolution of a larger brain, supplied with warmer blood; a faster reproduction rate; and a more active life are all defining mammalian traits that evolved because of warm-bloodedness.

Until now, most scientists had speculated that the transition to endothermy was was a gradual, slow process over tens of millions of years beginning near the Permo-Triassic boundary, although some suggested it happened closer to the origin of mammals, about 200 million years ago.

In contrast, our results suggest that it appeared in mammalian ancestors some 33 million years prior to the origin of mammals. The new date is consistent with recent findings that many of the traits usually associated with “mammalness”, such as whiskers and fur, also evolved earlier than previously expected. And according to our results, endothermy evolved very quickly in geological terms, in less than a million years. We suggest that the process may have been triggered by novel mammal-like metabolic pathways and the origin of fur.

Scientists’ intuition

Our research began with Dr Araújo and Dr David’s intuition about the inner ear. It is more than the organ of hearing: it also houses the organ of balance, the semicircular canals.

The three semicircular canals of the inner ear are oriented in the three dimensions of space. They’re filled with a fluid that flows in the canals as the head moves and activates receptors to tell the brain the exact three-dimensional position of the head and body. The viscosity, or runniness, of this fluid (called the endolymph) is critical to the balance organ’s ability to efficiently detect head rotation and aid balance.

The brain (pink) and inner ear (green) of a modern mammal, a primate, reconstructed in 3D.

Julien Benoit

In the same way as a piece of butter turns from solid to liquid in a warm pan, or honey becomes thicker when it is cold, the viscosity of the endolymph changes with body temperature. That means the endolymph’s viscosity would normally be altered by the evolution of a higher body temperature. But the body has to adapt because changing viscosity would prevent the semicircular canals from working properly. In mammals, the canals adapt to higher body temperature by changing their geometry.

The researchers realised that this change in the semicircular canals’ shape would be easy to trace through geological time using fossils. Pinpointing the species in which the change of geometry occurred would, they reasoned, provide an accurate guide to when endothermy evolved.

They needed fossils to test their hypothesis – and that’s where South Africa’s wealth of fossils from the Karoo region came in.

Reconstruction and study

The arid Karoo region preserves a treasure trove of fossils, many of them belonging to mammalian ancestors. These fossils offer an unbroken record of the evolution of life over a period of almost 100 million years. They document the transformation from reptilian-like animals (therapsids) to mammals in exquisite detail.

Using cutting edge CT-scanning techniques and 3D modelling, we were able to reconstruct the inner ear of dozens of mammalian ancestors from the South African Karoo and elsewhere in the world. From there we could point out exactly which species had an inner ear anatomy consistent with a warmer body temperature, and which ones did not.

What fossils reveal about the hairy history of mammals’ ancestors

One thing we had to take into consideration was the geographical position of the Karoo at the time when these animals lived. It was situated closer to the South Pole than it is now as a result of continental drift. That means the warmer body temperature suggested by the geometry of the inner ear cannot be due to an overall warmer climate. As the South African climate was colder on average, the change in inner ear fluid viscosity can only have been caused by a generally warmer body temperature in mammalian ancestors.

An exciting time

This is an exciting time for our field. Until now, to reconstruct the evolution of endothermy, scientists only had access to skeletal features that questionably correlated with warm-bloodedness. Every attempt was a long shot to get any accurate results. The inner ear, as this research shows, changes this. We believe it may be the key to unlocking more knowledge about mammalian ancestors in future.
Julien Benoit, Senior Researcher in Vertebrate Palaeontology, University of the Witwatersrand; Kenneth D. Angielczyk, Lecturer, University of Chicago; Ricardo Miguel Nóbrega Araújo, Junior Researcher, Universidade de Lisboa , and Romain David, Postdoctoral Researcher, Natural History Museum

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)

Abstract
Endothermy underpins the ecological dominance of mammals and birds in diverse environmental settings^1,2. However, it is unclear when this crucial feature emerged during mammalian evolutionary history, as most of the fossil evidence is ambiguous^{3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17}. Here we show that this key evolutionary transition can be investigated using the morphology of the endolymph-filled semicircular ducts of the inner ear, which monitor head rotations and are essential for motor coordination, navigation and spatial awareness^{18,19,20,21,22}. Increased body temperatures during the ectotherm–endotherm transition of mammal ancestors would decrease endolymph viscosity, negatively affecting semicircular duct biomechanics^23,24, while simultaneously increasing behavioural activity^25,26 probably required improved performance²⁷. Morphological changes to the membranous ducts and enclosing bony canals would have been necessary to maintain optimal functionality during this transition. To track these morphofunctional changes in 56 extinct synapsid species, we developed the thermo-motility index, a proxy based on bony canal morphology. The results suggest that endothermy evolved abruptly during the Late Triassic period in Mammaliamorpha, correlated with a sharp increase in body temperature (5–9 °C) and an expansion of aerobic and anaerobic capacities. Contrary to previous suggestions^{3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14}, all stem mammaliamorphs were most probably ectotherms. Endothermy, as a crucial physiological characteristic, joins other distinctive mammalian features that arose during this period of climatic instability²⁸.

Araújo, R., David, R., Benoit, J. et al.
Inner ear biomechanics reveals a Late Triassic origin for mammalian endothermy. Nature 607, 726–731 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04963-z

© 2026 Springer Nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

What makes this research so awkward for creationism is that it captures a major evolutionary transition not as a vague just-so story, but as a datable, testable change in physiology recorded in a succession of fossils. Warm-bloodedness did not appear by magic, fully formed and detached from any ancestry; it emerged in a lineage that was already accumulating other mammalian features, such as fur and whiskers, under changing environmental pressures. That is exactly what evolutionary theory predicts: not sudden creation of fixed “kinds”, but descent with modification as populations adapt to new conditions.

The Karoo fossils are especially damaging to creationist claims because they preserve this transition in context. Instead of sharp boundaries between separately created forms, they reveal a long sequence of intermediate synapsids showing the gradual assembly of the mammalian body plan. The rise of endothermy was one more step in that process, and a profoundly important one, because it opened up new ecological opportunities and helped set the stage for the later success of mammals.

So, once again, the evidence points not to immutable “kinds” created in a single week a few thousand years ago, but to a deep history of evolutionary change stretching back hundreds of millions of years. The fossil record, comparative anatomy and modern imaging techniques all converge on the same conclusion: mammalian characteristics evolved piecemeal, over immense spans of time, in complete contradiction of creationist mythology and entirely in accord with the Theory of Evolution.

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Refuting Creationism - Ancestral Mammals Laid Eggs - Over 200 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

2026-04-15T21:05:00.000+01:00

Lystrosaurus embryo within its partially preserved shell, reconstruction of the animal

Pictures - Professor Julien Benoit Drawing - Sophie Vrard.

Embryo fossil found in South Africa is world’s oldest proof that mammal ancestors laid eggs

It is well established in evolutionary biology that mammals arose from within the synapsid lineage, the ancient group that includes the therapsids - stem-mammals that long predate true mammals. What had remained uncertain, however, was whether those early synapsids still reproduced by laying eggs, as modern monotremes such as the platypus and echidnas do, or whether live birth had evolved much earlier in the mammalian line.

That gap in our knowledge has now been narrowed dramatically and, no doubt to the acute discomfort of creationists, the evidence shows that about 250 million years ago - roughly 244 million years before young-Earth creationists believe the Earth was created - a therapsid was still reproducing by laying eggs. The evidence comes from a fossil embryo discovered in South Africa in 2008 by palaeontologist John Nyaphuli. Even more awkward for creationists, their mythology requires animals to have been created as separate, unrelated ‘kinds’, yet here we have direct evidence from the stem-mammal lineage showing a reproductive stage inherited from deep evolutionary ancestry rather than sudden, magical creation without predecessors.

Now Julien Benoit and Jennifer Botha of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, together with Vincent Fernandez of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, have used high-resolution CT and synchrotron imaging to examine the curled-up embryo inside the rock and identify it as a young Lystrosaurus, a dicynodont therapsid from the Early Triassic. Crucially, the specimen preserves features consistent with an unhatched embryo, including a tightly curled in ovo posture and an unfused lower jaw symphysis. No calcified eggshell was preserved, so the egg was probably soft and leathery, as expected for a very early synapsid. Their findings are reported in an open access paper in PLOS One.

The authors have also co-authored an article in The Conversation explaining the discovery and its significance. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

Published: April 10, 2026 10.06am BST • Updated: April 13, 2026 8.29am BST

Embryo fossil found in South Africa is world’s oldest proof that mammal ancestors laid eggs

Artist’s impression of Lystrosaurus embryo.

Artist: Sophie Vrard, CC BY

Julien Benoit, University of the Witwatersrand; Jennifer Botha, University of the Witwatersrand, and Vincent Fernandez, University of the Witwatersrand

Between 280 and 200 million years ago, a group of animals evolved which would eventually give rise to mammals, including humans: the therapsids. They were first described more than 150 years ago, based on fossils from South Africa. Since then, many more fossils have been discovered.

James Kitching, one of the most talented South African fossil hunters of the 20th century, excavated many thousands of therapsids from the rocks of the Karoo (a semi-arid region of the country’s interior). He also found fossilised dinosaur eggs, but neither he nor any palaeontologist after him ever found therapsid eggs.

They should exist, because some mammals (platypus and echidnas) do lay eggs. But Kitching began to doubt that therapsids laid eggs: perhaps, he thought, they were, like most of their mammalian descendants, already viviparous (giving live birth)?

We are scientists who study extinct animals and the environments they lived in millions of years ago to understand more about the evolution of life. In our new paper we describe, for the first time, the embryo-containing fossilised egg of a 250 million-year-old mammalian ancestor.

It finally shows that therapsids were indeed egg-laying (oviparous). This discovery sheds new light on the reproduction and survival strategy of that group of animals.

The egg about to be synchrotron scanned at the ESRF.

Author provided, CC BY

A 20-year-old mystery

The fossil egg and embryo we described was discovered near Oviston, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, by John Nyaphuli, a palaeontologist from Bloemfontein, in 2008. It’s been kept in the National Museum in Bloemfontein. We knew that it belonged to a species that lived 252 million to 250 million years ago called Lystrosaurus, but we didn’t know whether the species was an egg-layer. The adult looked like a pig, with naked skin, a beak like a turtle, and two tusks sticking out and pointing down.

The reason it took 20 years to prove that it had been in an egg is that this fossil preserves no shell. Only a curled-up embryo is visible. If there was a shell, it was likely leathery or had dissolved. Only the most advanced dinosaurs laid hard-shelled eggs.

So how could we find out whether this young creature had once been inside an egg?

The answer to this question lay in the advanced technology of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility at Grenoble, France. There, we used a powerful X-ray source to image the inside of the bones of the embryo. Under this treatment, the fossil unveiled all its long-kept secrets – most crucially, its stage of development.

3D reconstruction of the embryo based on synchrotron scan performed at the ESRF.

Author supplied, CC BY

We discovered that the lower jaws of its beak were not completely fused. This developmental trait is only found in modern turtles and birds in which jaw bones fuse long before they are born so that their beak is strong enough for the hatchling to catch and crush its food.

This meant that our curled up Lystrosaurus embryo had died in ovo (in an egg), tightly nestled in its soft, leathery eggshell. This was the evidence palaeontologists had been looking for.

Thanks to the synchrotron-assisted examination of its lower jaw, we could finally demonstrate that this embryo was indeed that of an unhatched Lystrosaurus baby.

Famous survivor

What does it unravel about the survival strategy of Lystrosaurus?

Lystrosaurus is a herbivorous (plant-eating) therapsid famous for surviving the “Great Dying”, which was a major mass extinction of species 252 million years ago. During this event, 90% of all living things on Earth died. Life almost ceased to exist, which makes this the second most important event in the history of life on Earth after the origin of life itself.

How Lystrosaurus survived this is still an intriguing mystery, but the egg gives a possible clue. The fossil we describe shows that the animal laid arguably large eggs for its body size. Large eggs are produced by species that feed their embryos with yolk rather than milk. The young develop to an advanced stage in the egg and then they hatch. In contrast, monotremes (the platypus and echidnas), which feed milk to their young, lay small eggs because the baby is fed after hatching. The large size of its egg implies that Lystrosaurus did not feed milk to its young.

A secret mathematical rule has shaped the beaks of birds and other dinosaurs for 200 million years

More relevant to its survival strategy, this further indicates two things. Firstly, it means that the egg was less prone to desiccation (drying out). The larger the egg, the smaller its surface area (comparatively speaking), so Lystrosaurus eggs would lose less water through their leathery shell than those of other species of that time. Given the dry environment during and in the immediate aftermath of the extinction, this was a significant advantage, especially since hard-shelled eggs would not evolve for another 50 million years, at least.

Secondly, a large egg implies that Lystrosaurus was likely precocial, meaning that the babies likely hatched at an advanced stage of their development. Lystrosaurus hatchlings were big enough to feed by themselves and run away from predators, and would reach maturity faster so they could reproduce early.

How predators may have shaped the way some southern African lizards survive and reproduce

Growing up fast, reproducing young and proliferating were the secrets of Lystrosaurus survival.

Our ability to identify the fossil egg adds to our understanding of the origin of mammalian reproductive biology and lactation, and the survival strategy of Lystrosaurus in the most devastating biological crisis. This is significant to better grasp how modern species might cope with the current sixth mass extinction of species.
Julien Benoit, Associate professor in Vertebrate Palaeontology, University of the Witwatersrand; Jennifer Botha, Professor, University of the Witwatersrand, and Vincent Fernandez, Research associate, Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand

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)

Abstract

Oviparity was likely the plesiomorphic reproductive condition for non-mammalian Synapsida, the stem-mammal group. Yet, despite nearly two centuries of research, no definitive fossil eggs of late Palaeozoic or early Mesozoic synapsids have been discovered. Here, three perinate specimens of the dicynodont genus Lystrosaurus from the Early Triassic of the South African Karoo Basin are examined using high-resolution CT and synchrotron scanning. One specimen, NMQR 3636, displays a tightly curled posture suggestive of an in ovo position and completely lacks tusks. Crucially, the lower jaw symphysis remains unfused—a developmental trait found only in pre-hatching embryos of modern birds and turtles. No calcified eggshell is preserved, so the egg might have been soft and leathery. The large size of the reconstructed egg suggests a precocial, non-milk-feeding developmental strategy. As a non-cynodont synapsid, Lystrosaurus offers a rare and valuable glimpse into reproductive biology far removed from the mammalian crown group. Unlike the more derived, mammal-like cynodont Kayentatherium, whose egg size aligns with lactation, Lystrosaurus anchors the plesiomorphic condition deep within Synapsida. Its reproductive strategy may have played a crucial role in its resilience and ecological dominance following the end-Permian mass extinction.

Fig 1. Specimen NMQR 3636 in left lateral view.
a, photograph of the specimen; b, 3D digital reconstruction of the segmented bones; c, live reconstruction by artist Sophie Vrard. Colour code for b: vertebral elements in shades of green, ribs in blue, forelimb elements in red, femur in yellow, pelvic girdle elements in grey, skull in light red, mandible in light orange.

Fig 2. Comparison of cranial features of perinate Lystrosaurus specimens.
From left to right, NMQR 3636, BP/1/4011, and BP/1/9332. a, photographs of the skulls in lateral view; b, 3D digital transparent skull showing the tusk (in black) and mesethmoid (in grey), if preserved. The dotted lines marked “c” and “e” indicate the planes of view displayed in the sections of panel c and e; c, coronal CT section through the tusk sockets; d, 3D model of lower jaws in anterior view to display the symphysis. The black arrow points to the symphyseal gap in NMQR 3636; e, CT cross sections through the mandibular symphysis in two positions in NMQR 3636 (left and middle) and BP/1/9332 (right) showing the state of ossification of the rostral mandibular bones. Arrows point to incompletely co-ossified sutures. Abbreviations: Dt., dentary; Sp., splenial.

Fig 3. Comparison of two perinate Lystrosaurus skeletons.
a, 3D digital reconstruction of NMQR 3636 in left lateral view showing the complete skeleton (left), the skull, lower jaw and vertebrae only (middle), and the pelvis and femur only (right); b, 3D digital reconstruction of NMQR 3636 in right lateral view with (left) and without the ribs (right); c, comparison between the right humerus of NMQR 3636 and the left humerus (mirrored) of BP/1/9332; d, reconstructed lateral view of the preserved skeletal elements belonging to NMQR 3636; e, photograph of BP/1/9332 in dorsal view. Colour code for a and b: vertebral elements in shades of green, ribs in blue, forelimb elements in red, femur in yellow, pelvic girdle elements in grey, skull in light red, mandible in light orange. Abbreviations: Ent.f., entepicondylar foramen; Fem., femur; Hum.l., left humerus; Hum.r., right humerus; Il.l., left ilium; Il.r., right ilium; Is.l., left ischium; Is.r., right ischium; Man., manus; Rad., radius; Ul., ulna.

Benoit J, Fernandez V, Botha J (2026)
The first non-mammalian synapsid embryo from the Triassic of South Africa.
PLoS One 21(4): e0345016. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0345016

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by PLoS. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

So, yet again, the evidence points not to sudden, separate acts of magical creation, but to a long, branching history of descent with modification. Here we have a therapsid embryo from about 250 million years ago, preserved in what was almost certainly a soft, leathery egg, showing that one of the lineages leading eventually to mammals still retained a deeply ancestral mode of reproduction. That is exactly the sort of transitional evidence evolution predicts and exactly the sort of evidence creationism has no coherent way to accommodate.

For young-Earth creationists, the problem is twofold. First, the fossil exists at all in rocks laid down hundreds of millions of years before their preferred date for the creation of the universe. Secondly, it documents continuity between major groups, not the abrupt appearance of fixed, unrelated ‘kinds’. An egg-laying therapsid is not an anomaly for evolutionary biology; it is a glimpse of the gradual transformation of one lineage over immense spans of geological time. It fits neatly into the pattern. It is only creationism that must deny, distort or ignore it.

And that is the recurring lesson from discoveries like this. The natural world does not look as though it was assembled in a single burst of supernatural manufacture a few thousand years ago. It looks exactly as though life has a deep history, with old traits being modified, retained or discarded over time as lineages diverged and changed. Science follows that evidence wherever it leads. Creationism, by contrast, can survive only by pretending the evidence is not there.

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Creationism Refuted - Neanderthal Cannibals From 35,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

2026-04-14T22:39:00.000+01:00

Neanderthal at the Goyet Cave.

AI-Generated image (ChatGPT Latest)

Neandertal women and children were the victims of selective cannibalism at Goyet | CNRS

he evidence presented in my last blog post suggested that, at least in the earlier phases of contact between anatomically modern humans moving out of Africa and the indigenous Neanderthals, interactions could be relatively peaceful, involving exchanges not only of DNA but also of technology and culture.

That may not always have been the case, however, as new evidence from the Troisième caverne of Goyet in Belgium suggests. Research just published in Scientific Reports by an international team including researchers from CNRS, the University of Bordeaux, and Aix-Marseille University indicates that, between 41,000 and 45,000 years ago, when Neanderthals were close to disappearing from Western Europe, a group consisting largely of non-local females and juveniles was taken to the Goyet site, butchered, and consumed. The broader background to this violence may have included growing territorial pressures, dwindling populations, or the increasing presence of Homo sapiens in nearby regions, but the precise cause remains unknown.

So, while we cannot know exactly what triggered this episode, and while the coincidence with the arrival of Homo sapiens may or may not be significant, isotope analysis does show that those who were cannibalised were outsiders rather than members of the local population.

“Primitive” people were actually just humans like you and me. pic.twitter.com/NXGQm0sYCW
— Answers in Genesis (@AiG) April 13, 2026

For creationists, Neanderthals have always been a problem. It used to be common for them to claim that Neanderthals were known from just a single specimen later shown to be a pathological modern human suffering from arthritis. That falsehood has become harder and harder to sustain now that we have numerous specimens from across Eurasia, as well as sequenced Neanderthal genomes. The fallback position now seems to be to insist that Neanderthals fit neatly into Genesis because they were simply part of “human kind”.

Ken Ham, the creationist head of Answers in Genesis, with his characteristically casual regard for the truth and his obvious personal stake in presenting Bible-literalist mythology as history and science, has recently claimed that Neanderthals and Denisovans were descendants of Adam and Eve. What he does not explain, of course, is how he compresses the archaeological timescale of their existence, and their divergence into distinct lineages with markedly different genomes, into the 6,000 to 10,000 years allowed by creationist dogma. Like so many of Ham’s claims, it is aimed at an audience eager to have its prejudices confirmed and unlikely to fact-check anything for fear of discovering that it has been misled.

Like so much else in the history of life on Earth, and especially in the evolutionary history of our own species, all of this took place in that immense span of time before creationists imagine their small tribal god conjured up a small flat planet under a solid dome, conveniently centred on the Middle East.

The factual evidence, of course, tells a very different story: one based on testable, verifiable data, not on the campfire tales of Bronze Age herders who knew no better.

And in this case, that evidence shows that something, whether the increasing presence of modern Homo sapiens, the breakdown of Neanderthal society as their numbers declined, or some other factor entirely, led one Neanderthal group in what is now Belgium to capture outsiders, mainly women and children, bring them back to the Goyet site, and consume them.

Background^ Goyet Cave and the evidence for cannibalised outsiders. The Troisième caverne of Goyet in Belgium is one of the most important Neanderthal sites in northern Europe, with the largest known MIS 3 assemblage of Neanderthal remains from the region. It offers a rare glimpse into the lives of some of the last Neanderthals living there between about 41,000 and 45,000 years ago.

Archaeologists know the bodies were deliberately processed because the bones bear cut marks, fresh-bone fractures and percussion damage, showing that they were butchered and broken open for marrow. Some fragments were even reused as retouchers for shaping stone tools. The human remains were treated much like animal carcasses at the site, which is why the evidence points to nutritional cannibalism rather than burial or ritual treatment.

What makes the new study especially important is that isotope analysis suggests the victims were not locals. Carbon and nitrogen isotopes help reconstruct diet, while sulphur isotopes can indicate geographic origin. At Goyet, these chemical signatures suggest that the cannibalised individuals came from outside the local area, unlike Neanderthals from the nearby site of Spy. That means Goyet does not simply show that Neanderthals sometimes practised cannibalism. It suggests that, in this case, mostly female and young outsiders were brought to the cave, butchered and eaten, pointing to selective exocannibalism, possibly linked to inter-group conflict or territorial tension during the final phase of Neanderthal history in northern Europe.

The work of the team of archaeologists, led by Quentin Cosnefroy and Isabelle Crevecoeur of the University of Bordeaux, France, and Hélène Rougier of California State University, Northridge, USA, is explained in a news item from the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS):

Neandertal women and children were the victims of selective cannibalism at Goyet
The study of an assemblage of Neandertal human bones discovered in the Troisième caverne of Goyet (Belgium) has brought to light selective cannibalistic behaviour primarily targeting female adults and children between 41,000 and 45,000 years ago.
The biological profile of the victims, identified for the first time, reveals that they were part of a group originating from outside of the local community, and they were probably brought to the site where to be consumed for food rather than in a ritual context, as suggested by the presence of traces similar to those found on animal bones hunted, butchered and consumed by occupants of the Goyet site¹ . The research, which has just been published in Scientific Reports, was conducted by an international team including researchers from the CNRS² , l’Université de Bordeaux, and l’Université d’Aix-Marseille.

Situating these analyses in the context of the late Middle Paleolithic³ – marked in Northern Europe by great cultural diversity within Neandertal groups and the emerging presence of Homo sapiens in nearby areas – such cannibalism directed at specific outsiders could reflect the existence of territorial tensions between groups that preceded the disappearance of Neandertals in the region.

These conclusions are based on ten years of research involving a reassessment of the Goyet collection⁴ through DNA analysis, radiocarbon dating, and isotopic measurements to determine the geographic origin of individuals, in addition to virtual reconstitutions enabling morphological analysis of sometimes very fragmentary human bones.

Neandertal human remains from the Troisième caverne of Goyet (Belgium). Highly fragmented bones bear traces characteristic of fresh bone fracturing and percussion, demonstrating intentional treatment of the bodies. The individuals (GNx, for “Goyet Neandertal” x), numbering six at minimum, were identified by genetic analyses: XX indicates female gender, and XY male gender.

© Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences /Scientific Reports

Publication:
Cosnefroy, Q., Crevecoeur, I., Semal, P. et al.
Highly selective cannibalism in the Late Pleistocene of Northern Europe reveals Neandertals were targeted prey. Sci Rep 15, 40741 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-24460-3

Abstract
The Troisième caverne of Goyet has yielded the largest assemblage of Neandertal remains in Northern Europe with clear evidence of anthropogenic modifications. However, its skeletal fragmentation has long limited detailed morphological and behavioural study on the assemblage. In this study, we integrate palaeogenetic, isotopic, morphometric, and structural analyses of the long bones to assess the biological profiles of the Neandertals from Goyet and explore whether they present particularities that could shed light on the formation of this unique cannibalised assemblage. We identify a minimum of six individuals, including four adult or adolescent females. Compared to Homo sapiens and Neandertals—including regional specimens—the females from Goyet display short statures and reduced diaphyseal robusticity of their long bones. They lack skeletal markers associated with high mobility despite isotopic evidence for non-local origins. The overrepresentation of short, morphologically gracile, non-local females, alongside two immature individuals, suggests a strong selection bias in the individuals present at the site. Dated between 41,000 and 45,000 years ago, a period marked by Neandertal cultural diversity, biological decline and the arrival of Homo sapiens in Northern Europe, the cannibalised female and juvenile Neandertals from Goyet indicate exocannibalism, possibly linked to inter-group conflict, territoriality, and/or specific treatment of outsiders.

Fig. 1

Neandertal specimens from the Troisième caverne of Goyet included in this study. Genetic sex determinations: XX indicates female, XY indicates male. Specimens belonging to the same individual are shaded in the same colour.

Cosnefroy, Q., Crevecoeur, I., Semal, P. et al.
Highly selective cannibalism in the Late Pleistocene of Northern Europe reveals Neandertals were targeted prey. Sci Rep 15, 40741 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-24460-3

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

And so, once again, the evidence from archaeology and palaeoanthropology tells a story that is both richer and far more complex than the simplistic narratives preserved in Bronze Age mythology. The events at Goyet, dated to between 41,000 and 45,000 years ago, belong to a deep and intricate human past in which different human species coexisted, interacted, and sometimes came into conflict over vast stretches of time. This is not a fleeting episode that can be compressed into a few centuries or even a few millennia; it is part of a long evolutionary history that stretches back hundreds of thousands of years.

For creationists attempting to reconcile such findings with a literal reading of the Bible, the problem is not merely one of interpretation but of scale. The entire Neanderthal story — their evolution, spread across Eurasia, interaction with Homo sapiens, and eventual disappearance — unfolds over a timeframe that is an order of magnitude greater than the 6,000–10,000 years allowed by biblical chronology. To force this evidence into that narrow window requires not just reinterpretation, but the wholesale dismissal of radiometric dating, stratigraphy, genetics, and the cumulative findings of multiple independent scientific disciplines.

In practice, this means ignoring the converging lines of evidence that all point to the same conclusion: that Neanderthals were a distinct human species with a long and separate evolutionary history, one that cannot be reconciled with the idea that all modern humans descend from a single couple living a few thousand years ago. The genetic evidence alone, showing interbreeding events tens of thousands of years before the supposed date of creation, is sufficient to dismantle that claim, but it is reinforced by the archaeological and isotopic data from sites like Goyet.

What the Goyet evidence adds is a glimpse into the lived reality of these people — their social structures, their responses to stress and scarcity, and perhaps even their capacity for inter-group violence. It humanises them, but in doing so it also anchors them firmly in a deep past that cannot be wished away. The more we learn, the clearer it becomes that the history of our species is not a short, simple tale beginning a few thousand years ago, but a vast and unfolding narrative written in stone, bone, and DNA.

And that, ultimately, is the problem for creationism. It is not that science occasionally produces inconvenient facts, but that the entire body of evidence — from caves in Belgium to genomes in modern populations — forms a coherent and mutually reinforcing account of human origins that stands in direct contradiction to biblical literalism. To accept the evidence is to accept deep time; to reject it is to reject not just one or two findings, but the whole edifice of modern science.

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Refuting Creationism - Neanderthals And Modern Humans Lived Together - 120,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

2026-04-14T16:26:00.024+01:00

Archaeological examination of the Tinshemet Cave floor.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Neanderthal and Homo sapiens Interactions in the Mid-Middle Palaeolithic (130,000–80,000 years ago) | EUROPEAN FRIENDS OF THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY

Neanderthals are a persistent thorn in the side of creationism because they show that human origins are far older, messier and more interesting than the simplistic creation myths in the Bible. Genetic evidence shows that people outside Africa still carry a small but significant inheritance from Neanderthals, demonstrating that human ancestry was shaped not by descent from a single primordial couple, but by repeated episodes of migration, divergence and interbreeding between distinct human populations. There is even evidence that early Homo sapiens were interbreeding with Neanderthals as long as 100,000 years ago.

Now, new research by archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University, excavating at Tinshemet Cave in central Israel, suggests that the relationship between Neanderthals and early modern humans in the Levant, between about 130,000 and 80,000 years ago, involved far more than occasional contact. Their evidence indicates sustained interaction, shared technologies, similar hunting strategies and parallel ritual behaviour, including formal burial practices. The team have just published their findings in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. What emerges is a picture of different human groups living in close contact, exchanging ideas and behaviours to such an extent that their cultural differences became increasingly blurred.

The researchers reached this conclusion by integrating evidence from four main areas: stone-tool production, hunting strategies, symbolic behaviour and social complexity. Particularly striking is the clustering of burials at Tinshemet Cave, which suggests that the cave may have served as a repeated burial site, perhaps even an early cemetery. The placement of objects such as stone tools, animal bones and pieces of ochre in graves points to shared ritual practices and symbolic behaviour, hinting at a level of social and cultural complexity that creationist caricatures of early humans simply cannot accommodate.

Background^ Tinshemet Cave and the problem it poses for creationism. Tinshemet Cave, also known as Mugharet Al Watwat, lies near Shoham in central Israel on the east bank of Nahal Beit Arif. It is a Middle Palaeolithic site with the main archaeological deposits concentrated on the terrace at the entrance and in the first chamber, where excavators have found rich accumulations of stone tools, animal bones, traces of fire, ochre and human remains. The site was first noted in the 1940s, but the current excavation project began in 2016 under the direction of Yossi Zaidner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. [1]

What makes Tinshemet Cave important is not simply that humans lived there, but when they lived there. The site belongs to the Levantine mid-Middle Palaeolithic, roughly 130,000–80,000 years ago, with the main finds at Tinshemet itself dating to about 100,000 years ago. That places it tens of thousands of years before the dates demanded by young-Earth creationism, and in a period when the Levant was occupied by human populations showing a mixture of anatomical traits that do not fit the childish idea of a single, specially created human kind appearing all at once. [2]

The cave has yielded articulated human remains associated with ochre, stone tools and animal bones. The stone industry is Levallois-based, typical of the Middle Palaeolithic, and the faunal evidence shows a strong reliance on large-game hunting. Particularly striking is the evidence for deliberate burial, with bodies placed in graves and accompanied in some cases by ochre and other materials. This does not prove a fully developed theology or a neatly defined belief in an afterlife, but it does show symbolic and ritual behaviour of a kind that creationists have often tried to reserve for supposedly unique, fully modern humans. [2]

The significance of Tinshemet Cave becomes even clearer when it is compared with other Levantine sites such as Skhul, Qafzeh, Tabun and Nesher Ramla. The authors argue that across this region there was a broad behavioural uniformity: similar stone-tool technology, similar hunting strategies, and similar socially elaborated practices such as burial and ochre use. In other words, even where fossil remains suggest anatomically different human groups, the archaeological evidence suggests close interaction, cultural exchange and probably admixture between them. [2]

This is exactly the sort of evidence that creationism cannot comfortably absorb. Instead of a recent creation of a single human pair, followed by a simple and separate history for “true humans”, we find deep time, overlapping human populations, shared technologies, symbolic practices and blurred boundaries between groups. Tinshemet Cave adds to the growing body of evidence that human evolution was not a tidy ladder leading in a straight line to ourselves, but a branching, entangled history of related populations meeting, mixing and influencing one another over immense spans of time. [2]

The work of the team is explained in a news item from the European Friends of The Hebrew University:

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Neanderthal and Homo sapiens Interactions in the Mid-Middle Palaeolithic (130,000–80,000 years ago)
The first-ever published research on Tinshemet Cave reveals that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in the mid-Middle Paleolithic Levant not only coexisted but actively interacted, sharing technology, lifestyles, and burial customs. These interactions fostered cultural exchange, social complexity, and behavioral innovations, such as formal burial practices and the symbolic use of ochre for decoration. The findings suggest that human connections, rather than isolation, were key drivers of technological and cultural advancements, highlighting the Levant as a crucial crossroads in early human history.
A new discovery at Tinshemet Cave in central Israel is reshaping our understanding of human interactions during the Middle Palaeolithic (MP) period in the Near East. The cave, remarkable for its wealth of archaeological and anthropological findings, has revealed several human burials—the first mid-MP burials unearthed in over fifty years.

This research, published in Nature Human Behaviour, marks the first publication on Tinshemet Cave and presents compelling evidence that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in the region not only coexisted but also shared aspects of daily life, technology, and burial customs. These findings underscore the complexity of their interactions and hint at a more intertwined relationship than previously assumed.

The excavation of Tinshemet Cave, led by Prof. Yossi Zaidner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Prof. Israel Hershkovitz of Tel Aviv University, and Dr. Marion Prévost of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has been ongoing since 2017. A primary goal of the research team is to determine the nature of Homo sapiens–Neanderthal relationships in the mid-Middle Palaeolithic Levant. Were they rivals competing for resources, peaceful neighbours, or even collaborators?

By integrating data from four key fields—stone tool production, hunting strategies, symbolic behaviour, and social complexity—the study argues that different human groups, including Neanderthals, pre-Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens, engaged in meaningful interactions. These exchanges facilitated knowledge transmission and led to the gradual cultural homogenization of populations. The research suggests that these interactions spurred social complexity and behavioural innovations. For instance, formal burial customs began to appear around 110,000 years ago in Israel for the first time worldwide, likely as a result of intensified social interactions. A striking discovery at Tinshemet Cave is the extensive use of mineral pigments, particularly ochre, which may have been used for body decoration. This practice could have served to define social identities and distinctions among groups.

The clustering of human burials at Tinshemet Cave raises intriguing questions about its role in MP society. Could the site have functioned as a dedicated burial ground or even a cemetery? If so, this would suggest the presence of shared rituals and strong communal bonds. The placement of significant artifacts—such as stone tools, animal bones, and ochre chunks—within the burial pits may further indicate early beliefs in the afterlife.
Prof. Zaidner describes Israel as a "melting pot" where different human groups met, interacted, and evolved together.

Our data show that human connections and population interactions have been fundamental in driving cultural and technological innovations throughout history.

Professor Yossi Zaidner, lead author.
Institute of Archaeology
Hebrew University
Jerusalem, Israel.

Dr. Prévost highlights the unique geographic position of the region at the crossroads of human dispersals.

During the mid-MP, climatic improvements increased the region’s carrying capacity, leading to demographic expansion and intensified contact between different Homo taxa.

Dr Marion Prévost, co-author
Institute of Archaeology
Hebrew University
Jerusalem, Israel.

Prof. Hershkovitz adds that the interconnectedness of lifestyles among various human groups in the Levant suggests deep relationships and shared adaptation strategies.

These findings paint a picture of dynamic interactions shaped by both cooperation and competition.

Israel Hershkovitz, co-author.
Department of Anatomy and Anthropology
Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv, Israel.

The discoveries at Tinshemet Cave offer a fascinating glimpse into the social structures, symbolic behaviours, and daily lives of early human groups. They reveal a period of profound demographic and cultural transformations, shedding new light on the complex web of interactions that shaped our ancestors’ world. As excavations continue, Tinshemet Cave promises to provide even deeper insights into the origins of human society.

Publication:
Zaidner, Y., Prévost, M., Shahack-Gross, R. et al.
Evidence from Tinshemet Cave in Israel suggests behavioural uniformity across Homo groups in the Levantine mid-Middle Palaeolithic circa 130,000–80,000 years ago.
Nat Hum Behav 9, 886–901 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02110-y

Abstract
The south Levantine mid-Middle Palaeolithic (mid-MP; ~130–80 thousand years ago (ka)) is remarkable for its exceptional evidence of human morphological variability, with contemporaneous fossils of Homo sapiens and Neanderthal-like hominins. Yet, it remains unclear whether these hominins adhered to discrete behavioural sets or whether regional-scale intergroup interactions could have homogenized mid-MP behaviour. Here we report on our discoveries at Tinshemet Cave, Israel. The site yielded articulated Homo remains in association with rich assemblages of ochre, fauna and stone tools dated to ~100 ka. Viewed from the perspective of other key regional sites of this period, our findings indicate consolidation of a uniform behavioural set in the Levantine mid-MP, consisting of similar lithic technology, an increased reliance on large-game hunting and a range of socially elaborated behaviours, comprising intentional human burial and the use of ochre in burial contexts. We suggest that the development of this behavioural uniformity is due to intensified inter-population interactions and admixture between Homo groups ~130–80 ka.

Fig. 1: Tinshemet Cave, geographical location, cave plan and stratigraphy.

a, Location of Tinshemet Cave and other major mid-MP sites in the Levant. b, Plan of the Terrace and the First Chamber of the cave. c, Stratigraphic sections of the outer part of the First Chamber and the Terrace, and field image of the Terrace sediments. The red circles denote articulated human remains. The orange stars connected by a dashed line denote the locations of volcanic shards with similarly evolved rhyolitic signatures that suggest a chronological correlation between Unit A on the Terrace and Layer III in the outer part of the Inner Chamber.

Fig. 2: Tinshemet Cave: major characteristics.

Archaeological and environmental characteristics (stratigraphy, dating, microfauna, lithics, ochre and fauna) of the Terrace and the First Chamber. Ages are given in ka. When mean ages are presented, they are marked with an asterisk. FC, First Chamber; TR, Terrace; Ar, Arvicanthis; Ma, Mastomys. Smaller icons for lithics and ochre indicate smaller ratios. Smaller animal icons indicate their lower frequencies in the assemblages. Credit: Silhouettes from PhyloPic under a Creative Commons license CC0 1.0: porcupine, T. Michael Keesey; hyena, Margot Michaud; horse, Lisa Nicvert; deer, Feeran Sayol; aurochs, Mariana Ruiz Vilarreal. Skull icon by purzen adapted from OpenClipArt under a Creative Commons license CC0 1.0.

Fig. 3: Lithic artefacts from Tinshemet Cave.

a, Recurrent centripetal Levallois core. b, Centripetal Levallois core. c, Preferential Levallois core with centripetal preparation. d, Preferential Levallois core. e, Débordant flake. f, Débordant and outrepassé flake. g, Éclat débordant à dos limité (pseudo-Levallois flake). h, Éclat débordant à dos limité (pseudo-Levallois flake). i, Éclat débordant à dos limité (pseudo-Levallois flake) j, Centripetal Levallois flake. k, Centripetal Levallois flake. l, Levallois flake with bidirectional scar pattern. m, Centripetal Levallois flake. n, Levallois flake with bidirectional scar pattern. o, Levallois point. p, Scraper on centripetal Levallois flake. q, Scraper on Levallois flake.

Fig. 4: Different types of ochre from Tinshemet Cave and their association with human and animal bones.

a, Ochre types. Class I: sandstone, distinguishable sand grain size and crumbly, high abundance of quartz mineral; Class II: fine-grained laminated and compacted clay, with high abundance of quartz mineral and very low to non-existent carbonates; Class III: calcium-carbonated formation and low abundance of quartz grains; Class IV: heterogenic anisotropic grains, unstructured heterogeneous fabric, with anisometric and contiguous quartz crystals; Class V: oolitic sandstone; Class VI: poorly compacted sandstone. b, In situ piece of ochre located between the human leg long bones (Tinshemet 2). c, Ochre piece associated with several fragmented animal bones and lithic artefacts in Unit B1a in square AF23 (same sub-unit and ~1 m from Tinshemet 2). d, Ochre pieces associated with several fragmented animal bones and lithic artefacts in Unit A4 in square AG22.

Fig. 5: Human burials at Tinshemet, Qafzeh and Skhul Caves.

Note that in all three caves the body was deposited on their right side (Qafzeh 9 excluded) in a fetal position, regardless of sex or age. The burials of Skhul IX, IV and V are redrawn from McCown and Keith³, and the burials of Qafzeh 25, 15, 8 and 11 are redrawn from Vandermeersch and Bar-Yosef⁴.

Fig. 6: Centripetal Levallois method and large-game hunting in the Levantine MP.

a, Frequencies of Levallois flakes with centripetal scar patterns on the dorsal faces in various Levantine MP assemblages. The data and references are provided in Supplementary Table 7. b, The relative abundance of the largest ungulates (aurochs, equids, rhino and hippo) among the MP cave sites. The data and references are provided in Supplementary Table 9. Credit: Silhouettes from PhyloPic under a Creative Commons license CC0 1.0: horse, Lisa Nicvert; deer, Feeran Sayol; aurochs, Mariana Ruiz Vilarreal; hippo, Steven Traver; rhino, Jody Taylor.

Zaidner, Y., Prévost, M., Shahack-Gross, R. et al.
Evidence from Tinshemet Cave in Israel suggests behavioural uniformity across Homo groups in the Levantine mid-Middle Palaeolithic circa 130,000–80,000 years ago.
Nat Hum Behav 9, 886–901 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02110-y

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

And so, once again, the facts turn out to be the exact opposite of what creationists need them to be. Instead of a recent creation of a single, uniquely distinct human pair, the evidence shows a deep and tangled human past stretching back well over 100,000 years, populated by related human groups who not only met and mated, but shared technologies, customs and probably symbolic ideas. Tinshemet Cave adds yet another piece to the growing body of evidence that human evolution was not a simple, linear procession, or the magical sudden appearance without ancestry, but a complex network of interacting populations evolving over deep time.

This is awkward enough for biblical literalism, but it is even worse for the creationist habit of drawing a sharp line between “fully human” beings made in a god’s image and everything else. At Tinshemet Cave, those neat boundaries dissolve. Here we find different human groups apparently burying their dead in similar ways, using similar tools, hunting similar prey and participating in the same cultural world. That is not what we would expect from separate, specially created kinds. It is exactly what we would expect from closely related human populations evolving, interacting and exchanging ideas over long periods of time.

As so often, the scientific evidence fits comfortably within evolutionary theory and makes perfect sense in the light of descent with modification, migration and admixture. It is creationism that is left floundering, forced either to ignore the evidence, misrepresent it, or pretend that a richly documented prehistory somehow does not exist. Tinshemet Cave is a reminder that the story of our origins is written not in ancient mythology, but in bones, tools, ochre and DNA — and that story is far older, far more intricate, and far more interesting than any Bronze Age creation tale.

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Refuting Creationism - More on the Domestication of Dogs - Long Before 'Creation Week'

2026-04-14T01:24:00.000+01:00

Cover picture for The Way of the Wolf: A Stone Age Epic

Canine companions: revealing the genetic history of our first friends | Crick

This is the second of my posts on the domestication of dogs and on why the facts are so awkward for creationists. It concerns research by a team led by Anders Bergström and Pontus Skoglund of the Francis Crick Institute, London, working with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a large international network of collaborators.

The team have shown that the domestication of dogs had already begun well before the invention of farming, when humans in Europe still lived in nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers. At that stage, dogs would have been hunting companions, sentinel guards for encampments, and perhaps even family pets, long before they were adapted for the many tasks later associated with farming, such as herding livestock and guarding flocks. Their findings are published in Nature.

This establishes dogs as the first domestic animals and suggests that the human-dog relationship may have helped lay the groundwork for later animal husbandry and selective breeding.

The story of the domestication of dogs from wolves is something in which I have long taken a special interest, and it was that interest which led me to write two books with fictionalised accounts of how it may have happened - The Girl and the Wolf and its sequel, The Way of the Wolf: A Stone Age Epic.

Biologically, of course, this evolved symbiotic relationship between two species is exactly the sort of outcome the Theory of Evolution leads us to expect. But, embarrassingly for creationists, it also tells a story rooted in deep time, for which creationism has no credible explanation. Worse still for biblical literalists, it makes a mockery of the claim that God created all animals for the benefit of humankind, because that claim presupposes that animals created by an omniscient, omnipotent designer would already be fit for purpose and would not need extensive modification by human selective breeding.

The researchers reached their conclusions by analysing DNA from 216 canid skeletal remains, including 181 pre-Neolithic samples - that is, from before approximately 10,000 years ago. These remains came from sites across Europe and nearby regions, including Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, Sweden, Denmark and Scotland.

Creationists previously had a little wriggle room when the earliest indisputable domestic dog was thought to date to about 10,900 years ago. They could at least pretend that dogs appeared during their imaginary ‘Creation Week’ or shortly afterwards. That pretence is now no longer sustainable. This study shows that the ancestry of later dogs was already established before 14,200 years ago, and probably earlier still.

How do palaeontologists tell dog remains from wolf remains? At first glance, they often can’t — at least, not with complete confidence from a single bone. Early dogs had only recently diverged from wolves, so their skeletons could still be very similar. That is why many supposed “earliest dogs” have remained controversial for years. [1.1]

Skull and jaw shape
Researchers look for trends associated with domestication, such as a shorter snout, smaller skull, reduced tooth size, or crowding of the teeth. But these are tendencies, not foolproof markers, because wild wolves also vary naturally in size and shape. [2.1]

Detailed shape analysis
Modern studies often use 3D geometric morphometrics — a way of comparing the precise shape of skulls and jaws using many anatomical landmarks. This is much more reliable than simply measuring length and width with a ruler. [3.1]

Ancient DNA
The strongest evidence now comes from ancient DNA. Genetics can show whether a specimen belongs to a dog lineage even when its bones still look very wolf-like. That is why the new Nature study is so important: it does not rely on guesswork from bones alone. [2.1]

Archaeological context
Scientists also look at where the bones were found. A canid buried with humans, found repeatedly at campsites, or showing signs of close association with people is more likely to have been a dog than a wild wolf. [4.1]

The key point
So, palaeontologists do not usually identify an early dog by one “magic feature”. The best cases are those where anatomy, DNA and archaeological context all point to the same conclusion. That is why the evidence for very early dogs has become much stronger in recent years. [2.1]

The work of the team is explained in a Francis Crick Institute news release:

Canine companions: revealing the genetic history of our first friends
The largest ancient DNA study of canid remains to date sheds light on how the first farmers adopted hunter-gatherer dogs and highlights that dog domestication happened before 14,000 years ago.
Recent estimates suggest that the UK is home to nearly 13 million pet dogs – about one in three households. Dogs have been ‘man’s best friend’ throughout living history, but when did we first adopt these furry companions, and how have they evolved since then?

For Pontus Skoglund, leader of the Crick’s Ancient Genomics Laboratory, tracing the genetic evolution of dogs is another way to follow the footsteps of our ancestors as they faced and adapted to environmental challenges.
Dogs were the first animal to form a domestic relationship with humans, towards the end of the last Ice Age – even before the advent of farming. But we haven’t yet pinpointed where and how dogs were first domesticated from wolves, especially as it has typically been hard to tell early dogs from wolves, and trace how these first dogs expanded across the world.

Pontus Skoglund, co-lead author.
Ancient Genomics Laboratory
The Francis Crick Institute
London, UK.

The largest study of canid remains to date

Pontus and Anders Bergström, Lecturer at the University of East Anglia and former postdoc at the Crick, deployed advanced genetic techniques to distinguish dogs from their wild cousins, in research published today in Nature.
Working with researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a large network of international collaborators, Pontus and Anders analysed DNA from 216 canid skeletal remains, including 181 pre-Neolithic samples (before approx. 10,000 years ago), before the invention of farming. These samples came from sites across Europe and its vicinity, including Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, Sweden, Denmark and Scotland.

Excavation of the Kesslerloch cave in Switzerland, one of the sites in the study, under Jakob Heierli in 1903.

© Cantonal Archaeological Service (KASH) of Schaffhausen, archive.

Due to the age of the dogs studied, and the large amount of contamination from microbes, the amount of canid DNA in most of the samples was low. We used a technique called ‘hybridisation capture’ to boost the amount of usable DNA. This involved identifying genetic variants that are present in current-day grey wolves and ‘‘fishing’ only these out of the ancient canid samples.

Anders Bergström, co-lead author.
School of Biological Sciences
University of East Anglia
Norwich, UK.

A wolf in dog's clothing

Once hybridisation capture had successfully separated canid DNA from DNA from contaminants like bacteria or other microbes, the first step was to begin the wolf vs. dog classification.

We worked out how similar each sample is to a present-day dog. We managed to classify a remarkable 141 out of 216 remains, with some surprises. For example, a 13,700-year-old canid from Belgium, previously thought to be a dog due to its small size and traces of human modification, turned out to be a wolf. This highlighted that it is not always easy to tell a dog from a wolf based on skeletal evidence alone.”.

Pontus Skoglund.

The really exciting finding was that a proposed dog from the Kesslerloch cave in Switzerland was genetically a dog: at 14,200 years old, it’s one of the oldest European dogs confirmed by genetics. It joins a 15,800-year-old dog from Türkiye, analysed as part of a related study into the earliest genetic evidence for domesticated dogs in Türkiye and Europe, also published in Nature today and led by the Natural History Museum, the University of Oxford and LMU Munich.

The last estimated ‘oldest dog’ DNA is 10,900 years old; now the horizon is much further back into the past.

Pontus Skoglund.
Dog maxilla

Maxilla of the domesticated dog from the Kesslerloch cave in Thayngen, Switzerland.

© Cantonal Archaeological Service (KASH) of Schaffhausen.
Photo: Ivan Ivic.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks

Another question for ancient genomicists is whether dogs were domesticated separately in different locations. Previous work from Pontus and team showed that dogs derive most of their ancestry from two distinct wolf sources, one from eastern Eurasia and one from western Eurasia. Using a statistical model, the researchers showed that all the early European dogs in this study can trace their origins to the eastern wolf source, with some showing small amounts of ancestry from the western wolf source.

So, European wolves didn’t contribute detectably to dog evolution, and there’s no evidence that European dogs would have undergone an independent domestication process separate from dogs in Asia, as both share the same ancestry profile.

Anders Bergström.

The Kesslerloch dog was already genetically more similar to European dogs than to Asian dogs, suggesting that dogs were domesticated well before 14,200 years ago, to give time for European and Asian dogs to become genetically different by this time.

The first farmers adopted hunter-gatherer dogs

The spread of farming into Europe accompanied a large-scale migration of people from Southwest Asia in the Neolithic period. By modelling the ancestry of European dogs after the arrival of Neolithic farmers, the team showed that the dog genetic changes largely mirrored the changes in human genetics, but to a much smaller degree.

Reenactment scene in front of the Kesslerloch cave in Thayngen, Switzerland.

© Cantonal Archaeological Service (KASH) of Schaffhausen.
Photo: Luisa Kehl.

Dogs from local hunter-gatherer groups already living in Europe contributed substantially to the genetics of dog populations living with Neolithic farmers, so these native dogs were likely adopted by the first farmers. This contrasts, for example, with the colonial expansion into the Americas, where native dogs were almost entirely replaced by the incoming European dogs.

Pontus Skoglund.

The legacy of these European hunter-gatherer dogs is still around today, with most popular European dog breeds tracing about half of their ancestry to the dogs that lived in Europe before farming.
Most of the dogs running about in a local park today trace some of their ancestry to dogs living in Europe over 14,000 years ago. It’s fascinating that we’ve walked alongside each other for so many thousands of years, despite considerable changes in human lifestyles.

Pontus Skoglund.

Publication:
Bergström, A., Furtwängler, A., Johnston, S. et al.
Genomic history of early dogs in Europe. Nature 651, 986–994 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10112-7

Abstract
The earliest morphologically identifiable dogs are from Europe and date to at least 14,000 years ago^1,2,3,4,5, although early remains are also found in other regions. The origin of early dogs in Europe, and their relationships to other dogs, has remained elusive in the absence of genome-wide data. Similarly, although dogs were the only domestic animal to predate agriculture, little is known about how the arrival of Neolithic farmers from Southwest Asia affected the dogs living with European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Here we analysed 216 canid remains, including 181 from Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Europe. We developed a genome-wide capture approach that enriched endogenous DNA by 10–100-fold and could distinguish dog from wolf ancestry for 141 of 216 remains. The oldest dog data that we recovered are from a 14,200-year-old dog from the Kesslerloch site in Switzerland, and we find that it shares ancestry with later worldwide dogs—inconsistent with the hypothesis that European Upper Palaeolithic dogs derived wholly from a separate domestication process. The Kesslerloch dog already displays more affinity to Mesolithic, Neolithic and present-day European dogs than to Asian dogs, demonstrating that dog genetic diversification had started well before 14,200 years ago. We find a Neolithic influx of Southwest Asian ancestry into Europe, but this seems to have been of smaller magnitude than in humans, suggesting that Mesolithic dogs contributed substantially to Neolithic, and, ultimately, probably also modern, European dogs.

Bergström, A., Furtwängler, A., Johnston, S. et al.
Genomic history of early dogs in Europe. Nature 651, 986–994 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10112-7

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

What this study exposes is the sheer poverty of the creationist position. Dogs were not magically created in finished form for human convenience, as the biblical myth would require. They were shaped over millennia out of a wolf ancestry through a long, messy, entirely natural process of co-existence, selection and adaptation. In other words, exactly what evolution predicts, and exactly what creationism cannot accommodate without evasions and excuses.

The dates make that failure even harder to hide. The ancestry of domestic dogs is now traced back well before agriculture and far beyond the narrow little timescale that young-Earth creationists try to impose on reality. Yet again, the facts do not merely fail to support Genesis; they make it look like what it is — a collection of simplistic origin tales from a people who knew nothing of genetics, archaeology, evolution or deep time.

And that is the real lesson here. Science can reconstruct the history of the human-dog relationship because it works from evidence and is willing to follow that evidence wherever it leads. Creationism begins with a conclusion and then spends its time trying to twist, ignore or misrepresent inconvenient facts. The result is that every new discovery like this widens the gulf between what the evidence shows and what creationists need to believe. Far from supporting special creation, the domestication of dogs stands as yet another clear example of evolution in action, unfolding over thousands of years in a world far older and far more interesting than biblical literalism allows.

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Creationism Refuted - Earliest Domestic Dogs - 6,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

2026-04-13T13:14:00.004+01:00

Oldest genetic evidence for domestic dogs identified in Europe and Türkiye | University of Oxford

Artistic reconstruction of Pınarbaşı c. 15,800 years ago based on evidence from archaeological excavations by University of Liverpool.

This is the first of two blog posts on a pair of recent papers published in Nature on the earliest known domestic dogs and what they tell us about when grey wolves first entered into a domestic relationship with humans. Together, these studies push the earliest firm genetic evidence for dogs back[1] about 10,900 years ago, showing that dog populations were already present in western Eurasia during the Late Upper Palaeolithic. For creationists committed to a young Earth and to the simplistic Bronze Age origin myths of the Bible, that is yet another awkward fact: dogs were already on their way to becoming humanity’s first domestic animal long before their preferred chronology even allows for the Earth to exist. [1.1]

Since then, of course, dogs have been systematically modified by selective breeding to suit the many roles humans have found for them. That alone sits uneasily with the claim that a perfect creator made all animals ready-made for human benefit. But what makes these papers especially interesting to me is not only that they create yet another problem for creationist superstition, but that they touch directly on the background to two novels I have recently published, in which the domestication of wolves forms part of the story.

The first of these books, The Girl and the Wolf, tells the story of Almora, a child of the Drognai clan, who is raised alongside a wolf cub, Sharma, who becomes her inseparable companion. When Almora meets one of the last Neanderthals, Tanu, and they fall in love, Sharma plays a crucial part in bringing them together. The kindness of Almora’s mother, Shana, in rescuing and raising the starving cub becomes the small act from which a much larger change in human history begins.

In the sequel, The Way of The Wolf: A Stone Age Epic, Almora and Sharma have become the stuff of legend, their story spreading far beyond the lands of the Drognai. When Almora’s daughter, Shana — herself of mixed Neanderthal and modern human ancestry — chooses to leave the clan because of the tensions her family’s presence has caused, Almora, Tanu and a small band of Drognai go with her to a distant land. There they discover a people who have taken the legend of Almora and Sharma to heart and formed a close relationship with a pack of tame wolves, a relationship that has helped carry them through hardship into a period of hunting success and prosperity.

These books are fiction, of course, because we cannot know exactly how wolves became domesticated. What we can say is that the current evidence points to a long and complex process rather than a single moment of “invention”. The broad consensus is that some wolves probably began by exploiting scraps around human camps, while humans gradually came to recognise their value as sentinels, scavengers and hunting partners. The rest, as they say, is history.

And according to the first of these two new papers, that history was already under way deep in the Late Ice Age. One study generated nuclear and mitochondrial genomes from canid remains from Pınarbaşı in Türkiye, dated to 15,800 years ago, and from Gough’s Cave in Somerset, dated to 14,300 years ago, and concluded that a genetically homogeneous dog population was already widely distributed across Europe and Anatolia by at least 14,300 years ago. The second study analysed 216 canid remains from Europe and found its oldest dog genome in a 14,200-year-old specimen from Kesslerloch in Switzerland, showing that European dogs were already genetically distinct by then. [1.1]

Background^ Dogs Before Farming. One of the most remarkable things about dog domestication is that it appears to have happened before the rise of agriculture. Unlike cattle, sheep, goats or pigs, which were domesticated by settled farming communities, the earliest dogs lived alongside Late Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers. In other words, humanity’s first domestic animal was not an animal bred for meat, milk or labour by farmers, but a former wolf that entered into a relationship with mobile bands of Ice Age people. [2.1]

That matters because it makes dogs unique in the history of domestication. These new studies show that dogs were already present among hunter-gatherer populations in western Eurasia by at least 14,300 years ago, and that the oldest known dog genome so far comes from Pınarbaşı in Türkiye, dating to about 15,800 years ago. This means dogs were already living with humans thousands of years before agriculture had emerged, and long before villages, fields and herds became the basis of human life. [3.1]

This strongly suggests that the original relationship between humans and wolves was very different from later domestication events. Early dogs were unlikely to have been kept as livestock. Instead, they probably became useful because they could exploit scraps around human camps, warn of danger, help defend an encampment, and eventually assist in hunting. A partnership of this kind would have been especially valuable to hunter-gatherers, for whom success in the hunt and early warning of predators or rival groups could make the difference between survival and starvation. The Nature paper argues that these early dogs were exchanged among culturally distinct hunter-gatherer groups across western Eurasia, implying that they had already become socially and practically important. [3.1]

So, before humans domesticated the animals they would later herd, pen and breed for food, they had already formed a close working relationship with wolves. That makes the dog not just the first domestic animal, but the only one whose domestication clearly began in a world of Ice Age foragers rather than farmers. [2.1]

The first paper, by a team that included scientists from the University of Oxford, is the subject of an Oxford University news release. The related Natural History Museum news item explains how DNA from canid remains, including a jawbone from Gough’s Cave, helped reveal some of the oldest genetic evidence yet found for domestic dogs. The second paper broadens the picture by tracing the genomic history of early dogs in Europe and showing continuity between these early animals and later European dogs. [2]

Oldest genetic evidence for domestic dogs identified in Europe and Türkiye
University of Oxford researchers have contributed to a new study which has uncovered the earliest genetic evidence for the existence of dogs. Using ancient DNA analysis, researchers identified dogs at archaeological sites dating to the Late Upper Palaeolithic, approximately 16,000–14,000 years ago – far earlier than the previous genetic record for dogs of around 10,900 years ago. The results have been published today in Nature.
The research team, involving experts from 17 institutions internationally, identified multiple dogs dated to similar periods across Europe and Anatolia, indicating dogs were widely distributed by 14,000 years ago. At this time, all humans were hunter-gatherers and agriculture had not yet emerged.

Scientists have known that dogs emerged from grey wolf populations, and they suspected that the process took place around the last Ice Age. Up to now, evidence from pre-agricultural archaeological sites has been limited and difficult to confirm. During the early phases of domestication, the skeletons of dogs and wolves were likely to have been indistinguishable, and their behavioural differences do not leave traces in the archaeological record.

Previous studies have mostly used very short DNA sequences and skeletal measurements to evaluate the earliest presence of dogs in the archaeological record. In this new study, the researchers recovered whole genomes from archaeological specimens excavated from Upper Palaeolithic sites. These included Pınarbaşı in Türkiye (dating to around 15,800 years ago) and Gough’s Cave in the UK (around 14,300 years ago), as well as two Mesolithic sites in Serbia (11,500–7,900 years ago and 8,900 years ago, respectively). They then compared the genomes with more than 1,000 modern and ancient dogs and wolves from across the world.

The results of these analyses confirmed that these bones belonged to dogs, and that they were already widespread across western Eurasia by at least 14,300 years ago.

Not only has this discovery pushed back the earliest direct evidence of dogs by 5,000 years, but it also showed us that dogs and wolves were clearly separate, both biologically and in how humans interacted with them, at least 16,000 years ago. This suggests that dog domestication likely took place sometime during the last Ice Age, more than 10,000 years before the appearance of any other domestic plants or animals, which really does secure their title as “man’s best friend

Dr Lachie Scarsbrook, co-lead author
Palaeogenomics and Bio-Archaeology Research Network
School of Archaeology
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK.

These Palaeolithic dogs were genetically similar and were members of a population that expanded across the region between 18,500 and 14,000 years ago. They were more closely related to the ancestors of present-day European and Middle Eastern breeds, such as boxers and salukis, than to Arctic breeds like Siberian huskies. This indicates that today’s major dog genetic lineages must have been established by the Upper Palaeolithic.

By comparing the DNA from these ancient dogs with other ancient and modern populations, we were surprised to see just how closely related the earliest dogs were despite living more than 4,000 km apart. This suggests that the first dogs were a game changer and spread rapidly across Europe.

Professor Greger Larson, co-corresponding author
Palaeogenomics and Bio-Archaeology Research Network
School of Archaeology
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK.

What role these dogs played in Palaeolithic communities is currently unclear. The remains were associated with several human hunter-gatherer populations that were genetically and culturally different. This suggests that the spread of dogs may have been linked to the migration and interaction of these groups, including Epigravettian and Magdalenian communities in Europe.

The study included an analysis of dietary isotopes led by researchers at the University of York and the Natural History Museum. This showed that people at Pınarbaşı likely fed dogs fish, which, together with evidence that the animals were intentionally buried, suggests a close interaction between people and their dogs. Suggestions of similar interaction were also seen at Gough’s Cave and a site in Germany, indicating dogs may have held cultural significance across Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer communities.

Publication:
Marsh, W.A., Scarsbrook, L., Yüncü, E. et al.
Dogs were widely distributed across western Eurasia during the Palaeolithic. Nature 651, 995–1003 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10170-x

Abstract
Archaeological evidence suggests that dogs diverged from wolves during the Palaeolithic, more than 15,000 years ago^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7}. The earliest unequivocal genetic evidence, however, is associated with dog remains from Mesolithic archaeological contexts approximately 10,900 years ago^8,9. Here we generate both nuclear and mitochondrial genomes from canid remains at Pınarbaşı in Türkiye (15,800 years ago)¹⁰ and Gough’s Cave in the UK (14,300 years ago)¹¹, as well as from dogs excavated from two Mesolithic sites in Serbia (Padina between 11,500–7,900 years ago and Vlasac 8,900 years ago)^12,13. Our analyses indicate that a genetically homogeneous dog population was already widely distributed across Europe and Anatolia during the Late Upper Palaeolithic (by at least 14,300 years ago). This finding suggests that dogs were exchanged among genetically and culturally distinct western Eurasian Late Palaeolithic human populations, namely the Magdalenian, Epigravettian and Anatolian hunter-gatherers^10,14,15,16. Last, we identify a major influx of eastern Eurasian dog ancestry during the Mesolithic, concomitant with the movement of eastern hunter-gatherer populations into Europe¹⁴, which led to the establishment of the primary ancestry characteristics that define European dog populations today.

Marsh, W.A., Scarsbrook, L., Yüncü, E. et al.
Dogs were widely distributed across western Eurasia during the Palaeolithic. Nature 651, 995–1003 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10170-x

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

This and the next paper, the subject of my next blogpost, do more than add another detail to the history of domestication; they push the human–dog relationship back into the Late Ice Age, showing that dogs were already living alongside hunter-gatherers by at least 14,300 years ago, with the oldest genome in this study dating to about 15,800 years ago. That places the beginnings of dog domestication far outside the cramped timescale demanded by young-Earth creationism and long before farming, cities or civilisation. In other words, humanity’s oldest animal partnership was already taking shape thousands of years before creationists believe the Earth itself existed.

It also illustrates, yet again, how evolution and selection work in the real world. Wolves did not suddenly appear as fully formed domestic companions, conveniently designed for human use. They entered into a long, messy, contingent relationship with human communities, and over generations that relationship changed both species. Humans gained sentinels, hunting partners and companions; wolves that could tolerate and exploit human proximity gained a new ecological niche. Later, through selective breeding, humans reshaped those early dogs into the astonishing variety of forms we know today. That is not special creation; it is evolution, adaptation and artificial selection operating over deep time.

So, as usual, the science presents no problem at all for evolutionary theory, but a very great one for biblical literalism. The evidence from ancient DNA fits neatly into the scientific account of human prehistory, while the creationist model has nowhere to put it except in the ever-growing pile of facts that must be ignored, denied or misrepresented. Once again, reality agrees with science and not with mythology.

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Refuting Creationism - How Humans Caused 'Warrior' Wheat to Evolve.

2026-04-12T11:53:00.003+01:00

Early farming unintentionally bred highly competitive "warrior" wheat, study finds | Biosciences | The University of Sheffield

One of the more embarrassing questions you can ask a creationist is this: if an omniscient, perfect god created all living things for the benefit of humankind, as the biblical creation myth claims, why have humans had to modify almost all our domesticated animals and cultivated crops to make them fit for purpose? In many cases, we have altered them so extensively that they are barely recognisable as the same species as their wild ancestors.

The story of how humans domesticated wild species and gradually modified them is, in effect, a textbook example of evolution in progress. Sometimes this happened through conscious selective breeding, but often it was an unintended consequence of domestication itself. Wheat, for example, evolved grains that were more firmly attached to the stalk. This meant fewer grains were lost when harvested and carried back to camp for communal use, so the plants whose seeds stayed attached were more likely to have those seeds planted again, whether deliberately or accidentally, around early hunter-gatherer encampments.

Another example in wheat is the evolution of taller plants with more upright leaves. As humans began planting wheat more densely, they created an environment in which the more aggressive plants literally overshadowed their neighbours and captured a greater share of the sunlight. In this struggle for existence, the plants best suited to the human-made environment were the ones most likely to survive and become the parents of the next generation.

That is the conclusion of a research group led by Dr Yixiang Shan and Professor Colin Osborne of the University of Sheffield, working in collaboration with colleagues from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Rey Juan Carlos University in Spain, and Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Their findings are published in Current Biology.

Background^ the origins and cultivation of wheat.

One of the first domesticated crops: Wheat was among the earliest plants brought under cultivation, beginning more than 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. Evidence points especially to south-eastern Anatolia, including the Karacadağ region of modern Turkey, as a key centre in its early domestication. [1.1]
From wild grass to crop plant: Early domesticated wheats were derived from wild einkorn and wild emmer. Domestication favoured traits useful to humans, especially a non-brittle rachis — in other words, ears that held onto their grains instead of shattering and scattering them before harvest. Other domestication traits included larger seeds, larger leaves, reduced dormancy and greater above-ground growth.
Bread wheat is a hybrid: Modern bread wheat did not arise in a single simple step. It ultimately emerged when a domesticated tetraploid wheat hybridised with the wild grass Aegilops tauschii, producing the hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum) that now dominates world production. Durum wheat is tetraploid; bread wheat is hexaploid. [1.1]
How cultivation drove evolution: Wheat was not merely tamed; it evolved under human influence. Repeated harvesting and sowing favoured plants whose grains stayed attached long enough to be collected. Later, dense planting created new selection pressures, favouring traits such as taller growth and more competitive leaf arrangements. In other words, farming itself became an evolutionary force.
Its spread across the world: From its Near Eastern origins, wheat spread west through Anatolia into Greece by about 8,000 years ago, then across Europe, reaching Britain by roughly 5,000 years ago. It also spread east through Iran into Central Asia and China, and was later taken to the Americas and Australia. [2.1]
Why wheat became so important: Wheat is unusually adaptable. It grows across a wide range of climates, from sea level to high elevations, and under varied rainfall conditions. That adaptability, combined with its usefulness for making bread, pasta, couscous and other staple foods, is why it became one of the world’s most important crops. Today, bread wheat accounts for the great majority of global production, with most of the rest being durum wheat. [3.1]

They are also explained in a University of Sheffield School of Biosciences news item:

Early farming unintentionally bred highly competitive "warrior" wheat, study finds
An evolutionary ‘arms race’ for light and space led to the early domestication of wheat, according to new research that could offer fresh insights into crop design.
The study led by Dr Yixiang Shan and Professor Colin Osborne in collaboration with the Autonomous University of Madrid and King Juan Carlos University and Wageningen University, examined how wild plants adapted to human exploitation, finding that early cultivation selected for plants with a significantly stronger competitive ability than their wild ancestors. Published in Current Biology the findings show that the act of planting seeds in managed fields created a high-stakes environment. Over a period of 1,000 to 2,000 years, this process favoured plants that could outmanoeuvre their neighbours, leading to the development of "warrior" phenotypes in ancient landraces.

The research shows that early domesticated wheats were much stronger competitors for light and space in the field than wild varieties. This competitive edge was achieved through specific physical adaptations: larger, more upright leaves and a greater ability to maintain shoot growth even when crowded by other plants.

By using a functional-structural plant (FSP) model to simulate growth, the researchers identified that steeper leaf angles were the most influential trait. These upright leaves allowed domesticated plants to overtop their neighbours during the vegetative stage, capturing more sunlight and shading out rivals.

While evolution has favoured strong competitors, modern farming packs crops tightly into fields for high yields. This practice needs crops that are able to cooperate not compete, and has meant modern breeders needed to reverse the unhelpful effects of evolution.

’ Professor Colin P. Osborne, corresponding author
Plants, Photosynthesis and Soil
School of Biosciences
University of Sheffield
Sheffield, UK.

However, the research also reveals a stark reversal in this evolutionary trend during the modern era. While ancient landraces were bred for aggression, modern "elite" durum wheats produced by selective breeding programmes have become less competitive. In contemporary farming, where herbicides and fertilisers are used to manage resources, breeders have favoured varieties with smaller leaves and shorter stems to ensure energy is directed toward grain production rather than fighting for space.

The findings indicate that the traits responsible for the success of wheat during early human history are often unsuitable for conventional modern agriculture. This shift highlights how the specific environment of the field - and the transition from ancient cultivation to modern industrial farming - has fundamentally reshaped the architecture and behaviour of one of the world's most important food crops.

Publication:
Shan, Yixiang; Gómez-Fernández, Alicia; Evers, Jochem; Freckleton, Robert P.; Jones, Glynis E.M.; Milla, Ruben; Osborne, Colin P.(2026)
Evolution of competitiveness during wheat domestication
Current Biology 36(5), 1338.e4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.01.061

Highlights

Domesticated wheat plants are stronger competitors than their wild relatives
Stronger competitive ability evolved early during the domestication process
Competitiveness increased through larger, steeper leaves and apical dominance
Modern wheat breeding has weakened competitiveness for high-density planting

Summary
Crop domestication involved adaptation of wild plants to human exploitation,^1,2,3,4 but the underlying selection mechanisms remain unclear.^2,4 Archaeological evidence from the best-studied regions shows domestication occurring across a diffuse region and protracted period of at least 1,000–2,000 years,^2,5,6,7 consistent with a co-evolutionary process.^2,3 For seed enlargement, both theory^2,6,8,9,10 and empirical evidence^11,12,13 indicate an unintentional evolutionary mechanism, potentially acting via an ecological process such as competition,^14,15,16 but this remains unproven. Here, we used real and virtual experiments to test the hypothesis that cultivation selected for stronger competitive ability in wheats. First, we compared three independent domestication events across wheat species, showing that domesticated landraces were stronger competitors than their wild counterparts. Model simulations reproduced this finding, showing that competitiveness increased through larger, more erect leaves and greater apical dominance. A second experiment compared wild, landrace, and elite durum wheats, finding that stronger competitiveness arose early during domestication but has been reversed by modern breeding. Simulations showed that weaker competitiveness in modern varieties arose from smaller leaves and shorter internodes. Our work indicates that competition selected for domestication traits responsible for wheat canopy growth and architecture, resulting in competitive landrace phenotypes unsuitable for conventional modern agriculture.

Graphical abstract

Shan, Yixiang; Gómez-Fernández, Alicia; Evers, Jochem; Freckleton, Robert P.; Jones, Glynis E.M.; Milla, Ruben; Osborne, Colin P.(2026)
Evolution of competitiveness during wheat domestication
Current Biology 36(5), 1338.e4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2026.01.061

© 2026 Cell Press (Elsevier Inc.)
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

What this study shows, yet again, is that evolution is not some mysterious process that happened only in the remote past and then stopped. It is an observable, testable process that continues wherever living things reproduce, vary and encounter new selection pressures. In this case, those pressures were not imposed by changing climate, predators or disease, but by human activity itself. Simply by harvesting, sowing and growing wheat in dense stands, early farmers created conditions in which certain variants left more descendants than others. That is evolution in action, whether creationists like it or not.

It also poses an awkward problem for the childish notion that all living things were perfectly designed from the outset for human use. If wheat was specially created for our benefit, why did it need to be reshaped by generations of unconscious selection before it became a truly effective crop? Why were its wild ancestors not already equipped with the traits that would make them most useful to us? The answer, of course, is that wheat was not handed to humanity as a finished, purpose-built product. It was a wild grass, and like every other domesticated plant or animal, it was modified over time by entirely natural processes.

For science, this is no surprise. The Theory of Evolution predicts exactly this sort of gradual change under selection, whether that selection is imposed by nature or by human beings. For creationism, however, it is just one more example of reality refusing to conform to mythology. Far from supporting the fantasy of a perfect, fully formed creation designed with humans in mind, the evidence shows that humans have had to mould wild species into forms that better serve our needs. The history of wheat is not a story of supernatural design, but of descent with modification under selection.

And that, once again, is the difference between science and superstition. Science follows the evidence wherever it leads and produces explanations that fit the facts. Creationism starts with a myth and then has to ignore, deny or misrepresent the evidence when the facts contradict it. Wheat, one of the very foundations of civilisation, turns out to be yet another witness for evolution and yet another problem for those who insist that ancient folklore is a better guide to reality than the evidence itself.

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Malevolent Design - How Epigenetics Helps Pancreatic Cancer To Spread

2026-04-11T18:43:00.002+01:00

Representation of KLF5 expression patterns in lab-grown human pancreatic cancer cells (left) and their patterns of migration from the primary tumor (right). Credit: Andrew Feinberg laboratory, Johns Hopkins Medicine. Originally published in Molecular Cancer.

Growth of Spreading Pancreatic Cancer Fueled By “Under-Appreciated” Epigenetic Changes | Johns Hopkins Medicine

A new paper in Molecular Cancer from Johns Hopkins Medicine describes yet another discovery that should be deeply uncomfortable for Intelligent Design creationists. The researchers found that the spread of pancreatic cancer is driven not chiefly by fresh mutations in DNA sequence, but by epigenetic reprogramming — changes in chromatin organisation and gene activity. In particular, they identified KLF5 as a major driver of metastatic growth, with higher expression in most metastatic lesions than in the matched primary tumours. The paper in Molecular Cancer shows that KLF5 promotes metastatic proliferation through epigenetic modifier genes including NCAPD2 and MTHFD1, helping switch on programmes involved in migration, plasticity and invasion. [1]

What makes this especially important is that epigenetics is not some magical extra layer of “specified information” inserted into life by a supernatural designer. Its roots are ancient. In bacteria, DNA methylation is a major form of epigenetic regulation, involved in gene expression, chromosome replication and DNA repair. In archaea, histone-based chromatin already exists in a form strikingly similar to that of eukaryotes, and studies show that chromatin architecture and its role in regulating gene expression long predate complex multicellular life. In other words, the basic machinery was already there in simpler organisms, doing ordinary cellular housekeeping long before animals and plants ever appeared. [2]

Multicellular organisms did not receive a brand-new control system from an intelligent agent; they inherited this ancient molecular toolkit and elaborated it. As multicellularity evolved, epigenetic regulation expanded and became central to cell differentiation, allowing cells with the same DNA to adopt different stable identities by opening some regions of the genome and closing others. Work on the transition from unicellular to multicellular states in Dictyostelium, for example, shows that chromatin reorganisation and histone modifications are closely tied to the shift into multicellularity, while evolutionary reviews note that epigenetic diversity expanded rapidly with multicellular life and that epigenetic marks are crucial in development and long-lived cell lineages. [3]

And that is exactly why this Johns Hopkins work is such bad news for ID creationists. The same ancient, repurposed system that multicellular organisms rely on for cell specialisation can also be subverted to drive one of the deadliest features of cancer: metastasis. That is what evolved systems do. They are modified from older parts, good enough to work, but never perfect and never immune to catastrophic failure. What this study reveals is not elegant, flawless engineering, but the vulnerability of a historically evolved regulatory system — one that natural selection adapted for development and tissue specialisation, but which disease can hijack with lethal consequences. That is entirely consistent with evolution, and profoundly at odds with the notion of a competent, benevolent designer. [1]

The evolutionary origins of epigenetics.

Epigenetics is not “extra DNA information” magically added to the genome. It refers to chemical marks on DNA and its associated proteins, plus changes in chromatin packing, that alter how easily genes can be switched on or off without changing the DNA sequence itself. These marks help control which parts of the genome are accessible and active in any given cell.
Its roots are far older than animals, plants, or even multicellular life. In bacteria, DNA methylation is a major form of epigenetic regulation, involved in transcription, chromosome replication and DNA repair. In other words, long before there were bodies to build, cells were already using chemical marking systems to manage their genomes. [2]
Another major part of the story comes from the archaea. Histones — the DNA-packaging proteins central to eukaryotic chromatin — have their evolutionary origins in archaea. Archaeal histone-like proteins share the same basic fold as eukaryotic histones and can regulate gene expression as well as DNA organisation, showing that core components of chromatin regulation predate true eukaryotes.
Eukaryotes did not invent epigenetic regulation from scratch; they elaborated an older toolkit. Comparative work shows that DNA methylation is widespread across the tree of life, while several components of nucleosomes and histone-based regulation predated the emergence of eukaryotes. What changed with eukaryotes was the scale, complexity and integration of these systems.
That ancient toolkit became crucial when multicellular organisms evolved. A multicellular organism needs cells with the same genome to behave differently: some become muscle, some neurons, some skin, some blood. Epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation, histone modification and chromatin accessibility provide the means to lock different cells into different patterns of gene activity. [4]
This works because epigenetic states can be copied when cells divide. Reviews of developmental epigenetics note that DNA methylation and some histone marks are transmitted through mitotic cell divisions, so descendant cells tend to retain their lineage identity. That is how a fertilised egg can give rise to many specialised tissues without changing the underlying DNA sequence in each one.
But evolved systems are not flawless; they are vulnerable to misuse and breakdown. The Johns Hopkins team found that in metastatic pancreatic cancer, a gene called KLF5 promotes growth and invasion not mainly by new DNA mutations, but by altering chromatin organisation and other epigenetic controls. In 10 of 13 patients examined, at least one metastatic lesion showed increased KLF5 expression compared with the primary tumour. [1]
That is why this is such bad news for Intelligent Design creationists. What we see is not a perfect, purpose-built control system, but an ancient regulatory machinery adapted and repurposed over evolutionary time — useful for cell specialisation, yet also vulnerable to catastrophic failure in diseases such as cancer. That is exactly what we would expect from a historically evolved system assembled by modification of older parts, not from an all-wise and benevolent designer. [1]

The research and its importance for understanding pancreatic cancer is the subject of a news item from Johns Hopkins Medicine:

Growth of Spreading Pancreatic Cancer Fueled By “Under-Appreciated” Epigenetic Changes
In a lab-grown cell study focused on potential new treatment targets for halting the spread of most pancreatic cancers, Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists report they have found that a gene called KLF5 (Krueppel-like factor 5) fuels the growth of such spreading tumors not by acquiring abnormal changes in the cancer cells’ DNA code itself but by altering chemical changes and organization of DNA, or epigenetics, that turns genes on and off.

Epigenetic alterations are underappreciated as a major route to developing and fueling the growth of cancer metastasis.

Professor Andrew Feinberg, M.D., corresponding author.
Center for Epigenetics
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,
Baltimore, MD, USA.

Feinberg led researchers in 2017 to show that people with the most common form of pancreatic cancer had widespread epigenetic alterations, as opposed to new changes in the DNA code itself, or mutations, in their primary tumor that drove the cancer to metastasize to other parts of the body.

The new findings, which have implications in the search for treatments for pancreatic and other cancers, led them to pursue the current study, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health and described today in Molecular Cancer.

For the current study, the scientists aimed to find the most impactful genes associated with cancer cell growth. To do so, they used a gene-altering technology known as CRISPR to make cuts in DNA that silenced the genes in their investigative crosshairs. Once turned off, the genes that caused the largest shutdown of cell growth were considered to be most influential in cell growth had they been turned on.

The scientists found that KLF5 had the greatest effect specifically promoting the growth and invasion of metastatic cells, and that 10 of 13 people with pancreatic cancer had increased KLF5 gene expression in at least one metastatic lesion compared with the primary tumors.

The research team also did other experiments to validate KLF5’s impact on metastatic cell growth and found that KLF5 controls the tight packaging of DNA, an epigenetic factor that enables genes to be turned on or off.

The scientists concluded that slight changes in KLF5 expression levels in the metastatic group of cells appeared to make relatively larger changes in the cells’ ability to grow and spread. “This could suggest that, to develop treatments for pancreatic cancer metastasis, the gene may not need to be entirely shut down to have a positive effect,” says Feinberg, who notes that several anti-cancer compounds targeting KLF5 are in development.

The scientists also found that KLF5 regulates at least two other genes, NCAPD2 and MTHFD1, in metastatic but not primary laboratory-grown pancreatic cancer cells. The two genes are known as epigenetic modifier genes, which turn genes on or off not through the genetic code but by adding chemical groups to the DNA and helping to alter its packaging.

We are adding to evidence that cancer metastases are not caused by additional mutations in the primary cancer, but by additional epigenetic changes, enabling the cancer to thrive and grow. KLF5 seems to be a master gene that drives such changes and impacts a pathway of genes known to control invasion and the ability to resist treatments.

Kenna Sherman, co-first author.
Center for Epigenetics
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,
Baltimore, MD, USA.

The research in this study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (CA54358, R01HG010889, R01HG013409, T32GM148383), a Celgene License Pathway Agreement and a gift from the friends and family of Jasmine Lampadarios.

Additional scientists who contributed to the study are Masahiro Maeda, Weiqiang Zhou, Jiaqi Cheng, Yuta Nihongaki, Adrian Idrizi, Rakel Tryggvadottir, Oscar Camacho, Michael Koldobskiy, Barbara Slusher and Hongkai Ji from Johns Hopins; Xingbo Shang and Andre Levchenko from Yale University; and Jimin Min and Anirban Maitra from NYU Langone Health.

Publication:
Maeda, M., Sherman, K., Zhou, W. et al.
CRISPR screen of human pancreatic cancer xenografts identifies a KLF5 proliferation vulnerability through epigenetic modifiers NCAPD2 and MTHFD1. Mol Cancer 25, 75 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12943-026-02575-z

Abstract One of the major conundrums of cancer research and treatment is that the metastases that lead to death in most patients do not appear to involve additional driver mutations. Previously, we reported widespread loss of heterochromatin with activation of pro-metastatic genes in the subset of cells of primary pancreatic tumors that gave rise to liver and lung metastases. Here we hypothesized that this change in chromatin could create unique vulnerabilities in distant metastases. Using a CRISPR screen of human patient-derived xenografts from metastases and primary tumors, we identified KLF5 as essential for metastatic cell proliferation but not primary tumor growth. Further, we found that KLF5 induced epigenetic modifier genes, including NCAPD2 and MTHFD1, which themselves facilitated expression of specific genes driving migration and epithelial-mesenchymal transition, including TGFBR2, VIM, EMP1, and ITGB1. Inhibition of expression of these modifier genes restored heterochromatin in the specific regions that distinguish the primary and metastatic tumors. We backed up this causal chain of evidence with rigorous additional knockdown experiments with the modifier genes, and single cell RNA and chromatin experiments, and we also replicated the main findings in a second set of paired primary and distant metastasis xenograft lines. Finally, KLF5 expression was strongly associated with patient survival and human PDAC cell plasticity in a dataset of 70 PDAC patients and KLF5 expression was increased in the majority of lung, liver and peritoneal metastases compared to the matched primary tumor, confirming its importance in PDAC metastasis and mortality. In summary, we have identified a cascade of epigenetic modulators, modifiers and mediators that maintains the widespread heterochromatin loss supporting metastatic cell proliferation in human pancreatic cancer (see Graphical Abstract).
Graphical Abstract

KLF5 modulates epigenetic modifications driving PDAC metastatic proliferation and plasticity

Maeda, M., Sherman, K., Zhou, W. et al.
CRISPR screen of human pancreatic cancer xenografts identifies a KLF5 proliferation vulnerability through epigenetic modifiers NCAPD2 and MTHFD1. Mol Cancer 25, 75 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12943-026-02575-z

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

This study shows yet again how much more sense biology makes when viewed through the lens of evolution than through the fantasies of Intelligent Design. What we are looking at is not a pristine, purpose-built system created by a flawless engineer, but an ancient regulatory machinery inherited from simpler ancestors, modified over immense spans of time, and adapted for new functions such as cell differentiation in complex multicellular life. That such a system can be turned against the organism it serves is exactly what we should expect of an evolved, contingent process, not of deliberate, benevolent design.

For ID creationists, this presents an impossible dilemma. If epigenetic regulation is supposed to be the product of intelligent foresight, then so too is its lethal susceptibility to corruption in cancers such as pancreatic adenocarcinoma. The same machinery that helps produce specialised tissues and organs can also be hijacked to drive invasion, metastasis and death. That is not evidence of wisdom or compassion in design; it is evidence of a system that works well enough to persist, but which remains vulnerable because evolution can only tinker with what already exists.

And that, of course, is the point creationists are so often desperate to evade. Time and again, biology reveals not elegant perfection but jury-rigged compromise, historical constraint and dangerous failure modes. Epigenetics now joins the long list of features that make perfect sense as the modified inheritance of an unguided evolutionary past, and no sense at all as the handiwork of an all-knowing designer.

So, once again, the facts are no friend to creationism. Far from uncovering signs of supernatural planning, research like this exposes the messy, makeshift and often tragic reality of living systems shaped by evolution. Science has no difficulty accommodating that reality. It is Intelligent Design that is left floundering, forced either to ignore the evidence or to attribute one of the deadliest forms of human suffering to the intentions of its supposed designer.

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Refuting Creationism - Origin Of Western Europeans - Thousand Of Years Before The Mythical Flood

2026-04-11T12:44:00.000+01:00

Map indicating hunter-gatherer ancestry proportions across Europe 4500–2500 BCE. Darker is more.

New research into ancient DNA sheds light on key phase in European prehistory - University of Huddersfield

This second post on discoveries made by international teams of palaeontologists and geneticists, including scientists from the University of Huddersfield’s Archaeogenetics Research Group, examines the genetic evidence for the ancestry of modern western Europeans. As so often happens in research into human origins and archaeology, the findings are not what creationists keep hoping for: not a scrap of evidence that the creation myths in the Bible contain even a grain of historical truth. Instead, the team’s findings, published in Nature, add yet more evidence for a deep, complex and thoroughly non-biblical human past.

As usual, the evidence sits squarely at odds with those childish fairy tales of magical creation and a recent global population reset caused by a genocidal flood. The study shows that farming practices were reaching parts of western Europe long before biblical chronology allows for such events, and that there is no sign of the extreme genetic bottleneck such a story would require. On the contrary, both the archaeological and genetic evidence point to continuity across the period, with farming introduced unevenly into the region and with women of Early European Farmer ancestry from the Near East marrying into local hunter-gatherer communities.

Nor are these findings any comfort to far-right white supremacists who fantasise about Europeans as some sort of ancient “pure race”. Research led by scientists including Dr Maria Pala, Professor Martin B. Richards and Dr Ceiridwen J. Edwards of the University of Huddersfield shows that modern Europeans carry ancestry from multiple distinct populations: indigenous hunter-gatherers, Neolithic farmers ultimately derived from the Near East, and later pastoralist groups associated with the Eurasian steppe. In other words, the population history of Europe is one of movement, mixture and cultural exchange, not racial purity.

The team also found that the hunter-gatherer way of life persisted in what are now Belgium and the Netherlands for thousands of years longer than in most other parts of Europe. Rather than being rapidly replaced, these communities retained high levels of hunter-gatherer ancestry well into the Neolithic, apparently because the wetland, riverine and coastal environments allowed them to adopt some farming practices without abandoning their existing lifeways.

Background^ The Three Main Ancestral Strands in Modern Western Europeans. Ancient DNA has shown that the ancestry of modern western Europeans is not derived from a single ancient “race” or isolated founding population, but from the mixing of three broad prehistoric population groups over many thousands of years. These are usually described as western hunter-gatherers, Early European Farmers, and later steppe pastoralists. The balance between them varies from place to place, but together they form the main ancestral framework for much of western Europe today. [1]

Western hunter-gatherers
These were the descendants of the Mesolithic people who lived across Europe after the last Ice Age, surviving by hunting, fishing and gathering wild foods. They were the indigenous inhabitants of Europe before farming arrived. In most parts of Europe, their genetic signature was greatly reduced when farming populations spread westwards, but it did not vanish. In some regions, especially the wetlands of the Lower Rhine-Meuse area, hunter-gatherer ancestry persisted for much longer than elsewhere. [1]
Early European Farmers
These were the descendants of early farming populations ultimately derived from western Anatolia and the Near East. As farming spread into Europe between about 6500 and 4000 BCE, these groups mixed with local hunter-gatherers and, in many areas, contributed the majority of the ancestry of later populations. They also brought with them domesticated plants and animals, pottery traditions, and a much more settled way of life. [1]
Steppe pastoralists
A third major ancestral component entered Europe later, during the late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, from pastoralist populations of the Eurasian steppe. This “steppe ancestry” spread westwards roughly between 3000 and 2500 BCE, often associated with cultural complexes such as Corded Ware and later Bell Beaker groups. It became an important part of the ancestry of many later European populations, including those in western Europe. [1]

What this means
So, modern western Europeans are the product of repeated migrations, intermarriage and cultural exchange over millennia. The genetic evidence shows a history of mixture, not purity; mobility, not isolation. Studies like this one are important because they show that even within Europe the process was uneven, with some regions adopting farming early and others, such as the Lower Rhine-Meuse wetlands, retaining strong hunter-gatherer ancestry for thousands of years longer than expected. [1]

Their findings are also summarised in a news item from the University of Huddersfield:

New research into ancient DNA sheds light on key phase in European prehistory
Researchers at the University of Huddersfield have used ancient DNA to reveal that hunter-gatherers in one part of Europe survived for thousands of years longer than anywhere else on the continent – and have uncovered the pivotal role of women in the process.
The research was carried out as part of an international network of geneticists and archaeologists led by David Reich at Harvard University, and is published in the leading scientific journal, Nature. The work at the University of Huddersfield was carried out by research student Alessandro Fichera and post-doctoral fellow Dr Francesca Gandini, under the supervision of Dr Maria Pala, Professor Martin B. Richards, and Dr Ceiridwen Edwards, members of the Archaeogenetics Research Group within the School of Applied Sciences. The research was funded as part of a Doctoral Scholarship scheme awarded by the Leverhulme Trust to Professor Richards and Dr Pala. The group collaborated closely with palaeoecologist Professor John Stewart at Bournemouth University and archaeologists at the Université de Liège in Belgium, who excavated and managed the ancient human samples. The study analysed complete human genomes from individuals who lived across a region that encompasses modern-day Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, between 8500 and 1700 BCE.

Map indicating hunter-gatherer ancestry proportions across Europe 4500–2500 BCE

This was a particularly crucial phase in European prehistory when a series of major population and cultural shifts shaped the genetic composition of modern Europeans. Before national borders existed, people moved freely across large distances. In Europe, these movements involved the arrival of genetically distinct populations that mixed and therefore introduced not only new genetic components, but also new languages, cultures, and ways of life.

The impact of these changes was so profound and expansive that virtually all modern-day European populations carry evidence of three ancestral components: a hunter-gatherer component, a Neolithic component brought by the first farmers from the Near East, and a third component associated with pastoralists from Russia.

This latest research reveals that the arrival of farming in the area in question, around ~4500 BCE, did not result in anything like the major shift in genetic composition that took place across the rest of Europe. Instead, it involved the uneven acquisition of farming-related practices by local hunter-gatherer communities with only minimal genetic input from the incoming farmers.

Strikingly, genomic data from the study suggest that this farmer influx was mostly from women marrying into the local hunter-gatherer communities, bringing with them their know-how as well as their genes. This pattern was limited to the riverine wetlands and coastal areas across the region. The wealth of natural resources seems to have allowed the local people to selectively embrace some aspects of farming while also preserving many hunter-gatherer practices, and therefore genes.

The high levels of hunter-gatherer ancestry persisted across the region (modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands) until the end of the Neolithic, around 2500 BCE, when new people spread across Europe. The new incomers this time arrived and mixed fully with local communities, so that the genomic trajectory of the area finally realigned with the neighbouring regions.

We expected a clear change between the older hunter-gatherer populations and the newer agriculturalists, but apparently in the lowlands and along the rivers of the Netherlands and Belgium, the change was less immediate. It's like a Waterworld where time stood still.

Professor John R. Stewart, co-author
Faculty of Science and Technology
Bournemouth University
Poole, UK.

Ancient DNA studies often bring to light unexpected pages of our past. We might anticipate finding the unexpected when analysing samples from unexplored or peripheral regions of the globe. But here we are looking at the heartland of Europe, making these results even more striking. It’s a testament to the power of ancient DNA studies that findings like these can still surprise us. This study has also brought to light the crucial role played by women in the transmission of knowledge from the incoming farming communities to the local hunter-gatherers. Thanks to ancient DNA studies, we can not only uncover the past but also give voice to the invaluable but often overlooked role played by women in shaping human evolution.

Dr Maria Pala, co-author.
School of Applied Sciences
University of Huddersfield
Huddersfield, UK.

Publication:
Olalde, I., Altena, E., Bourgeois, Q. et al.
Lasting Lower Rhine–Meuse forager ancestry shaped Bell Beaker expansion.
Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10111-8

Abstract
Ancient DNA studies revealed that, in Europe from 6500 to 4000 BCE, descendants of western Anatolian farmers mixed with local hunter-gatherers resulting in 70–100% ancestry turnover^1.1, then steppe ancestry spread with the Corded Ware complex 3000–2500 BCE^2.1. Here we document an exception in the wetland, riverine and coastal areas of the Netherlands, Belgium and western Germany, using genome-wide data from 112 people 8500–1700 BCE. A distinctive population with high (approximately 50%) hunter-gatherer ancestry persisted 3,000 years later than in most European regions, reflecting incorporation of female individuals of Early European Farmer ancestry into local communities. In the western Netherlands, the arrival of the Corded Ware complex was also exceptional: lowland individuals from settlements adopting Corded Ware pottery had hardly any steppe ancestry, despite a Y-chromosome characteristic of people associated with the early Corded Ware complex. These distinctive patterns may reflect the specific ecology that they inhabited, which was not amenable to full adoption of the early Neolithic type of farming introduced with Linearbandkeramik^3.1, and resulted in distinct communities where transfer of ideas was accompanied by little gene flow. This changed with the formation of Lower Rhine–Meuse Bell Beaker users by fusion of local people (13–18%) and Corded Ware associated migrants of both sexes. Their subsequent expansion then had a disruptive impact across a much wider part of northwestern Europe, especially in Great Britain where they were the main source of a 90–100% replacement of local Neolithic ancestry.

Olalde, I., Altena, E., Bourgeois, Q. et al.
Lasting Lower Rhine–Meuse forager ancestry shaped Bell Beaker expansion.
Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10111-8

© 2026 Springer Nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

These findings tell a story that is utterly at odds with Biblical mythology. There was no single founding couple created by magic a few thousand years ago, no sudden appearance of fully formed peoples, and no global flood reducing humanity to a tiny remnant from which all later populations somehow sprang. Instead, the evidence reveals a long, intricate human past shaped by migration, intermarriage, cultural exchange and regional continuity over many millennia.

What ancient DNA shows is exactly what the Theory of Evolution would lead us to expect: modern populations are the product of deep ancestry, gradual change and repeated admixture, not separate acts of special creation. Western Europeans did not emerge as some isolated, divinely ordained “kind”, but as the descendants of multiple earlier populations, each with its own history, movements and adaptations. That is the very opposite of the simplistic, childlike account in Genesis.

It is also yet another blow to the fantasies of racial purity so often encouraged, implicitly or explicitly, by creationist and far-right ideologies. The ancestry of modern Europeans is not pure, fixed or primordial, but mixed, dynamic and shared. The genetic record shows that movement and mixture are not aberrations in human history; they are the norm.

So, once again, science presents creationists with a choice they habitually refuse to make: accept the evidence and revise their beliefs, or cling to mythology and deny reality. As always, the facts pose no problem for science, which welcomes new evidence and incorporates it into an ever more detailed understanding of the past. It is creationism, with its brittle dependence on ancient myths and impossibly false history, which is left looking ever more absurd.

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Refuting Creationism - Modern Humans Reached Australia 50,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'

2026-04-10T16:48:00.029+01:00

The migration of the first settlers to Sahul 60,000 years ago.

Photo: Helen Farr and Erich Fisher.

New genetic research supports “long chronology” for first settlement of Sahul - University of Huddersfield

Two recent papers by teams that included members of the Archaeogenetics Research Group at the University of Huddersfield, UK, show how modern DNA extraction and sequencing techniques are adding yet another independent line of evidence in support of the Theory of Evolution and against creationism. Together, they reveal the ancient and complex origins of modern humans, in stark contradiction to the simplistic Bronze Age origin myths of the Bible.

The first of these papers, published last November (2025), and available open access in Science Advances, examines human migration into Australia and lends support to the ‘long chronology’ hypothesis for the earliest settlement of Sahul, the Ice Age landmass that united Australia, New Guinea and nearby islands.

The second paper examines the more recent population history of Western Europe. That will be the subject of my next blog post.

According to the long chronology hypothesis, humans first reached Sahul around 60,000 years ago, whereas the short chronology hypothesis places their arrival between about 45,000 and 50,000 years ago. Either date is, of course, utterly incompatible with the childish notion of magical creation just 6,000-10,000 years ago. And unlike geochronological dating methods, which creationists routinely dismiss as fraudulent, flawed or unreliable whenever the results embarrass them, this evidence comes from genetic analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Because mtDNA is inherited through the female line, it can be used to reconstruct maternal ancestry in remarkable detail.

How the molecular clock and mtDNA are used to reconstruct genealogies.

What mtDNA is and why it matters Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is the small genome found in the mitochondria. In humans it is transmitted almost entirely through the maternal line, so both sons and daughters inherit it from their mother, but only daughters pass it on. Because it is largely non-recombining, mtDNA preserves a much clearer record of maternal descent than most nuclear DNA. [1]
Why archaeogeneticists use mtDNA so often mtDNA has long been valuable in studies of human origins and population history because its maternal inheritance and lack of recombination make genealogical relationships easier to trace. It is also especially useful in ancient DNA work because there are many copies of mtDNA per cell, which improves the chances of recovering it from degraded archaeological remains. [2]
How a genealogy is built from mtDNA Researchers sequence mtDNA from ancient and modern samples, compare the mutations they share, and group related sequences into branches known as haplogroups. These are, in effect, branches on the maternal family tree: shared mutations mark a common ancestral line, while additional mutations define smaller sub-branches within it. [3]
What the molecular clock means The molecular clock is the idea that mutations can accumulate through time at a roughly predictable rate. If a stretch of DNA behaves clock-like, the number of differences between two lineages can be used to estimate how long ago they shared a common ancestor. In other words, more accumulated differences usually mean a deeper split in the genealogy. [4]
How the clock is calibrated Genetic differences alone do not give calendar dates. To turn sequence differences into ages, researchers must calibrate the clock using independent evidence, such as dated fossils, archaeological horizons, or geological events. Modern studies often use relaxed clocks, which allow mutation rates to vary somewhat between lineages instead of assuming one perfectly constant rate. [4]
What this reveals about human history Once the tree has been built and calibrated, researchers can estimate the ages of haplogroups, identify which maternal lines are older or younger, and track how those lineages spread across regions. That allows them to reconstruct migrations, population expansions, bottlenecks, and the timing of major dispersal events. [2]
Its main limitation mtDNA is powerful, but it traces only one line of ancestry: your mother, her mother, and so on. It does not represent the whole of a person’s ancestry, so the strongest studies combine mtDNA with Y-chromosome data, autosomal DNA, archaeology, and dating evidence from other sources. [5]

The work of the international team, led by Professor Martin Richards of the University of Huddersfield, is explained in a University of Huddersfield news item:

New genetic research supports “long chronology” for first settlement of Sahul
A major collaboration between the University of Huddersfield’s Archaeogenetics Research Group and the University of Southampton’s Centre for Maritime Archaeology has clarified the first settlement of New Guinea and Australia by modern humans, Homo sapiens.
The work was funded by a European Research Council grant to maritime archaeologist Professor Helen Farr at the University of Southampton, with the archaeogenetics team led by Professor Martin Richards at Huddersfield.

During the last Ice Age, when sea levels were much lower than they are today, New Guinea and Australia were part of a single landmass, known as Sahul. There has been a long-running debate about both the timing of the first settlement of Sahul and the routes by which people first travelled to the ancient super-continent.

The new research, a collaboration between archaeogeneticists, archaeologists, earth scientists and oceanographers, has cast light on the who, where and when of this early maritime migration.

Long versus short chronology debate

It is widely known that the ancestors of New Guineans and Aboriginal Australians have inhabited Sahul for tens of thousands of years, with many Aboriginal Australians understanding that they have always been on country.

Yet, for Western scientists and archaeologists, the details of global dispersals have remained controversial. There are two views on the timing of the settlement – the “long chronology”, suggesting that the first settlement goes back to around 60,000 years and the “short chronology”, which argues for a first landfall around 45,000 to 50,000 years.

The interdisciplinary team, including colleagues at the University of Minho in Portugal, at La Trobe University in Australia, and the University of Oxford, focused firstly on human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genomes to address this question. The mtDNA is inherited only from the mother, and the way the mtDNA sequences vary from one person to the next can therefore be used to recreate the maternal genealogy in great detail.

The team analysed almost 2,500 mtDNA genomes from Aboriginal Australians, New Guineans, and people from the western Pacific and Southeast Asia. They used these to build a genealogical tree and looked at the way the lineages in the tree were distributed from one population to the next. As all DNA changes gradually over time, they used the amount of change in the lineages – known as the “molecular clock” – to date lineages from each region.

Their findings showed that the most ancient lineages seen either in Aboriginal Australians, New Guineans, or both, but nowhere else, dated to around 60,000 years, coming down firmly in support of the long chronology.

The ancestry of the most ancient lineages could be traced back to Southeast Asia. But the team also found that while the majority traced back to more northerly parts of Southeast Asia – northern Indonesia and the Philippines – a significant minority traced to more southerly parts – southern Indonesia, Malaysia and Indochina. This suggested there were at least two distinct dispersal routes into Sahul with lineages from both routes dated to around the same arrival time.

Significance of research findings

The work is especially significant as although the new genetic results fit well with the archaeological and palaeoenvironmental picture, in the last few years many geneticists have been moving in the opposite direction, towards a short chronology

We feel that this is strong support for the long chronology. Still, estimates based on the molecular clock can always be challenged, and the mitochondrial DNA is only one line of descent. We are currently analysing hundreds of whole human genome sequences – 3 billion bases each, compared to 16,000 – to test our results against the many thousands of other lines of descent throughout the human genome. In the future, there will be further archaeological discoveries, and we can also hope that ancient DNA might be recovered from key remains, so we can more directly test these models and distinguish between them.

Professor Martin B. Richards, senior author
School of Applied Sciences
University of Huddersfield
Huddersfield, UK.

This is a great story that helps refine our understanding of human origins, maritime mobility and early seafaring narratives. It reflects the really deep heritage that Indigenous communities have in this region and the skills and technology of these early voyagers.

Professor Helen Farr, co-corresponding author
Centre for Maritime Archaeology
Archaeology
University of Southampton
Southampton, UK.

Publication:
Francesca Gandini et al.
Genomic evidence supports the “long chronology” for the peopling of Sahul.
Sci. Adv. 11, eady9493 (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ady9493

Abstract
The timing of the settlement of Sahul—the Pleistocene landmass formed by present-day New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania that existed until ~9000 years ago (~9 ka)—remains highly contentious. The so-called “long chronology” posits the first main arrivals at ~60 to 65 ka, whereas a “short chronology” proposes 47 to 51 ka. Here, we exhaustively analyze an unprecedentedly large mitogenome dataset (n = 2456) encompassing the full range of diversity from the indigenous populations of Australia, New Guinea, and Oceania, including a lineage related to those of New Guinea in an archaeological sample from Wallacea. We assess these lineages in the context of variation from Southeast Asia and a re-evaluation of the mitogenome mutation rate, alongside genome-wide and Y-chromosome variation, and archaeological and climatological evidence. In contrast to recent recombinational dating approaches, we find support for the long chronology, suggesting settlement by ~60 ka via at least two distinct routes into Sahul.

Fig. 4. Map showing continental shelves of Sunda, Sahul, and the Western Pacific.
Coastal contours at 0, −50, −80, and −120 m below sea level indicate the changing extent of landmass with fluctuating sea levels. Potential migration routes are indicated and the likely marker lineages for mtDNA and Y chromosome are labeled. ESRI, ArcGIS, GEBCO Compilation Group (2020) GEBCO 2020 Grid (doi: 10.5285/a29c5465-b138-234d-e053-6c86abc040b9)

Francesca Gandini et al.
Genomic evidence supports the “long chronology” for the peopling of Sahul.
Sci. Adv. 11, eady9493 (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ady9493

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

So, once again, the facts turn out to be no friend of creationism. Whether the first humans reached Sahul 60,000 years ago or a mere 45,000-50,000 years ago, the conclusion is equally fatal to the childish notion that humans were conjured into existence by magic just a few thousand years ago. And because this evidence comes not from rocks and radiometric dates alone, but from the inherited record carried in human DNA itself, it closes off yet another of the escape routes creationists like to use when the evidence becomes inconvenient.

What studies like this show is that modern humans have a deep, complex and traceable history. We did not appear suddenly, fully formed, in a tiny Bronze Age world centred on the Middle East. We are the product of long migrations, branching lineages, isolated populations and repeated expansions, all of which can now be reconstructed in increasing detail by genetics, archaeology and anthropology working together. The more science uncovers, the richer and more intricate the human story becomes, and the more absurd the biblical caricature looks by comparison.

That, ultimately, is the difference between science and dogma. Science follows the evidence wherever it leads, revises its conclusions when better evidence appears, and steadily builds a more accurate picture of reality. Creationism, by contrast, begins with a fixed conclusion and then twists, denies or ignores whatever contradicts it. The settlement of Sahul is therefore not just another fascinating chapter in human prehistory; it is another demonstration that evidence-based inquiry explains our origins, while mythology merely preserves the misunderstandings of an earlier and far more ignorant age.

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How Science Works - And Why Religion Doesn't - Changing Its Mind When The Evidence Changes

2026-04-10T01:04:00.000+01:00

Pohlsepia mazonensis PE51727a (part) and PE51727b (counterpart).

Oldest octopus fossil is no octopus at all scans reveal - University of Reading

The excitement creationists may feel on hearing that science has got it wrong yet again because a fossil once classified as the oldest known octopus has now been reidentified, will no doubt be tempered by the awkward fact that the animal it really belonged to lived 300 million years before, according to their beliefs, there was even a universe, let alone life on Earth. As so often, the truth poses no problem for science; it is creationism that stumbles over it.

Far from showing that science is unreliable compared with the supposed ‘eternal truth’ of religion, this revision is a vindication of the scientific method and a demonstration of its self-correcting nature. Unlike religions, which cling to ‘sacred truths’ that, when tested against reality, turn out to be little more than the best guesses and campfire tales of our ignorant and fearful ancestors, science is a method for moving ever closer to the truth. It remains the best tool we have for discovering reality precisely because nothing is sacred except truth itself, and because scientific understanding is always provisional — open to revision whenever new evidence demands it, unlike religions which are doxastically and doctrinally closed to new information.

On this occasion, the fossil re-examined and found not to be what it was once thought to be was the famous Pohlsepia mazonensis, identified as an octopus 25 years ago and even entered in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest known fossil octopus. Using modern synchrotron imaging to peer inside the fossil and reveal details the original investigators could not see, researchers discovered tiny teeth and other internal features showing that it was not an octopus at all, but a nautiloid — a cephalopod with an external shell. The team recently published their findings in the journal Proceedings of The Royal Society B.

Nautiloid or octopus~ How scientists told the difference. A crucial question raised by the re-examination of Pohlsepia mazonensis is how scientists could tell that it was not, after all, an octopus. The answer lies in anatomy. When the fossil was first described in 2000, its rounded body, fin-like structures and apparent arms made it look rather like a cirrate, or “dumbo”, octopus. Because cirrate octopuses differ in some respects from the more familiar octopuses, the absence of certain expected features did not seem fatal to that interpretation. [1]

Modern imaging techniques allowed researchers to look beneath the rock surface and examine details that the original investigators could not see. What they found undermined the octopus interpretation. The fossil lacks a siphon and does not preserve clearly distinct arms or tentacles. More importantly, it contains a radula — a toothed feeding structure — with at least 11 tooth-like elements in each row. That is inconsistent with an octopus, which typically has seven or nine, but it fits much better with a nautiloid affinity. [1]

The radula is especially significant because it closely resembles that of Paleocadmus pohli, a fossil nautiloid already known from Mazon Creek. The most likely explanation is that Pohlsepia was a nautiloid whose body had partly decayed before burial, losing the more obvious clues to its shelled identity and leaving behind a misleading outline. So the fossil was not evidence that octopuses existed in the Carboniferous after all, but it remains important as the oldest known preservation of nautiloid soft tissue. [1]

The publication is accompanied by a news item from the University of Reading:

‘Oldest octopus’ fossil is no octopus at all, scans reveal
A famous 300-million-year-old fossil that was thought to be the world's oldest octopus – even featuring in the Guinness Book of Records – has turned out to be something else altogether.
In what amounts to a case of mistaken identity, the fossil hid its true nature through decay 300 million years ago, before being fossilised.

Using the latest synchrotron imaging to search inside the fossil rock, researchers discovered tiny teeth preserved inside the rock that prove that Pohlsepia mazonensis is not an octopus at all, but an animal related to a modern Nautilus – a multi-tentacled animal with an external shell. Pohlsepia mazonensis

This revelation, shared today (Wednesday, 8 April 2026) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, solves a long-running puzzle in the understanding of octopus evolution that has confused scientists for decades. It also provides evidence of the oldest nautiloid soft tissue preservation known in the fossil record and means that the record-holding 'oldest octopus’ should be quietly written out of the Guinness Book of Records.

It turns out the world's most famous octopus fossil was never an octopus at all. It was a nautilus relative that had been decomposing for weeks before it became buried and later preserved in rock, and that decomposition is what made it look so convincingly octopus-like. Scientists identified Pohlsepia as an octopus 25 years ago, but using modern techniques showed us what was beneath the surface to the rock, which finally cracked the case. We now have the oldest soft tissue evidence of a nautiloid ever found, and a much clearer picture of when octopuses actually first appeared on Earth. Sometimes, reexamining controversial fossils with new techniques reveals tiny clues that lead to really exciting discoveries.

Dr Thomas Clements, lead author.
Lecturer in Invertebrate Zoology
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
School of Biological Sciences
University of Reading
Reading, UK.

Pohlsepia mazonensis being scanned.

Cold case X-ray

Found in Illinois, USA, the first analysis of the fossil was published in 2000 and was later used in studies of how octopuses and their relatives evolved. Scientists thought the fossil showed eight arms, fins, and other features typical of an octopus, pushing back the known history of octopuses by around 150 million years.

Doubts had been raised about the identification for years, but without a clear way to test them until recently. The scientists in the new study used synchrotron imaging – a technique that uses beams of light brighter than the sun – to scan for structures invisible to the eye beneath the surface, revealing hidden details inside the rock. The scientists likened the process to giving a 300-million-year-old suspect a modern forensic examination.

What they found was a radula, a ribbon-like feeding structure with rows of teeth only found in molluscs. With at least 11 tooth-like elements per row, the shape and number ruled out an octopus entirely. Octopuses have seven or nine, while nautiloids have 13.

The teeth matched those of a fossil nautiloid called Paleocadmus pohli, already known from the same site where it was found, and the researchers concluded the animal had partially rotted before fossilisation, causing it to look very different from its true self.

Octopus origins pushed back.

The Nautilus is a shelled sea creature still alive today, with its ancient origins leading some to describe it as a “living fossil”. The Paleocadmus fossils found at the Mazon Creek site in Illinois now represent the oldest known nautiloid soft tissue in the fossil record – beating the previous record by around 220 million years.

These findings change the picture of when octopuses first evolved. The data now supports octopuses appearing much later, during the Jurassic period. Scientists now believe the split between octopuses and their ten-armed relatives such as squids happened in the Mesozoic era, not hundreds of millions of years earlier as previously thought.

It's amazing to think a row of tiny hidden teeth, hidden in the rock for 300 million years, have fundamentally changed what we know about when and how octopuses evolved.
.
Dr Thomas Clements.

Publication:
Thomas Clements, Imran Alexander Rahman, Alan R. T. Spencer, Christian Klug, Dirk Fuchs, Isabelle Rouget, Isabelle Kruta, Sebastian Schöder, Jack Wittry, Orla G. Bath Enright, Pierre Gueriau
Synchrotron data reveal nautiloid characters in Pohlsepia mazonensis, refuting a Palaeozoic origin for octobrachians.
Proc Biol Sci 1 April 2026; 293 (2068): 20252369. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.2369

Abstract Pohlsepia mazonensis, from the late Carboniferous Mazon Creek Lagerstätte (311–306 Ma), has been suggested to be the oldest fossil octopus. This single specimen provides a key calibration point for molecular clock studies, which estimated a Palaeozoic origin for octobrachians, pushing the fossil record of crown octopuses back 150 million years. Despite being a textbook ‘phylogenetic fuse’ example, the systematic position of Pohlsepia is controversial and, consequently, our understanding of cephalopod evolution remains in flux. We present the first comprehensive reassessment of this enigmatic fossil, alongside multiple new specimens, using a suite of advanced analytical techniques. Synchrotron micro-X-ray fluorescence elemental mapping reveals a radula obscured by the matrix, definitively confirming a molluscan affinity. Crucially, radular tooth count and morphology indicate that Pohlsepia is not an early octobrachian but rather a decomposed nautiloid. This reinterpretation refutes a Palaeozoic origin for octobrachians and provides the only unequivocal evidence of nautiloid soft tissue in the Palaeozoic fossil record. Our findings demonstrate how advanced analytical methods can be used to resolve the interpretive challenges posed by the exceptional but often ambiguous soft tissue preservation in the Mazon Creek Lagerstätte, offering great potential for the re-evaluation of other fossil specimens from this iconic site.

The fossils and soft tissue anatomy of Pohlsepia mazonensis and cf. Paleocadmus sp. (a) Pohlsepia mazonensis PE51727a (part). (b) Pohlsepia mazonensis PE51727b (counterpart). (c) The putative anatomy of Pohlsepia mazonensis (PE51727a). Dotted lines represent unresolved anatomical characters, and solid lines represent unambiguous anatomical characters identified in this study. (d) cf. Paleocadmus sp. (PE29383). (e) cf. Paleocadmus sp. (PE32522). (f) cf. Paleocadmus sp. (PE88991). Scales: 1 cm. All Paleocadmus samples (parts and counterparts) can be seen in electronic supplementary material, figure S1. (g) A schematic of a molecularly calibrated time-tree of cephalopod evolution with solid lines indicating known fossil occurrences. Blue squares indicate molecular divergence data based on Kröger et al. [2], Tanner et al. [3] and López-Córdova et al. [4]. The putative position of Pohlsepia as a cirrate is marked, demonstrating the conflict of a highly derived crown-group octopus existing 150 million years before the transitional octopus fossils of the Mesozoic.

Analytical investigations of Pohlsepia mazonensis (PE51727). (a) Virtual reconstruction based on micro-CT showing the external concretionary surface of PE51727a. Mouthparts are highlighted in purple. (b) Virtual reconstruction based on micro-CT with the external surface of PE51727a partly transparent. Mouthparts are highlighted in purple and the area of high X-ray attenuation is shown in blue. (c) Synchrotron micro-X-ray fluorescence (µXRF) elemental map of PE51727a showing copper (red), arsenic (yellow) and iron (blue). (d) Synchrotron micro-X-ray fluorescence (µXRF) elemental map of PE51727b showing copper (red), arsenic (yellow) and iron (blue). (e,f) Multispectral false colour RGB images of PE51727a (e) and PE51727b (f). Illumination/detection couples used: red—illum. 460 nm/det. 472 ± 15 nm (reflection), green—illum. 385 nm/det. 708 ± 37 nm (luminescence), blue—illum. 660 nm/det. 835 ± 35 nm (lum.). Scales: 1 cm.

The radula and beak of Pohlsepia mazonensis. (a) Synchrotron micro-X-ray fluorescence (µXRF) iron (Fe) elemental map of PE51727a—the radula and beak region are marked by white box. Acquisition parameters: lateral scanning step, 80 µm; dwell time, 40 ms. (b) Increased magnification of the radula and beak region. (c) Annotated radula anatomy of Pohlsepia mazonensis. (d) Annotated synchrotron micro-X-ray fluorescence (µXRF) elemental map of PE51727a showing copper (red), arsenic (yellow) and iron (blue). Acquisition parameters: lateral scanning step, 25 µm; dwell time, 50 ms. Scales = 10 mm.

Radulae of extinct and extant cephalopods. (a) Composite reconstruction of Paleocadmus pohli‘s radula row (from both fossil material and modified from [37,50]). The missing elements of PE51727 are marked in grey. (b) Paleocadmus herdinae (modified from [50]), (c) Saundersites ilinoissensis (modified from [46,50 (d) Vampyroteuthis infernalis (modified from [51]), (e) Luteuthis dentatus (modified from [52]) (f) Grimpoteuthis sp.? (modified from [53]) (g) Octopus vulgaris (modified from [50]) and (h) Nautilus pompilius (modified from [50]). Abbreviations: R: rachidian tooth, L1: 1st lateral tooth, L2: 2nd lateral tooth, M1: 1st marginal tooth, M2: 1st marginal tooth. MP1: 1st marginal plate, MP2: 2nd marginal plate. Scale bars: 1 mm (scale missing = data unavailable).

Thomas Clements, Imran Alexander Rahman, Alan R. T. Spencer, Christian Klug, Dirk Fuchs, Isabelle Rouget, Isabelle Kruta, Sebastian Schöder, Jack Wittry, Orla G. Bath Enright, Pierre Gueriau
Synchrotron data reveal nautiloid characters in Pohlsepia mazonensis, refuting a Palaeozoic origin for octobrachians.
Proc Biol Sci 1 April 2026; 293 (2068): 20252369. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.2369

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by The Royal Society. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

So, far from being an embarrassment to science, the reclassification of Pohlsepia mazonensis is a perfect example of why science works. Scientists did not cling dogmatically to an old claim because it was familiar, flattering or ideologically useful; they revisited the evidence with better tools, found that the earlier interpretation was wrong, and corrected it. That is not failure. It is intellectual honesty in action.

For creationists, however, the story is far more awkward. Their standard tactic is to pounce on any scientific revision as though it somehow discredits the entire enterprise, while continuing to defend beliefs that are immune to evidence and unchanged by facts. But this fossil, whether misidentified or correctly identified, still comes from a world hundreds of millions of years older than their mythology allows. The details may change as knowledge improves; the fatal problem for creationism does not.

In reality, this discovery strengthens science in two ways. It sharpens our understanding of cephalopod evolution, and it demonstrates yet again that science is self-correcting because it values evidence above ego, tradition and wishful thinking. Religion preserves ancient certainties by shielding them from scrutiny; science advances by exposing its ideas to it. That is why science keeps getting closer to the truth, while creationism remains trapped defending the errors of a prescientific age.

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Refuting Creationism - How the Human Eye Evolved

2026-04-08T14:06:00.004+01:00

1:posterior segment of eyeball 2:ora serrata 3:ciliary muscle 4:ciliary zonules 5:canal of Schlemm 6:pupil 7:anterior chamber 8:cornea 9:iris 10:lens cortex 11:lens nucleus 12:ciliary process 13:conjunctiva 14:inferior oblique muscle 15:inferior rectus muscle 16:medial rectus muscle 17:retinal arteries and veins 18:optic disc 19:dura mater 20:central retinal artery 21:central retinal vein 22:optic nerve 23:vorticose vein 24:bulbar sheath 25:macula 26:fovea 27:sclera 28:choroid 29:superior rectus muscle 30:retina

By Chabacano - References: [1] [2] [3] among others, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Our modern vision evolved from an ancient one-eyed worm creature

A recently published paper in the Cell Press journal, Current Biology, by four palaeontologists — two from the University of Sussex, UK, and two from Lund University, Sweden — delivers yet another solid rebuttal to creationist misrepresentation. It traces the origin of the vertebrate eye back to a worm-like marine creature that lived around 600 million years ago, neatly demolishing the old creationist claim that something as complex as the eye could never have evolved by natural means.

One of the favourite dishonest tricks in the creationist repertoire is the quote mine: lifting a sentence from an expert, stripping it of context, and presenting it as though it supports the very position the author was arguing against. Few examples are more shameless than their abuse of a passage from Darwin's On the Origin of Species. In typical Darwinian style, he first states what appears to be a serious objection to his theory, then immediately explains why it is not a real objection at all. The part creationists love to quote, from page 100, is this:

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.

Presented on its own, this is supposed to fool the unwary into thinking Darwin admitted defeat — as though he had conceded that evolution could not explain the eye and that modern creationists were right all along with their talk of 'irreducible complexity'. But, as usual, the deception depends entirely on stopping before the very next sentence, where Darwin wrote:

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Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real.

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (p. 100). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

So Darwin was not conceding the point at all; he was doing the exact opposite. He was saying that the apparent absurdity disappears once we recognise that useful intermediate stages can and do exist. In other words, the creationist quote mine works only by concealing Darwin's actual argument.

And now, more than 160 years later, the evidence Darwin lacked has arrived in abundance. He could not have known the developmental genetics, the comparative anatomy, the fossil evidence, or the evolutionary history that modern biology has uncovered. Creationists have no such excuse. They are not merely repeating an old objection; they are repeating one that has been answered again and again, and now answered yet again by evidence tracing the deep evolutionary roots of the vertebrate eye itself.

So this discovery matters not simply because it adds another detail to the history of life, but because it exposes the intellectual bankruptcy of the creationist argument. The eye is not a problem for evolution. It is a triumph of evolution — a structure whose history is precisely the sort of gradual, functional modification Darwin predicted. The real problem lies not with evolutionary theory, but with those who continue to misquote Darwin and mislead their audiences in the hope that no one will bother to read past the sentence they have carefully amputated from its context.

An account of how the researchers arrived at their conclusion is given in an article in The Conversation by two of the four scientists involved. Their article is reproduced below under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Published: April 2, 2026 3.11pm BST

Our modern vision evolved from an ancient one‑eyed worm creature.

LuckyStep/Shutterstock

George Kafetzis, University of Sussex and Dan Nilsson, Lund University

It’s easy to take our eyes for granted. But our recent research shows they took an incredible evolutionary journey to reach their current familiar form.

It has long been known that our (vertebrate) eyes differ fundamentally from the ones of our distant relatives (invertebrates), because of their cell composition and how they develop before birth. However, answers to why or how these differences first emerged long remained elusive.

Our study suggests that our eyes descend from a worm-like ancestor that was roaming the oceans 600 million years ago. The same also applies to all bilateral animals, meaning animals whose bodies can be divided into roughly mirror-image left and right halves.

As part of our study, we surveyed 36 major groups of living animals (covering nearly all bilateral animals) to see where their eyes and light-sensing cells are located and what they do.

A pattern emerged. We discovered that eyes and light-sensing cells are consistently found at two separate locations: paired on both sides of the face, and at the midline of the head, on top of the brain. Across the animals we looked at, cells in the paired position are used to steer movements, while their midline counterparts tell day from night and up from down.

We concluded that an ancient worm-like ancestor of all vertebrate animals lost the “steering” pair of eyes when it adopted a mostly stationary lifestyle 600 million years ago, burrowing into the seabed. In becoming a filter feeder with no need to move around, the energetically expensive type of paired eyes was rendered useless and costly.

However, this lifestyle change left the light-sensing cells in the middle of its head unscathed, because the animal still needed to sense the time of day and distinguish between up and down. Although the paired eyes were gone, the light-sensing cells in the midline developed into a small midline eye.

Our eyes have a surprising history.

PeopleImages/Shutterstock

Possibly within a few million years, this animal changed lifestyle again. A return to swimming reintroduced the need to control steering and measure its own body motion for efficient filter-feeding (sifting food out of water) and avoiding predators.

This pushed evolution to develop the midline eye by forming small eye cups on each side. These eye cups later separated from the midline eye, moved out to the sides of the head and formed new paired eyes: our eyes.

The loss and regain of vision happened between 600 and 540 million years ago. Components of the midline eye remained and became the pineal organ in the brain, which produces and releases the sleep hormone melatonin.

In many vertebrates, the pineal organ receives light through a transparent (unpigmented) region in the middle of the head. However, in the mammalian lineage the pineal organ lost its light-sensing capacity – possibly because early mammals were active at night and hid during daytime. So the eyes, which were more sensitive, took over the light detection which drives melatonin release and sleep.

Eyes of all shapes and sizes

Those animals that did not lose the worm-like ancestor’s original paired light-sensing cells comprise most invertebrates around today, since they descended from a branch of the evolutionary tree that never adopted a static lifestyle. Such animals include crustaceans, insects, spiders, octopus, snails and many groups of worms. These animals still have modern versions of the original sets of light-sensing cells.

The paired eyes of insects and crustaceans are compound eyes, with an array of tiny and densely packed lenses per eye. Instead of compound eyes, octopus and snails have camera-type eyes with a single lens.

In fact, octopus and snails independently evolved the same eye design and visual performance as us vertebrates. However, our retina – the light sensitive layer at the back of our eyes – has over 100 types of neurons (mice have even more – 140), compared to a mere handful in octopus and snails. This makes it almost as complex as our cerebral cortex – the outer and largest part of our brain.

Scientists have thought that in the evolution of our eyes, this complexity emerged fairly late. Similarities between light-sensing cells in the brain and paired eyes informed earlier hypotheses about a simple, pineal organ-like eye early in its evolution. In our work, however, we argue that a lot of this complexity predates the retina.

As such, it is likely to have been present already in the “cyclops” ancestor eye. This has broad implications for the origin and wiring of neural circuits in our retina and brain alike.

For us vertebrates, the evolution of our eyes and brain is intimately linked. The emergence of new paired eyes is a fundamental part of this picture, since the eyes allowed for the complex behavior that call for cognition and large brains. Without the eyes, we would not just be humans without eyes; we would not exist at all, nor would any of the other vertebrates.
George Kafetzis, Research Fellow in Neuroscience, University of Sussex and Dan Nilsson, Professor emeritus of Zoology, Lund 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)

Summary
The vertebrate retina is a uniquely complex and evolutionarily conserved structure, combining ciliary (rod and cone) and rhabdomeric (ganglion, amacrine and horizontal cells) photoreceptor lineages within a multilayered circuit. This arrangement contrasts with the ancestral bilaterian cephalic pattern, where rhabdomeric photoreceptors dominate lateral eyes and ciliary photoreceptors are largely limited to unpigmented, non-visual median positions. Here, we make a case that the vertebrate retina evolved through the lateralization of a complex median photoreceptive organ already containing both photoreceptor types. This shift likely followed the loss of lateral rhabdomeric eyes in a burrowing, suspension-feeding deuterostome ancestor that retained a pool of median photoreceptors. In the early chordates leading to vertebrates, this structure diversified into the pineal/parapineal complex and lateral retinas. Central to this transformation was the emergence of a bipolar cellular identity, linking ciliary and rhabdomeric circuits — an unusual feature in animal nervous systems. We suggest that bipolar cells predate the retina and have dual evolutionary origins: Off bipolar cells deriving from a ciliary ‘effector’ lineage and rod-On bipolar cells deriving from a chimeric sensory cell. This model explains key similarities between the retina and the pineal gland and supports a scenario in which vertebrate vision emerged by integrating and repurposing preexisting circuits. It reframes the retina not as a de novo innovation, but as a modified and lateralized solution to sensory challenges faced by early chordates.

Figure 1 Position and type of photoreceptor cells in the head of bilaterians.
Schematic dorsal view of the head of selected bilaterians. A complete survey, including all bilaterian phyla and subgroups will be published elsewhere — here we only show representative animal groups needed to reconstruct ancestral forms of protostomes, deuterostomes and bilateria (based on the papers cited as references^{1,7,16,18,30,40,126,161,162,163,164,165,166,167,168,169,170,171,172,173,174,175,176,177,178,179}). We indicate the position for photoreceptors in imaging eyes (large circles), simple directional ocelli (small circles) or non-directional clusters (diffuse ellipses). The important distinction is between photoreceptors in paired lateral organs (irrespective if they point sideways or forwards) and median clusters in the brain or close to it. Colours indicate rhabdomeric versus ciliary photoreceptors with their specific opsins and transduction pathways. Reconstruction of ancestral protostome and bilaterian conditions suggest ciliary photoreceptors exclusively as unpigmented (non-directional) median clusters in the brain and rhabdomeric photoreceptors in paired lateral eyes or ocelli, as well as in pigmented median ocelli. Vertebrates stand out as exceptions, with lateral eyes as well as a median pineal/parapineal containing ciliary photoreceptors, pre-synaptically connected to neurons of rhabdomeric origin. Because deuterostomes lack paired lateral eyes/ocelli with primary rhabdomeric photoreceptors, we suggest these were lost in a deuterostome ancestor adopting a burrowing filter-feeding lifestyle^19,20 with reduced need for locomotory steering. Vertebrate eyes are then derived from remaining median photoreceptors, explaining their unorthodox components and circuits. The lower right panel suggests typical functional roles for paired lateral versus median photoreceptors. (Silhouettes from PhyloPic.org.)

Figure 2 Repeated lifestyle changes drove the unique evolution of vertebrate eyes.
Cross-section diagrams of likely photoreceptor (PRC) and eye structures in the heads of ancestral bilaterians (top), with presumed ancient lifestyles (bottom). Colour and graphical representations of photoreceptors refer to Figure 1. Approximate times in million years before present are indicated for key evolutionary stages⁵⁴.

Figure 3 Deuterostome median and lateral eyes.
(A) Suggested timeline for the emergence of median and lateral eye components leading to modern vertebrate lateral eyes. Note that the emergence of a ‘modern ciliary’ (red, G_t) identity postdates non-vertebrate chordates. (B) Lancelets (amphioxus) have four median photoreceptors: two anterior clusters are ‘ancient’ ciliary (G_o, green), while the two posterior clusters are rhabdomeric (blue). During development, the two central clusters become superimposed. (Adapted from Lacalli¹⁸⁰, © 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel.) (C) The pineal organ of lampreys comprises diverse populations of photoreceptors and projection neurons that form at least two independent local microcircuits: dorsorostrally, ‘ancient’ ciliary photoreceptors expressing parietopsin and parapinopsin (green) make ribbon synapses onto rhabdomeric projection neurons (blue), while independently, ventral ‘modern’ ciliary rod- and cone-like photoreceptors make basal ribbon contacts onto Landolt-club-bearing ciliary projection neurons (red). (Schematic adapted from Wada et al.¹⁰⁸ and Ekström and Meissl¹⁸¹.) (D) The lamprey retina has a vertebrate-typical tri-layered organization, with modern-ciliary rods and cones (red) feeding into diverse populations of bipolar cells (BCs) of unclear ancestry (depicted green and dark red) that in turn feed into rhabdomeric ganglion and amacrine cells (RGCs and ACs, blue). Horizontal cells (HCs, rhabdomeric, blue) with notably large somata slot above the bipolar cells. Note that, in lamprey, many inner retinal neurons including their main axons are ‘displaced’ compared to their positions in other vertebrates (Box 2). Moreover, some bipolar-like neurons project directly to the brain. (Schematic adapted from Baden¹⁸².)

Figure 4 Transcriptomic comparison of zebrafish pineal and retina.
(A,B) A UMAP — Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection — representation of single-cell transcriptomic data extracted from zebrafish pineal (A) and retina (B) and annotated cell classes (VLMCs, vascular leptomeningeal cells; RPE, retina pigment epithelium; other abbreviations as in the Figure 3 legend). (Modified based on clustering as shown in Zheng et al.⁶⁹.) For pineal data, see also Shainer et al.⁷⁴. (C) Correlation matrix of pseudobulk scRNA transcriptomic clusters based on (A,B), comparing pineal and retinal cell clusters. Note molecularly intermediate position of retinal bipolar cells between pineal rods/cones and pineal ‘neurons’. (Adapted from Zheng et al.⁶⁹ with permission from John Wiley and Sons.)

Figure 5 Two evolutionary origins of retinal bipolar cells?
(A) Molecular relationships of scRNA transcriptomically defined bipolar cell types in lamprey, zebrafish and mouse as indicated. (Trees modified from papers cited as references^89,90,91.) Note that rod bipolar cells (RBCs, green) consistently cluster apart from all other bipolar cells. Note also that lamprey cone-bipolar cells are dominated by Off-types (dark red) with a single putative On-type (green lining), and that On- and Off-cone types of zebrafish are molecularly intermingled. We posit that RBCs and Off-cone BCs have distinct evolutionary origins, and that On-cone BCs emerged, possibly more than once, by co-option of mGluR6 and associated molecular machinery from RBCs onto ancestrally Off-types. (B) Suggested sequence of events leading to Off-cone-bipolar cells (left) and rod bipolar cells (right). Retinal off BCs (middle, dark red) may link with pineal ciliary projection neurons that have a Landolt club in place of a photosensitive outer segment. These cells are already postsynaptic to pineal rods and cones, and a connection onto the nearby rhabdomeric ganglion cells (blue) could explain their origin. Preceding pineal circuits, these neurons may link with a motor-ciliary heritage originally in place to stir cerebro-spinal fluids (top left, adapted from Jékely⁹⁹). By contrast, retinal rod bipolar cells (green) may link with pineal parietopsin photoreceptors, which are already presynaptic to rhabdomeric ganglion cells. Connection of parietopsin cells onto pineal rods and cones, possibly facilitated by mGluR6, may explain their input circuits in the retina. (C) Comparison of phototransduction components across different photoreceptor lineages as indicated. Note the molecularly ‘chimeric’ relationship of rod-bipolar cells compared to ‘modern ciliary’ (G_t, red), ‘ancient ciliary’ (G_o, green) and rhabdomeric lineages (G_q, blue).

Figure 6 Evolution of retinal neurons.
(A) Molecular relatedness of retinal neurons computed on mean pseudobulk transcriptomic relatedness of retinal neuron classes based on Hahn et al.⁸⁸. The dataset was organized into a 176 x 176 two-dimensional matrix of pairwise pseudobulk-transcripomic similarity (0:1) with eleven retinal cell sub-classes (RGCs, ACs_GABA, ACs_Glycine, ACs_{Acetylcholine}, BCs_Off, BCs_On, BCs_Rod, HCs, Rods, Cones, Müller glia). For simplicity, Müller glia data were excluded. ‘Molecular contrasts’ were then calculated as normalized similarity to pairs of retinal neuron sub-classes: ‘cone’ versus ‘RGC’ (y-axis) and rod BC versus Off BC (x-axis), each anchored to the mean across species. We then computed each entry’s ‘molecular contrast’ position between each pair of anchor cell sub-classes such that the anchors scored 1 or –1, while an equidistant intermediate entry scored 0. Small symbols illustrate individual species, while large symbols denote their corresponding mean. Note that all bipolar cells are molecularly intermediate between rods/cones and RGCs, and On-cone bipolar cells (On BCs) are molecularly intermediate between rod BCs and Off BCs. HCs and different populations of ACs (GABA/Glycine/Acetylcholinergic) all cluster near RGCs; however, note that some are also close to Off cone BCs. (B) As (A) but showing mean pseudo-bulk transcriptomic similarity between each retinal neuron sub-class as labelled. Pairwise molecular similarity summarizes the average transcriptomic similarity between each retinal sub-class as detailed above. Line strength indicates similarity from 1 (identical) to 0 (zero similarity). For clarity, we thresholded this graphical representation at a similarity of 0.45, which approximately corresponds to the ‘baseline’ similarity between retinal neurons and the Müller glia. (C) Proposed evolutionary timeline and likely instances of chimerization between ancient photoreceptor lineages, leading first to a pineal-like organization and eventually to the vertebrate retina. (D) Schematic of mouse retina with neurons colour-coded by their putative ancestral lineage. (E) Overview of ‘modern ciliary’ versus ‘rhabdomeric’ traits found in murine VGlut3 and GluMi cells. BC, bipolar cells; AC, amacrine cell; RGC, retinal ganglion cell.

Kafetzis G, Bok M, Baden T. et al
Evolution of the vertebrate retina by repurposing of a composite ancestral median eye
Current Biology, 36, R153-R170.

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Cell Press (Elsevier Inc.) Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

What this research shows, yet again, is that the supposed “mystery” of the vertebrate eye exists mainly in creationist rhetoric, not in biology. Far from appearing fully formed, without ancestry or intermediate stages, the eye now has an increasingly well-understood evolutionary history reaching back into deep time, with simpler sensory structures being modified, repurposed and refined over hundreds of millions of years. Exactly as Darwin argued, the difficulty vanishes once the intermediate stages are recognised and understood.

And that, of course, is the real problem for creationism. Its advocates still rely on 19th-century quote mines and long-refuted assertions about irreducible complexity, as though modern genetics, developmental biology, comparative anatomy and palaeontology had never happened. But science has moved on, and the evidence has accumulated in precisely the direction Darwin predicted. The vertebrate eye is not an embarrassment for evolution; it is one of its many triumphs.

So, while creationists will no doubt continue repeating the same tired claims to audiences conditioned not to look too closely, the facts tell a very different story. The eye was not conjured into existence by magic, nor does it present some insurmountable obstacle to natural selection. It is, instead, another example of how evolution works with existing structures, modifying them step by step into something more complex and more effective.

In other words, this discovery does not merely add another fascinating detail to the history of life on Earth; it also removes yet another refuge for those who depend on misrepresentation to keep creationist dogma alive. Once again, the evidence supports evolution, vindicates Darwin, and leaves creationism exactly where it so often finds itself — contradicted by the facts.

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Refuting Creationism - Transitional Fossils From Before The Cambrian 'Explosion'

2026-04-07T17:49:00.029+01:00

Reconstruction of Jiangchuan biota

Credit: Xiaodong Wang.

Spectacular fossil treasure trove pushes back origins of complex animals | University of Oxford

A paper just published in Science by a team of palaeontologists from Oxford and Yunnan universities should, if creationists were honest enough and sufficiently knowledgeable to understand it, finally lay to rest two favourite canards they use to attack Darwinian evolution: the so-called Cambrian Explosion and their misrepresentation of Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of punctuated equilibrium.

The Cambrian Explosion is a favourite target for creationists, who exploit the word “explosion” to misrepresent it as the sudden appearance of multicellular life with multiple body plans, supposedly without ancestry, and therefore as a single act of supernatural creation. The fact that it happened some 535 million years ago is usually dismissed with the standard creationist repertoire: claims that scientists are inventing the dates, relying on “flawed” dating techniques, or, more bizarrely still, failing to take account of some unspecified change in radioactive decay rates that just happens to make 6,000–10,000 years look like 535 million.

But that fallacy was based on very limited data, especially the fossils from the Burgess Shale, which provided only a narrow snapshot of living organisms at one time and place. From evidence such as this, Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge developed the idea of punctuated equilibrium, in which long periods of relative stasis in the fossil record are interrupted by comparatively short episodes of more rapid evolutionary change. Creationists eagerly seized on this, dishonestly presenting it as though Gould had somehow replaced Darwinism and proved Darwin wrong. In reality, it did no such thing. It was not a rejection of evolution, nor of common descent, nor of natural selection, but a discussion within evolutionary biology about the pattern and tempo with which evolutionary change appears in the fossil record.

Darwin, of course, never claimed that evolution must proceed at a constant, steady rate. On the contrary, his theory makes it clear that changing environments drive evolutionary change, so more rapid evolution during periods of environmental upheaval is entirely consistent with Darwinian evolution and, indeed, a vindication of it. The appearance of long stasis followed by apparently abrupt change can also be exaggerated by the incompleteness of the geological record, in which spans of thousands of years may appear almost instantaneous when compressed into a thin layer of rock.

However, the notion that the Cambrian Explosion was a sudden event without ancestry has been steadily dismantled by discoveries pushing the origins of Cambrian-type biota back towards the Ediacaran, together with evidence that some Ediacaran organisms were already capable of movement. What emerges is not a miraculous burst of creation, but a clear evolutionary progression from the Ediacaran into the Cambrian.

Now this new paper strengthens that case by showing that complex body plans existed much earlier than previously thought, and by presenting evidence of gradual Darwinian evolution from the Ediacaran into the Cambrian.

The evidence comes from a treasure trove of fossils, the Jiangchuan Biota in Yunnan Province, southwest China, where more than 700 fossil specimens were recovered from rocks dated to between 554 and 539 million years old. Among the more surprising finds is a deuterostome — part of the broad group that includes vertebrates such as fish and humans.

The Jiangchuan Biota, Yunnan Province — background information.

Zhao M, Mussini G, Li Y. et al (2024) [3]

The Jiangchuan Biota is a fossil assemblage from Yunnan Province, south-west China, dating to the late Ediacaran, just before the start of the Cambrian. Current work places the key fossil-bearing interval at about 554–539 million years old. [1]
Geologically, the biota comes from the Jiucheng Member of the Dengying Formation. Earlier studies had already shown it to be an important late Ediacaran site, especially for its abundant macroalgal fossils and other problematic forms. [2]
Before the new Science paper, Jiangchuan was already recognised as unusual because it preserved a eukaryote-dominated late Neoproterozoic ecosystem, but it was known mainly for algae rather than clearly identified animals. That is why the newer discoveries are so important: they greatly expand the biological significance of the site. [3]
The new work reports more than 700 fossil specimens, showing that Jiangchuan preserves a diverse late Ediacaran community including previously undescribed forms as well as animals once thought to be known only from Cambrian rocks. [1]
One reason the site is so valuable is its style of preservation. Unlike many Ediacaran fossil localities, where organisms are preserved mainly as surface impressions in sandstone, the Jiangchuan fossils are preserved as carbonaceous films. This is a rarer mode of preservation for rocks of this age and can preserve much finer anatomical detail. [1]
Because of that exceptional preservation, some Jiangchuan fossils show structures such as feeding organs, digestive tracts, attachment structures, and possible locomotory features. That makes the site especially important for working out what some of these early animals actually were. [1]
Among the most important finds are fossils interpreted as early bilaterians and possible early deuterostomes, including forms related to ambulacrarians — the broader group that includes modern starfish, sea urchins and acorn worms. If these identifications are correct, they push parts of those lineages back into the Ediacaran. [1]
The Jiangchuan Biota is therefore important not simply because it is old, but because it appears to document a transitional fauna between the classic Ediacaran world and the better-known Cambrian faunas. In other words, it helps fill part of the gap between the strange soft-bodied organisms of the Ediacaran and the more recognisably modern animal groups of the Cambrian. [1]
More broadly, the site strengthens the case that the apparent “suddenness” of the Cambrian Explosion has been exaggerated by the incompleteness of the fossil record. Jiangchuan suggests that several animal lineages and body plans were already present before the Cambrian began, but have often gone unrecognised because fossils of the right age and preservation are so rare. [1]
Earlier papers on the Jiangchuan Biota had already shown that it was compositionally distinct from other Chinese Ediacaran fossil assemblages, underlining that late Ediacaran ecosystems were more varied than once thought. [2]

The discovery of these fossils by a team led by Dr Gaorong Li, formerly of Yunnan University and now based at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, together with Dr Frankie Dunn of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, is explained in an Oxford University news release:

Spectacular fossil treasure trove pushes back origins of complex animals
A newly discovered fossil site in southwest China has transformed our understanding of how complex animal life emerged on Earth, revealing that many key animal groups had already evolved before the start of the Cambrian Period. The study, led by researchers at Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History and Department of Earth Sciences as well as Yunnan University in China, has been published in Science.
Fossil of a sausage shaped animal with an end-positioned mouth. A newly-discovered fossil from the Jiangchuan Biota. Credit: Gaorong Li. One of the most transformative events in Earth’s history was the rapid diversification of animal life, resulting in a dramatic increase in complexity and diversity from simpler life forms. Up to now, this was thought to have occurred at the start of the Cambrian Period, in an event known as the Cambrian explosion, starting around 535 million years ago. The new study, however, shifts this timeframe back by at least 4 million years, to the end of the Ediacaran period.

Our discovery closes a major gap in the earliest phases of animal diversification. For the first time, we demonstrate that many complex animals, normally only found in the Cambrian, were present in the Ediacaran period, meaning that they evolved much earlier than previously demonstrated by fossil evidence.

Dr Gaorong Li, lead author
State Key Laboratory of Vegetation Structure, Function and Construction
Institute of Palaeontology
Yunnan University
Kunming, China.

The discovery comes from the Jiangchuan Biota in Yunnan Province, southwest China, where more than 700 fossil specimens were recovered, aged between 554 and 539 million years old. The fossil site revealed a diverse community of Ediacaran organisms - both new, undescribed animal forms and groups known from the Cambrian period. Most strikingly, the international team identified fossils thought to be the oldest known relatives of deuterostomes – the broader group that today includes vertebrates such as humans and fish. The new fossils push the fossil record of deuterostomes back into the Ediacaran Period for the first time.

Among these fossil specimens were ancestors of modern starfish and their closest relatives, the acorn worms (the Ambulacraria*). These fossils have a U-shaped body and were attached to the seafloor with a stalk, with a pair of tentacles on their head used to catch food.

The presence of these ambulacrarians in the Ediacaran period is really exciting. We have already found fossils which are distant relatives of starfish and sea cucumbers and are looking for more. The discovery of ambulacrarian fossils in the Jiangchuan biota also means that the chordates – animals with a backbone – must also have existed at this time.

Dr Francis S. Dunn, corresponding author.
Oxford University Museum of Natural History
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK.

Other ancestral groups among the fossils included worm-like bilaterian animals (having bilateral symmetry), some with complex feeding adaptations, alongside rare fossils interpreted as early comb jellies.

Many specimens showed novel combinations of anatomical features (such as tentacles, stalks, attachment discs, and feeding structures that can be turned inside out) that do not match any known Ediacaran or Cambrian species.

For instance, one specimen looks a lot like the sand worm from Dune!

Dr Francis S. Dunn.

This discovery is extremely exciting because it reveals a transitional community: the weird world of the Ediacaran giving way to the Cambrian, the following time period where the animals are much easier to place in groups that are alive today. When we first saw these specimens, it was clear that this was something totally unique and unexpected.

Associate Professor Luke Parry, co-corresponding author
Department of Earth Sciences
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK.

The new findings help to resolve a long-standing puzzle in evolutionary biology. While molecular studies and trace fossils suggested that animal lineages diversified well before the Cambrian explosion, up to now fossils of many of these groups of complex animals have been missing from the Ediacaran period.

Left: Haootia-like fossil (an early cnidarian – the phylum that includes jellyfish, sea anemones and corals) from the Jiangchuan Biota (scale bar: 2 mm) and artist’s reconstruction. Right: A deuterostome cambroernid fossil from the Jiangchuan Biota (scale bar: 2mm) and artist’s reconstruction.
Credits: Gaorong Li (fossil photographs) and Xiaodong Wang (artistic reconstruction).

Unlike most Ediacaran fossil sites, which preserve organisms mainly as impressions on sandstone surfaces, the Jiangchuan Biota fossils are preserved as carbonaceous films, a mode of preservation more typical of famous Cambrian sites such as the Burgess Shale in Canada. This exceptional preservation reveals anatomical details such as feeding structures, guts and locomotory organs.

Our results indicate that the apparent absence of these complex animal groups from other Ediacaran sites may reflect differences in preservation rather than true biological absence. Carbonaceous compressions like those at Jiangchuan are rare in rocks of this age, meaning that similar communities may simply not have been preserved elsewhere.

Associate Professor Ross Anderson, co-author
Oxford University Museum of Natural History
University of Oxford
Oxford, UK.

A deuterostome cambroernid fossil from the Jiangchuan Biota.
Credit: Gaorong Li.

The new fossils were discovered by a research group in Yunnan University, China, led by Professor Peiyun Cong and Associate Professor Fan Wei, who have spent nearly ten years looking for diverse Ediacaran animal fossils. The rocks from Eastern Yunnan were already known to contain fossils but previously had yielded only remains of algae and not animals.

After years of fieldwork, we finally found several sites with the right conditions where animal fossils are preserved together with the abundant algae.

Associate Professor Fan Wei, co-corresponding author
State Key Laboratory of Vegetation Structure, Function and Construction
Institute of Palaeontology
Yunnan University
Kunming, China.

The new fossils provide the most compelling evidence for the presence of diverse bilaterian animals at the end of the Ediacaran, evidence people have searched for across decades.

Professor Feng Tang, not an author of the current paper
Chinese Academy of Geological Science
Beijing, China.

* Ambulacraria, from the Latin ambulacrum, meaning ‘a walk planted with trees.’

Publication:
Gaorong Li et al.
The dawn of the Phanerozoic: A transitional fauna from the late Ediacaran of Southwest China. Science; 392, 63-68 (2026). DOI: 10.1126/science.adu2291

Abstract
Animal diversification across the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition was a crucial event in Earth history, fundamentally altering our planet and its biosphere. However, Ediacaran fossil assemblages show limited overlap with those from the Cambrian, obscuring the critical interval when the animal phyla were diversifying. We report a new terminal Ediacaran fossil assemblage preserved as carbonaceous films from the Jiangchuan Biota, Yunnan, Southwest China. This assemblage diverges from coeval sites, preserving Ediacaran body fossils alongside recognizable nonbilaterians and bilaterian body and trace fossils. These include diverse vermiform animals and the oldest deuterostomes (stem-group ambulacrarians). Our discovery provides insight into the radiation of Bilateria, the most diverse and disparate animal clade.

Gaorong Li et al.
The dawn of the Phanerozoic: A transitional fauna from the late Ediacaran of Southwest China. Science; 392, 63-68 (2026). DOI: 10.1126/science.adu2291

© 2026 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

What the Jiangchuan Biota shows is not a sudden, unexplained burst of life appearing from nowhere, but exactly what evolutionary theory has long predicted: a deeper ancestry for Cambrian animals, transitional forms linking earlier and later biotas, and a fossil record that becomes clearer as more evidence is found. The so-called “Cambrian Explosion” turns out, yet again, not to have been an instantaneous act of magical creation, but a geologically extended phase in a much longer evolutionary story whose roots stretch back well into the Ediacaran.

It also exposes the dishonesty with which creationists have tried to exploit both the Cambrian fossil record and Gould’s punctuated equilibrium. Neither supports their childish parody of evolution as something that must proceed at a perfectly steady rate or collapse if the fossil record is incomplete. On the contrary, the Jiangchuan fossils show precisely why science works and dogma fails: each new discovery adds detail, fills gaps, and strengthens the evolutionary account, while creationism is left doing what it always does — denying, distorting, and improvising excuses to avoid the obvious conclusion.

So, far from refuting Darwinian evolution, the Jiangchuan Biota is another striking vindication of it. Complex animal body plans did not appear without ancestry, nor did the Cambrian fauna emerge in isolation from what came before. What we see instead is descent with modification unfolding through deep time, preserved imperfectly but increasingly clearly in the rocks. As always, the evidence fits evolution comfortably, while creationism survives only by misrepresentation and wilful ignorance.

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Malevolent Design - How Brain Cells Promote Brain Cancer

2026-04-06T17:21:00.000+01:00

Scientists uncover hidden cells fuelling brain cancer — and a drug that could stop them - McMaster News

Scientists at McMaster University and The Hospital for Sick Children have discovered how a type of brain cell that normally supports healthy brain function can instead go rogue, helping glioblastoma grow and spread. Their findings were recently published in the Cell Press journal Neuron. The prognosis for glioblastoma remains grim, with survival often measured in months.

As putative examples of intelligent design, cells like these should be acutely embarrassing for any creationist willing to follow the evidence where it leads, because within the ID creationist paradigm the only logical conclusion is that the designer is malevolent. By contrast, as examples of how evolution produces workable but imperfect, error-prone systems, they are entirely consistent with the Theory of Evolution and yet another vindication of the science.

Glioblastoma is not simply a mass of malignant cells, but an organised ecosystem sustained by a network of interacting cells. In that sense, it is indistinguishable from the sort of irreducibly complex system that Michael J. Behe claims is evidence of intelligent design. What the researchers found is that a type of cell called an oligodendrocyte, normally responsible for supporting and insulating nerve fibres, can switch roles and actively support tumour growth. These helper cells communicate with cancer cells through a specific signalling system, creating conditions in which the tumour can flourish.

The team discovered that a crucial part of this communication system involves cell-surface receptors called CCR5. By blocking this receptor, tumour growth can be significantly slowed. CCR5 is already the target of the anti-HIV medication Maraviroc, a drug that has already been clinically tested and approved, so it offers a potentially promising treatment for glioblastoma, even if not yet a cure.

Glioblastoma worldwide: incidence at a glance. Glioblastoma is a relatively rare cancer, but it is the commonest malignant primary brain tumour in adults. Current reviews generally place its annual incidence at about 3–5 cases per 100,000 people worldwide, with rates tending to be higher in more developed regions. [1]

For comparison, the broader category of brain and central nervous system cancers accounted for an estimated 321,731 new cases worldwide in 2022, with a world age-standardised incidence rate of 3.5 per 100,000. Because major global cancer databases usually group these tumours together rather than listing glioblastoma separately, precise worldwide GBM totals are harder to pin down than national figures.

Geographically, incidence rates for brain and CNS cancers are highest in Europe, Australia/New Zealand, and North America, and lowest across much of Africa and parts of South and South-East Asia. Glioblastoma appears to follow the same broad pattern, with higher reported rates where cancer registration and diagnostic imaging are more complete.

Glioblastoma is also more common in men than in women. Large registry-based studies typically find a male excess of about 1.6 to 1, and English national data show an age-standardised incidence of 6.3 per 100,000 in men versus 3.8 per 100,000 in women. [2]

Age is another major factor. Glioblastoma is chiefly a disease of older adults, with a median age at diagnosis of about 64 years, and incidence rising sharply with age before peaking in the elderly. It is comparatively uncommon in children. [3]

The work of the research team, led by Professor Sheila Singh, is explained in a news release from McMaster University:

Scientists uncover hidden cells fuelling brain cancer — and a drug that could stop them
Scientists from McMaster and the Hospital for Sick Children have uncovered a new way to slow the growth of aggressive glioblastoma, and identified an existing medication that could treat it.
A Canadian team led by scientists from McMaster and the Hospital for Sick Children has uncovered a new way to slow the growth of glioblastoma, the most aggressive and currently incurable form of brain cancer – and identified an existing medication that could treat it.

Certain brain cells — once thought to simply support healthy nerve function — actually help glioblastoma grow and spread, the research shows.

These cells send signals that strengthen the tumour, but when researchers blocked this harmful communication in lab models, they found the cancer slowed its growth significantly.

Even more promising, the study suggests an existing HIV medication could be repurposed to target this process and offer a new treatment option for patients who currently have few. The prognosis for glioblastoma is poor, with survival often measured in months.

The research was published on Jan. 21 in Neuron and led by scientists at McMaster University and the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). Co-first authors of the study are Kui Zhai, a research associate in the Singh Lab at McMaster, and Nick Mikolajewicz, a postdoctoral fellow in the Moffat Lab at SickKids at the time of the study.
Glioblastoma isn’t just a mass of cancer cells, it’s an ecosystem. By decoding how these cells talk to each other, we’ve found a vulnerability that could be targeted with a drug that’s already on the market
.
Professor Sheila K. Singh, co-senior author
Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research (CDCR)
McMaster University
Hamilton, ON, Canada.

It’s known that glioblastoma grows by forming a network of cells that communicate and support each other, and disrupting these connections can slow the cancer. This study dug deeper to uncover which brain cells are involved.

The researchers discovered that a type of cell called an oligodendrocyte, normally responsible for protecting nerve fibres, can switch roles and actually support tumour growth. These helper cells communicate with cancer cells through a specific signalling system, creating an environment that allows the tumour to thrive.

When researchers blocked this communication in lab models, the cancer slowed down significantly, showing that this interaction is critical for glioblastoma’s survival.

What makes this finding especially promising is that the signalling system involves a receptor called CCR5, which is already targeted by an existing HIV medicine called Maraviroc. This means a medication that’s already approved and widely used could potentially be repurposed to treat glioblastoma, offering hope for faster progress toward new therapies.

The cellular ecosystem within glioblastoma is far more dynamic than previously understood. In uncovering an important piece of the cancer’s biology, we also identified a potential therapeutic target that could be addressed with an existing drug. This finding opens a promising path to explore whether blocking this pathway can speed progress toward new treatment options for patients.

Jason Moffat, co-senior author.
Program in Genetics and Genome Biology
The Hospital for Sick Children
Toronto, ON, Canada.

The breakthrough builds on Singh and Moffat’s 2024 study published in Nature Medicine, which discovered that a migration path used by cells during brain development can be hijacked for cancer cell invasion. Together, these discoveries highlight a new era of glioblastoma research focused on dismantling the tumour’s complex communication networks. This research work was supported by the 2020 William Donald Nash Brain Tumour Research Fellowship administered by the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada, and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research. Singh is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Human Cancer Stem Cell Biology and Moffat is the GlaxoSmithKline Chair in Genetics & Genome Biology at The Hospital for Sick Children. Publication:
Mikolajewicz N, Zhai K, Puri A; et al.
Reactive oligodendrocytes promote glioblastoma progression through CCL5/CCR5-mediated glioma stem cell maintenance
Neuron, 114, 237-249.e10

Highlights

Reactive oligodendrocytes (rOLs) play an important role in the GBM microenvironment
GBM tumor cells can actively recruit rOLs through the CX3CL1/CX3CR1 axis
rOLs secrete CCL5 to promote GBM tumor growth
CCR5 is a potential druggable target for GBM

Summary
Glioblastoma (GBM) evolves within a microenvironment abundant in oligodendrocyte-lineage (OL) cells. In this study, we utilized single-cell and spatial transcriptomics from primary and recurrent GBM tumors, immunohistochemistry, cytokine profiling, and migration assays to show that GBM cells recruit OLs to the tumor border via fractalkine (i.e., CX3CL1/CX3CR1) signaling. A pan-disease human OL meta-atlas and syngeneic mouse models reveal an interferon (IFN)-induced reactive OL state, akin to those seen in demyelinating inflammatory and traumatic injury, which is enriched in central nervous system malignancies. These reactive OLs secrete pro-tumorigenic cytokines, notably C-C motif chemokine ligand 5 (CCL5), that promote GBM tumor cell growth through C-C chemokine receptor type 5 (CCR5) signaling. CCR5 is preferentially expressed in glioma stem-like cells (GSCs) and upregulated at recurrence. Targeting CCR5 with genetic knockdown or the approved drug maraviroc impairs GSC stemness and prolongs survival in GBM models. Our work highlights the functional interplay between OLs and GBM cells and positions the CCL5/CCR5 axis as a druggable target in GBM.
Graphical abstract

Mikolajewicz N, Zhai K, Puri A; et al.
Reactive oligodendrocytes promote glioblastoma progression through CCL5/CCR5-mediated glioma stem cell maintenance
Neuron, 114, 237-249.e10

© 2026 Cell Press (Elsevier Inc.)
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

And so, once again, the evidence points not to elegant design but to the messy, makeshift outcomes of evolution. A system that normally helps maintain and protect the brain can, under the wrong conditions, be co-opted into helping one of the deadliest cancers grow and spread. That is not what anyone would expect from a competent, benevolent designer, but it is exactly the sort of imperfect, vulnerable biological arrangement that evolution produces when natural selection works only with whatever materials happen to be available.

For advocates of intelligent design, glioblastoma poses an especially awkward problem. Here we have a complex, highly organised network of interacting cells, signalling pathways and support systems which, by Michael Behe’s own standard, would qualify as “irreducibly complex”. Yet that complexity does not serve health or wellbeing; it serves a lethal tumour. If irreducible complexity is supposed to be evidence of purposeful design, then glioblastoma forces the uncomfortable conclusion that the designer deliberately produced systems capable of turning the brain into a hospitable environment for cancer.

By contrast, evolutionary biology has no such difficulty. It does not predict perfection. It predicts compromises, vulnerabilities and systems that function well enough under most circumstances, but which can fail catastrophically when regulatory controls break down. The same cells that usually support normal brain tissue can, in a different context, be recruited into a malignant process. That is tragic for patients, but scientifically it is entirely unsurprising.

And, crucially, this is where real answers come from. Not from theological excuses or attempts to redefine bad design as mysterious divine purpose or the result of some misbehaviour from Bronze Age mythology, but from scientists patiently uncovering the mechanisms involved and identifying points of intervention. In this case, their work has already highlighted a promising treatment target in CCR5 and the possible repurposing of an existing drug. That is how science advances: by confronting reality as it is, not as dogma insists it ought to be.

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Refuting Creationism - The Oldest Known Ancestor of Spiders - 500 Million Years Ago

2026-04-04T23:20:00.000+01:00

Close up of chelicera

Credit: Rudy Lerosey-Aubril.

A 500-Million-Year-Old Clawed Predator Rewrites the Origin of Spiders and Horseshoe Crabs | Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

Another day, another piece of evidence for creationists to ignore, misrepresent or simply lie about — anything, in fact, except honestly acknowledge that it shows they are wrong. This discovery strikes at the heart of creationism. It not only refutes the notion that Earth is just 6,000–10,000 years old, but also demolishes two favourite creationist misrepresentations: that there are no transitional fossils, and that the Cambrian Explosion was some sudden, magical appearance of multiple body plans with no evolutionary ancestry. Of course, creationists can always fall back on the familiar claim that scientists invented the dates to lure people away from God and convert them to “Darwinism”.

The evidence, published in Nature, is a 500-million-year-old transitional fossil showing that arthropods had already diverged to produce the chelicerate subphylum — the lineage that would eventually give rise to spiders, scorpions and horseshoe crabs. This pushes the earliest known chelicerates back by some 20 million years from the previous oldest example, dated to about 480 million years ago from the Early Ordovician Fezouata Biota of Morocco.

The crucial evidence was the presence of the defining chelicerae, identified by research scientist Rudy Lerosey-Aubril of Harvard University while microscopically cleaning a fossil arthropod that the scientists have named Megachelicerax cousteaui. Chelicerae are the pincer-like, sometimes venomous, foremost appendages that define chelicerates, in contrast to the antennae that are the foremost appendages in insects and many other arthropods.

This shows that chelicerae evolved before chelicerates acquired their later, more familiar body plan with a two-part body and the reduced head appendages that became the eight walking legs of spiders and their relatives. In other words, this fossil captures an intermediate stage between the earlier, multi-segmented arthropods and the later chelicerate body plan. It is, therefore, precisely the sort of transitional form creationists keep claiming does not exist — right up until one is found, at which point they are forced to deny, distort or ignore it.

The evolution of the chelicerates.

Chelicerates are one of the major branches of the arthropods, and today they include sea spiders, horseshoe crabs, arachnids such as spiders and scorpions, and the hugely diverse mites and ticks. Modern chelicerates comprise well over 120,000 described living species.
What defines a chelicerate is the presence of chelicerae — the first pair of appendages, used for grasping or feeding — rather than antennae. Their body is typically divided into two main regions: a front section bearing the eyes, mouthparts and walking legs, and a rear section containing most of the major organ systems.
The group is ancient, with origins in the Cambrian. A newly described fossil, Megachelicerax cousteaui, from about 500 million years ago, is now the oldest known chelicerate, pushing the record of the group back by around 20 million years. [1.1]
That fossil is important because it shows the chelicerate body plan evolved step by step. It already had true chelicerae and an emerging division between front and rear body regions, but it still retained features of earlier, more generalised arthropods. In other words, it is exactly the sort of transitional form evolution predicts. [1.1]
Early chelicerates were marine. By the late Cambrian there is evidence for early chelicerate lineages, and by the Ordovician the fossil record includes horseshoe-crab relatives, eurypterids (“sea scorpions”) and other aquatic forms. [2.1]
The move onto land came later. Arachnids are known with certainty from the Silurian onward, with different major groups appearing through the Devonian and Carboniferous, showing a long history of diversification rather than any sudden appearance of modern forms. [2.1]
For a long time, the standard view was that arachnids evolved from a single land-colonising ancestor, with book lungs evolving from structures related to the book gills of marine chelicerates such as horseshoe crabs. That remains an important historical model.
More recent molecular work has made the picture more complicated. Sea spiders are now strongly supported as the sister group to the rest of the chelicerates, and some large phylogenomic studies place horseshoe crabs within the arachnid radiation rather than outside it. If that result holds, the conquest of land by chelicerates may have been more complex than older textbook accounts suggested.
One of the best-supported modern groupings is Arachnopulmonata, the clade that includes spiders, scorpions and several close relatives. Genomic evidence suggests their common ancestor underwent a whole-genome duplication, which may have helped open up new evolutionary possibilities in features such as body patterning, venom systems and silk-related biology.
Overall, chelicerate evolution is a textbook example of gradual assembly of a body plan over deep time. The fossil record and modern genetics both show an ancient lineage branching, modifying and diversifying over hundreds of millions of years — the exact opposite of the creationist caricature that major groups simply appeared fully formed and without ancestry. [1.1]

How the fossil was identified as an early chelicerate, and why it matters for understanding the evolutionary history of the subphylum, is explained in a Harvard University news release.

A 500-Million-Year-Old Clawed Predator Rewrites the Origin of Spiders and Horseshoe Crabs
It had been a long day of teaching for Rudy Lerosey-Aubril. As a reward, he returned to cleaning an intriguing Cambrian arthropod fossil he had recently received for review. At first, the specimen showed all the expected characteristics of its time – yet, something was off. In place of an antenna, there appeared to be a claw.

Claws are never in that location in a Cambrian arthropod. It took me a few minutes to realize the obvious, I had just exposed the oldest chelicera ever found.

Rudy Lerosey-Aubril, first author.
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Museum of Comparative Zoology
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA, USA.

In a study published in Nature, Research Scientist Rudy Lerosey-Aubril and Associate Professor Javier Ortega-Hernández, Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology – both in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology – describe Megachelicerax cousteaui, a 500-million-year-old sea predator discovered in Utah’s West Desert. It is the oldest known chelicerate, the arthropod group that includes spiders, scorpions, horseshoe crabs, and sea spiders. The discovery pushes the evolutionary history of chelicerates back by 20 million years.

This fossil documents the Cambrian origin of chelicerates, and shows that the anatomical blueprint of spiders and horseshoe crabs was already emerging 500 million years ago.

Rudy Lerosey-Aubril.

Holotype specimen (part and counterpart) of the Cambrian chelicerate Megachelicerax cousteaui, showing its spectacular pincer-like chelicera.

Credit: Rudy Lerosey-Aubril.

Lerosey-Aubril spent more than 50 hours carefully cleaning the fossil under a microscope using a fine needle to reveal its shocking anatomy. At slightly over 8 centimeters long, M. cousteaui preserves a dorsal exoskeleton consisting of a head shield and nine body segments. These two regions feature distinct appendages: six pairs of limbs specialized for feeding and sensing in the head shield, and plate-like respiratory structures beneath the body that resemble the book gills of modern horseshoe crabs.

Its most extraordinary feature, however, is its unmistakable chelicera — the pincer-like feeding appendages that define the subphylum Chelicerata and distinguish spiders from insects. While insects possess sensory antenna as their foremost appendages, chelicerates have grasping, often venomous tools. Despite a rich Cambrian fossil record, no unambiguous chelicera-bearing arthropod from that time had ever been found – until now.

Prior to this discovery, the oldest known chelicerates dated to the Early Ordovician Fezouata Biota of Morocco, roughly 480 million years ago. The existence of M. cousteaui 20 million years earlier places it as an early offshoot of the chelicerate family tree, a key transitional species bridging Cambrian arthropods that appear to lack chelicera with the much younger horseshoe crab-like chelicerates known as synziphosurines.

Megachelicerax shows that chelicera and the division of the body into two functionally specialized regions evolved before the head appendages lost their outer branches and became like the legs of spiders today. It reconciles several competing hypotheses; in a way, everybody was partly right.

Assistant Professor Javier Ortega-Hernández, co-author
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Museum of Comparative Zoology
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA, USA.

The fossil captures a crucial stage in the assembly of the chelicerate body plan, revealing that key elements had already evolved during the immediate aftermath of the Cambrian Explosion – a period of extraordinarily rapid evolutionary innovation.

This tells us that by the mid-Cambrian, when evolutionary rates were remarkably high, the oceans were already inhabited by arthropods with anatomical complexity rivaling modern forms.

Assistant Professor Javier Ortega-Hernández.

Intriguingly, the early acquisition of this complex anatomy did not immediately lead to ecological dominance or diversification. Instead, chelicerates remained relatively inconspicuous for millions of years, overshadowed by seemingly simpler groups such as trilobites, before successfully colonizing land.

A similar evolutionary pattern has been documented in other animal groups. This shows that evolutionary success is not only about biological innovation — timing and environmental context matter.

Rudy Lerosey-Aubril.

M. cousteaui was collected in the middle Cambrian Wheeler Formation of Utah’s House Range. The fossil was discovered by renowned avocational fossil collector, Lloyd Gunther, and donated to the Kansas University Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum in 1981 for further study. It was among a collection of seemingly unremarkable fossils from Utah that Lerosey-Aubril offered to investigate as part of his research on early arthropods.

Modern spider next to Megachelicerax cousteaui

Credit: Rudy Lerosey-Aubril.

Megachelicerax cousteaui is named in honor of French explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Lerosey-Aubril – who is also French – and Ortega-Hernández chose Cousteau for his work raising awareness of the beauty and vulnerability of the undersea.

Cousteau and his crew inspired generations to look beneath the surface. It seemed fitting to name this ancient marine animal after someone who changed the way we see ocean life.” Just as Megachelicerax cousteaui has changed how we view chelicerates.

Rudy Lerosey-Aubril.

Today, chelicerates include more than 120,000 living species — from spiders and scorpions to mites, horseshoe crabs, and sea spiders – inhabiting both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

For thousands of years, these animals have quietly existed among us, deeply influencing our lives from pop-culture to medical and agricultural contributions. This fossil discovery sheds new light on their origins.

Assistant Professor Javier Ortega-Hernández.

The authors acknowledge the vital role of scientific collections, such as those of the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, and the dedication of the professionals who curate them – especially B. Lieberman and J. Kimmig – preserving specimens for decades until new questions, and new eyes, reveal their full significance.

Publication:
Lerosey-Aubril, R., Ortega-Hernández, J.
A chelicera-bearing arthropod reveals the Cambrian origin of chelicerates.
Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10284-2

Abstract
Chelicerata is a megadiverse (over 120,000 species) arthropod clade that includes familiar taxa of profound ecological and economic importance, such as scorpions, spiders and mites¹. Extant chelicerates share a unique anatomical character, the chelicerae—feeding first appendages terminated by a simple pincer-like chela². The fossil record of these primarily predatory animals spans almost 500 million year³, suggesting a likely yet undocumented origin during the Cambrian Explosion. Artiopods^4,5,6, megacheirans,^4,7,8,9, habeliids^10,11,12,13 and mollisoniids^14,15 have been considered Cambrian stem- or crown-group chelicerates, but they all lack unequivocal chelicerae, leaving the emergence of chelicerae-bearing arthropods unclear. Here we describe Megachelicerax cousteaui gen. et sp. nov., a large soft-bodied arthropod from the middle Cambrian of Utah featuring massive three-segmented chelicerae, along with five pairs of pseudobiramous prosomal limbs with non-foliaceous exopodal rami, and plate-like lamellae-bearing opisthosomal appendages. Bayesian and parsimony phylogenetic analyses resolve Megachelicerax as a stem-group chelicerate bridging Cambrian habeliids and post-Cambrian chelicerae-bearing synziphosurines. This finding provides unequivocal evidence of large predatory chelicerates in the Cambrian, illuminates their body plan’s origin, and confirms habeliids, mollisoniids and probably megacheirans as members of total-group Chelicerata.

Lerosey-Aubril, R., Ortega-Hernández, J.
A chelicera-bearing arthropod reveals the Cambrian origin of chelicerates.
Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10284-2

© 2026 Springer Nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

What this fossil shows, yet again, is that the history of life is not the childish caricature creationists need it to be. Major groups did not appear out of nowhere, fully formed and without ancestry. They emerged by modification of earlier forms, with features evolving step by step, leaving behind exactly the sort of intermediate stages that creationists insist do not exist. Then, when such a fossil is found, they are left with the familiar choice: ignore it, misrepresent it, or lie about it.

And this one is especially awkward for them because it does double damage. Not only does it sit half a billion years back in Earth’s history, far outside the absurdly tiny timescale allowed by biblical literalism, but it also shows that the chelicerate body plan was assembled gradually. The defining chelicerae evolved before the later, more specialised form seen in spiders and their kin. In other words, evolution did not leap magically from one finished design to another; it proceeded through transitional stages, precisely as the theory predicts.

So, far from supporting the creationist fantasy of separate, sudden creation, Megachelicerax cousteaui adds one more clear piece of evidence that arthropod evolution was a long, branching, deeply historical process. Science has no difficulty accommodating such discoveries, because they fit neatly into the evolutionary framework. Creationism, by contrast, can only survive by pretending the evidence is not there.

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Refuting Creationism - How New Genetic Information Can Arise Rapidly, Naturally

2026-04-03T01:46:00.003+01:00

A small selection of Lake Malawi cichlids

How ‘supergenes’ help fish evolve into new species | University of Cambridge

Creationists like William A. Dembski constantly reassure their fellow believers that new genetic information cannot arise naturally and therefore requires divine intervention. This claim depends on a misrepresentation of the laws of thermodynamics and a deliberate confusion of information with energy. It is clung to despite the obvious and overwhelming evidence to the contrary, with the same tenacity that creationists bring to their insistence that evolution either does not happen at all or, if it does, must somehow have occurred at an impossibly rapid rate after the Flood to produce such enormous variation within their invented ‘kinds’ from just a single surviving pair.

So now we have yet more contrary evidence for creationists to ignore, this time in the form of an explanation for how the cichlid fishes of Lake Malawi in East Africa were able to evolve into more than 800 species in a fraction of the time it took humans and chimpanzees to diverge from a common ancestor. Readers of this blog with long memories may recall that, back in 2012, I described these fish as a particularly powerful argument against creationism.

The fact of this rapid adaptive radiation, taking place on a timescale that could be independently verified, was already indisputable. What we lacked at the time was a clear understanding of the underlying mechanism that made it possible. That gap has now been filled by researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Antwerp, who have shown that the source of this new genetic information lies in genetic inversions, where an entire section of DNA is inserted in reverse orientation. They have recently published their findings in the journal Science.

During the normal process of meiosis, in which reproductive cells are formed, crossing-over reshuffles genes to produce new combinations in offspring. But when a segment of DNA has been inverted, that section cannot take part properly in the crossing-over process. As a result, the genes within it remain linked together as an intact block, forming what geneticists call a ‘supergene’. These supergenes can then be inherited largely unchanged across generations. The effect is to create barriers to hybridisation much more quickly than would otherwise be possible, effectively isolating a new gene pool within the wider population and allowing new species to evolve far more rapidly than usual, instead of having novel gene combinations continually diluted by interbreeding across the whole population.

Why we know the Lake Malawi cichlid radiation was exceptionally rapid. Lake Malawi’s cichlids are not just diverse; they are diverse on a timescale so short that even evolutionary biologists regard them as one of the most spectacular known examples of rapid vertebrate adaptive radiation. Depending on how species are counted, the lake contains well over 500 and probably more than 800 cichlid species, all descended from a comparatively recent common ancestral stock. [1]

The reason we know this radiation was especially fast is that several independent lines of evidence converge on the same conclusion. Geological and palaeoenvironmental work on Lake Malawi shows that the major phase of diversification is associated with the lake’s deep-water history over roughly the last 800,000 years. In evolutionary terms, that is an extraordinarily short period in which to generate hundreds of species occupying a wide range of ecological niches. [2]

Genomics confirms just how recent this diversification was. Whole-genome comparisons show that many of these supposedly separate species are genetically astonishingly similar, with average sequence divergence between species pairs of only about 0.1–0.25%. In fact, the differences between species overlap with the amount of variation found within species, and about 82% of heterozygous sites are shared between them. That is exactly what we would expect if many lineages split so recently and so quickly that there has not yet been time for deep genome-wide differences to accumulate. [1]

Their family tree tells the same story. Instead of deep, neatly separated branches, Malawi cichlids show the genetic signature of rapid branching, ongoing gene flow, and incomplete lineage sorting — all classic signs of a radiation that happened quickly enough for much ancestral variation to remain shared among descendant species. [1]

So the evidence is not simply that Lake Malawi has many cichlid species. It is that hundreds of species, with striking differences in body shape, feeding strategy, colouration and habitat use, evolved in a geologically brief window and left behind precisely the genomic pattern expected from rapid, recent diversification. That is why these fishes have become one of the textbook examples of evolution happening fast enough to be measured, dated and explained. [1]

How the researchers arrived at this discovery is explained in a University of Cambridge news item.

How ‘supergenes’ help fish evolve into new species
Researchers have found that chunks of ‘flipped’ DNA can help fish quickly adapt to new habitats and evolve into new species, acting as evolutionary ‘superchargers’.
Why are there so many different kinds of animals and plants on Earth? One of biology’s big questions is how new species arise and how nature’s incredible diversity came to be.

Cichlid fish from Lake Malawi in East Africa offer a clue. In this single lake, over 800 different species have evolved from a common ancestor in a fraction of the time it took for humans and chimpanzees to evolve from their common ancestor.

What’s even more remarkable is that the diversification of cichlids happened all in the same body of water. Some of these fish became large predators, others adapted to eat algae, sift through sand, or feed on plankton. Each species found its own ecological niche.

Now, researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Antwerp have determined how this evolution may have happened so quickly. Their results are reported in the journal Science.

The researchers looked at the DNA of over 1,300 cichlids to see if there’s something special about their genes that might explain this rapid evolution.

“We discovered that, in some species, large chunks of DNA on five chromosomes are flipped – a type of mutation called a chromosomal inversion.

Hennes Svardal, senior author
Evolutionary Ecology Group
Department of Biology
University of Antwerp
Antwerp, Belgium.

Normally, when animals reproduce, their DNA gets reshuffled in a process called recombination – mixing the genetic material from both parents. But this mixing is blocked within a chromosomal inversion. This means that gene combinations within the inversion are passed down intact without mixing, generation after generation, keeping useful adaptations together and speeding up evolution.

It’s sort of like a toolbox where all the most useful tools are stuck together, preserving winning genetic combinations that help fish adapt to different environments.

L. Moritz Blumer, first author
Department of Genetics
University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK.

These preserved sets of genes are sometimes called ‘supergenes. In Malawi cichlids, the supergenes seem to play several important roles. Although cichlid species can still interbreed, the inversions help keep species separate by preventing their genes from blending too much. This is especially useful in parts of the lake where fish live side by side – like in open sandy areas where there’s no physical separation between habitats.

The genes inside these supergenes often control traits that are key for survival and reproduction – such as vision, hearing, and behaviour. For example, fish living deep in the lake (down to 200 meters) need different visual abilities than those near the surface, require different food, and need to survive at higher pressures. Their supergenes help maintain those special adaptations.

When different cichlid species interbred, entire inversions can be passed between them – bringing along key survival traits, like adaptations to specific environments, speeding up the process of evolution.

L. Moritz Blumer.

The inversions also frequently act as sex chromosomes, helping determine whether a fish becomes male or female. Since sex chromosomes can influence how new species form, this opens new questions about how evolution works.

While our study focused on cichlids, chromosomal inversions aren’t unique to them. They’re also found in many other animals — including humans — and are increasingly seen as a key factor in evolution and biodiversity.

Professor Richard Durbin, senior co-author
Department of Genetics
University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK.

We have been studying the process of speciation for a long time. Now, by understanding how these supergenes evolve and spread, we’re getting closer to answering one of science’s big questions: how life on Earth becomes so rich and varied.

Hennes Svardal.

Publication:
L. M. Blumer et al.
Introgression dynamics of sex-linked chromosomal inversions shape the Malawi cichlid radiation.
Science 388, eadr9961 (2025). DOI:10.1126/science.adr9961

Structured Abstract

INTRODUCTION
Ecological speciation is responsible for much of the biodiversity on our planet. Despite its fundamental importance, this process, in which new species emerge through evolutionary adaptation to distinct ecological niches, is still not fully understood. Intriguing case studies are adaptive radiations, bursts of ecological speciation that give rise to large numbers of diverse species over timescales that are short compared with the fixation time for new genetic variants. Genome sequencing studies increasingly point towards the importance of hybridization and cross-species gene flow in producing the diversity needed for ecological speciation and adaptive radiation. However, a major conundrum is the role of meiotic recombination in this process. On the one hand, recombination can create new, beneficial combinations of genetic alleles. On the other, it breaks down co-adapted allelic combinations, impeding speciation.

RATIONALE
Chromosomal inversions, stretches of DNA that are flipped in their orientation, provide a potential solution to the conflicting roles of recombination in ecological speciation. This is because inversions show suppressed recombination with the original chromosomal orientation, enabling them to lock together adaptive combinations of alleles in so-called “supergenes.” Inversions have been found to be important in ecological adaptation and speciation in many groups of organisms, but so far, there has been little evidence for their significance in adaptive radiations. To address this gap, we systematically investigated the presence and role of inversions across the lake Malawi cichlid fish adaptive radiation, the largest recent vertebrate radiation.

RESULTS
The genomes of 1375 Malawi cichlids from 240 species revealed the presence of multiple chromosomal inversions. The five largest of these segregate within the diverse and species-rich benthic subradiation, with a strong association between inversion states and habitat depth. Phylogenetic tracking of inversion states revealed a hybrid origin of the benthic clade, along with several introgression events transporting inversions and other genetic material between lineages within and outside of the radiation. Inversion haplotypes showed strong signals of adaptive evolution, including being enriched for sensory functions, behavior, and reproduction. For three chromosomes, the re-introgression of haplotypes of the ancestral orientation into benthic lineages coincides with an apparent Y chromosome–like role of this haplotype in the sex determination of some benthic species but not others.

CONCLUSION
The spread of chromosome-scale inversions in Malawi cichlids coincided with the phenotypic and ecological diversification of benthic species across habitats, with evidence for a role of inversion haplotypes in ecological adaptation. The additional transient sex linkage of introgressed inversion-region haplotypes points to an interplay of sex-linked and natural selection in shaping the evolution of inversion haplotypes and the diversification of cichlids.

Five large chromosomal inversions contribute to the diversification of Malawi cichlids.
Inversions established in the diverse benthic subradiation. Inversion-region haplotypes were exchanged through hybridization of lineages within and outside of the Malawi radiation and contribute to ecological and habitat divergence, sensory adaptation, and sex determination.

Abstract Chromosomal inversions can contribute to adaptive speciation by linking coadapted alleles. By querying 1375 genomes of the species-rich Malawi cichlid fish radiation, we discovered five large inversions segregating in the benthic subradiation that each suppress recombination over more than half a chromosome. Two inversions were transferred from deepwater pelagic Diplotaxodon through admixture, whereas the others established early in the deep benthic clade. Introgression of haplotypes from lineages inside and outside the Malawi radiation coincided with bursts of species diversification. Inversions show evidence for transient sex linkage, and a notable excess of protein changing substitutions points toward selection on neurosensory, physiological, and reproductive genes. These results indicate that repeated interplay between depth adaptation and sex-specific selection on large inversions has been central to the evolution of this iconic system.

L. M. Blumer et al.
Introgression dynamics of sex-linked chromosomal inversions shape the Malawi cichlid radiation.
Science 388, eadr9961 (2025). DOI:10.1126/science.adr9961

© 2025 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Lake Malawi’s cichlids are not just diverse; they are diverse on a timescale so short that even evolutionary biologists regard them as one of the most spectacular known examples of rapid vertebrate adaptive radiation. Depending on how species are counted, the lake contains well over 500 and probably more than 800 cichlid species, all descended from a comparatively recent common ancestral stock.

The reason we know this radiation was especially fast is that several independent lines of evidence converge on the same conclusion. Geological and palaeoenvironmental work on Lake Malawi shows that the major phase of diversification is associated with the lake’s deep-water history over roughly the last 800,000 years. In evolutionary terms, that is an extraordinarily short period in which to generate hundreds of species occupying a wide range of ecological niches.

Genomics confirms just how recent this diversification was. Whole-genome comparisons show that many of these supposedly separate species are genetically astonishingly similar, with average sequence divergence between species pairs of only about 0.1–0.25%. In fact, the differences between species overlap with the amount of variation found within species, and about 82% of heterozygous sites are shared between them. That is exactly what we would expect if many lineages split so recently and so quickly that there has not yet been time for deep genome-wide differences to accumulate.

Their family tree tells the same story. Instead of deep, neatly separated branches, Malawi cichlids show the genetic signature of rapid branching, ongoing gene flow, and incomplete lineage sorting — all classic signs of a radiation that happened quickly enough for much ancestral variation to remain shared among descendant species.

So the evidence is not simply that Lake Malawi has many cichlid species. It is that hundreds of species, with striking differences in body shape, feeding strategy, colouration and habitat use, evolved in a geologically brief window and left behind precisely the genomic pattern expected from rapid, recent diversification. That is why these fishes have become one of the textbook examples of evolution happening fast enough to be measured, dated and explained. Certainly — here is a more forceful side-panel version aimed squarely at Dembski’s claim: Discovery Institute Fellow, William A. Dembski’s argument depends on the assertion that biologically useful new genetic information cannot arise by natural processes and therefore must be inserted by an intelligent designer. The Lake Malawi cichlids are a direct empirical refutation of that claim. In a single lake, a recent common ancestor gave rise to hundreds of species — probably more than 800 — occupying a remarkable range of ecological niches, making this one of the most extensive recent vertebrate adaptive radiations known.

What makes this especially awkward for ID creationists is that researchers have now identified a natural mechanism that helps explain how this happened so quickly. By analysing more than 1,300 cichlid genomes, researchers found large chromosomal inversions — sections of DNA flipped into reverse orientation — on five chromosomes. These inversions suppress recombination across large regions, preserving successful combinations of genes as inherited blocks, or “supergenes”. In other words, ordinary mutation and inheritance can generate new, heritable genomic arrangements with functional evolutionary consequences. No designer is required to step in and add anything by magic.

This matters because Dembski and similar creationists often play a semantic trick: they talk as though “new information” must mean the miraculous insertion of entirely novel material from outside the system. But in real genetics, evolution often works by reorganising, preserving, combining and differentially filtering existing variation in ways that create genuinely new adaptive outcomes. In the Malawi cichlids, these inversions helped maintain co-adapted sets of genes involved in traits such as vision, physiology, behaviour and reproduction, while also helping keep species distinct even when they could still interbreed. That is exactly the sort of naturally arising functional genomic novelty Dembski claims cannot happen.

The wider genomic evidence shows just how rapidly all this occurred. Whole-genome comparisons found that many Lake Malawi cichlid species are still genetically extremely similar overall, with average sequence divergence between species pairs of only about 0.1–0.25%, and with roughly 82% of heterozygous sites shared between species. Yet despite this shallow overall divergence, they have already split into a huge array of ecologically and anatomically distinct species. That is what rapid natural diversification looks like in the real world: not a designer injecting “information”, but known evolutionary mechanisms generating adaptive novelty and reproductive separation faster than creationist dogma says should be possible.

So the problem for Dembski is not merely that the Malawi cichlids evolved rapidly. It is that they did so by exactly the sort of natural genetic processes he insists are incapable of producing functional evolutionary innovation. The evidence shows the opposite: genomes can generate new adaptive architectures naturally, selection can preserve them, and new species can result — all without the slightest hint of supernatural intervention.

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Refuting Creationism - How Long-Necked Dinosaurs Refute Intelligent Design.

2026-04-02T13:31:00.000+01:00

Neuquensaurus australis

AI-Generated image (ChatGPT Latest)

South American long-necked dinosaur could easily stand on two legs

Evolution works only with whatever variation happens to be available at the time, favouring traits that improve reproductive success in the short term. Unlike the imaginary “intelligent designer” of creationist fantasy, evolution has no foresight, no long-term plan, and no concern for what happens once reproduction has been achieved. The result is not elegant perfection, but a patchwork of compromises that work well enough for long enough.

That is why nature is full of structures and processes that serve an immediate purpose while carrying harmful longer-term consequences. Ageing itself is one obvious example, as damage accumulates, repair systems falter, and tissues and organs gradually fail. Cancers and degenerative diseases are others, arising when biological control mechanisms begin to malfunction. A genuinely intelligent designer would have no excuse for such shoddy, failure-prone systems; evolution, by contrast, explains them perfectly.

In humans, physical and reproductive fitness generally peaks in early adulthood, then declines steadily with age, until the very old, if they live that long, may become frail and dependent. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes perfect sense: once genes have been passed on, natural selection becomes progressively less effective at eliminating traits that cause harm later in life. What looks like incompetence from a design perspective is exactly what we should expect from an undirected evolutionary process.

And this is not some recent peculiarity of human biology, but a deep feature of evolution itself. A recent study by researchers from Brazil, Germany and Argentina illustrates the point with two South American sauropod dinosaurs, the Brazilian Uberabatitan and the Argentinean Neuquensaurus. These giant herbivores could apparently rear up on their hind limbs to reach high foliage, and perhaps also gain advantages in defence or display. But that ability came at a cost. As body size increased, so did the mechanical stress on the femur, making the posture progressively more difficult to sustain. In other words, evolution had produced a useful adaptation, but not a perfect one. The benefit came with a built-in structural penalty.

The researchers reached this conclusion by applying computational techniques from mechanical engineering to digital models of sauropod femurs, calculating the stresses imposed by gravity and increasing body mass when the animals reared up. Their results are published, open access, in the journal of the Palaeontological Society, Palaeontology.

Background^ the two sauropods in the study. Both dinosaurs discussed in the paper were titanosaurs: members of the last great radiation of long-necked sauropods, which dominated many southern continents during the Late Cretaceous. But they were very different animals. Uberabatitan ribeiroi was a very large Brazilian titanosaur from the very end of the Cretaceous, whereas Neuquensaurus australis was a much smaller, more compact saltasaurine from Patagonia. That contrast makes them useful for biomechanical comparison. [1]

Uberabatitan ribeiroi is known from the Serra da Galga Member of the Marília Formation in Minas Gerais, Brazil, part of the Bauru Group and generally regarded as Maastrichtian in age, so it lived very close to the end-Cretaceous extinction. It has been described as one of the youngest titanosaurs known from the Bauru Basin. Later revision of the material added new anatomical information and refined its diagnosis. In public-facing summaries from Brazilian heritage organisations, it is often described as the largest dinosaur yet found in Brazil, with estimates of around 27 metres in length, though that figure is a popular estimate rather than the central point of the technical description. [2]

Neuquensaurus australis, by contrast, was a small saltasaurine titanosaur from the Anacleto Formation of Patagonia, Argentina, usually dated to the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous. Fossils from near Cinco Saltos have made it one of the better-known Patagonian titanosaurs. Unlike the gigantic, more stereotypical sauropods, Neuquensaurus was relatively modest in size and is notable for the presence of osteoderms — bony armour-like scutes in the skin — a feature associated with several of its close relatives. [3]

That difference in build is part of what makes the new study interesting. Neuquensaurus represents a smaller, sturdier saltasaurine body plan, while Uberabatitan represents a much larger titanosaur from Brazil. In the biomechanical modelling, Neuquensaurus and a juvenile Uberabatitan came out as especially capable of sustaining rearing postures, whereas increasing size brought increasing stress on the femur. In other words, these two dinosaurs help show how the same general feeding strategy could become mechanically more costly as sauropods got larger. [4]

Their findings are explained in a news item from Agência FAPESP, the official news agency of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) in Brazil:

South American long-necked dinosaur could easily stand on two legs
Using computational engineering techniques to simulate weight and gravitational stress on sauropod femurs, researchers from Brazil, Germany, and Argentina have demonstrated that these giant quadrupeds could generally remain standing for feeding, mating, and defense.
By André Julião | Agência FAPESP – Sixty-six million years ago, two genera of long-necked, quadrupedal dinosaurs had an advantage over other sauropods: they could easily stand on their hind legs for extended periods. This allowed them to scare off potential predators and feed on leaves high up in trees, for example.

The Brazilian Uberabatitan and the Argentine Neuquensaurus were about the size of a modern elephant. Although they were considered small for their group, it is estimated that adult Uberabatitans could reach 26 meters, making them the largest dinosaurs in Brazil. Because of their size, these sauropods could only stand for extended periods while they were young. This conclusion comes from a study supported by FAPESP and published in the journal Palaeontology. The study was conducted by researchers from Brazil, Germany, and Argentina.

The scientists used a computational technique adopted in engineering. They aimed to estimate the stress on the femur caused by gravity and the weight of the sauropods when standing on their two hind legs.

“Smaller sauropods like these had a bone and muscle structure that allowed them to stand more easily and for longer on their two hind legs. Larger ones were probably also able to stand, but for a shorter time and with less comfort, since the position caused a lot of stress on the femur,” summarizes Julian Silva Júnior, a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Engineering of São Paulo State University (FEIS-UNESP) in Ilha Solteira, Brazil. Silva Júnior is the first author of the study, which was conducted during an internship at the University of Tübingen in Germany with a scholarship from FAPESP.

The researchers digitally reconstructed the femurs of seven sauropods representing different evolutionary lineages, sizes, and anatomical characteristics unique to this group. The digital models were based on fossils found in natural history museum collections around the world.

South Americans

The simulations were performed using finite element analysis (FEA), a computational technique that simulates how materials behave under conditions such as force and heat. This technique is widely used in bridge design, for example.

“Using this technique, we performed two simulations. One dealt with the extrinsic scenario, simulating the force coming from outside to inside. In this case, gravity and the animal’s own weight on the femur when the dinosaur was standing on its hind legs. In the other, we analyzed the intrinsic scenario, the force that the muscles would exert on the femur,” Silva Júnior explains.

The combination of the two scenarios suggests the amount of stress each species endured. The two South American sauropods, a juvenile Uberabatitan ribeiroi (named after the Brazilian municipality of Uberaba, where it was found, and coincidentally, Silva Júnior’s hometown) and Neuquensaurus australis (found near the Neuquén River in Argentina), showed the lowest levels of stress on the femurs. Both species lived during the Late Cretaceous period, about 66 million years ago.

“They had more robust femurs and could dissipate stress better. The bigger ones had very large muscles and even giant femurs, but not enough to support their weight. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t stand up, but they probably chose the best time to do so, because it must have been an uncomfortable position,” says the paleontologist. He points out that adult Uberabatitan individuals, unlike the juvenile analyzed in the study, would probably have had the same difficulty standing on their hind legs as other giant species.

This position would have been useful for feeding and reaching food in the highest parts of trees since sauropods were leaf eaters. It may also have been used for reproduction, allowing males to mount females and perform displays to attract mates. Finally, it may have been useful for defense, making them appear larger to potential predators.

The authors note that the simulations did not take into account the cartilage present in these bones, which could dissipate stress quite efficiently. They also did not consider how the tail would support the animals in the tripodal position.

Furthermore, since cartilage was not examined in any of the seven specimens, it is assumed that its role was similar in all of them. “The tool we use is very efficient for comparisons, even if the answer isn’t exact for each one. By comparing representatives from different lineages, we can get a fairly accurate picture of how these animals behaved millions of years ago,” says the researcher.

Publication:
Julian C. G. Silva Junior, Gabriel S. Ferreira, Agustín G. Martinelli, Thiago S. Marinho, Felipe C. Montefeltro
Standing giants: a digital biomechanical model for bipedal postures in sauropod dinosaurs.
Palaeontology, 68: e70019. https://doi.org/10.1111/pala.70019

ABSTRACT
Here we explore the potential of sauropod dinosaurs to adopt a bipedal or tripodal stance using digital biomechanical modelling and finite element analysis (FEA). Seven sauropod species from diverse lineages and sizes were sampled, and 3D models of their femora were analysed under both extrinsic (body weight distribution) and intrinsic (muscular force) functional scenarios. The results indicate that smaller sauropods, like the saltasaurid titanosaur Neuquensaurus, were more capable of sustaining bipedal postures, probably due to their robust femora combined with advantageous muscle attachment areas. In contrast, larger sauropods such as Dreadnoughtus experienced higher stress levels, making bipedal postures less likely for extended periods. Our analysis provides new insights into sauropod functional evolution, highlighting that species size and morphology significantly influenced their ability to rear up, which could have played a role in behaviours such as feeding, defence and reproduction.

FIG. 1
Simplified phylogenetic relationships of taxa sampled herein (based on Otero & Hutchinson 2022). Silhouettes from PhyloPic (https://www.phylopic.org/). From top to bottom: Diplodocus carnegii, Amargasaurus cazui, Cedarosaurus weiskopfae, Dreadnoughtus schrani and Opisthocoelicaudia skarzynskii; D. schrani, Kenneth Lacovara (CC0 3.0); all others Scott Hartman (CC0 3.0).

Julian C. G. Silva Junior, Gabriel S. Ferreira, Agustín G. Martinelli, Thiago S. Marinho, Felipe C. Montefeltro
Standing giants: a digital biomechanical model for bipedal postures in sauropod dinosaurs.
Palaeontology, 68: e70019. https://doi.org/10.1111/pala.70019

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

What this study shows, yet again, is that living things and extinct ones alike are not the products of perfect foresight, but of expedient compromises. Sauropods evolved a body plan that allowed them to dominate the herbivore niche for millions of years, but even that success came with trade-offs. The same long neck and rearing ability that gave them access to food and perhaps advantages in defence or display also imposed increasing mechanical costs as body size grew. That is exactly the sort of messy, contingent outcome evolution produces.

For advocates of Intelligent Design, this creates the usual problem. If these animals were the deliberate products of an all-knowing, all-powerful designer, why give them a useful adaptation that became progressively more stressful and mechanically limiting as they got larger? Why a design that works well enough, but not without cost, compromise and diminishing returns? The answer from evolution is straightforward: natural selection does not engineer perfection; it merely preserves what works better than the alternatives in the here and now.

So, far from pointing to intelligent planning, this research points to the absence of it. It shows a classic evolutionary pattern: a successful adaptation shaped by immediate advantage, constrained by inherited anatomy and physical law, and carrying penalties that no competent engineer would knowingly build in. Sauropods were not designed from scratch by a master planner; they were modified, step by step, from earlier forms, with all the compromises that process inevitably entails.

In other words, this is one more example of reality looking exactly as evolutionary theory says it should, and nothing like the product of a perfect designer. Evolution explains both the advantage and the cost. Intelligent Design can only ignore the cost, excuse it with theology, or pretend that obvious compromise is somehow evidence of perfection.

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Malevolent Design - A Parasitic Fly With All Creationism's Hall Marks for Intelligent Design Is Heading For The USA

2026-03-31T18:59:00.000+01:00

The New World screwworm, Cochliomyia hominivorax.

Judy Gallagher, CC BY

An article in The Conversation by Richard Wall, Emeritus Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol, should remind creationists—if they had the wit to understand why—of the theological quagmire into which their favourite leaders have led them.

The Discovery Institute and its fellows, with their reliance on notions such as irreducible complexity and complex specified genetic information, have taken creationism to a point where the only escape lies in three almost equally unacceptable options:

They can abandon the very arguments they present as proof of intelligent design, and so admit that they have no proof at all.
They can accept that the designer god they traditionally equate with the god of the Bible and Qur'an is in fact an evil god, relentlessly designing ever more ingenious ways to increase suffering in the world.
Or they can retreat into theology and Bible-literalist fundamentalism, abandoning any pretence that intelligent design is genuine science rather than simply rebranded creationism, by blaming everything on 'The Fall'. But in doing so they must also admit the existence of some other creative force with powers sufficient to rival their creator god—one to which their god is either powerless or indifferent. That, of course, destroys the basic principle of Judeo-Christian monotheism: a single omnipotent ruling deity. Ironically, the Discovery Institute was established for the very purpose of persuading US legislators and state education officials that intelligent design is real science.

This problem for creationism arises because the notions of irreducible complexity and complex specified genetic information apply just as well—if not better—to parasites and pathogens as they do to those aspects of nature that creationists like to present as evidence of their god's existence and benevolence; in other words, anything that happens to benefit them.

Professor Wall's article concerns a parasitic fly, the New World screwworm, Cochliomyia hominivorax, whose larvae feed on open wounds in cattle and sometimes humans, often with fatal consequences. The fly is currently extending its range northwards through Mexico and has now reached states bordering Texas. His article is reproduced here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Published: March 27, 2026 2.26pm GMT

A flesh‑eating fly is advancing towards the US border – can it be stopped?

The New World screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax) has now reached a Mexican state that borders on Texas.

Judy Gallagher, CC BY

Richard Wall, University of Bristol

A flesh eating parasitic fly has spread north through Mexico to within a few hundred miles of the US southern border.

The New World screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax) lays its eggs in open wounds and in the orifices of live, warm-blooded animals – including, occasionally, humans. The maggots then devour the animal’s flesh, causing devastating lesions that can quickly kill the infested host.

Before the 1950s, it was found in the southern states of the US, where cattle infestations caused heavy financial losses for beef producers. But, during the second half of the 20th century, eradication efforts pushed it out of North and Central America.

In the past few years, however, screwworm control has unravelled, with cases spiking across Central America. The fly has now spread north through Mexico, reaching two Mexican states – Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon – that share a border with Texas.

The method that was used to eradicate the fly is known as the sterile insect technique (SIT). This involves breeding vast numbers of a target species, sterilising them, usually with radiation, and then releasing the males.

The sterile males mate with wild females, which then produce no offspring. By continuously swamping the wild population with sterile males, the wild groups go extinct. However, SIT alone may not be enough to control the current outbreaks.

To be effective, SIT has a number of critical requirements. One of the most important is that the immigration of fertile females into areas where outbreaks are already under control must be very limited (and ideally zero). If fertile females are allowed to reinvade, the population will reestablish.

The technique therefore works best on isolated or island populations. In other circumstances, barriers and continuous surveillance need to be maintained to prevent immigration and immediately stamp out any incursions.

SIT has been used many times on a vast number of pests over the past 80 years – with mixed results. The eradication of screwworm from the US, Mexico and central America was its greatest success.

Screwworm larva. Tusklike mandibles protruding from the screwworm larva's mouth rasp the flesh of living warm-blooded animals. A wound may contain hundreds of such larvae.

By John Kucharski - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons. Original uploader was Ellmist from http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/k7576-1.htmImage Number K7576-1, Public Domain, Link target="_blank"

The natural range of the New World screwworm fly extends from the southern states of the USA through Central America and the Caribbean Islands to northern Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. In North America, the fly used to spread north and west each summer from its overwintering areas near the US-Mexican border.

Historically, its effects were devastating. In 1935, during a screwworm epidemic, there were approximately 230,000 cases in livestock and 55 in humans in the state of Texas. Female screwworm lay batches of 200-300 eggs in open wounds and orifices. The catastrophic lesions caused as the maggots feed are known as myiasis.

Large-scale SIT for New World screwworm started in Florida in 1957-59 and was gradually rolled out to the west. Effective control by the US was achieved in 1966.

Subsequently, using rearing facilities in Mexico, the fly was pushed back through Central America and was held at a barrier at the Darien Gap in Panama using continuous release and surveillance.

Occasional incursions in the US have still occurred. In the summer of 2016, screwworm infestation was identified in deer in the Florida Keys. Such incursions clearly demonstrated that any relaxation of the control and surveillance effort could allow the return of this devastating parasite.

The recent breakdown of screwworm control has seen thousands of cases confirmed in animals and humans across Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Mexico.

The insect’s continuing northward spread now raises the risk of a costly US reinvasion. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that an outbreak in Texas could cost livestock producers more than US$700 million (£526 million) per year.

There are several probable reasons for the breakdown of screwworm control. Maintaining barriers, rearing facilities and surveillance operations are expensive. US federal budget cuts, along with reduced foreign aid, hit screwworm control programmes in Central America and weakened surveillance.

Since the 1990s, a facility in Panama has produced sterile flies in order to maintain a biological barrier at the Darien Gap, on the country’s border with Colombia.

Copeg

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) global health security programme, with responsibility for transboundary animal disease management, reduced its screwworm surveillance as US funding was withdrawn in March 2025.

Loss of control over the illegal movement of cattle, lacking veterinary inspections, may also have been a contributing factor. Alongside this, in many countries there has been an ongoing loss of expertise as experienced veterinary entomologists have retired and not been replaced.

Traditional applied entomology has been viewed as dated in the face of, for example, modern molecular and genetic approaches to the identification of species. The retired entomologists have taken with them a generation of experience of screwworm control and insect pest management in general – the essential underlying knowledge on which other approaches often depend.

As a result, considerable efforts are now required to resume control of this pest and prepare for future outbreaks. Significant new US federal funding for screwworm control has just been announced. But given that the pest is now re-entrenched in Central America, it may be too late to quickly reestablish regional control using SIT. As such, a fall back on insecticides seems like the only fix for immediate problems.

The rearing facilities for sterile insects in Mexico were shut down after screwworm was pushed out of North and Central America in the latter half of the 20th century. However, refurbishment is currently underway to allow them to restart producing sterile flies by summer 2026.

A new facility at Moore Airbase in Edinburg, Texas, close to the southern border, is being built. However, the suggestion that it is Mexico’s responsibility to prevent flies entering the US seems fanciful.

There are several important lessons that emerge from this history. The first is that insects don’t respect borders. International cooperation is required for management at a geographically relevant scale. Unwillingness to support the efforts of less economically robust neighbours, or international organisations such as the FAO, may well come back to bite.

The cost of maintaining the barrier in Panama was almost certainly significantly less than the costs of what will now be needed to achieve preparedness, or what will be incurred by US livestock producers if there is a persistent outbreak.

Finally, new pests and parasites (even some of the ones that seem to be under control) are an ever-present threat, particularly given greater global travel and the effects of climate change. Ignoring them, deprioritising research and control, failing to train the next generation of veterinary entomologists and hoping for the best, is not a viable strategy.
Richard Wall, Emeritus Professor, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol

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)

What the New World screwworm shows, yet again, is that the living world is not remotely what intelligent design advocates need it to be. This is not a minor inconvenience in an otherwise benevolent creation, but a highly specialised parasite whose larvae invade the living tissue of warm-blooded animals, including livestock, pets, wildlife and, occasionally, humans, causing severe injury and sometimes death. As the current outbreak has spread north through Mexico, the US response has included renewed sterile-fly releases and new border-preparedness measures, precisely because this is a serious biological threat, not some harmless curiosity of nature which walls are not going to stop, but instead requires cross-border cooperation.

And that is where the theological difficulty begins. Creationists and intelligent design proponents like to point to complexity, information-rich biology and intricate adaptation as signs of a wise and loving designer. But the screwworm is also complex, information-rich and exquisitely adapted. Its life cycle is not evidence of benevolence; it is evidence that natural selection can produce horrific efficiency without the slightest concern for suffering. If design arguments are applied consistently, then parasites such as Cochliomyia hominivorax must be counted among the designer’s achievements too.

So, if creationists understood the implications of cases like this, they would see the trap their own arguments have set for them. Either they abandon irreducible complexity and “specified information” as evidence for design, or they accept that their designer also designed flesh-eating larvae to exploit wounds in living animals, or they retreat into theology and blame some post-Creation corruption of nature. But that last move simply concedes the central point: intelligent design was never science in the first place, only creationist theology in a lab coat.

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Creationism Refuted - 100 Million Years Of Cuttlefish and Squid Evolution

2026-03-30T22:52:00.000+01:00

The intricate ram’s horn squid shell is only about the size of a fingernail. Compared to other cephalopod species, the shell structure has not degraded over time. As part of this study, researchers used transcriptomics which revealed genes supporting biomineralization and regeneration of the shell.

Credit: Catherine Hodges/OIST

100 million years ago, an ‘evolutionary fuse’ was lit in the deep ocean, sparking squid diversification | EurekAlert!

Another day, another gap in evolutionary history closed by scientists doing what scientists do: following the evidence wherever it leads. This time, the gap concerns the origins and diversification of squid and cuttlefish, the decapodiform cephalopods.

An international team led by the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) has now reconstructed a much clearer picture of their history, and their findings are published, open access, in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The study supports a rapid mid-Cretaceous diversification of the major decapodiform lineages around 100 million years ago, followed much later by expansion into coastal habitats after the K–Pg mass extinction. [1]

That is, of course, disastrous for creationism. Creationists need the history of life to be short, simple, and static: a few thousand years, separate acts of special creation, and only trivial shuffling of variation within rigidly defined “kinds”. What this study shows instead is exactly what evolutionary biology has long predicted - deep ancestry, branching descent, ecological change over immense spans of time, and major radiations triggered by changing environmental conditions. In other words, not magic, not fixity, and not “kinds”, but evolution. [1]

The researchers conclude that the ancestors of modern squid and cuttlefish probably originated in the deep ocean, where oxygenated refugia may have allowed them to survive while shallow marine environments became increasingly hostile. Ocean acidification in shallower waters would likely have damaged shell-bearing forms, and the later recovery of coastal ecosystems and coral reefs after the K–Pg event opened up new ecological opportunities. What followed was not the survival of a few immutable “created kinds”, but the adaptive expansion of lineages into newly available habitats. [2]

That matters because it gives the lie to one of creationism’s central evasions: the claim that organisms merely vary within fixed boundaries. The history uncovered here is not one of minor tinkering around the edges. It is one of common ancestry, divergence, persistence through catastrophe, and later radiation into new environments. It is precisely the sort of deep, branching history that creationists have to deny, ignore, or misrepresent because their belief system simply has no room for it. [1]

The team reconstructed this history using genome-scale data, including newly sequenced genomes that helped fill key phylogenetic gaps. Together with data from the Aquatic Symbiosis Genomics Project and other existing resources, this allowed the researchers to produce a robust evolutionary tree covering nearly all recognised decapodiform lineages. Because cephalopod genomes are often very large, this kind of work has only recently become practical with modern sequencing technology and computing power. [1]

So, once again, creationism is refuted not by some special anti-creationist project, but as an incidental consequence of real scientific research. Scientists set out to understand the evolutionary history of a fascinating group of animals, and in doing so they uncovered yet more evidence for common descent, ancient Earth history, and the power of evolution to generate biological diversity. Reality, as usual, has no respect for creationist dogma. [1]

Background information^ the evolution of squids and cuttlefish. Squids and cuttlefish are cephalopods, a molluscan group with a history stretching back more than 490 million years. Among living cephalopods, the two great surviving branches are the externally shelled nautiluses and the coleoids. The coleoids include octopuses, squid and cuttlefish, with squid and cuttlefish belonging to the ten-limbed decabrachian or decapodiform branch, while octopuses and vampire squid belong to the eight-armed octobrachian branch. [3]

The decapodiform cephalopods comprise 7 orders containing ~534 known species plus two extinct orders:[5]

Oegopsida (Oceanic squids): ~259 species.
Sepiida (Cuttlefish): ~120 species.
Sepiolida (Bobtail squids): ~89 species.
Myopsida (Coastal squids): ~48 species.
Idiosepida (Pygmy squids): ~5 species.
Bathyteuthida: ~3 species.
Spirulida (Ram's horn squid): 1 species (Spirula spirula).
Belamnitidia (belemnites) - extinct
Diplobelida - extinct.

The earliest history of the coleoids is still patchy because soft-bodied animals fossilise poorly, but unequivocal early coleoid fossils are known from the Carboniferous, and molecular studies generally place the origin of the crown-group somewhere around the Permian or Triassic. One of the key evolutionary steps was the internalisation of the shell. Instead of carrying a large external shell-like nautiluses, early coleoids evolved an internal shell and later added other innovations such as the ink sac. This shift seems to have been associated with greater manoeuvrability and more active swimming, helping to turn coleoids into agile predators. [4]

Modern squid and cuttlefish still retain traces of that ancestral shell, but in highly modified forms. In many squid it survives as a gladius or “pen”, a thin internal support rod. In cuttlefish it became the cuttlebone, a flattened chambered structure used for buoyancy control. Other decapodiform lineages show further reduction or modification, and some have lost the internal shell almost completely. This means that the various shell structures seen in living squid and cuttlefish are not separate creations but altered descendants of an ancestral chambered shell. [1]

A crucial point is that “squid” is not a single neat evolutionary category in the same way that cuttlefish are. Cuttlefish form one order, Sepiida, but the animals commonly called squid are spread across several decapodiform orders. Recent phylogenomic work using new genome sequences has helped clarify these relationships and shows that nearly all recognised modern decapodiform orders were already diverging rapidly in the mid-Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago. [1]

The new picture suggests a deep-ocean origin for the major modern squid and cuttlefish lineages. According to this model, the first major splits happened in the open ocean during the mid-Cretaceous, but much of the later expansion into shallow seas and coastal habitats happened only after the K–Pg mass extinction 66 million years ago. In other words, there was a long interval between the first branching of the main lineages and their later ecological radiation - an evolutionary “long fuse” before the modern diversity of squid and cuttlefish really took off. [1]

The work of the OIST-led team is the subject of an OIST news release published via EurekAlert!

100 million years ago, an ‘evolutionary fuse’ was lit in the deep ocean, sparking squid diversification
New evolutionary mapping suggests deep sea origins and mass extinction-triggered diversification of modern squid and cuttlefish
From color-changing skin to jet-propelled motion, squid and cuttlefish have long fascinated scientists. To understand the origins of their unique characteristics, many attempts have been made to define their evolutionary history. However, the limited fossil record and incomplete genomic information have made it impossible to confidently order the evolution of these enigmatic creatures, until now.

Published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, a new study from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) combines existing databases with three newly sequenced squid genomes to identify the ‘long fuse’ that led to today’s diversity of squid and cuttlefish, which together make up the decapodiform (ten-limbed) cephalopods.

Squid and cuttlefish are remarkable creatures, yet their evolution has been notoriously difficult to study. The question of their ancestry has been under investigation for decades, and many research groups have proposed different evolutionary hypotheses based on different morphological characteristics and molecular datasets. With our new genomic information, we have been able to resolve some of the mysteries surrounding their origins.

Dr. Gustavo Sanchez, first author
Molecular Genetics Unit
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology
Onna, Japan.

Demystifying the decapodiformes

Squid and cuttlefish are found in a wide variety of habitats across the globe, from deep seas to shallow coastlines. One of the few characteristics linking most of these diverse creatures is their internal shell. But even this takes a variety of forms, from the smooth, rounded cuttlebones of cuttlefish, the thin, sword-like gladius of oceanic and coastal squid, and the spiral-shaped shell of ram’s horn squids, to a complete loss in shallow water species.

Past attempts to order the evolution of these animals have been limited by a lack of data.

Earlier reconstructions of decapodiform evolution were built from datasets with limited resolution and were prone to biased signals, obscuring the true relationships between different species. Whole genome data now provide a cleaner, more consistent picture of how these animals evolved.

Dr. Gustavo Sanchez.

Because most squid and cuttlefish genomes are large, typically reaching up to twice the size of human genomes, generating and analyzing them requires state-of-the-art sequencing facilities and considerable computational power. Researchers also need fresh DNA for sequencing, which is a challenge when sourcing specimens at sea.

Some lineages are only abundant and highly diverse in tropical reef systems like the Ryukyu Archipelago, while others are enigmatic and known only in the deep sea. We were fortunate to find some key species on our doorstep in Okinawa, and collaborate with colleagues with access to more challenging samples.

Dr. Gustavo Sanchez.

The paper presents the first-ever evolutionary tree for decapodiformes that is based on sequenced genomes from nearly all decapodiform lineages. This was made possible due to a global collaboration spanning the last five years, with the Aquatic Symbiosis Genomics Project funded by the Wellcome Sanger Institute aiming to sequence some cephalopod genomes among other marine and freshwater species. Sanchez headed the Japanese branch of the cephalopod hub of this project.
Within the symbiosis project, we’ve been steadily sequencing genomes for several years, but several key gaps remained. In this study, we were able to fill these missing puzzle pieces.

Dr. Gustavo Sanchez.

Co-author Dr. Fernando Á. Fernández-Álvarez of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography was especially enthusiastic to study the enigmatic ram’s horn squid, Spirula spirula, a rarely encountered species whose unusual internal shell has long puzzled biologists. From the moment he had it in hand, he saw its genomic potential.

In the past, the structure of the ram’s horn squid shell made some scientists wrongly conclude it was closely related to cuttlefishes. I believed this genome could help close a key gap and bring clarity to the broader evolutionary questions of cephalopods.

Fernando Ángel Fernández-Álvarez, co-author
Centro Oceanográfico de Gijón (IEO, CSIC)
Spanish Institute of Oceanography
Gijón, Spain.

A long fuse model of evolution

Using a combination of genomic data and recently discovered fossils, the researchers were able to map out an evolutionary timeline and ecological scenario for the origin and diversification of squid and cuttlefish.

Our analysis shows that these animals originated in the deep ocean, a habitat which still harbors species like the ram’s horn squid.

Dr. Gustavo Sanchez.

The model shows that the different decapodiform orders first split rapidly around 100 million years ago, putting their origins firmly in the mid-Cretaceous period. However, 66 million years ago, a catastrophic mass extinction event known as the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) wiped out three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth. This same event famously led to the extinction of dinosaurs and the rise of mammals. So how did squid survive?

The researchers believe that ancient cephalopods were able to find refugia within tiny deep-sea microcosms which harbored an abundance of oxygen.

The sea surface would have been a very harsh environment for cephalopods. Around that time, very few suitable oxygen-rich habitats would have been found near the shores. Intense ocean acidification in shallower waters would also likely have degraded their shells, so the fact that some form of this feature has been retained throughout their evolutionary history is evidence of their deeper oceanic origins.

Dr. Gustavo Sanchez.

After the K-Pg event, coral reefs started to rebuild along coastlines. This created more habitable shallow water ecosystems, to which many of the ancient 10-limbed cephalopod lineages migrated.

Following the initial lineage splits in the Cretaceous, we don’t see much branching for many tens of millions of years. However, in the K-Pg recovery period, we suddenly see rapid diversification, as species adapt and evolve to new and changing ecosystems. This is an example of a ‘long fuse’ model; a period of limited change followed by an explosion of diversity.

Dr. Gustavo Sanchez.

From gene evolution to gene editing

The team hopes this research can provide a framework for future investigations into the origins of decapodiformes’ unique characteristics.
Squids and cuttlefish have so many unique features compared to other animal groups, making them an endless source of inspiration for scientists. With these genomes and with a clear picture of their evolutionary relationships, we can make meaningful comparisons to uncover the molecular changes associated with major cephalopod innovations, from the emergence of novel organs and dynamic camouflage to the neural complexity that supports their remarkable behavior.

Professor Daniel S. Rokhsar, Co-corresponding author
Molecular Genetics Unit
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology
Onna, Japan.

Publication:
Sanchez, G., Fernández-Álvarez, F.Á., Bernal, A. et al.
Rapid mid-Cretaceous diversification of squid and cuttlefish preceded radiation into coastal niches.
Nat Ecol Evol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03009-1

Abstract
The evolutionary relationships among decapodiform lineages (cuttlefish and diverse types of squid) remain uncertain, with implications for the origin of internalized structures (for example, gladius, cuttlebone and coiled shell) derived from the ancestral chambered shell as well as the ecological shifts between the deep ocean and shallow coastal habitats. To address these questions, we adopted a phylogenomic approach that integrated three new high-quality genome sequences with available genomic and transcriptomic datasets. Our analyses support a novel topology that separates a clade of open-ocean lineages (Oegopsida and Spirulida, together Acorneata) from a clade comprising the remaining coastal and shallow-water orders (Sepiida, Myopsida, Idiosepiida and Sepiolida, together Corneata). Molecular clock estimates suggest a rapid cladogenesis of modern decapodiform orders in the deep open ocean during the mid-Cretaceous, consistent with fossil data. This early diversification set a ‘long fuse’ that led to the explosive radiation of squid and cuttlefish into coastal and shallow-water environments as they recovered from the Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction event.

a, Representative morphological characters of decapodiform lineages mapped to an unresolved decapodiform tree. RO, rostrum; SIPH, siphuncle; PROS, primordial rostrum; PRO, proostracum; PHR, phragmocone; ANG, accessory nidamental gland; COR, cornea; TP, tentacle pockets; OVD, oviduct; BC, branchial canal. The asterisk next to Spirulida and Oegopsida indicates that these two orders appear as sister early branching clades in our phylogeny. References cited in brackets for Idiosepiida, Sepiolida and Sepiida refer to prior studies that place these lineages as the earliest diverging decapodiform. In Bathyteuthida, the ANG is present in one family but absent in another, as indicated by the mixed presence/absence code. PROS, PRO and PHR are marked as ‘derived’ or ‘vestigial’ in most taxa based on the presence of homologous structures (for example, cuttlebone in Sepiida) that originate from the chambered shell of ancestral decapodiform. In this context, derived refers to functionally elaborated structures that evolved from ancestral components, whereas vestigial refers to highly reduced, non-functional remnants (for example, septa-like elements of the phragmocone in Oegopsida gladius). Only Spirulida retains a fully mineralized, chambered form with two out of three ancestral components. The shell diagram represents ancestral decapodiform characters. Some of the morphological traits were previously reported by Lindgren et al.¹⁴. The habitat category provides a summarized classification; more detailed ecological distributions are shown in Supplementary Table 1. b, Species with newly sequenced genomes presented in this study. Shell illustration in aadapted from ref. ¹⁴² under a Creative Commons License CC BY 4.0. Silhouettes in a adapted from PhyloPic under a Creative Commons License CC0 1.0. Credit for S. spirula photo in b: Victor Tuset. Bathyteuthis abyssicola silhouette in a adapted from ref. ¹⁴³, Neill.

Sanchez, G., Fernández-Álvarez, F.Á., Bernal, A. et al.
Rapid mid-Cretaceous diversification of squid and cuttlefish preceded radiation into coastal niches.
Nat Ecol Evol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03009-1

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

What this study shows, yet again, is that the history of life is not the childishly simple tale creationism needs it to be. Squid and cuttlefish did not appear suddenly as fully formed “kinds” a few thousand years ago; they emerged from a branching evolutionary history stretching back into the Cretaceous, with major lineages diverging around 100 million years ago and later radiating into new habitats after the K–Pg mass extinction. That is a story of common ancestry, deep time and adaptive diversification — precisely the things creationists are forced to deny.

It also demolishes the old creationist fallback that organisms only vary within fixed limits. The evolutionary pattern here is not trivial shuffling within some imaginary boundary, but the splitting of ancestral lineages, the modification of inherited structures such as the internal shell, and the expansion of descendants into very different ecological niches. In other words, exactly what evolutionary theory predicts, and exactly what creationist dogma says cannot happen.

And once again, this refutation of creationism is entirely incidental. The researchers were not trying to disprove Bronze Age mythology; they were using genome-scale evidence to understand the real history of a remarkable group of animals. But reality has a habit of doing that. Every time science fills another gap, reconstructs another lineage, or uncovers another deep chapter in the history of life, creationism is left looking not merely wrong, but hopelessly detached from the world as it actually is.

Far from undermining evolution, studies like this show just how powerful it is as an explanatory framework. It enabled scientists to make sense of the relationships among living squids and cuttlefish, their modified shells, their deep-ocean ancestry and their later ecological expansion. Creationism, by contrast, contributes nothing beyond denial, distortion and the endless repetition of claims that the evidence keeps refuting.

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