Rosa Rubicondior

Refuting Creationism - No Sex Please, We're Ediacaran

2026-06-11T11:06:25.671+01:00

A lack of sex held back life’s diversity for millions of years | University of Cambridge

Try debating with a creationist on social media and before long you will be challenged to explain how sexual reproduction evolved, because there must have been a first male and a first female. A regular form of this, betraying the abysmal ignorance of the creationist, is the childish attempt at a "Gotcha!" with, "How long did the first man have to wait for the first woman to evolve?"

Like so many creationist preconceptions about what evolution is and what evolutionary biologists claim, this assumes that each species somehow evolves without ancestry, so everything about it must have arisen spontaneously in a single individual or, in this case, in a single couple. There is no awareness of inheritance from common ancestors, nor of the slow accumulation and honing of traits over time. Presumably, the questioner thinks adult men and women being magicked into existence without parents is a perfectly rational belief.

In reality, sexual reproduction did not begin with men and women. A form of sex almost certainly arose long before animals, among single-celled eukaryotes, and need not have involved anything recognisable as male and female. At its simplest, sex is the mixing of genetic material from different individuals. The interesting question, from the point of view of evolutionary biology, is not where the first man and first woman came from, but what advantage genetic mixing had over cloning or other asexual forms of reproduction, such that it became the predominant, although far from exclusive, method of reproduction among complex organisms.

Now two researchers from the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, UK, believe they have part of the answer, and have just published their findings in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The paper, by Dr Emily G. Mitchell and Professor Andrea Manica, examines how reproductive mode affected competition, dispersal and diversity among Ediacaran animal communities. It is accompanied by a research news item from the University of Cambridge.

The Ediacaran Period, roughly 635-539 million years ago, saw some of the earliest known large animals. Many of them would look nothing like any modern animal: they were sessile, lacked mouths and obvious digestive systems, and probably absorbed nutrients directly from the surrounding seawater. In the relatively benign conditions of the Ediacaran oceans, with limited predation and reduced competition, there was less pressure for rapid diversification. As a result, these early animal communities appear to have changed only slowly for millions of years before the later burst of diversity that preceded and fed into the Cambrian radiation.

But, as they began to colonise the shallower seas and coastal regions, the Ediacaran biota would have encountered increasingly unstable conditions with tides, storms and fluctuating temperatures and nutrient levels, so there would have been competition and selection pressure to adapt to these more hostile conditions. And this is what we see in the fossil record as the Ediacaran biota produced a second wave of more diverse forms, leading eventually to the 'Cambrian Explosion'.

Previous work has shown that some of these Ediacaran organisms reproduced asexually by sending out stolons or runners, rather like strawberry plants do today. Their offspring were clones, physically connected to the parent colony and genetically very similar. That can work well in a stable environment, but it has a serious evolutionary limitation: it restricts the mixing of genes from different lineages. Beneficial mutations that arise in separate clonal lines cannot easily be combined in the same genome, so lineages compete with one another instead of pooling their evolutionary gains.

Sexual reproduction changes that. It does not create evolution by magic; it provides natural selection with more combinations on which to act. Beneficial alleles that arise in different lineages can be brought together in the same genome instead of being trapped in competing clonal lines. This is the Fisher-Muller advantage of recombination: sex can turn evolutionary change from a slow serial process into a more rapid parallel one.

(Skip the next technical section if your maths understanding is like mine. Basically, it shows mathematically why multiple beneficial mutations accumulate more quickly than single such mutations, in a sexually reproducing species)

The point can be illustrated with a simple selection model. Suppose a genotype carrying one beneficial allele has fitness \(1+s\), where \(s\) is the selective advantage. If its frequency in the population is \(p_t\), then after one generation of selection:

\( p_{t+1}=\frac{p_t(1+s)}{1+s p_t} \)
The log-odds of that genotype therefore increase each generation by:

\( \log\left(\frac{p_{t+1}}{1-p_{t+1}}\right)=\log\left(\frac{p_t}{1-p_t}\right)+\log(1+s) \)
So the approximate time needed for that genotype to rise from an initial frequency \(p_0\) to a later frequency \(p_f\) is:

\( t_1= \frac{ \log\left(\frac{p_f(1-p_0)}{p_0(1-p_f)}\right) }{ \log(1+s) } \approx \frac{1}{s} \log\left(\frac{p_f(1-p_0)}{p_0(1-p_f)}\right) \)
Now suppose recombination brings together \(k\) beneficial alleles of similar effect \(s\) into the same genotype. If their effects are approximately multiplicative, the fitness of that genotype is:

\( W_k=(1+s)^k \)
Its effective selective advantage is therefore:

\( S_k=(1+s)^k-1 \approx ks \)
for small values of (s). The time for this multi-benefit genotype to spread over the same frequency range is then:

\( t_k= \frac{ \log\left(\frac{p_f(1-p_0)}{p_0(1-p_f)}\right) }{ \log\left((1+s)^k\right) } = \frac{t_1}{k} \)
In this simplified case, a genotype carrying two beneficial alleles spreads at roughly twice the rate of one carrying only a single beneficial allele; a genotype carrying three spreads at roughly three times the rate, and so on. More generally, if the beneficial alleles have different effects \(s_1,s_2,\ldots,s_k\), then:

\( W=\prod_{i=1}^{k}(1+s_i) \)
and:

\( t \approx \frac{ \log\left(\frac{p_f(1-p_0)}{p_0(1-p_f)}\right) }{ \sum_{i=1}^{k}s_i } \)

Formulae supplied by ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking.

This is why sex matters. In an asexual population, beneficial mutations arising in separate clonal lineages tend to compete; one lineage may eliminate the other before both advantages can be combined. In a sexual population, recombination can bring those beneficial alleles together, creating fitter genotypes on which selection can act immediately.

Evolution of gender^ From mating types to males and females. The evolution of sexual reproduction did not require a first fully-formed male and a first fully-formed female. A useful living model is provided by the volvocine green algae, a group that includes the single-celled Chlamydomonas and the colonial Volvox.

In some simpler volvocine algae, such as Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and Gonium, the gametes are much the same size and shape. They are not usefully called male and female; they are mating types, often labelled plus and minus. This condition is called isogamy, from Greek roots meaning "equal marriage".

In other related forms, such as Eudorina and Pleodorina, the gametes differ in size. One type produces many smaller gametes, while the other produces fewer larger gametes. This is anisogamy, or "unequal marriage". It is an important intermediate stage because it shows the beginning of the division between the high-quantity strategy that becomes male, and the high-investment strategy that becomes female.

In Volvox, the distinction is clearer still. The small gametes are sperm, and the large gametes are eggs. This condition is called oogamy. It is the familiar pattern seen in animals and many plants: many small, mobile sperm competing to fertilise fewer, larger, nutrient-rich eggs.

The important point is that these are not separate acts of special creation. They are variations on a reproductive theme found within a related group of organisms. The sequence from isogamy to anisogamy to oogamy shows how two mating types can evolve gradually into the familiar distinction between male and female. There was no first man waiting for the first woman; there were populations in which reproductive cells became progressively specialised over evolutionary time.

The paper, by Dr Emily G. Mitchell and Professor Andrea Manica, examines how reproductive mode affected competition, dispersal and diversity among Ediacaran animal communities. It is accompanied by a research news item from the University of Cambridge:

A lack of sex held back life’s diversity for millions of years
The way that Earth’s first animals reproduced held back life’s diversity for millions of years, until stress and competition led to the development of sexual reproduction, which in turn accelerated the pace of evolution.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge studied fossils from the oldest-known animals on Earth, dating from 574 million years ago, and found that asexual reproduction slowed the pace of evolution to a crawl, since it limited competition between different groups.

Their results, reported in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, could help explain a longstanding puzzle in palaeontology: why animal life appeared on Earth but then barely changed for millions of years, before a second wave of diversification gave evolutionary progress a major boost.

After billions of years of microbial life, during the Ediacaran period, between 635 and 539 million years ago, life exploded in size and the first animals appeared. Some of these earliest animals, such as Fractofusus, could grow as tall as two metres, although most were much smaller.

These animals looked more like ferns than any animal we would recognise today: they do not appear to have mouths, organs or means of movement, so they are thought to have absorbed nutrients from the water around them. And like most Ediacaran life forms, they disappeared from the fossil record at the beginning of the Cambrian period 540 million years ago, making it difficult for scientists to link them to any modern life forms.

Researchers have previously determined that these early animals reproduced asexually, by sending out clones via stolons or runners, like modern strawberry plants. In the rich waters of the Ediacaran, they thrived.

Life was pretty nice during the Ediacaran, so the need for sex was rather limited. There was relatively little competition, so there was no real pressure to change anything.

Dr Emily Mitchell, lead author
Department of Zoology
Cambridge University
Cambridge UK.

Mitchell and her co-author Professor Andrea Manica used a combination of laser scanning, spatial analysis and artificial intelligence to study fossils from Mistaken Point in Newfoundland, one of the world’s richest sources of fossils from the Ediacaran, to help determine why early animal evolution slowed down, and why it might have sped up again.

The researchers first showed that asexual, stolon-based reproduction limited competition, then built a computer model to simulate how early animal communities might behave under different reproductive strategies. They ran the model thousands of times while a simple neural network helped narrow down which simulations best matched the diversity patterns seen in the fossil record. This approach, known as Approximate Bayesian Computation, allowed the researchers to work backwards from the real data to estimate how far organisms spread and how strongly they competed for resources.

Using this method, the researchers showed that limited dispersal linked to asexual, runner-based reproduction could explain why early animal communities had relatively few species, and why a later shift toward wider dispersal and sexual reproduction coincided with a sudden burst of evolutionary diversity.

Competition and stress have been prime drivers of evolution for billions of years, but in the deep waters of the Ediacaran, asexual reproduction meant that competition was limited.

If you’re connected to your neighbour by these runners, then you’re sharing nutrients and you don’t need to compete with them.

Professor Andrea Manica, co-author.
Department of Zoology
Cambridge University
Cambridge UK.

However, as life in the Ediacaran slowly spread from the deep ocean to shallower waters, early animals faced more pressures: tides, storms, changing temperatures and nutrient levels all would have made life more precarious, leading to increased competition for resources.

If you’re suddenly in an environment where you’re essentially getting killed a couple of times per year, then that changes everything. Stress essentially leads to sexual reproduction, and when that happens, we can see a massive increase in dispersal distances as animals attempt to colonise new areas due to an increase in competition.

Dr Emily Mitchell.

As these early animals adapted to both a new mode of reproduction and new habitats, there was a corresponding increase in diversification, leading to the Ediacaran ‘second wave’ of animal evolution, a process that accelerated further in the Cambrian once animals became mobile. Publication:
Mitchell, E.G., Manica, A.
The influence of reproductive mode on resource competition and diversity patterns in Ediacaran early animal communities. Nat Ecol Evol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03094-2

Abstract
The appearance of the oldest known animals during the late Ediacaran period (~574 million years ago) was followed by a phase of slow diversification, until a later burst of rapid diversification known as the Ediacaran ‘second wave’. The reasons behind the tempo of diversification are poorly understood. Here we investigate how reproductive mode mediated community dynamics and in turn Ediacaran macroevolutionary change. We show that widespread reproduction via stolon (namely via filaments connecting clones) limited within-species competition, leading to between-species competition acting at smaller spatial scales than within-species competition, a phenomenon called heteromyopia. Heteromyopia enables co-existence of suboptimal competitors because the dispersal limitation of the dominant species limits the occupation of the optimal habitat, so that lesser competitors can still exist within the same community, operating under reduced selection pressure. We explored the consequences of this dispersal limitation on community diversity using a mechanistic model showing that the change from stoloniferous to sexual reproduction that coincided with the second wave could explain the sudden increase in diversity observed in the fossil record. We conclude that widespread asexual reproduction via stolon probably constrained early animal evolution, limiting diversification until the onset of widespread sexual reproduction.

Mitchell, E.G., Manica, A.
The influence of reproductive mode on resource competition and diversity patterns in Ediacaran early animal communities. Nat Ecol Evol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03094-2

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)

So the creationist "first man waiting for the first woman" question is not an argument against evolution; it is an argument against ignorant stupidity; a crude parody of evolution that no evolutionary biologist believes. There was no first man waiting for a first woman. There were ancestral populations in which inherited reproductive mechanisms changed gradually, and in which genetic mixing gave some lineages an advantage over purely clonal reproduction. The new Cambridge study shows why that mattered: once reproduction allowed genes to be reshuffled and lineages to disperse more widely, evolutionary diversity could accelerate.

Once again, we see the gulf between creationist rhetoric and scientific reality. The creationist caricature imagines evolution as a sequence of impossible miracles: a first man appearing alone, waiting hopefully for a first woman to evolve from nowhere. Science, by contrast, deals with populations, ancestry, inheritance, variation, selection and deep time. It explains why there never needed to be a first male and first female, only ancestral populations in which reproductive strategies changed gradually.

The Cambridge study adds an especially interesting dimension to that picture because it shows how reproductive mode could have affected the pace of early animal evolution. Asexual reproduction may have served the Ediacaran organisms well enough in stable conditions, but it also limited the genetic mixing and ecological competition that later helped drive diversification. When sex became more widespread, evolution had more combinations to work with, and natural selection could assemble successful traits more efficiently.

This is not a problem for evolution; it is evidence of evolution. It is exactly the sort of thing we should expect if life diversified through natural processes acting over hundreds of millions of years. It is also exactly the sort of thing we should not expect if all organisms were created as fixed kinds a few thousand years ago.

Creationism has no mechanism, no predictive model and no serious explanation for this pattern. It offers only a childish parody of evolution, then mistakes its own parody for an argument. The fossil record, population genetics and comparative biology all tell the same story: sex did not begin with a lonely man waiting for a woman. It evolved because, in changing environments, genetic mixing gave populations an advantage. Once again, the evidence does not merely fail to support creationism; it exposes how little creationism has to say.

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How we Know The Bible Is Wrong - Evidence That wouldn't Be there if The Bible Myths Were True

2026-06-09T20:59:12.127+01:00

Drone footage of the excavation site.

Headless skeletons offer new insights into farming societies 7,000 years ago

A problem for biblical literalist creationists is that they are wedded to the absurd and demonstrably false notion that the Bible is a literal account of real history, including a catastrophic, genocidal flood just a few thousand years ago. Such a flood would have left a tell-tale, globally recognisable layer of flood sediment containing the jumbled remains of the animals and plants it had killed. It would also have destroyed, displaced or buried earlier human settlements beneath one unmistakable flood horizon.

This, of course, flies in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary. The predicted global layer of flood silt is not there, and the archaeological record continues, uninterrupted, through the very period in which creationists need their flood to have occurred. Practically every archaeological find older than the various creationist dates for Noah's Flood — from the pyramids at Giza to the less spectacular but more numerous Neolithic and Bronze Age burial grounds, field systems, settlements, tools and artefacts that litter the African and Eurasian landscape — should not be where it is, least of all in the Middle East, the supposed epicentre of the alleged catastrophe.

And yet archaeologists are regularly digging up evidence of human activity that long predates the creationist timescale. A recent example is the grim, 7,000-year-old evidence of headless human bodies at Vráble-Veľké Lehemby in Slovakia, reported in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. The refutation of creationist mythology is, of course, entirely incidental. The archaeological question is what this extraordinary find tells us about an Early Neolithic farming society. The indications so far are that the heads were not removed by violent decapitation as a form of execution — which might have suggested a society in crisis or conflict — but were skilfully removed around the time of death. That points instead to some form of social, ritual or funerary practice, although the precise meaning of that practice remains uncertain.

The site at Vráble-Veľké Lehemby comprises more than 300 house outlines arranged in three neighbourhoods, with up to 80 buildings inhabited at the same time. The settlement existed for several centuries, approximately between 5250 and 4950 BCE. One neighbourhood was enclosed by a ditch, probably marking a boundary, and it was in or around this ditch, especially near the entrance to the settlement, that archaeologists found the remains of at least 78 individuals. Of these, 77 lacked heads, the single exception being a child whose skull was still present.

Background^ Vráble-Veľké Lehemby. Vráble-Veľké Lehemby, in south-western Slovakia, is one of the largest known settlements of the Linear Pottery Culture, or LBK, the first widespread farming culture in much of Central Europe. The site dates to about 5250–4950 BCE, a period when farming communities were spreading across the continent, bringing with them cultivated cereals, domestic animals, timber longhouses and a new way of life based on settled village communities.

The site is remarkable for its scale. Geophysical survey and excavation have identified more than 300 longhouse plans, arranged not as a single compact village but as three distinct neighbourhoods. Radiocarbon dating suggests that these were not three successive settlements, but existed at the same time for much of the site's history. At its peak, about 70–80 longhouses may have been occupied simultaneously, implying an unusually large and densely occupied Early Neolithic settlement.

These houses were not temporary shelters. LBK longhouses were substantial timber buildings, often associated with pits, storage areas and working spaces. Each probably represented a household or farmstead, with its own domestic economy, but Vráble also shows signs of cooperation at a larger scale. Farming, cattle husbandry, house-building, food storage and perhaps ritual activity would all have required social rules, shared expectations and some form of community organisation.

That does not mean Vráble was a peaceful egalitarian idyll. One of its three neighbourhoods was later separated from the others by a large double ditch and palisade more than a kilometre long. Archaeologists caution that this need not have been a simple defensive fortification; it may also have acted as a boundary marker. Even so, the fact that only one neighbourhood was enclosed suggests some degree of separation, rivalry or tension within the settlement.

The most disturbing discoveries came from this ditch system, especially near an entrance. Archaeologists found the remains of dozens of people, many of them placed in confused positions rather than carefully arranged as formal burials. Most strikingly, almost all lacked heads. Earlier excavations revealed 38 individuals, but further work has raised the number to at least 78, of whom 77 were headless. The single exception was a child whose skull was still present.

At first glance, this might suggest massacre, execution or warfare, but the evidence is more complex. Initial analysis suggests that the heads were not simply hacked off in violent decapitations. Instead, they appear to have been skilfully removed around the time of death or shortly afterwards. This could point to ritual treatment of the dead, secondary burial practices, ancestor-related customs, social exclusion, or other practices whose meaning is now difficult to reconstruct.

Vráble is therefore important not merely because it contains a dramatic and macabre find, but because it reveals the social complexity of Europe's earliest farming communities. It shows settled villages, household autonomy, communal organisation, boundary-making, possible inequality, changing mortuary customs and perhaps rising internal tension. In other words, it is a snapshot of real human history: complex, continuous, archaeologically visible and thousands of years older than the mythical chronology required by biblical literalism.

The paper in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society is accompanied by a press release from Kiel University's Cluster of Excellence ЯOOTS, which appears to have been translated from German:

Headless skeletons offer new insights into farming societies 7,000 years ago
First results on the extraordinary archaeological site Vráble Vel’ke-Lehemby have been published.
Dozens of human skeletons, lying apparently randomly on and next to each other, of which the skulls are missing, presents a terrifying sight at first glance. Since 2022, this is what researchers have been excavating in a 7,000-year-old settlement near the current town of Vráble in Slovakia. Are the headless skeletons the remains of a Neolithic massacre and represent gruesome evidence of a crisis in the ancient society?

Initial bone analyses and a compilation of the excavation results until now point in a different direction.

In contrast, we have evidence that the interments – which appear unusual to us – were part of social practices, which structured local and supra-regional relationships and are only limited signs of conflict and crisis.

Professor Dr. Martin Furholt, lead author.
Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology
Kiel University, Germany.

He is the lead author of the corresponding study, which has now been published in the international journal Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.

One of the most important archaeological sites of the Linear Pottery culture

The large Neolithic settlement at Vráble belongs to the most important excavation sites of the so-called Linear Pottery culture (LBK) in Central Europe. Researchers from Kiel University and the Slovakian Academy of Sciences in Nitra have been investigating it since 2012.

The excavation site is comprised of more than 300 house outlines in three neighbourhoods, where intermittently up to 80 buildings existed which were simultaneously inhabited. The settlement existed for a period of several centuries, approximately between 5250 and 4950 BCE.

One of the neighbourhoods was surrounded by a ditch which probably served as a border. During earlier excavations, researchers already found human remains. Since the fieldwork in 2022, these finds have accumulated spectacularly. At the entrance to the settlement, the remains of at least 78 individuals have been uncovered – in various postures and without discernible order.

Spectacular finds of headless skeletons

77 of the individuals lacked a head. The excavators found only one skeleton of a child with a preserved skull. Initial evidence suggests that little time passed between the death of these individuals and their interment.

The features clearly exhibit an intentional manipulation of the bodies. First analyses suggest, above all, that violent ‘decapitations’ were not conducted here, but rather skilful removals of the skulls.

Dr. Katharina Fuchs, co-author
Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology
Kiel University, Germany.

How this practice should be interpreted, however, is still open. One hypothesis is discussed that the heads may have been stored separately – a phenomenon that is not yet directly attested for Vráble, but known from other contexts.

Comparable interventions associated with human bodies are proven for many prehistoric societies, also within the LBK. However, the details of the practices differ greatly. Furthermore, the deposition of the dead or of body parts in settlement ditches is not an isolated phenomenon. It is, however, notable, that mass graves, depositions in settlement ditches as well as manipulations of bodies appear at many archaeological sites at the end of the LBK.

This phenomenon has frequently been interpreted as evidence of a time of crisis, for example, in connection with violence or conflicts. The participants of the current study, however, suggest a differentiated perspective.

The deposition of bodies and body parts may have been part of more complex, meaningful and recurring practices sein [sic]. We must assume that these practices were embedded in completely different contexts of meaning than those of modern societies. This is what makes an interpretation of them so challenging.

Dr. Nils-Müller-Scheeßel, co-author.
Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology
Kiel University, Germany.

The site provides keys for the discussion of fundamental questions

The publication is thus a springboard for further analyses in the current research project ‘Neolithic Bodies’, which has been funded by the German Research Foundation since 2025. Presently, the participating research groups continue to sort the recovered bones in order to determine the age at the time of death, the biological sexes and to analyse the cutting marks on the cervical vertebra in more detail. Further studies on the possible impacts of violence and forensic investigations on decomposition processes are being conducted as well. Isotope and DNA analyses will also provide added information on the origins, diet and kinship ties of the Neolithic individuals. The construction of the ditch system also raises further open questions.

But the first results already show that Vráble is an exceptional excavation site. It provides us with the keys for the discussion of fundamental questions, for example, how were death and the body understood in the Neolithic and what role did the associated practices play in the social fabric of early farming societies?

Professor Martin Furholt.

The mass deposition at the ditch. Below: photos; above: a tracing of the skeletons in various colours. Most of the individuals are found to the far left, where the ditch ends and the entrance to the settlement was located.

© Katharina Fuchs, Agnes Heitmann, Nils Müller-Scheeßel, Till Kühl

Drone footage of the excavation site. In the foreground, an area is visible that has just been stripped open by an excavator and waits to be excavated. This spot was chosen because it exhibits an opening through the ditch, where further depositions of human skeletons were expected. In the background, two further trenches are shown, one with the mass deposition.

© Nils Müller-Scheeßel

While the excavation of the mass deposition was concentrated on the eastern area starting in 2022, the western section has been under excavation since 2024. The tent above the trench protects the excavation from rain and sun.

© Katharina Fuchs

Publication:
Furholt M, Cheben I, Hukeľová Z, et al.
Neolithic Bodies in Vráble – 7000 year-old Headless Human Skeletons in an Enclosed LBK Settlement in South–West Slovakia. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. Published online 2026:1-16. doi:10.1017/ppr.2026.10082

Abstract
We present here the extraordinary find of an Early Neolithic mass deposition of headless human bodies at the LBK settlement site of Vráble-Veľké Lehemby. While various scientific analyses are under way, we present the archaeological context of this find and preliminary osteological and taphonomic observations. We discuss these in the light of a patterned and meaningful depositional complexity in Vráble, which embeds into a larger corpus of human remains in ditches surrounding LBK settlements in central Europe. Furthermore, we discuss the significance of the find for the overall discourse on the crisis at the end of the LBK period with regard to the role of violence and the nature of Early Neolithic cosmologies.

Figure 1.
The Neolithic settlement site of Vráble-Veľké Lehemby. A) Geographic location of the site in Slovakia and the distribution area of LBK societies; B) Settlement plan of the three neighbourhoods and the double-ditch system in the south-western neighbourhood based on magnetic measurements (see Winkelmann et al. 2020; base map A: maps-for-free.com; base map B: Google Satellite, URL: https://mt1.google.com/.

Credits: K. Furholt).

Figure 2.
Overview picture of the mass deposition of human remains and the profiles of the main ditches. A) Trench 23 (campaign 2022); B) Trench 32 (campaign 2024)
Photo: T. Kühl; credits: K. Furholt.

Figure 3.
Results of the magnetic survey (by Knut Rassmann, Frankfurt) of the south-western neighbourhood and excavation areas, with trenches shown in outline (2016–2024).

Figure 6. Overview of different contexts with human remains and depositional practices in ditch areas and entrances at the south-western neighbourhood of Vráble-Veľké Lehemby

Credits: K. Fuchs, M. Furholt, K. Furholt, N. Müller-Scheeßel.

Figure 4.
Examples of different treatments and states of preservation of human remains at Vráble-Veľké Lehemby. A) Complete skeletons in burial pits near the ditch of the south-western neighbourhood (S21; Müller-Scheeßel and Hukeľová 2020, 178). B) Human remains from house contexts, here in a long pit (S14, south-eastern neighbourhood; Müller-Scheeßel and Hukeľová 2020, 162). C–E) Headless skeletons and other human bones in the inner and outer ditches of the south-west neighbourhood. C) Well-preserved, articulated cervical spine; sporadic disarticulation in the lower spine and lower left leg (mass deposition outer ditch, S30). D) Well-preserved, partly intertwined with another headless skeleton; sporadic disarticulation in the right lower leg (mass deposition outer ditch, S30), together with disarticulated arm bones and a skull fragment of unclear association. E) Moderate preservation in the inner ditch (S32), with overlaying single and fragmented bones (arrow). F) Poorly preserved and fragmented bones in the inner ditch. G) Superimposed headless skeletons, articulated and disarticulated body parts, and single bones at the ditch terminal near entrance 2 (S23), discovered in 2022; for more examples see Müller-Scheeßel and Hukeľová, 2020; Müller-Scheeßel et al. 2021).

credits: K. Fuchs, T. Kühl, N. Müller-Scheeßel

Figure 7.
Different contexts of pebble deposition (pebbles are marked with white arrows) next to headless and complete skeletons in the outer ditch (A–C), around human bone complexes (D & E), and a pebble paving in the inner ditch near entrance 5 (F). A) campaign 2021, trench 26, object 2, quadrant G-H-J; B) campaign 2017, trench 23, object 203, quadrant 30-32; C) campaign 2021, trench 25, planum 2; D) campaign 2021, trench 25, planum 2; E) campaign 2021, trench 26, object 4, quadrant D, planum 2; F) campaign 2022, trench 27, objects 3 and 20
Photo: T. Kühl; credits: K. Furholt.

Furholt M, Cheben I, Hukeľová Z, et al.
Neolithic Bodies in Vráble – 7000 year-old Headless Human Skeletons in an Enclosed LBK Settlement in South–West Slovakia. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. Published online 2026:1-16. doi:10.1017/ppr.2026.10082

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Prehistoric Society. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

As with so much of archaeology, the significance of Vráble-Veľké Lehemby lies not in any deliberate attempt to disprove creationism, but in the simple fact that it is real. It is a carefully excavated, scientifically dated settlement, occupied for centuries by real people with homes, fields, animals, social divisions, customs and beliefs. Their lives, deaths and treatment of the dead are part of a continuous human story that reaches back thousands of years before the period in which biblical literalists need their mythical flood to have happened.

That continuity is precisely the problem for creationism. A recent global flood would not leave archaeologists patiently reconstructing the internal organisation of a 7,000-year-old farming community from house plans, ditches, burials and radiocarbon dates. It would leave one unmistakable global catastrophe layer, with everything before it destroyed, displaced or buried in a single chaotic deposit. Instead, we find settled communities, local histories, gradual changes, abandonment phases, regional cultures and recognisable patterns of human behaviour extending across the supposed date of the flood without interruption.

The headless bodies at Vráble are macabre and mysterious, but they are not mysterious in the way creationists need them to be. They do not point to a supernatural catastrophe, divine judgement or a world-destroying flood. They point to complex human societies, ritual behaviour, social stress and cultural practices whose meanings archaeologists can investigate using evidence. In other words, they belong to history, not mythology.

Once again, the evidence does not merely fail to support the Bible story; it contradicts it. The ground beneath our feet preserves the record of real human beings living, farming, building, dying and burying their dead in ways that are wholly incompatible with a recent global flood. Creationism can only wave this evidence away, misrepresent it, or ignore it. Science, by contrast, can dig it up, date it, analyse it and use it to tell us something true about our past.

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Refuting Creationism - Evolution of Hagfish By LOSS of Eye Complexity

2026-06-07T23:38:16.842+01:00

Hagfish ties itself in a knot

Credit: Justin, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

UWM research sheds new light on the evolution of hagfish eyes

My last post concerned the loss of genetic diversity in fallow deer over a period of 140,000 years, shown by comparing the genomes of modern fallow deer with DNA recovered from 140,000-year-old fossils from Germany. Creationism, of course, has no explanation for the age of fossils from some 130,000 years before the mythical 'Creation Week', nor for how evolution can result in a loss of diversity, since creationist dogma insists that any loss of 'genetic information' must necessarily be deleterious.

Now we have an even more difficult paper for creationists, recently published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters by Assistant Professor Victoria McCoy, of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and researchers from the Field Museum of Natural History, the Lauer Foundation for Paleontology, Science and Education, the David and Sandra Douglass Collection, and the University of Ottawa. The paper explains how the hagfish eye has evolved to become less complex, having lost its pigment and lens, and is now covered by soft tissue.

To add insult to injury for creationists, the authors also show that the 308-million-year-old hagfish fossils they examined, recovered from the Mazon Creek site in northeastern Illinois, were already showing evidence of reduced complexity. Their eyes were intermediate between the normal vertebrate eye and those of modern hagfish, confirming the hypothesis that hagfish eyes evolved from more typical vertebrate eyes by a stepwise process of complexity reduction. Creationists continue to insist that there are no intermediate forms in the fossil record, despite the regular discovery of exactly such forms, as this hagfish example neatly illustrates.

Today, hagfish inhabit the abyssal plain, where there is little or no light. They are scavengers, feeding on the bodies of dead animals, and are among the creatures that help strip the soft tissues from large carcasses, including whale falls, on the ocean floor. Yet these are the descendants of hagfish that lived in a shallow, near-shore, well-lit environment, such as that preserved at what is now Mazon Creek. The conclusion is that the loss of eye complexity was not simply an adaptation to a dark, deep-sea environment, but was driven by some other environmental factor or factors. This reduction in visual ability then appears to have enabled hagfish to extend into and exploit their present environment, eventually disappearing as coastal species.

And this refutes yet another creationist assertion: that scientists only ever publish findings that conform to scientific orthodoxy. This paper challenges the long-held assumption that deep-sea conditions drove the loss of eye complexity in hagfish. It is now clear that the process preceded the move onto the deep-ocean floor.

Background^ Hagfish. Hagfish are among the strangest living vertebrates. They are jawless, eel-like marine animals, although they are not true eels, and are placed with the lampreys among the living agnathans — the jawless vertebrates. Their bodies are long, soft, scaleless and supported by cartilage rather than bone. They lack paired fins and jaws, and feed with horny tooth-like structures that allow them to rasp flesh from carrion or from dead and dying animals.

Modern hagfish are mostly animals of cold marine waters, often living on or in soft seabed sediments, where they may lie partly buried with only the head exposed. They feed largely as scavengers, but this should not be taken to mean that they are merely passive cleaners of the deep sea. Observations have shown that hagfish can also prey on other animals and may play a more varied ecological role than was once assumed.

Their most famous feature is their slime. When attacked, hagfish eject a mixture of mucus and fine protein threads from rows of slime glands along the body. In seawater this expands rapidly into a gelatinous mass that can clog the mouth and gills of a predatory fish, forcing it to release the hagfish. The hagfish can then tie itself into a knot and pass the knot along its body, scraping away excess slime and helping it escape or feed.

Hagfish are also important in evolutionary biology because they occupy a key position close to the base of the vertebrate family tree. They show that evolution is not a simple march from “simple” to “complex”. Modern hagfish are not primitive failures or unfinished animals; they are highly specialised survivors, well adapted to a particular way of life.

Their eyes are especially significant. In living hagfish the eyes are extremely reduced, lacking the lens and pigmentation typical of more familiar vertebrate eyes, and are covered by soft tissue. For that reason, hagfish were once tempting candidates for the idea that their eyes represented an early, primitive stage in the evolution of the vertebrate eye. Fossil evidence now shows something more interesting: hagfish eyes are not primitively simple, but secondarily simplified. In other words, their ancestors had more complex eyes, and the modern condition evolved through loss and reduction.

That makes hagfish a particularly useful example of evolutionary change. They show that evolution can produce loss as well as gain, simplification as well as elaboration, and that reduced organs can be just as much the product of natural evolutionary history as complex ones.

The paper in Biology Letters was accompanied by a news release from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee:

UWM research sheds new light on the evolution of hagfish eyes
New research led by a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee geoscientist provides insight into how one of the most primitive living vertebrates evolved its uniquely simple visual system. The study, published in Biology Letters on May 27, examines fossilized hagfish eyes to reconstruct how their modern, reduced structure came to be.
The study’s lead author, Victoria McCoy, assistant professor in UWM’s Department of Geoscience, collaborated with researchers from the Field Museum of Natural History, the Lauer Foundation for Paleontology, Science and Education, the David and Sandra Douglass Collection and the University of Ottawa.

Hagfish, often described as the most primitive living vertebrates, possess extremely simple eyes and are nearly blind. Scientists have long hypothesized that their eyes evolved from more complex vertebrate eyes through a gradual loss of structures, likely as hagfish adapted to the dark, deep-sea environments they inhabit today.

To test this idea, McCoy and her colleagues analyzed exceptionally well-preserved fossils of three extinct hagfish species from the approximately 308 million-year-old Mazon Creek site in northeastern Illinois. Unlike modern deep-sea habitats, this ancient environment was near shore and well lit.

The fossil evidence revealed that these early hagfish had eyes more developed than those of modern hagfish, yet still less complex than typical vertebrate eyes, representing an intermediate stage in eye reduction.

This study shows that the hagfish eye didn’t become simple all at once. Instead, it evolved through a gradual, stepwise loss of complexity over millions of years. Importantly, some of these changes appear to have happened before hagfish moved into the low-light environments where they live today.

Arjan Mann, co-author
Lauer Foundation for Paleontology, Science and Education
Wheaton, IL, USA.

These findings challenge the long-held assumption that deep-sea conditions alone drove the degeneration of hagfish vision, suggesting instead that aspects of this evolutionary process began earlier.

The research emphasized the importance of fossil evidence in understanding evolutionary transitions.

Fossils like those from Mazon Creek give us a rare window into evolutionary history. They allow us to see intermediate forms that bridge the gap between ancient organisms and their modern relatives, helping us understand how dramatic changes, like the reduction of a complex eye, actually unfold over time.

Assistant Professor Victoria E. McCoy, lead author
Department of Geosciences
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI, USA.

The study highlights the importance of combining paleontological data with evolutionary biology to better understand how major anatomical transformations occur.

Publication:
Victoria E. McCoy, Jason D. Pardo, Arjan Mann, Andrew Young, René Lauer, Bruce Lauer, Tetsuto Miyashita
Stepwise loss of complexity in hagfish eyes prior to deep sea colonization.
Biol Lett 1 May 2026; 22(5): 20260127. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2026.0127

Abstract
The hagfish eye is highly reduced, lacking pigment and a lens, and covered by soft tissue. The timing and mode of this loss of complexity remain unknown. Here, we present high-resolution anatomical data on the fossilized eyes of three stem hagfishes that form a transitional series towards the highly vestigialized eye of modern hagfishes. All have small eyes covered in soft tissue and containing only spherical melanosomes. Lenses are present in the more stemward hagfishes but absent in the more crownward hagfish. Reduction of the eyes occurred gradually across the Palaeozoic, with an initial stage of size reduction and loss of cylindrical melanosomes from the retinal pigmented epithelium, an intermediate stage with loss of image-focus capability and finally a near-complete loss of vision (the hagfish crown group). The initial and intermediate stages of this process likely occurred in nearshore environments prior to the Permian colonization of the continental slope by hagfish.

Fossil specimens of Gilpichthys greenei housed in the collections of either the Lauer Foundation for Paleontology, Science and Education (specimen numbers starting with LF) or the Field Museum of Natural History (specimen numbers starting with FMNH). (a) Specimen LF 6966 showing the entire body with the eyes (essentially overlapping) indicated by a white arrow; scale bar = 5 mm. (b–d) SEM secondary electron images of the eyes of three specimens of G. greenei, showing preserved melanosomes. (b) Specimen LF 6965. (c) Specimen LF 6970. (d) Specimen LF 6967. (e) Specimen LF 6968 showing eyes (white arrows) with lenses preserved as dark holes (black arrows); scale bar = 0.5 mm. (f) Specimen LF 6966 eyes (white arrows) with lenses preserved in white kaolinite (black arrows); scale bar = 0.5 mm. (g) Specimen LF 6965 preserved in almost direct lateral view, with eyes overlapping, and cranial elements posterior to their eyes preserved as a line; scale bar = 2 mm. (h) Specimen FMNH PF8348 preserved offset from lateral, with widely spaced eyes and cranial elements preserved posterior to the eyes as wideset structures; scale bar = 2 mm.

Phylogeny with eye structure. We adapted a previously published phylogenetic matrix of jawless fishes [10] by updating scores for G. greenei and scoring S. testai (electronic supplementary material, dataset). The phylogeny presented here is a summary tree showing the phylogenetic relationships of lampreys (Petromyzontida), crown hagfish (Myxini) and the stem hagfish included in this study (Gilpichthys greenei, Squirmarius testai and Myxinikela siroka). The character state transitions involved in the vestigialization of the modern hagfish eye are mapped on the tree. The colours on the timeline at the bottom of the chart are in accordance with those on the international chronostratigraphic chart (https://stratigraphy.org/chart/).

Victoria E. McCoy, Jason D. Pardo, Arjan Mann, Andrew Young, René Lauer, Bruce Lauer, Tetsuto Miyashita
Stepwise loss of complexity in hagfish eyes prior to deep sea colonization.
Biol Lett 1 May 2026; 22(5): 20260127. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2026.0127

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)

Here again we have a fossil that should not exist if creationism were true: a 308-million-year-old hagfish from a world that existed hundreds of millions of years before the mythical creation week, preserving an intermediate stage in the evolutionary reduction of a vertebrate eye. It is not merely old; it is inconveniently old, inconveniently transitional, and inconveniently explanatory.

The significance of this discovery is not just that hagfish eyes became simpler, but that the fossil evidence shows how that simplification happened. Far from being an inexplicable loss of “information”, it is an example of evolution doing exactly what evolutionary theory says it can do: modifying existing structures according to changing circumstances, sometimes by elaboration, sometimes by reduction, and sometimes by removing what is no longer useful enough to justify its biological cost.

Nor is there any need to invoke magic, design, or supernatural tinkering. The history is written in the fossils and in the anatomy of living hagfish. Their reduced eyes are not evidence of failed design, nor of a primitive animal waiting to become something better; they are evidence of descent with modification, of ancestry, adaptation, and evolutionary change over deep time.

Creationism has no useful explanation for any of this. It cannot explain the age of the fossil, the intermediate condition of the eye, the stepwise reduction in complexity, or the way this evidence overturns an earlier scientific assumption without overturning evolution itself. All it can offer is denial, misrepresentation, or silence.

Science, meanwhile, does what it always does at its best: it follows the evidence, corrects itself when the evidence demands it, and improves our understanding of the natural world. The hagfish, blind or nearly so, has once again helped science see more clearly.

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Creationism Refuted - British Fallow Deer Have LOST Genetic Diversity - Over The Last 120,000 Years

2026-06-07T17:56:28.919+01:00

Fallow deer

Photo credit: Memurubu, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

UP News - University of Potsdam

A paper just published in iScience should, if they were aware of it, at least cause an honest creationist to question some basic assumptions. It reports that modern European fallow deer, Dama dama, retain only a fraction of the genetic diversity present in their Ice Age ancestors. This finding is based on ancient DNA recovered from the fossilised remains of ten, approximately 120,000-year-old fallow deer from Neumark-Nord in Germany, analysed by researchers from the University of Potsdam, the MONREPOS Research Center and Museum in Neuwied, and Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Creationism continues to take a battering in the world of real science, where yet another paper quite incidentally refutes several of its basic dogmas. Creationists, who are notoriously reluctant to read serious science and would probably struggle to understand it if they did, will no doubt remain blissfully unaware of this constant refutation of their core superstitions.

To ensure that ignorance is maintained, creationist disinformation sites expend considerable effort in spreading distrust of serious science amongst their followers. What cult leader would want his followers reading anything that exposes his claims as bogus?

However, ignoring the facts does not make them go away, and the facts this paper reveals go to the heart of creationist mythology. Firstly, this evidence should not exist at all if the Bible creation myth were real history: a magical creation just 6,000-10,000 years ago, followed by a catastrophic global genocide, would leave no room for a 120,000-year-old population of fallow deer preserved in an Eemian lake environment. Secondly, it undermines the creationist parody of evolution that they so often attack: the false claim that evolution must always mean increasing complexity, and that any loss of genetic information is invariably fatal.

The reduced genetic diversity of modern fallow deer is a clear example of evolution involving a loss of genetic variation within a population. So far as individual deer are concerned, there need be no immediate reduction in fitness; the problem comes when a population has less capacity to respond to environmental change, disease, or other selective pressures, and may then be more vulnerable to extinction. Evolution, of course, has no plan. Unlike intelligent design, or even guided evolution, it cannot foresee future conditions and prepare a species for them. A species can be driven towards extinction by the simple operation of mindless natural processes.

British Fallow Deer and the Founder Effect. Fallow deer, Dama dama, are now a familiar part of the British countryside, but they are not truly native to Britain. They were first brought here during the Roman period, probably as ornamental animals kept in enclosed parks, or vivaria. However, genetic evidence indicates that those Roman fallow deer died out in Britain after the collapse of Roman rule.

The present British population appears to derive mainly from animals reintroduced in the 11th century, this time from the eastern Mediterranean. At first they were kept as rare and prestigious animals in aristocratic deer parks, valued both for display and for venison. As deer parks became less fashionable, and as some parks fell into disrepair, escapees and released animals formed the basis of the free-living British fallow deer population seen today.

This history provides a good example of the founder effect. When a new population is started by a small number of individuals, it carries only a sample of the genetic diversity present in the larger source population. Some alleles may be missing altogether, while others may become common simply because they happened to be present in the founders. This is not because they were necessarily better or worse, but because chance plays a much larger role in small populations.

Once isolated, such a population can lose still more variation through genetic drift: random changes in allele frequencies from one generation to the next. A population may thrive numerically while still being genetically impoverished. The danger is not always immediate poor fitness, but reduced evolutionary flexibility. If disease, climate change, habitat change, or a new parasite imposes a fresh selective pressure, a genetically narrow population may have fewer variants on which natural selection can act.

This is why the fallow deer story is so awkward for creationism. It shows evolution operating without foresight, plan, or direction. A species can become abundant while also losing genetic diversity, not because anything intended that outcome, but because population history, isolation, chance, and selection act blindly on whatever variation happens to be available.

The paper in iScience is accompanied by a news item from Potsdam University:

120,000-year-old European fallow deer – Tracing the loss of genetic diversity
European fallow deer faced a dramatic loss of genetic diversity since the last interglacial period. This was revealed by 120,000-year-old fossils from central Germany's Neumark-Nord site (Saxony-Anhalt), analysed by researchers from the University of Potsdam, the MONREPOS Research Center and Museum in Neuwied, and from the Leiden University. Their results have been published in the international journal “iScience”. Modern fallow deer thus represents just a fraction of their Ice Age ancestors' variety. The study highlights how climate and human actions substantially reshaped a once-diverse species and may be informative for conservation action.
Fallow deer, once widespread across central Europe during warm interglacials, retreated south during cold glacial periods. Unique preservation conditions in the lake sediments of Neumark Nord – a fossil biotope near Merseburg in Saxony-Anhalt – enabled this rare temperate-climate DNA recovery.

The research team of the University of Potsdam, the MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution in Neuwied, part of the Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA), and from the Leiden University (Netherlands), was able to extract ancient DNA from ten fallow deer fossils at Neumark-Nord. Strikingly, the single ancient population from Neumark-Nord exhibits genetic diversity comparable to that of today's fallow deer across their entire Eurasian range, from Spain to Turkey. Modern fallow deer also display unusually low variation compared to relatives like red deer or sambar deer.

Phylogenetic reconstructions show contemporary fallow deer being closely related to the ancient Neumark-Nord lineage.

This pattern strongly suggests that multiple diverse genetic lineages once evolved in or colonized central Europe during the Late Pleistocene, but only a single one survived after the end of the ice age.

Alberto Rocha-Méndez, lead author
Evolutionary Adaptive Genomics
Institute of Biochemistry and Biology
University of Potsdam,
Potsdam, Germany.

Phylogenies date the split between ancient and modern European fallow deer to around 200,000 years ago, amid Middle Pleistocene climate fluctuations. Glacial cooling likely wiped out the diverse northern populations, with survivors only in southern refugia like Anatolia and Balkans. Humans later spread the low-diversity refugial population from Anatolia worldwide during Neolithic, Roman, medieval and modern times.

Due to its deviating anatomy, particularly in antler shape, the fallow deer at Neumark-Nord have long been assigned to their own species or subspecies: Dama (dama) geiselana. The low genetic differentiation to modern fallow deer specimens uncovered in the study, however, rejects a separate status.

The fallow deer once showed high phenotypic variability, but this can be attributed to local adaptation rather than to different genetic lineages.

Lutz Kindler, co-author
Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie - Neuwied Location
CC Pleistocene and Early Holocene Archaeology
MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution,
Neuwied, Germany.
Future work on the full nuclear genome could clarify the species’ demographic history in greater detail.

Background on the excavation site: At the Neumark Nord 1 site, geologist Matthias Thomae discovered a paleolake biotope in 1985, which was excavated and studied by archaeologist Dietrich Mania between 1985 and 1996. According to his findings, there was once a large lake basin at this location, which dates back to the last interglacial 120,000 years ago, known as the Eemian. Between 2004 and 2008, a team from the Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA) in Mainz and Leiden University investigated another lake basin at the Neumark-Nord 2 site. Research at both locations revealed a unique environmental archive. The finds are now housed at the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt.

Publication:
Rocha-Méndez, Alberto; Arnold, Patrick; Kindler, Lutz; Gaudzinski-Windheuser, Sabine; Roebroeks, Wil; Scherjon, Fulco; Hofreiter, Michael (2026)
Eemian palaeogenetics demonstrates loss of diversity in modern fallow deer (Dama dama)
iScience 29(6); DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2026.116204.

Highlights

10 near-complete mitogenomes from 120,000-year-old fallow deer at Neumark-Nord
Ancient local population is as diverse as the entire modern range
Modern Dama dama forms a single clade sister to Eemian lineages
Neumark-Nord morphological variation reflects within species local adaptation

Summary
The European fallow deer (Dama dama) is a widely distributed cervid that has experienced extensive human management since the Neolithic. Although several studies have examined relationships among present-day and Holocene populations, molecular data from Pleistocene fallow deer remain extremely limited, leaving a gap in our understanding of the species’ evolutionary history. Here, we retrieved 10 mitochondrial genomes from a ∼120-thousand-year-old last interglacial (Eemian) fallow deer population from the Neumark-Nord archaeological sites in central Germany. We find that modern European fallow deer throughout their western Eurasian distribution are closely related and form a single clade sister to the Eemian samples. Likewise, modern diversity is low compared to other cervids, whereas this single Eemian assemblage displays comparable levels to that of the entire modern range. Our results suggest that Neumark-Nord mitochondrial lineages were part of broader Late Pleistocene diversity, of which only one part appears to have persisted into the Holocene.

Graphical abstract

Figure 1 Evolutionary relationships between Eemian and modern fallow deer

(A) Secondarily calibrated Bayesian phylogeny of 10 Eemian and 17 modern European fallow deer mitochondrial genomes. The root age was calibrated using the age estimate from the Bayesian mitochondrial species phylogeny. Branch values show posterior probabilities and median 95% HDP values from the best supported model, calibration set 3. Blue node bars represent the 95% credibility intervals of divergence times.

(B) Median joining network of the mitochondrial genomes generated in POPART 1.7 considering positions that are present in all sequences while excluding ambiguities and missing data (alignment length: 7,110 bp), 70 variable sites.

Color of haplotypes depict their origin: ancient Neumark-Nord samples (white), modern Eurasian samples (gray), and hypothetical inferred (black). Node sizes are proportional to the frequencies of the haplotypes. Bars on branches represent the number of mutational steps between the connected haplotypes.

Once again, science has produced evidence that should not exist if creationist mythology were true. There were fallow deer living in Europe tens of thousands of years before the earliest possible date for the alleged biblical creation, and their genomes preserve a history of population change, isolation, loss of genetic diversity, and descent with modification. None of this is consistent with a magical creation event a few thousand years ago, nor with a recent global flood that should have erased such deep-time evidence.

What the study shows is not merely that fallow deer have a long evolutionary history, but that their present genetic condition is the result of ordinary, natural processes: population bottlenecks, founder effects, drift, isolation and selection. These are not speculative “Darwinist” inventions; they are measurable features of real genomes. They leave signatures that can be detected, compared and dated, even in ancient DNA recovered from fossil remains.

Creationists like to pretend that evolution must always mean progress, increasing complexity, or the production of ever more “information”. Real evolution is not obliged to obey that cartoon version. Populations can lose variation, become genetically narrower, and still survive for long periods, at least until environmental change, disease or other pressures expose the cost of that loss. Evolution has no foresight, no benevolent purpose and no protective plan for the future.

The modern fallow deer, then, is not the product of a single act of supernatural manufacture, but of a long and contingent history written in its genome. It is a history of migration, isolation, human interference, chance and survival. As usual, the facts point not to design, but to descent, population history and the blind processes of evolution.

Intellectually honest people would accept that these facts falsify creationist mythology; but not so creationists who will dismiss it so they can continue to cling to demonstrably false beliefs, imagining that changing their mind is a sign of weakness.

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Refuting Creation - With Goethe's 40-Million-Year-Old Ant

2026-06-06T15:49:09.340+01:00

Amber piece 1552.b showing bioinclusions. Arrow in a (top): inclusion of †Ctenobethylus goepperti; arrow in b (bottom): inclusion of the Sciaridae. Scale bar 5 mm.

Boudinot, B.E., Bock, B.L., Tröger, D. et al. (2026)

Exceptionally Well-Preserved Ant in Goethe’s Amber | Uni Jena

Some years ago, while staying for a few days in Berlin in a hotel just off Goethestraße, I made the mistake of telling a taxi driver that our hotel was just off “Go-eth Straße”. It took several minutes and a map to sort out the confusion.

“Nein! Goethe-Straße!” he laughed. Only then did I realise that “Go-eth” and “Goethe” were not two different German philosophers.

“Ach ja! Danke! Goethe! Ich bin ein Engländer!” I explained, in my best German.

“Ja! Is better we speak English,” he replied.

Goethestraße — Goethe Street — is, of course, named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832), the German writer, poet, novelist and playwright. He was also an administrator, scientist, geologist, botanist and philosopher. As a naturalist and collector, he left behind an extensive geological and mineralogical collection, including 40 pieces of Baltic amber, which have now been closely examined by biologists at Friedrich Schiller University Jena — appropriately enough, since Goethe and the playwright Friedrich Schiller were friends.

What they found was the subject of a paper in Scientific Reports, published in January 2026. It is not good news for creationists, since it concerns an approximately 40-million-year-old ant, preserved in exquisite detail and now visible using modern imaging techniques such as synchrotron micro-computed tomography. In addition to the ant, the scientists also found a fungus gnat and a blackfly in Goethe’s amber.

It is unlikely that Goethe knew these creatures were preserved in his amber, since the pieces are unpolished and the contents are barely visible to the untrained eye. He certainly could not have known that the amber was tens of millions of years old. Had he known, we can only speculate how that knowledge might have affected his view of nature, time and human origins. His famous work, Faust, draws deeply on Christian motifs, including the story of a man who makes a pact with the Devil; but Goethe was also a serious observer of nature, living at a time when geology, palaeontology and evolutionary thinking were still in their infancy.

In the early nineteenth century, Europeans had not yet accumulated the overwhelming evidence that Earth is billions of years old and that life has changed profoundly over vast periods of time. Many educated people still interpreted history, nature and morality through a biblical framework, even when their own thinking was more subtle than simple literalism. Goethe, despite his scientific curiosity, lived before Darwin, before modern stratigraphy was fully established, and long before modern imaging could reveal the hidden contents of an opaque piece of amber.

Now, of course, we know better, because of the tremendous scientific progress made over the last two centuries.

Why Baltic amber? Amber is fossilised tree resin, not tree sap, and although it is found in many parts of the world, it has a special association with the Baltic because that region contains the largest and most famous amber deposits. Baltic amber is mostly a form called succinite, derived from resin produced by vast Eocene forests that once grew across northern Europe, especially in the region sometimes called Fennoscandia.

As resin flowed from damaged or diseased trees, it trapped small organisms such as insects, spiders, plant fragments and other forest debris. Over millions of years, the resin was buried, chemically altered and hardened into amber. Later erosion, rivers, marine currents and Ice Age glaciers redistributed it through sediments and along the coasts of the Baltic Sea. This is why pieces of amber can still be washed up on Baltic beaches after storms.

The richest geological concentrations are associated with Paleogene deposits around the south-eastern Baltic, particularly the Samland Peninsula and surrounding areas. Polish geological sources also note that major amber accumulations occur in sandy and silty sediments connected with the Eocene sea and ancient river-delta systems.

The Baltic connection is also cultural and historical. For thousands of years, Baltic amber was traded southwards into central and southern Europe along what became known as the Amber Routes. These were among Europe’s earliest long-distance trade networks, carrying amber from northern Europe towards the Mediterranean and Adriatic worlds.

So “Baltic amber” is not merely a modern trade label. It reflects a real geological concentration, an ancient Eocene forest ecosystem, coastal and glacial redistribution, and a prehistoric trade network that made amber from the Baltic famous throughout Europe.

How the biologists at Friedrich Schiller University Jena studied Goethe’s amber was the subject of a news item by Sebastian Hollstein, which accompanied the paper in Scientific Reports:

Exceptionally Well-Preserved Ant in Goethe’s Amber
Researchers at the University of Jena examine the collection of the famous poet
Even some 200 years after his death, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s scientific curiosity continues to yield new insights. This has now been demonstrated by biologists at Friedrich Schiller University Jena while closely examining the amber collection of the Weimar poet and polymath. In one of the pieces, they discovered a fossilized ant approximately 40 million years old which, thanks to its excellent state of preservation and extensive analyses, provides valuable information about the insect species. The Jena researchers report their findings together with experts from the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar in the scientific journal »Scientific Reports«.

Goethe’s amber collection, housed by the Klassik Stiftung Weimar at the Goethe National Museum, comprises a total of 40 pieces originating from the Baltic region. In two of them, the Jena scientists discovered three fossil animal inclusions. The poet himself was likely unaware of the millions-of-years-old contents of these biological time capsules, as the animals are barely visible to the untrained eye in the unpolished stones. To identify them beyond doubt, the Jena team therefore employed modern imaging techniques. They scanned the promising amber pieces at the German Electron Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg using synchrotron micro-computed tomography, producing three-dimensional images of a fungus gnat, a black fly, and an ant.

A Look Inside the Ant

The ant in particular attracted great interest among the Jena researchers.

The ant belongs to the extinct species †Ctenobethylus goepperti (Mayr, 1868), which is very common in amber. Thanks to its excellent preservation and the extensive investigations, however, we were able to describe it in greater detail than ever before and gain new information about the species and its relationships.

Bernhard Bock, co-corresponding author
Institute for Zoology and Evolutionary Research
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Jena, Germany.

In addition to fine hairs on the body of the worker ant, the researchers were able for the first time to look inside it and visualize endoskeletal structures in the head and thorax, revealing more about ant morphology.

We have fully processed the specimen and, based on the newly acquired information, created a 3D reconstruction that is available online. This model helps colleagues worldwide to identify and compare further fossils of this species.

Daniel Tröger, co-author
Institute for Zoology and Evolutionary Research
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Jena, Germany.

Based on similarities to the ant genus Liometopum, which today lives in North America or warmer regions of Europe, conclusions can be drawn about the lifestyle of these extinct ants. The ant from Goethe’s amber presumably built large nests in trees, which could also explain why the species is so frequently found in amber.

Goethe and Amber

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe himself showed little interest in amber throughout his life—apart from its potential optical properties. For example, he ground lenses from the fossilized tree resin in order to observe specific color spectra for his theory of colors. Although systematic research into the material and the fossils it contains began in the mid-18th century, and early scientific publications can also be found in his library, the significance of these studies for his own fields of interest was not yet foreseeable.

Goethe is regarded as the founder of morphology and would likely have been delighted to see how we were able to gain valuable insights in this field using entirely new methods. At the same time, the results demonstrate the value of such historical collections. It is truly fascinating that an object originating from his hand and his era—when this science was just beginning—can still enrich us so much today.

Bernhard Bock.

3D reconstruction of the ant and the fossil in the original amber behind it.

Picture: Bernhard Bock/Daniel Tröger

Publication:
Boudinot, B.E., Bock, B.L., Tröger, D. et al.
Discovery of Goethe’s amber ant: its phylogenetic and evolutionary implications.
Sci Rep 16, 2880 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-36004-4

Abstract Museum collections remain essential scientific resources, especially when revisited using modern analytical techniques. In an interdisciplinary study, we examined the overlooked amber collection of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), polymath and pioneer of art and natural science. Using synchrotron-based micro-computed tomography (SR-µ-CT), we identified a fossil ant from Baltic amber (Eocene ~ 47–34 Ma) in Goethe’s collections. The specimen is assigned to †Ctenobethylus goepperti (Mayr in Die Ameisen des Baltischen Bernsteins. Beiträge zur Naturkunde Preussens, 1868), which we redescribe and re-diagnose, proposing †Eldermyrmex exsectus Dubovikoff et Dlussky, 2019 as its junior synonym (syn. nov., comb. nov.). We further infer a potential sister-group relationship with the extant genus Liometopum Mayr, 1861, suggesting that †C. goepperti may have been a dominant arboreal species in warm-temperate coniferous forests, a scenario which is supported by its abundance in Baltic amber. Critically, our results document endoskeletal structures in a Cenozoic fossil ant, underscoring both the morphological value of historical collections and the lasting scientific legacy of Goethe’s naturalist vision.

Fig. 1

Amber piece 1552.b showing bioinclusions. Arrow in a (top): inclusion of †Ctenobethylus goepperti; arrow in b (bottom): inclusion of the Sciaridae. Scale bar 5 mm.

Fig. 2

3D render of amber piece 1552.b with its corresponding bioinclusions in their position. Top: †Ctenobethylus goepperti. Arrow: sciarid gnat coated close to the rear surface of the backside of the amber piece in this view. 3D model available on Sketchfab: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/goethe-amber-inclusions-d2d1f7f09a3e43e2a12f5467697cd3a2.

Fig. 3

3D renders of †Ctenobethylus goepperti in amber piece 1552.b. a Lateral view. b Dorsal view. c Ventral view. Abbreviations: an = antenna; ce = compound eye; cl = clypeus; fc = frontal carina; g = gaster; hy = hypopygium; ol = occipital lobe; mn = mesonotum; pl = propleuron; pn = pronotum; ppd = propodeum, dorsal face; ppp = propodeum, posterior face; ptn = petiolar node; py = pygidium; sc = scape. Scale bars 0.5 mm. 3D model available on Sketchfab: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/ctenobethylus-goepperti-adf1d4e9abd5416ca0c401ad6fa2caa1.

Fig. 4

Transparent 3D renders of †Ctenobethylus goepperti in amber piece 1552.b. a Head frontal view showing the tentorium. b Mesosoma seen from lateral showing the profurca, legs removed. Scale bar 0.5 mm. 3D model available on Sketchfab: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/ctenobethylus-goepperti-f816f0a528e540a8959fa96361c395b8.

Fig. 5

Goethe as a Natural philosopher. a Goethe and Schiller Monument in Weimar. b For Goethe, art, science, and humanity were inextricably linked. He was particularly invested in color theory and prisms on both a physical and a philosophical level; he painted and annotated this color wheel in 1809³⁵ for his Farbenlehre to symbolize the “human spirit and soul life” (image taken from: Freies Deutsches Hochstift, Frankfurter Goethe Museum; https://goethehaus.museum-digital.de/singleimage?imagenr=35554). c Goethe collected many natural objects; this specimen is the last remaining insect in Goethe’s collections (without the amber inclusions). The label states “Curculio imperialis”, today known as Entimus imperialis (Forster J.R, 1771), an endemic beetle species from Brazil.

There is a pleasing irony in the fact that these tiny creatures, sealed in resin millions of years before any human being existed, lay unnoticed in Goethe’s own collection. Goethe, with all his curiosity about nature, lived at the edge of a great intellectual transformation, but before the discoveries that would make deep time, extinction, common descent and evolution unavoidable facts of science.

In Goethe’s day, the natural world could still be interpreted within a biblical framework, with Earth imagined as young and essentially unchanged since creation. Since then, geology has revealed the immense age of the planet; palaeontology has revealed the succession of life through time; and biology has revealed the evolutionary processes that explain both continuity and change. A piece of amber that might once have been admired merely as a beautiful curiosity can now be read as a tiny window into an Eocene forest ecosystem.

The ant, fungus gnat and blackfly in Goethe’s amber are not anomalies to be explained away. They are part of the immense, consistent pattern of evidence showing that life on Earth has a history measured not in thousands of years, but in hundreds of millions. Modern imaging can now reveal structures Goethe could not have seen, while modern science can place them in a timescale he could not have known.

Creationism, by contrast, has learned nothing comparable. It still begins with an ancient conclusion and tries to force every new discovery into it. Science does the opposite. It follows the evidence, improves its methods, corrects its errors and expands human understanding. Goethe’s amber is a beautiful reminder of that difference: a small, golden fragment of deep time, carrying evidence from a world that existed tens of millions of years before the myths of Genesis were ever written.

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Refuting Creationism - Yet Another Gap Is Closing - No God Found

2026-06-05T20:02:05.252+01:00

Fossil discovery fills in missing information about modern fish evolution | Michigan News

Complete skeleton of the oldest jack fish, part of the group that includes modern jacks and trevallies.

A close-up of sharp teeth in an early relative of modern tunas.

Images credit: Professor Hesham Sallam, Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center

There are only two things in the universe faster than light: monarchy and gods. When a monarch dies, the monarchy passes instantaneously to the sovereign’s heir, regardless of where either of them happens to be at the time; and when science shines a light into one of the gaps in which creationists have been hiding their god, the god has already departed. That, presumably, is why no god has ever been detected by science.

Creationist dependence on these god-shaped gaps has produced an ever-shrinking god as science fills one gap after another with evidence. The fallacy depends on the gamble that, unlike every previous gap closed by science, this one will turn out to require a supernatural creation event. It never does, of course, but that never seems to diminish creationist confidence that the next gap will be different.

True to form, science has now closed yet another gap with evidence, not magic. It is one few creationists are likely to know about, and fewer still would be willing to acknowledge, because it concerns a gap in the fossil record between the K–Pg mass extinction, which eliminated the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago, and about 56 million years ago. In other words, it is a 10-million-year interval in the very long pre-‘Creation Week’ history of life on Earth — a history no self-respecting creationist can honestly admit exists without conceding that the Bible’s creation myth is not real history. Specifically, it is a gap in the fossil record of fish evolution, from the devastation at the K–Pg boundary to the later appearance of many species that look markedly different from those that preceded it.

That gap, known to palaeontologists as “Patterson’s Gap”, has now been partly filled by the discovery of the earliest known examples of six modern fish groups by a research team led by Sanaa El-Sayed, a University of Michigan doctoral student and researcher at the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center. The fossils were found in the Qreiya 3 Lagerstätte, dated to 62.2 million years ago, in Egypt’s Eastern Desert. The discovery has just been reported in Science Advances.

Background: The Qreiya 3 Lagerstätte. The Qreiya 3 Lagerstätte is an exceptionally fossil-rich deposit in Egypt’s Eastern Desert, dated to about 62.2 million years ago, in the early Palaeocene. That places it only about 4 million years after the Cretaceous–Palaeogene (K–Pg) mass extinction, the event that eliminated the non-avian dinosaurs and profoundly disrupted life in the oceans as well as on land.

A Lagerstätte is a fossil site with unusually rich or unusually well-preserved remains. Qreiya 3 qualifies because it preserves abundant, often articulated fish skeletons, rather than merely isolated teeth, scales or fragments. This makes it especially valuable because complete skeletons reveal much more about anatomy, relationships and ecology than scattered remains can.

The site is important because it falls within “Patterson’s Gap”, a poorly sampled interval in the fossil record of spiny-rayed fishes between the latest Cretaceous and the early Eocene. Before this discovery, palaeontologists had relatively little direct evidence of what happened to many marine fish lineages during the first few million years after the K–Pg extinction.

The Qreiya 3 fossils show that several modern-looking marine fish groups were already present surprisingly soon after the mass extinction. The assemblage includes 21 kinds of fishes across nine orders, with many belonging to the percomorphs, the huge group that now dominates much of modern marine fish diversity. Among the fossils are early representatives of groups related to jacks, moonfish, pipefish and tuna-like fishes.

Just as importantly, the site does not preserve the characteristically Cretaceous fish groups that palaeontologists had suspected disappeared at or near the K–Pg boundary. That absence strengthens the conclusion that their disappearance was real extinction, not merely a failure of preservation. Qreiya 3 therefore helps show how marine ecosystems were rebuilt after catastrophe, not by magic, but by evolutionary recovery, replacement and diversification over deep time.

The paper is accompanied by an article in Michigan News, which explains how this Egyptian fossil site has opened a window into a part of evolutionary history that had previously been frustratingly dark:

Fossil discovery fills in missing information about modern fish evolution
Fish have a missing chapter in their history: after an asteroid slammed into Earth 66 million years ago, there is very little evidence of fish in the fossil record.
When whole fossil fish skeletons become common again about 10 million years after the asteroid impact, they include many species that look different than those that came before, leaving scientists to wonder what evolutionary paths fishes took between about 66 and 56 million years ago. Now, a research team including University of Michigan graduate student Sanaa El-Sayed has discovered the earliest known examples of six modern fish groups that still swim in Earth’s seas today.

The finding, published in Science Advances, describes marine fishes dated to 62.2 million years ago, helping to fill a 10 million year interval with sparse fossil information about modern fish evolution. Among the findings include the earliest known fossil skeletons of jack, a type of sportfish, moonfish and pipefish, the family to which seahorses belong.

The first clues of the new fish site in the Eastern Desert of Egypt came from a geologist who provided dates for the deposit. El-Sayed realized that this earlier study mentioned a fish fossil bed, dated to almost the middle of the 10 million year fossil record gap. She, along with the lab team of Hesham Sallam, founder of the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center (MUVP) in Egypt, began excavating the site.

We have this 10 million year gap with a very limited fossil record. We know the asteroid impacted the marine environment, but it was unclear how the oceans came to have these modern fishes. It was mindblowing that this site is now helping us answer the questions of when and where and what was present in the modern ocean just a few million years after the dinosaurs went extinct.

Sanaa El-Sayed, lead author
Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center (MUVP)
Mansoura University
Mansoura, Egypt.

A newly uncovered fossil jack fish, photographed in the field shortly after its discovery.

Fossil skeleton of the oldest known tuna-related fish.

Image credit: Professor Hesham Sallam, Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center.

In total, the researchers discovered 21 kinds of fishes across nine orders of fish. Most of the fishes are percomorphs, a major group in today’s oceans but which were relatively uncommon during the age of dinosaurs, according to Matt Friedman, co-author of the study and director and curator of the U-M Museum of Paleontology.

The findings also reinforce the idea that the biological crisis event linked to the asteroid impact, called the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction, led to the demise of certain kinds of fishes, followed by the rapid establishment of other groups of fishes that look distinctly modern.

A newly discovered fossil moonfish, the oldest known example of a group still living today. Moonfish are the most abundant fish at the site.

A first glimpse of the body armor of an early relative of modern pipefishes and seahorses, photographed at the moment of discovery.

The newly uncovered upper jaw of a marine fossil fish related to modern freshwater arowanas.

MUVP team excavating fossils at the Qreiya 3 site in Egypt’s Eastern Desert, July 2023.

Images credit: Professor Hesham Sallam, Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center

Patterson’s Gap

Part of the fossil collection recovered during the 2023 Qreiya 3 field expedition, photographed at the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center in Egypt after the end of fieldwork.

Image credit: Professor Hesham Sallam, Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center

Friedman has long been vexed by a fossil-poor part of the record around the K-Pg, a gap he and colleagues called Patterson’s Gap after a paleontologist who had previously noted it. Because of its timing, the gap muddies our picture of how fishes were impacted by the extinction.

This gap early in the Cenozoic record leads to two interrelated questions. First, did the fish that we generally assume went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period really not limp into the next interval, called the Paleogene, and we’ve just missed them because the record is poor? Second, when did the more familiar modern groups appear? The gap represents a long span of time during which we have poor grasp of what happened, and it’s frustratingly coincident with one of the most interesting intervals of Earth’s more recent history.

Professor Matt Friedman, co-author.
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI, USA.

Perhaps, researchers thought, that the gap in the fossil record meant the conditions did not exist during that time period to optimally preserve fish as fossils. That meant uncertainty about which groups the extinction impacted and how recovery proceeded.

Here we have this remarkable deposit that opens a new window on this critical time. There are plenty of skeletons preserved, but none of the kinds of fishes we thought went extinct were there. Our findings suggest that those fish likely did go extinct at or around that major cataclysm at the end of the Cretaceous, rather than their absence just reflecting a lousy record. At the same time, the site provides direct evidence that a lot of these modern-looking fish groups were established pretty early on.

Professor Matt Friedman.

Branching out the fossil search

The researchers say there could be many reasons why the 10-million-year gap has occurred. One reason could be that the majority of paleontological work has been concentrated in Europe and North America, missing valuable deposits that might be present elsewhere—something El-Sayed hopes will change.

It’s always good to look at other places for finding fossils. We can’t keep focusing on Europe and North America. New discoveries like this site in Egypt are showing us some of the oldest examples of this group, and this, in the long run, will change how we understand modern fish evolution. We are examining a site that’s very well dated—62.2 million years old. It’s hard to get more precise than that. What we are seeing now is only a small light illuminating a long and previously dark corridor in the early history of modern marine fish evolution. This Egyptian site shows that many important answers are still waiting to be discovered. Exploring older and new fossil localities in Egypt will be a major focus of our ongoing collaboration between our center and the University of Michigan.

Sanaa El-Sayed.

El-Sayed is also a senior student researcher at MUVP and assistant lecturer at Mansoura University, where she studied vertebrate paleontology as an undergraduate. There, she was the first student to work in the first lab in Egypt studying vertebrate fossils, led by Sallam, the first Egyptian scientist to earn a doctorate in vertebrate paleontology.

The study’s co-authors include the geologist who first identified the site, Robert Speijer, of KU Leuven in Belgium, as well as Belal Salem, Abdullah Gohar, Shorouq Al Ashqar, Mohamed Amin and Hossam El-Saka of MUVP and U-M’s Hadeel Saad.

Publication:
Sanaa El-Sayed et al.
Rise of modern marine fishes captured in an early Paleocene Lagerstätte. Sci. Adv. 12, eaec8978 (2026). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aec8978

Abstract
The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction reshaped Earth’s biodiversity, yet its impact on marine fishes remains debated due to gaps in the Paleocene record. Here, we report a paleotropical assemblage from the early Paleocene (Danian) of Egypt that provides a window into this transition. The Qreiya 3 Lagerstätte [62.2 million years ago (Ma)] reveals an offshore marine ecosystem with at least 21 actinopterygian taxa across nine orders, exceeding the diversity of all other Danian skeletal assemblages combined. Most fishes are percomorphs and include the oldest skeleton-based records for at least six ecologically divergent extant groups. These findings reinforce inferences of fish extinction linked to the K-Pg and the rapid establishment of compositionally modern communities, marked by the first occurrences of new lineages no later than ~4 million years (Myr) after the event. Comparisons across sites indicate that percomorphs appear more common at lower paleolatitudes in the Paleocene, expanding into higher paleolatitudes by the Eocene.

Fig. 2. Non-acanthomorphs and non-percomorph acanthomorphs from Qreiya 3.
(A to D) Non-acanthomorph fishes. (A), †Pycnodontidae (cf. †Nursallia), specimen missing caudal fin (MUVP 642). [(B) and (C)] Osteoglossidae (bony tongues) (†Phareodontinae) undet. (B) maxillary fragment (MUVP 652). (C) Partial skeleton (MUVP 650). (D) Clupeiformes (Clupeoidei) undet. (MUVP 661). (E to G) Non-percomorph acanthomorph fishes. (E) Veliferidae (sailfin velifers) undet, partial skeleton (MUVP 666). (F) Zeiformes (dories) undet. Morphotype I, partial skeleton (MUVP 670). (G) Acanthomorpha undet., Morphotype I, complete skeleton (MUVP 671).

Fig. 3. Percomorphs from Qreiya 3. (A to C) Syngnathiformes. (A) Syngnathidae (pipefishes) undet., articulated skeleton missing caudal region (MUVP 698). (B) Aulostomoidea undet., skeleton missing caudal region (MUVP 705). (C) Aulostomoidea undet., skull (MUVP 706). (D and E) Scombriformes. (D) Scombridae (†Eocoeolopomini) (mackerel, tuna, and kin) undet., articulated skeleton missing the neurocranium and the caudal fin (MUVP 708). (E) Trichiuroidea undet. (MUVP 829). (F and G) Carangiformes. (F) Menidae (moonfish) (Mene sp.), complete skeleton (MUVP 804). (G) Carangidae (jacks) undet., complete skeleton (MUVP 805). (H and I) Distinct percomorph morphotypes. (H) Percomorpha undet. Morphotype I, skull and anterior region of the body (MUVP 709). (I) Percomorpha undet. Morphotype II, skull and the anterior abdominal region (MUVP 812).

(A) Summary of the new earliest skeletal occurrences of several acanthomorph lineages represented in this study. Previously documented stratigraphic ranges are shown in white (see table S4), and stratigraphic range extensions based on Qreiya 3 are shown in orange; open-ended arrows indicate lineages that extend beyond the plotted interval to the present. An asterisk in Aulostomoidea indicates that this may represent the earliest occurrence of the group, contingent on resolving the phylogenetic position of the Mexican syngnathiform †Eekaulostomus (38). (B) Artistic reconstruction of the Qreiya 3 fauna. Individual taxa shown approximately at scale to one another, with anatomy based on specimens from Qreiya 3 augmented by close living and extinct relatives. Image credit: I. Baylatry. Abbreviations: Ca, Carangidae; Cl, Clupeoidei; He, Hexanchidae; Me, Menidae (Mene sp.); Od, Odontaspididae; Pa, †Palaeophiidae; Ph, †Phareodontinae; Py, †Pycnodontidae (cf. †Nursallia); Sc, Scombridae; Sy, Syngnathidae; Tr, Trichiuroidea; up, undetermined percomorph; ua, undetermined acanthomorph; Ve, Veliferidae; Ze, Zeiformes.

Sanaa El-Sayed et al.
Rise of modern marine fishes captured in an early Paleocene Lagerstätte. Sci. Adv. 12, eaec8978 (2026). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aec8978

Copyright: © 2026 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, a supposed “gap” turns out not to be a place where a god can be safely hidden, but a place where scientists need better fossils. And when those fossils are found, they do what fossils always do: they fit into the long history of life on Earth, they illuminate evolutionary relationships, and they show change through deep time. They do not point to a supernatural magician conjuring fish into existence fully formed during a mythical creation week.

Qreiya 3 is especially damaging for creationists because it does not merely add another fossil to a list; it helps document recovery and diversification after one of the greatest biological catastrophes in Earth’s history. The K–Pg extinction devastated marine ecosystems as well as terrestrial ones, yet within a few million years, lineages ancestral or related to several modern fish groups were already present. That is exactly the sort of pattern evolutionary theory leads us to expect: survival, extinction, replacement, diversification and adaptation, all unfolding over immense spans of time.

Creationism, by contrast, has no explanatory framework for any of this. It cannot explain why there should be a K–Pg boundary, why the non-avian dinosaurs should disappear below it, why certain fish groups should vanish while others diversify above it, or why a 62.2-million-year-old Egyptian fossil bed should contain early representatives of modern marine fish lineages. All it can do is deny the timescale, misrepresent the evidence, or pretend that another gap has not just been made smaller.

And that is the recurring embarrassment for the god-of-the-gaps argument. Every time science shines a light into one of those dark places, the gap becomes smaller and the god supposedly hiding in it becomes more elusive. Patterson’s Gap has not been closed completely, but it has been narrowed by evidence — real fossils, in real rocks, in a real geological sequence, from a real period of Earth’s history tens of millions of years before any alleged Biblical creation. Once again, the facts have moved in, and the god has quietly moved out.

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Refuting Creationism - Wild Cattle Roamed The Grasslands Of Europe - 4 million Years Before Creation Week

2026-06-04T23:07:32.575+01:00

Half-ton early Bovines roamed 4-million-year-old grasslands in Europe | EurekAlert!

Palaeoartistic reconstruction of the environment in the surrounding of Camp dels Ninots maar lake during the early Pliocene.

Artwork by Mauricio Antón.

Nowhere in the Bible will you find any mention of wild cattle roaming the land, nor any indication that domestic animals are highly modified descendants of wild species, reshaped by human selection because their wild ancestors were not conveniently suited to human use. Instead, we find the childish claim that all animals were created for the exclusive benefit of humankind — which raises the obvious question: did the creator not know what humans would later need, or did it simply get things wrong, leaving humans to correct the design by selective breeding?

This is easily explained once we recognise that the authors of Genesis had a narrow, parochial view of the world. They knew little or nothing of Earth’s history or of the origins of life on it, so they made up stories that conformed to their own cultural assumptions and superstitions, often borrowing from neighbouring cultures.

They were completely unaware of the rest of Eurasia beyond their limited view from the Canaanite hills, and equally unaware of the great age of the Earth or the cycles of glacial and interglacial periods that had characterised it for the previous several million years. Indeed, the concept of such deep time seems to have been far beyond their comprehension. They could therefore have had no concept of the early forms of cattle-like bovines that once roamed Europe, already fitted by evolution for life in the changing environments of the Pliocene.

One such animal was a large bovine species, weighing up to about half a ton, which lived in what is now north-eastern Iberia about 4.41 million years ago. The discovery and re-analysis of this animal has just been published in PLOS One by Leonardo Sorbelli of the Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Germany, and colleagues.

The fossils, from the Camp dels Ninots site in Catalonia, include remains from at least 14 individuals, among them eight nearly complete and partly articulated skeletons. The species, Parabos tigneresi, helps fill a gap in the evolutionary history of Eurasian bovines, including the wider lineage that eventually gave rise to modern cattle, bison and buffalo. Although smaller than many living domestic cattle, these animals were larger than comparable bovids of their time, suggesting an early stage in the increase in body size that later became characteristic of the bovine lineage.

The researchers suggest that this increase in size may have been associated with the climatic and environmental changes that characterised Pliocene Europe. The anatomy of Parabos tigneresi also indicates an animal adapted mainly to humid, vegetation-rich environments, consistent with the reconstructed setting of Camp dels Ninots as a water-rich maar lake ecosystem.

This incidental confirmation of an earlier reconstruction of the lake ecosystem at Camp dels Ninots is a good example of how independent strands of evidence converge on the same conclusion. It also illustrates the strength of Darwinian evolutionary theory: organisms are expected to show adaptations to the environments in which they lived, rather than appearing as arbitrary, ready-made forms. In this case, the anatomy of these bovids is consistent with animals adapted to a humid, vegetation-rich lakeside habitat, exactly as the geological and palaeoecological evidence had already indicated.

Background^ The Origins of the Eurasian Bovids.
The Bovidae are the large ruminant family that includes cattle, bison, buffalo, antelopes, gazelles, sheep and goats. They are distinguished, among other things, by permanent, unbranched horn cores covered in life by a keratin sheath. Their history is not one of sudden appearance, but of gradual diversification from small, deer- or gazelle-like ruminants during the Miocene.

Some of the earliest fossil bovids are usually placed in or near the genus Eotragus, known from early Miocene deposits in Europe and Asia, roughly 18–17 million years ago. These were small animals, very unlike modern cattle, but they already show features that place them close to the roots of the bovid family tree. From such early forms, the major bovid lineages diversified into several branches, including the Bovinae — the wider group that includes cattle, buffaloes, bison, nilgai and related extinct forms.

The early history of the cattle-like branch, Bovini, is more difficult to reconstruct because the fossil record is incomplete and several extinct Miocene groups show mixtures of primitive and more bovine-like features. Some late Miocene “boselaphine” and tragoportacin bovids from Eurasia appear close to the ancestry of later bovines, but their exact relationships remain debated. Stem Bovini were probably present in southern Asia by about 9 million years ago, after which bovine lineages spread into Africa and, later, into Europe.

By the Pliocene, Europe had its own large bovines or bovine-like forms, including Parabos, Alephis and later Leptobos. These animals were not modern cattle, but they help bridge the evolutionary gap between earlier Miocene bovids and the later true cattle, bison and buffalo lineages. The newly described material of Parabos tigneresi from Camp dels Ninots is important because it captures this transitional period in Europe, when bovids were becoming larger and increasingly cattle-like, but had not yet become the familiar bovines of the Pleistocene and the present day.

In other words, the Eurasian bovids were not specially created as ready-made domestic animals for human use. They were the result of millions of years of ruminant evolution, dispersal, extinction, replacement and adaptation to changing climates and habitats. Domestic cattle came much later, when humans took one descendant of this long evolutionary history — the aurochs, Bos primigenius — and altered it further by artificial selection.

The key points above are based on Bibi and colleagues’ review of the bovid fossil record, which places early Eotragus-like forms around 18–17 Ma and notes that early Bovinae must already have split from other bovids by about 18 Ma. It also notes probable stem Bovini in southern Asia by about 9 Ma, followed by dispersal into Africa and Europe. The newer PLOS One paper treats Parabos tigneresi as either among the earliest European stem Bovini or among the last members of the related Tragoportacini radiation.

The paper in PLOS One was accompanied by a news release from PLOS via EurekAlert!:

Half-ton early Bovines roamed 4-million-year-old grasslands in Europe
Complete skeletons from Iberia prompt revision of lifestyle and identity of early buffalo-like species

Palaeoartistic reconstruction of the environment in the surrounding of Camp dels Ninots maar lake during the early Pliocene.

Artwork by Mauricio Antón.
Sorbelli et al., 2026, CC-BY 4.0

The first large-sized bovines grew to up to half a ton 4 million years ago in the European Early Pliocene, an early step toward our modern diversity of large-bodied buffalo and cattle, according to a study published June 3, 2026 in the open access journal PLOS One by Leonardo Sorbelli of the Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Germany, and colleagues.

Bovines are major components of many modern ecosystems as well as of human agriculture, particularly species of the tribe Bovini, which includes bison, buffalo, and cattle. But their evolutionary origins and their relationships with the most closely related groups have been unclear given a lack of well-preserved early fossils. The discovery of several near-complete skeletons at the 4.4-million-year-old site of Camp de Ninots in northeastern Iberia prompted Sorbelli and colleagues to re-examine these early European cattle relatives.

Osteology and in-life reconstruction of Parabos tigneresi based on the specimens from Camp dels Ninots. Cranium (A–C), dentition (D–I), skeleton (J) and life restoration of an adult male with colors based on the extant bongo (Tragelaphus euryceros) (K), with the position of the most important anatomical elements mentioned in the text. Drawings not to scale. Artwork by LS.

Artwork by L.S.
Sorbelli et al., 2026, CC-BY 4.0

The researchers examined remains from at least 14 individuals in their study and identified them as Parabos tigneresi, part of a group of five buffalo-like species that inhabited Europe during the Early Pliocene. The largest of these specimens is estimated to have weighed nearly 500 kilograms, smaller than most living cattle species but larger than any other similar bovid of this time. These animals therefore represent an early stage of increasing body sizes in the bovine lineage, possibly as an adaptation to the climatic and environmental changes which characterized the European continent during the Pliocene. Their anatomy suggests that they predominantly inhabited a humid, vegetation-dense environment, matching the researchers’ understanding of the water-rich environment that existed at the Camp de Ninots site.

This study identifies the Early Pliocene as the beginning of the age of large bovines, but the exact relationships of Parabos remain unclear. Based on comparisons with other species, the authors conclude that Parabos either represent the earliest members of the tribe Bovini or the latest members of a related lineage, Tragoportacini, which were ultimately replaced by true buffaloes, cattle and bison. Future study into the anatomy and ecology of Parabos will help resolve precisely where these animals fit into the story of bovine evolution.

The bovids from Camp dels Ninots are among the most exquisite fossils from the Pliocene of Europe. The exceptional preservation of these animals has allowed us to better understand their anatomy and, therefore, the ecology of the first large-sized bovids to populate the continent. Working on these fossils has been both challenging and satisfying. The exceptional preservation and abundance of the remains have provided us with a large amount of data, which is unique for such ancient geological periods and opened a new window on our world before the arrival of humans.

Sorbelli L, Bibi F, Madurell-Malapeira J, Grandi F, Moreno-Ribas E, Oms O, et al.

Publication:
Sorbelli L, Bibi F, Madurell-Malapeira J, Grandi F, Moreno-Ribas E, Oms O, et al. (2026)
First of a line or last of a dynasty? Parabos tigneresi and the evolution of eurasian bovinae in the early pliocene.
PLoS One 21(6): e0340256. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0340256

Abstract
The Early Pliocene maar deposits of Camp dels Ninots (Catalonia, NE Iberia) have produced an exceptionally well-preserved fossil assemblage. Among the large mammals, a large bovid stands out, represented by 14 individuals, including 8 nearly complete and partially articulated skeletons. Here we provide a comprehensive description and systematic evaluation of this material, previously referred to Alephis tigneresi, including an in-depth comparison with specimens assigned to Parabos, Alephis, and other large Late Miocene and Early Pliocene Eurasian and African bovids. We revise the genera Alephis and Parabos, recognizing five valid species across both groups, and refer the Camp dels Ninots bovid to Parabos tigneresi. We further explore the possible relationships of Parabos and Alephis within Bovinae, finding that they could either be the earliest European representatives of stem Bovini or among the last surviving members of the Miocene Tragoportacini radiation. Additionally, the exceptionally preserved skeletons of P. tigneresi provide paleoecological evidence of adaptation to humid, vegetated environments, confirming reconstruction of the paleoenvironment of the Camp dels Ninots maar lake, while also showing traits associated with mixed to open habitats, suggesting potentially broad habitat preferences for P. tigneresi.

Fig 1. Geological and stratigraphical setting of Camp dels Ninots (CN). A–B, geological map and geographical localization of CN in the context of the North-Eastern Iberian Peninsula (A) and Caldes de Malavella (B, C); D, lithostratigraphical context of the studied Bovidae within the 4 sectors of CN locality.

Fig 2. Localities where Parabos and Alephis are recorded. 1, Arenas del Rey; 2, Baza-1; 3, Puerto de la Cadena; 4, Librilla; 5, Alcalá del Júcar; 6, Alcoy-Mina; 7, Venta del Moro; 8; Camp dels Ninots; 9, Baho; 10, Perpignan; 11, Villeneuve-de-la-Raho and Serrat d’en Vaquer; 12, Ille-sur-Têt; 13, Saint Palais; 14, Sables de Montpellier; 15, Celleneuve; 16, Pont-de-Gail (Saint-Clément); 17, Saint-Laurent-des-Arbres; 18, Jassans-Riottier; 19, Tunnel de Caluire (Collonge); 20, Trèvoux; 21, Autrey-lès-Gray; 22, Puimoisson; 23, Montecarlo; 24; Casino basin; 25, Val di Pugna; 26, Velona; 27, Gravitelli; 28, Ivanovce; 29, Kisláng; 30, Capeni; 31, Varghis; 32; Iaras-1; 33, Beresti; 34, Malusteni; 35, South Bessarabia 36, Sofia basin; 37, Stamer; 38, Gephyra; 39, Ptolemais basin; 40, Milia; 41, Megalo Emvolon (“Falaise de Karabouroun”); 42, Esme-Manissa; 43, Erikdere; 44, Red Crag. Map made with Natural Earth.

Fig 3. Articulated skeletons of Parabos tigneresi from Camp dels Ninots.
A, IPHES.CN’11-B4; B, IPHES.CN’04-B1; C, IPHES.CN’05-B2; D, IPHES.CN’19-B15; E, IPHES.CN’17-B14; F, IPHES.CN’06-B3.

Sorbelli L, Bibi F, Madurell-Malapeira J, Grandi F, Moreno-Ribas E, Oms O, et al. (2026)
First of a line or last of a dynasty? Parabos tigneresi and the evolution of eurasian bovinae in the early pliocene.
PLoS One 21(6): e0340256. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0340256

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

So here again, reality is not remotely what the Bible story leads its followers to expect. There is no sudden appearance of ready-made cattle for human use, no neat division between “wild” and “domestic” animals, and no hint of a world stocked in a single act of magic a few thousand years ago. Instead, there is a long, complex history of evolving ruminants, dispersing across changing landscapes, adapting to local environments, and giving rise over millions of years to the bovine lineages from which modern cattle, bison and buffalo eventually emerged.

Parabos tigneresi was not a failed attempt at a cow, nor a half-finished domestic animal waiting for humans to arrive. It was a successful Pliocene species, adapted to its own environment, living in a humid, vegetation-rich lakeside ecosystem long before there were humans to domesticate anything, and long before the authors of Genesis imagined their little world was the centre of creation.

The discovery at Camp dels Ninots is therefore another small but telling example of the way science builds a coherent picture from geology, anatomy, palaeoecology and evolutionary biology. Different lines of evidence converge on the same conclusion: these animals belonged to a real, ancient ecosystem, shaped by natural processes, not by the needs, myths or theological vanity of humans.

Creationism has no explanation for this, other than denial, special pleading or the usual retreat into metaphor whenever the facts become too awkward. Evolution, by contrast, explains why these animals existed, why they looked as they did, why they lived where they did, and how they fit into the wider history of life. Once again, the evidence is not merely consistent with evolution; it is exactly the sort of evidence we should expect if evolution is true — and exactly the sort of evidence that should not exist if Genesis were real history.

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Refuting Creationism - The Evidence Shows How Wrong The Bronze Age Myths In The Bible Were

2026-06-02T14:00:54.206+01:00

A crouched burial of a 40 year old man in Oostwoud, the earliest known Bell Beaker grave identified by the researchers.

Source: Provincial Depot for Archaeology Noord-Holland.

DNA study uncovers continental origins of Britain’s bronze age population

Leaving a side the long history of archaic hominins such as the Neanderthals and their ancestors inhabiting Western Eurasia for about 250,000 years before the arrival of large numbers of anatomically modern humans, which itself is deeply problematic for creationists, there is also the archaeological record of the complext history of modern humans going back at least 40,000 years which simply would not be there if the Bible narrative of a recent spontaneous magical origin and a later global genocidal flood were true.

As reported in a paper in Nature last February (2026), the history of Northwest Europe and the Bristic Isles is far mpre complex and interesting that the simple Bronze Age fairy tail in Genesis.

Of course, the arcahaeolgeneticists never set out to disprove the Bible. The facts they revealed did that as a matter of course, because unlike Genesis, the facts record real events.

The contrast could hardly be more stark. Genesis gives us a world populated from a single specially-created human pair, followed by a later repopulation of the world from Noah’s family after a global flood, and then the dispersal of peoples after Babel. That is a story of magical manufacture, catastrophic reset and sudden dispersal. The ancient DNA tells a completely different story: long-lived regional populations, gradual migration, intermarriage, cultural exchange, local ecological adaptation and no global genetic bottleneck compatible with a recent universal flood.

The Leiden University news item reports on a Nature paper showing that the prehistoric populations of the Low Countries — roughly the Netherlands, Belgium and north-western Germany — did not simply follow the same demographic pattern as much of the rest of Neolithic Europe. The research team analysed ancient DNA from 112 individuals dating from about 10,500 to 3,700 years ago, from the Rhine–Meuse region.

Across much of Europe, incoming farmers descended from early Anatolian farming populations mixed with, and in many places largely replaced, local hunter-gatherer ancestry between about 6500 and 4000 BCE. In the wetland, riverine and coastal Low Countries, however, that transformation was delayed. The *Nature* paper describes this region as an exception: a distinctive population with high hunter-gatherer ancestry persisted about 3,000 years longer than in many other European regions.

This was not because the region was isolated from ideas. Farming groups were present in Zuid-Limburg from about 5500 BCE, but their influence further north was limited for a long period. The evidence suggests that the Rhine–Meuse delta remained attractive to hunter-gatherer communities because it was rich in fish, game, fruit, seeds and other resources, so there was less immediate pressure to abandon foraging for farming.

One especially interesting finding is that the limited early farmer ancestry detected in these communities appears mainly through maternal lines. Leiden archaeologist Quentin Bourgeois suggests this may mean that women helped introduce agricultural knowledge into local hunter-gatherer societies, challenging a simple male-centred migration narrative.

The later Corded Ware period also shows that culture and genes do not always move together. In the western Rhine–Meuse region, people adopted new pottery styles and burial customs, yet their genetic profile remained largely local. In other words, ideas, techniques and social practices could spread through contact networks without mass population replacement.

A major genetic shift came only later, around 2500 BCE, with the Bell Beaker phenomenon. At that point, incoming groups from Central Europe mixed with local Rhine–Meuse populations. The resulting population later had a major influence elsewhere, including Britain, where the *Nature* paper says Bell Beaker-associated groups from this broader region were a major source of the 90–100% replacement of local Neolithic ancestry.

This study is exactly the kind of evidence that should not exist if the Biblical narrative were literal history. These people were not the freshly-scattered descendants of a single post-Flood family. They were populations with deep regional continuity, carrying identifiable ancestry from older European hunter-gatherers, later Anatolian-derived farmers, Corded Ware-associated migrants and Bell Beaker groups, all layered through time by ordinary human movement and reproduction.

What emerges is not a creation event but a population history. There is no hint of humans being created fully formed in a garden, no evidence of all humanity being reduced to eight survivors on a boat, and no sudden post-Babel origin of European peoples. Instead, the Low Countries show what real history looks like when read from bones and genomes: messy, regional, gradual, contingent and entirely natural.

Waves of Migration into Northwestern Europe. The peopling of Northwestern Europe was not a single event, and certainly not the sudden appearance of specially-created people in a finished world. It was a long, repeated process of movement, extinction, survival, interbreeding and replacement, shaped by climate, geography, technology and ecology.

Neanderthal Europe
Before modern humans arrived, Northwestern Europe was inhabited by Neanderthals. They had lived in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years and were well adapted to Ice Age conditions, but they existed in relatively small, scattered populations vulnerable to climatic instability, ecological change and competition.
Early modern human incursions
There is evidence for early Homo sapiens movements into western and central Europe before the final replacement of Neanderthals. Some of these appear to have been short-lived incursions rather than permanent colonisation. The picture is not one of a single triumphant invasion, but of a patchwork of modern human and Neanderthal populations overlapping in time and space.
The Upper Palaeolithic expansion
By about 45,000 years ago, modern humans were present in central and northwestern Europe. These early groups were associated with Upper Palaeolithic technologies, including the Lincombian–Ranisian–Jerzmanowician tradition. Neanderthals disappeared from most of Europe soon afterwards, although their genetic legacy survived because some Neanderthals and modern humans interbred.
Aurignacian and Gravettian hunter-gatherers
After Neanderthals vanished, Europe was occupied by successive modern human hunter-gatherer populations. These were not a single unchanging “Stone Age people”, but shifting communities with changing tool traditions, art, burial practices and genetic profiles. The Aurignacian and later Gravettian cultures represent major phases in this Upper Palaeolithic occupation.
Ice Age retreat and post-glacial recolonisation
During the Last Glacial Maximum, around 25,000–19,000 years ago, much of northern Europe became uninhabitable or only sparsely occupied. Human populations survived mainly in refuges farther south and west. As the climate warmed, groups such as the Magdalenians expanded north-eastwards again, recolonising areas that had been abandoned or thinly populated during the coldest phase.
Mesolithic hunter-gatherers
After the ice sheets retreated, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers occupied the forests, rivers, coasts and wetlands of Northwestern Europe. In Britain, people related to western European hunter-gatherers recolonised the landscape before rising sea levels finally separated Britain from the continent. In the Low Countries, rich wetland and delta environments allowed hunter-gatherer lifeways to persist for unusually long periods.
Neolithic farmers from Anatolia via Europe
From about the seventh to fifth millennia BCE, farming spread into Europe with people ultimately descended from Anatolian and Aegean farming populations. In much of Europe, these farmers largely replaced or absorbed local hunter-gatherers. In Britain, farming arrived around 4000 BCE with incoming continental farmers, while in the Rhine–Meuse region hunter-gatherer ancestry remained unusually strong for thousands of years.
Corded Ware and steppe ancestry
From about 3000 BCE, ancestry ultimately linked with the Pontic–Caspian steppe spread into much of Europe, often associated with the Corded Ware complex. In many areas this was a major demographic change, but the western Rhine–Meuse wetlands were unusual: people there adopted some Corded Ware styles and customs without a matching large-scale influx of steppe ancestry.
Bell Beaker expansion
Around 2500 BCE, the Bell Beaker phenomenon brought a clearer genetic shift into the Lower Rhine–Meuse region, involving migrants with Corded Ware-related ancestry mixing with local forager-descended populations. This mixed population later became highly influential, especially in Britain, where Bell Beaker-associated groups from the continent caused a major replacement of earlier Neolithic ancestry.

The resulting picture is one of deep time, repeated migration and complex population history. Northwestern Europeans were not the descendants of a single couple created a few thousand years ago, nor of one family surviving a global flood. They were the product of many ancient populations, each leaving traces in archaeology, culture and DNA.

For a creationist, this is awkward evidence. For science, it is simply another piece of the growing picture of human prehistory: not mythic beginnings, but populations adapting to landscapes, exchanging ideas, marrying across cultural boundaries and leaving their ancestry written in DNA thousands of years before the Bible’s imagined chronology could accommodate them.

DNA study reveals remarkable stability in prehistoric Low Countries populations
For thousands of years, the prehistoric communities of the Low Countries followed their own path compared with the rest of Europe. This unique region later played a key role in major European shifts. An international research team has now published these findings in Nature.
While large-scale migrations and rapid genetic changes occurred elsewhere in Europe, the population of what is now the Netherlands, Belgium and north-western Germany remained remarkably stable. The study shows that Europe’s prehistory was far less uniform than often assumed. According to the researchers, landscape, lifestyle and social structures proved decisive. The results were published in Nature on 11 February.

Farming arrived later
The findings are noteworthy because hunter-gatherers and early farmers in other parts of Europe intermixed on a large scale much earlier, explains archaeologist Quentin Bourgeois. This took place between 8500 and 4000 BC, and within just a few centuries, farming ancestry became dominant across much of Europe. According to the study, however, hunter-gatherer DNA remained predominant in the Low Countries until around 3000 bc.

The international team analysed skeletal remains from 112 individuals dating from 10,500 to 3,700 years ago. These individuals lived in the Rhine–Meuse region of the Low Countries – today’s Netherlands, Belgium and north‑western Germany.

Previous archaeological research had already shown that large-scale farming emerged later in the Low Countries. Our genetic research aligns perfectly with the archaeological evidence.

Quentin Bourgeois, co-lead author
Faculty of Archaeology
Leiden University
Leiden, The Netherlands.

Farmers in Zuid-Limburg
Around 5500 BC, small groups of farmers settled in what is now the province of Zuid-Limburg, but their contact with communities further north remained very limited. The DNA analysis confirms that people in the region lived primarily as hunter-gatherers for much longer. The Limburg farmers were descendants of early farmers from the Middle East, people with what is known as an Anatolian genetic profile. Their descendants slowly moved into the Low Countries via Central Europe over a period of roughly 2,000 years, says Bourgeois

Role of women
One of the most striking findings concerns the role of women in these early interactions. The limited amount of farmer DNA that appears early in the Rhine–Meuse region entered primarily through maternal lines.
This period is often viewed through a male lens, but DNA evidence now shows that it was probably women who introduced crucial agricultural knowledge into these societies.

Quentin Bourgeois.

A crouched burial of a 40 year old man in Oostwoud, the earliest known Bell Beaker grave identified by the researchers.

Source: Provincial Depot for Archaeology Noord-Holland.

Food rich delta
Why was the Rhine–Meuse region so exceptional? Part of the answer lies in the landscape, says Leiden emeritus professor Harry Fokkens:

Hunting and gathering remained important for longer because the Rhine-Meuse delta was rich in resources. It offered a wide range of food sources such as game, fish, fruits and seeds, bringing everything together in one place. People could successfully gather their food here. [The region’s many waterways also played a key role in maintaining social networks]. People remained connected along rivers and coastlines. Ideas could spread without entire populations needing to relocate.

Emeritus Professor Harry Fokkens, co-lead author
Faculty of Archaeology
Leiden University
Leiden, The Netherlands.

Corded Ware Culture
Around 3000 BC, the contrast becomes even clearer. Across large parts of Europe, the Corded Ware Culture emerged: in late‑prehistoric societies, people began burying their dead individually and producing pottery decorated with distinctive cord impressions. According to the researchers, this culture is often linked to migration from the Eastern European steppe.

Circulation of Ideas
In the western Rhine–Meuse region, the pattern looked different. Residents adopted new pottery styles and customs, but their genetic profile remained largely local.
This shows that cultural innovation was not automatically the result of mass migration. Practices, techniques and styles could spread rapidly through existing networks, without large groups of people moving. Large-scale DNA research is now making it possible to distinguish between cultural and genetic change.

Eveline Altena, co-lead author.
Department of Human Genetics
Leiden University Medical Center
Leiden, The Netherlands.

Bell Beaker Culture
Only around 2500 BC does the picture shift dramatically. With the rise of the Bell Beaker Culture – recognisable from its bell‑shaped pottery and characteristic burial practices – new groups arrived in the Rhine–Meuse region. A clear genetic transition follows, involving both men and women. The local population did not disappear entirely, however: elements of their genetic signature remained present in the new communities. This suggests intermixing between incoming groups from Central Europe and the indigenous population of the Rhine–Meuse region.

Expansion towards United Kingdom
This mixed population later proved highly influential, the team notes. The study shows that communities from the Rhine–Meuse region played a major role in spreading the Bell Beaker Culture further across Europe, including towards what is now the United Kingdom. There, this expansion was accompanied by an almost complete replacement of earlier populations by groups with ancestry in the Rhine–Meuse region.

The Rhine–Meuse region therefore has two faces. For thousands of years it developed along its own trajectory, but ultimately it also became a region with significant influence on developments elsewhere in Europe.

Quentin Bourgeois.

Approximately 50 researchers worked on the study. The Nature publication has five first authors. Leiden archaeologists Quentin Bourgeois and Harry Fokkens were responsible for the archaeological interpretation. LUMC archaeogeneticist Eveline Altena analysed the genetic data. The other first authors are (archeo)geneticist Iñigo Olalde from the University of the Basque Country (Spain) and (archeo) geneticist David Reich from Harvard University (Boston, USA).

In addition to the news item from Leiden University, two of the authors, Martin B. Richards, Research Professor in Archaeogenetics, and Maria Pala, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biology, of Sheffield University have written an article in The Conversation. Their article is reprinted here under a Creatiive Commons licene, refirmatted for stylistic consistency:

Published: February 23, 2026 1.35pm GMT

DNA study uncovers continental origins of Britain’s bronze age population

The researchers analysed genetic material from remains found at excavations across Belgium and the Netherlands.

Monika Knul

Martin B. Richards, University of Huddersfield and Maria Pala, University of Huddersfield

When ancient DNA studies began to gain attention, little more than a decade ago, the view took hold among geneticists that everything we thought we knew about the peopling of Europe by modern humans was wrong. The story was simpler than anyone was expecting: Europe was settled in just three massive migrations from the east.

First came the hunter-gatherers, more than 40,000 years ago. Then, after 9,000 years ago, there was an expansion of farming people from Anatolia during the Neolithic age.

Finally, from 5,000 years ago, the Corded Ware people expanded out of the Russian steppe to inaugurate the European bronze age. The Corded Ware were named after the cord-like impressions in their pottery and carried a distinctive genetic signature previously absent from most of Europe. Genetically, most present-day Europeans have some of each.

This was always an over-simplification, however. Our new paper, produced with colleagues from the US and across Europe, has highlighted some of the more complex interactions between ancient populations that took place in north-west Europe.

Our research untangles the origins of prehistoric populations across Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as identifying the source population for a migration into Britain during the late Neolithic that seems to have led to a 90% replacement of Britain’s Neolithic farmers.

Ancient DNA research already suggested a much more nuanced picture. For example, when early Neolithic farmers first moved into Europe, they interacted little with the local hunter-gatherer people. As a result, although they now lived far from their homeland, their genomes still resembled those of their ancestors from Anatolia.

But by 1,000–2,000 years later, they had absorbed significant local ancestry. Their hunter-gatherer ancestry swelled from only 10% to 30–40% in some regions. Clearly the hunter-gatherers had not vanished as the farmers expanded.

Hunter-gatherer ancestry in populations across Europe between 4,500BC and 2,500BC.

Nature / University of Huddersfield

Northern wetlands

The new research takes us even further from the simple picture. Almost a decade ago, our research group at the University of Huddersfield began a collaboration with palaeoecologist Professor John Stewart from Bournemouth University and archaeologists at the Université de Liège, Belgium. We analysed the genomes of Neolithic human remains excavated along the River Meuse in Belgium, dating to around 5,000 years ago.

This work became part of a larger project, led by Professor David Reich and Dr Iñigo Olalde at Harvard University, involving geneticists and archaeologists from across western Europe. This widened the focus to further sites around the Lower Rhine–Meuse area – wetlands and coastal areas as well as rivers – spanning the late hunter-gatherer cultures to the bronze age.

The fertile soils south of the Rhine-Meuse wetlands had attracted pioneer Neolithic farmer-colonists as early as 5,500BC. However, the rich resources of the northern wetlands were more suited to the lifestyle practised by hunter-gatherers. Even so, the results, generated by our research student, Alessandro Fichera, in collaboration with Harvard, came as a big surprise.

The genomes of people from later Neolithic times in Belgium carried at least 50% local hunter-gatherer ancestry, alongside the expected Anatolian farmer ancestry. Discussing these results with our collaborators led to a “eureka” moment: the same pattern appeared at other sites situated in similarly water-rich environments across the region.

Notably, many of the earlier Neolithic Dutch samples from further north – such as the Swifterbant culture, well-known for maintaining a hunter-gatherer economy alongside some adoption of agriculture – carried close to 100% hunter-gatherer ancestry.

Women’s role in the spread of farming

We then compared the Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA, which track the male and female lines of descent, respectively. The Y chromosomes in the Belgian remains were all characteristic of hunter-gatherers, but three-quarters of the mitochondrial DNA lineages had come from Neolithic farmers living further south. The implication was clear: farming know-how had been imported into the “waterworld” hunter-gatherer communities by women.

Our findings support a version of the “frontier mobility” or “availability” model for the spread of the Neolithic, proposed by archaeologists Marek Zvelebil and Peter Rowley-Conwy in the 1980s. They envisioned a contact zone between pioneer farming groups arriving by “leapfrog colonisation” and hunter-gatherer areas.

In the model, the “availability” phase entailed contact and small-scale movements across the frontier, with trading relationships and marriage alliances, for example, forming gradually. This would be followed by a “substitution” phase where farming develops alongside foraging in the hunter-gatherer area, and eventually a “consolidation” phase, when farming predominates.

Our results suggest that the frontier was much more permeable to women than it was to men, and that it may have been marriage of Neolithic women into the forager communities that eventually helped the hunter-gatherers to adopt farming full time. After all, because of the predominance of farming across Europe, the likely alternative long-term was extinction.

Perhaps this kind of model might also apply to other parts of Europe where we lack evidence for how the increased hunter-gatherer ancestry in the later Neolithic came about. In any case, the fact that, here, the “more advanced” farming women married into hunter-gatherer groups, contrary to many archaeologists’ expectations that hunter-gatherer women would “marry up”, suggests that perceptions need to change.

Pottery made by the Bell Beaker people, who created the bronze age of central Europe.

Alfons Åberg, CC BY-SA

Beakers, bronze age and Britain

Around 4,600 years ago, though, people were on the move again. A new wave of settlers – pastoralist-farmers hailing ultimately from the Russian steppe – began to infiltrate the Rhine area in the form of the Corded Ware culture. As growing numbers moved in from the east, they were transformed – we still don’t understand exactly how – into what is known as the Bell Beaker culture.

Within a few centuries, the genetic landscape of the Rhine-Meuse region, including the wetlands, was completely reshaped. Our colleagues found that, 4,400 years ago, less than 20% of the ancestry of the people living there traced back to the earlier farmers and hunter-gatherers. At least 80% of their ancestry was now from the steppe.

The Bell Beaker people rapidly expanded and rippled out further in all directions, creating the bronze age of central Europe. And not only central Europe – they also spread across the English Channel and throughout Britain, extending as far north as Orkney.

It looks as if the British farmers who had been building Stonehenge over the preceding centuries all but disappeared – again, for reasons which remain unclear.

But did they actually vanish? Perhaps this rather blunt picture might become more nuanced too, as we learn more fine-grained details of what happened from archaeology and ancient DNA.

Martin B. Richards, Research Professor in Archaeogenetics, Department of Physical and Life Sciences, University of Huddersfield and Maria Pala, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Biology, Department of Physical and Life Sciences, University of Huddersfield

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)

Publication:

Olalde, I., Altena, E., Bourgeois, Q. et al.
Lasting Lower Rhine–Meuse forager ancestry shaped Bell Beaker expansion.
Nature 652, 938–946 (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 turnover¹, then steppe ancestry spread with the Corded Ware complex 3000–2500 bce². 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 Linearbandkeramik³, 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 652, 938–946 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10111-8

© 22026 Springer Nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

What this research shows is not a simple tale of one people replacing another in a neat sequence, still less the sudden appearance of humans in a magically-created world. It shows a complex, evidence-rich history of populations moving, mixing, persisting, adapting and sometimes being replaced over many thousands of years. The people of prehistoric Northwestern Europe were not characters in a folk tale; they were real human communities whose lives were shaped by climate, landscape, food resources, technology and contact with neighbouring groups.

That is why studies such as this are so fatal to the Bible creation myth when it is mistaken for history. The genetic evidence does not point to a single founding couple, a recent global flood, or the dispersal of all peoples from one post-Flood family. It points instead to deep ancestry, regional continuity, repeated migration and interbreeding between populations with different histories. The Low Countries, far from fitting a childish story of instant creation and recent repopulation, preserve evidence of a long, slow, natural human story written in DNA.

Creationism has no mechanism with which to explain these patterns, except by denying the evidence or pretending that it somehow means something other than it does. Science, by contrast, can test, refine and correct its account as new evidence is discovered. Ancient DNA does not merely add detail to archaeology; it allows us to see the movement of people, ideas and ancestry through time, revealing a past far richer and more interesting than Bronze Age mythology ever imagined.

And once again, the contrast could hardly be clearer. Reality gives us ancient populations, changing environments, cultural exchange and genetic inheritance. Genesis gives us magic, talking snakes, a boat full of animals and a mythical family tree. One is evidence-based history; the other is theology dressed up as history by people who need the facts not to be true.

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Eco-Friendly Books

2026-05-31T21:17:42.553+01:00

All my paperback books are now printed on lower carbon groundwood paper. What does this mean for the reader? Here is what Amazon have to say:

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Creationism Refuted - The Theory of Evolution May Be Slightly Wrong - But It's No Comfort To Creationists

2026-05-31T16:54:00.973+01:00

Microscopic fungi, baker’s or brewer’s yeast, are used as probiotics to restore normal flora of intestine.

Image credit: Adobe Stock

A new theory of molecular evolution | University of Michigan News

A paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution last november (2025) by four evolutionary biologists from the University of Michigan might have caused a stir of excitement in creationists cirles if any of them ever read a science paper because it appears on first sight to question the basis of the Theory of Evolution - what creationists call 'Dawinism'. However, that excitement would have been short-lived if they had read the details.

This is not the long-awaited collapse of the Theory of Evolution that creationists have been confidently predicting since at least the middle of the last century. It is nothing of the sort. It is a normal example of science doing what science does: testing a model against evidence, finding that the model is incomplete, and adjusting the explanation accordingly.

The theory being challenged here is not evolution itself, nor common descent, nor natural selection, nor mutation, nor population genetics. It is the neutral theory of molecular evolution, a theory developed in the 1960s to explain why many genetic changes appear to spread through populations without obvious adaptive advantage. The new paper argues that this appearance of neutrality may be misleading. What looks neutral in the long term may, in fact, be the result of short-term adaptation to changing environments.

The researchers found that beneficial mutations are more common than the classic neutral theory assumes. The problem, then, is why these apparently useful mutations do not become fixed at the rate one might expect. Their answer is beautifully evolutionary: environments change. A mutation that helps in one set of conditions may be useless, or even harmful, in another. So populations are not marching steadily towards some perfect design; they are continually tracking a moving target.

That is what the authors mean by adaptive tracking with antagonistic pleiotropy. “Pleiotropy” means that one mutation can have more than one effect. “Antagonistic” means that those effects can pull in opposite directions: helpful here, harmful there; useful now, costly later. This is not magic. It is not supernatural intervention. It is the ordinary interaction between genes, organisms and environments.

Creationists often pretend that science is an orthodoxy in which biologists merely defend Darwin at all costs. This paper shows the opposite. Scientists have examined one of their own long-standing theories, compared it with new evidence, and proposed a better explanation. No sacred text was protected. No dogma was shielded from scrutiny. No conclusion was declared immune from revision.

The result is not less evolution, but more evolutionary detail. Mutation still supplies variation. Selection still acts on differences in reproductive success. Genetic drift still matters. Environments still shape which variants succeed and which fail. What has changed is the understanding of how molecular change can appear neutral over deep time while still being shaped by episodes of adaptation in shifting environments.

So, far from helping creationism, this paper undercuts one of creationism’s favourite caricatures of science. It shows evolutionary biology as a living, self-correcting science, not a rigid ideology. It also shows why no supernatural designer is needed. The process described is entirely natural: mutations arise, their effects depend on circumstances, environments change, and populations respond as best they can, without foresight, plan or purpose.

Glossary^ Molecular Evolution Without Magic.

Theory of Evolution (TOE): The scientific explanation for how populations change over generations through natural processes such as mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow and common descent.
Molecular evolution: Evolution studied at the level of DNA, RNA and proteins, rather than at the level of whole bodies, fossils or visible traits.
Neutral theory: A theory of molecular evolution proposing that many genetic changes spread through populations not because they are useful, but because they are selectively neutral or nearly neutral.
Mutation: A change in genetic material. Mutations may be harmful, beneficial or neutral, depending on their effects and the environment in which they occur.
Amino acid: One of the building blocks of proteins. A change in DNA can sometimes alter an amino acid in a protein, which may affect how that protein works.
Beneficial mutation: A mutation that improves survival or reproduction in a particular environment. It is not necessarily beneficial in all environments.
Fitness: A measure of how well an organism’s traits help it survive and reproduce in its particular environment. Fitness is not absolute; it depends on circumstances.
Natural selection: The process by which inherited traits that improve survival or reproduction tend to become more common in a population.
Genetic drift: Random change in gene frequencies, especially in small populations. Drift can spread or eliminate mutations independently of whether they are useful.
Fixation: The point at which a genetic variant has spread through a population so that all individuals carry it.
Substitution: A genetic change that has become established in a population or species over evolutionary time.
Selective sweep: The spread of a beneficial mutation through a population because natural selection favours it.
Pleiotropy: The situation in which one gene or mutation affects more than one trait.
Antagonistic pleiotropy: A case where a mutation has mixed effects: helpful in one respect, harmful in another; or useful in one environment, but costly in another.
Adaptive tracking: The process by which a population follows changing environmental conditions through natural selection. Because environments change, today’s useful mutation may not remain useful tomorrow.
Adaptive Tracking with Antagonistic Pleiotropy: The idea proposed in the paper: populations may repeatedly begin adapting to changing environments, but mutations can have conflicting effects, so many changes may appear neutral over long periods even though selection has been involved.
Deep mutational scanning: A laboratory method used to test the effects of large numbers of mutations, often by measuring how different genetic changes affect protein function or organismal fitness.
Environment: The conditions in which organisms live. This includes temperature, food, competitors, predators, parasites, chemicals and many other factors. In evolution, the environment helps determine which mutations are helpful, harmful or neutral.

The paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution was accoumpanied by a news item from the University of Michigan:

A new theory of molecular evolution
For a long time, evolutionary biologists have thought that the genetic mutations that drive the evolution of genes and proteins are largely neutral: they’re neither good nor bad, but just ordinary enough to slip through the notice of selection.

Now, a University of Michigan study has flipped that theory on its head.
In the process of evolution, mutations occur which can then become fixed, meaning that every individual in the population carries that mutation. A longstanding theory, called the Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution, posits that most genetic mutations that are fixed are neutral. Bad mutations will be quickly discarded by selection, according to the theory, which also assumes that good mutations are so rare that most fixations will be neutral, says evolutionary biologist Jianzhi Zhang.

The U-M study, led by Zhang, aimed to examine whether this was true. The researchers found that so many good mutations occurred that the Neutral Theory cannot hold. At the same time, they found that the rate of fixations is too low for the large number of beneficial mutations that Zhang’s team observed.

To resolve this, the researchers suggest that mutations that are beneficial in one environment may become harmful in another environment. These beneficial mutations may not become fixed because of frequent environmental changes. The study, supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, was published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

We’re saying that the outcome was neutral, but the process was not neutra. Our model suggests that natural populations are not truly adapted to their environments because environments change very quickly, and populations are always chasing the environment.

Professor Jianzhi Zhang, senior author.
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI, USA.

Zhang says their new theory, called Adaptive Tracking with Antagonistic Pleiotropy, tells us something about how well all living things are adapted to their environments.

I think this has broad implications. For example, humans. Our environment has changed so much, and our genes may not be the best for today’s environment because we went through a lot of other different environments. Some mutations may be beneficial in our old environments, but are mismatched to today. At any time when you observe a natural population, depending on when the last time the environment had a big change, the population may be very poorly adapted or it may be relatively well adapted. But we’re probably never going to see any population that is fully adapted to its environment, because a full adaptation would take longer than almost any natural environment can remain constant.

Professor Jianzhi Zhang.

The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution was first proposed in the 1960s. Previously, scientists studied evolution based on the morphology and physiology, or appearance, of organisms. But starting in the 1960s, scientists were able to start sequencing proteins, and later, genes. This prompted researchers to look at evolution at the molecular level.

To measure beneficial mutation rates, Zhang and colleagues investigated large deep mutational scanning datasets produced by his and other labs. In this kind of scanning, the scientists created many mutations on a specific gene or region of the genome in model organisms such as yeast and E. coli.

The researchers then followed the organism over many generations, comparing them against the wild type, or the most common version existing in nature, of the organisms. This allowed the researchers to measure their growth and compare their growth rate to the wild type, which is how they estimated the effect of the mutation.

They found that more than 1% of mutations are beneficial, orders of magnitude greater than what the Neutral Theory allows. This amount of beneficial mutations would lead to more than 99% of fixations being beneficial and a rate of gene evolution that is much higher than the rate that is observed in nature. The researchers realized they had made a mistake in assuming an organism’s environment remained constant.

To investigate the impacts of a changing environment, Zhang’s research team compared two groups of yeast. One group evolved in a constant environment for 800 generations (each generation lasted 3 hours), while the second group evolved in a changing environment, in this case composed of 10 different kinds of media, or solution, that the yeast grew in. The second yeast group grew in the first media for 80 generations, in the second media for another 80 generations, and so on, for a total of 800 generations as well.

The researchers found that there were far fewer beneficial mutations in the second group compared to the first. Although the beneficial mutations occurred, they didn’t have a chance to become fixed before the environment shifted.

This is where the inconsistency comes from. While we observe a lot of beneficial mutations in a given environment, those beneficial mutations do not have a chance to be fixed because as their frequency increases to a certain level, the environment changes. Those beneficial mutations in the old environment might become deleterious in the new environment.

Professor Jianzhi Zhang.

However, Zhang says there is a caveat: The data they used came from yeast and E. coli, two unicellular organisms in which it’s relatively easy to measure the fitness effects of mutations. Deep mutational scanning data collected from multicellular organisms would tell whether their findings from unicellular organisms apply to multicellular organisms such as humans. Next, the researchers are planning a study to understand why it takes so long for organisms to fully adapt to a constant environment.

Other authors of the study include former U-M graduate students Siliang Song and Xukang Shen and former U-M postdoctoral researcher Piaopiao Chen.

Publication:
Song, S., Chen, P., Shen, X. et al.
Adaptive tracking with antagonistic pleiotropy results in seemingly neutral molecular evolution.
Nat Ecol Evol 9, 2358–2373 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02887-1

Abstract
The neutral theory of molecular evolution, positing that most amino acid substitutions in protein evolution are neutral, is supported by vast comparative genomic data. However, here we report that the key premise of the theory—beneficial mutations are extremely scarce—is violated. Deep mutational scanning data from 12,267 amino acid-altering mutations in 24 prokaryotic and eukaryotic genes reveal that > 1% of these mutations are beneficial, predicting that > 99% of amino acid substitutions would be adaptive. This observation demands a new theory that is compatible with both the high beneficial mutation rate and the comparative genomic data considered consistent with the neutral theory. We propose such a theory named adaptive tracking with antagonistic pleiotropy. In this theory, virtually all beneficial mutations observed are environment specific. Frequent environmental changes and mutational antagonistic pleiotropy across environments render most of the beneficial mutations seen at one time deleterious soon after and hence rarely fixed. Consequently, despite the occurrence of adaptive tracking—continuous adaptation to a changing environment fuelled by beneficial mutations—neutral substitutions prevail. We show that this theory is supported by population genetics simulation, empirical observations and experimental evolution and has implications for the adaptedness of natural populations and the tempo and mode of evolution.

Song, S., Chen, P., Shen, X. et al.
Adaptive tracking with antagonistic pleiotropy results in seemingly neutral molecular evolution.
Nat Ecol Evol 9, 2358–2373 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02887-1

© 2025 Springer Nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This paper is not an admission that evolution has failed, nor is it a retreat from Darwin, common descent, natural selection or any of the other foundations of modern biology. It is a refinement of one part of evolutionary theory at the molecular level — exactly the sort of refinement that happens when scientists compare ideas with evidence rather than forcing evidence to conform to dogma.

Creationists like to portray science as an orthodoxy, but this is projection. In real science, theories are examined, tested, challenged and modified when the evidence requires it. The neutral theory of molecular evolution was not a sacred doctrine; it was a model, and like all scientific models it remains useful only for as long as it explains the facts. If a better model explains more, science changes. That is not weakness. That is why science works.

What the researchers have shown is that mutations, selection and changing environments can interact in more subtle ways than previously appreciated. A mutation that is beneficial in one environment may become neutral or even harmful when conditions change. Populations therefore do not evolve towards perfection, nor according to a plan, but in response to immediate circumstances, local pressures and inherited constraints.

There is no hint here of magic, design or supernatural interference. There is only the familiar evolutionary picture: organisms living in changing environments, mutations arising without foresight, selection acting without purpose, and populations changing over time. Creationists have been waiting for more than half a century for scientists to abandon evolution. Instead, scientists continue to do what creationism cannot do — improve their explanations in the light of evidence.

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Refuting Creationism - Another Bizarre Dinosaur - From 70 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

2026-05-30T23:17:40.767+01:00

A reconstruction of Kank australis

Gabriel Díaz Yantén.

Heron-like, fish-eating dinosaur from 70 million years ago discovered in Argentina - Taylor & Francis Newsroom

In my previous post, I wrote about Labrujasuchus expectatus, a bizarre distant relative of the crocodile line which walked on two legs, had tiny arms, and possessed a toothless mouth tipped with a beak. Although not a dinosaur, it looked superficially dinosaur-like — a neat example of convergent evolution. Because earlier and later shuvosaurids were already known from the region, palaeontologists predicted that a form occupying the gap between them should exist, and Labrujasuchus duly turned up in the right place and in the right rock formation.

That is how science works: evidence fits into a testable, predictive framework. Creationism, by contrast, has nothing to offer except hand-waving, misrepresentation and denial when confronted with a bizarre extinct archosaur from some 212 million years ago, just as it has nothing to offer in explanation of this almost equally bizarre dinosaur from about 70 million years ago.

The new species, Kank australis, is described by palaeontologist Dr Matías J. Motta, of the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires (Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia”), and his colleagues in a paper published on 28 May 2026 in the peer-reviewed Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Kank australis was a paravian theropod — an unenlagiid, belonging to a group of small- to medium-sized raptor-like dinosaurs known from Late Cretaceous Gondwanan deposits. Its discoverers suggest that it may have lived rather like a large heron. Its long jaws, armed with teeth, suggest a fish-eating habit, while its cervical vertebrae show structures associated with muscle attachment and the protection of neck blood vessels, features comparable with those seen in modern birds that rely on rapid, precise neck movements. In other words, this was probably not the familiar pop-culture image of a raptor as a fast-running terrestrial predator, but a specialised animal exploiting the riverine and wetland ecosystems of southern Patagonia.

And, as so often with new fossil discoveries, Kank australis fills in yet another of those gaps so beloved of creationists looking for somewhere to hide their ever-shrinking little god. In this case, it helps bridge a distributional gap in the Late Cretaceous record of southern Patagonia, connecting better-known unenlagiid records from northern Patagonia with those from Antarctica, and adding more detail to the still-patchy evolutionary history of these South American paravian dinosaurs.

Unenlagiids – southern raptor-like relatives of birds. The unenlagiids — sometimes treated as the subfamily Unenlagiinae within the dromaeosaurs — were a group of small- to medium-sized predatory theropod dinosaurs from the Southern Hemisphere. They belonged within Paraves, the wider dinosaur group that includes birds and their closest non-avian relatives, including dromaeosaurs and troodontids.

Most unenlagiid fossils have been found in Patagonia, especially Argentina, although related or possible members of the group have also been reported from elsewhere in Gondwana, including Antarctica, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Australia and Madagascar. This southern distribution is important because much of the classic fossil record of bird-like dinosaurs comes from the Northern Hemisphere, especially Asia and North America. Unenlagiids therefore help to fill in the Gondwanan side of the dinosaur-bird story.

The best-known unenlagiids include Unenlagia, Buitreraptor, Neuquenraptor, Pamparaptor, Austroraptor, Diuqin and now Kank australis. They were generally lightly built, long-legged animals with many bird-like features, although they were not birds. Like other paravians, they had the enlarged second toe claw often associated with “raptor” dinosaurs, but their body plans were not simply southern versions of Velociraptor. Several had long, low skulls, narrow jaws, numerous teeth and long, flexible necks, suggesting ecological specialisations different from the popular image of raptors as fast-running terrestrial hunters of large prey.

This is especially relevant to Kank australis. Its long jaws, teeth, neck vertebrae and association with fish-bearing deposits suggest a heron-like, fish-catching animal living around rivers, streams, ponds and wetlands in Late Cretaceous Patagonia. In other words, unenlagiids show that paravian dinosaurs were ecologically diverse, experimenting with different ways of life before the end-Cretaceous extinction removed all non-avian dinosaurs.

Their relationship to birds is particularly interesting. Birds are not merely “descended from dinosaurs”; in modern evolutionary classification, birds are dinosaurs — specifically avian theropod dinosaurs. Unenlagiids were close relatives of the bird line, but they were not necessarily direct ancestors of modern birds. Different phylogenetic studies have placed them either as early-diverging dromaeosaurs or as a separate paravian group close to Avialae, the branch that includes birds. Either way, they sit close to the dinosaur-bird transition and help show how bird-like characters evolved in a branching, mosaic pattern rather than appearing all at once.

That is why fossils such as Kank australis matter. They do not show a neat ladder of progress from “reptile” to “bird”, because evolution does not work like that. Instead, they reveal a branching evolutionary bush of feathered, bird-like theropods, some closer to the avian line than others, each adapted to its own environment. Creationism, with its fixed “kinds” and magical special creation, has no useful explanation for such a pattern. Evolution predicts precisely this sort of messy, branching, transitional diversity — and the rocks keep providing it.

The paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology was accompanied by a news release by the journal's publishers, Taylor & Francis:

Heron-like, fish-eating dinosaur from 70 million years ago discovered in Argentina
Palaeontologists estimate that the new species — described based on fossils unearthed at a ranch in Argentina — grew up to three metres long
A new raptor-like dinosaur from some 70 million years ago that ate fish and behaved like modern herons has been unearthed from southern Patagonia.

The new species, which has been named Kank australis, was identified based on the discovery of fossil remains including teeth, vertebrae and toe bones.

K. australis is an unenlagiid, a family of small-to-medium sized theropod dinosaurs whose members have been unearthed from Late Cretaceous deposits in South America, Antarctica, Australia and Madagascar.

Based on comparison with another unenlagiid — Neuquenraptor argentinus, which lived in northern Patagonia 90 million years ago — researchers believe adults of the new species likely grew up to some 2.5–3 metres long.

The new species is described by palaeontologist Dr Matías Motta, of the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires (Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia”), and his colleagues in a paper published today in the peer-reviewed Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

“Kank lived in a landscape of meandering rivers and streams with seasonal ponds, inhabited by aquatic plants such as water lilies and animals including fish, insects, and various molluscs,” says Dr Motta.

Based on the analysis of ancient soil samples and fossilised plant remains, he explains, we know that “70 million years ago the climate was temperate and humid, with seasonal rainfall, very different from the current cold and relatively dry conditions.”

Analysis of the fossilised remains of the new dinosaur, meanwhile, has shined light on how it might have lived.

“The cervical vertebrae of Kank show special structures for muscle attachment and the protection of neck blood vessels — features particularly important in modern birds with complex neck movements, such as herons,” says Dr Motta.

“This suggests Kank may have been an active fisher, contrasting with common portrayal of raptors as agile terrestrial predators, like Velociraptor from the Northern Hemisphere.”

The discovery also helps fill in some more of the patchy evolutionary history of the unenlagiids in South America. While seven different species have been recorded in northern Patagonia, until now the fossil record had only yielded a few isolated remains from the south of the region that palaeontologists were unable to attribute to particular species.

Kank helps bridge a distributional gap for the Late Cretaceous of southern Patagonia, connecting known records from northern Patagonia and Antarctica, and showing that this family was dispersed across different latitudes of South America.

Dr. Matías J. Motta, lead author
Laboratorio de Anatomía Comparada y Evolución de los Vertebrados
Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia”
Buenos Aires, Argentina.

K. australis was unearthed at La Anita farm, near the city of El Calafate, in Santa Cruz, Argentina.

“Field excavations have been conducted there since 2018, uncovering a wide variety of fossil animals and plants,” says Dr Motta.

“The first remains of Kank were discovered in 2018, but were too fragmentary to be identified as a new species,” he adds. “Subsequent expeditions recovered additional material, with the discovery of a cervical [neck] vertebra in 2024 proving key to recognising it as a new unenlagiine dinosaur.”

Like other unenlagiids, Dr Motta explains, K. australis sports an enlarged, ‘raptorial’ claw on the second toe of its foot.

“However,” he adds, “it differs in having teeth with sharp and pronounced longitudinal ridges and notably pneumatic cervical vertebrae (with internal air chambers).”

“It is also smaller and more gracile compared to other unenlagiids from the end of the Cretaceous, such as Austroraptor cabazai, a giant (around five metres long) unenlagiine from northern Patagonia.”

The discovery of the new dinosaur adds to mounting evidence that unenlagiids were piscivores — that is, fish-eaters.

Their elongated snouts, numerous teeth and long, flexible necks suggest adaptations for fishing, similar to modern herons. In the case of Kank, its remains were found alongside fish fossils, reinforcing this idea.

Dr. Matías J. Motta.

However, the palaeontologist notes, it is possible that Kank also preyed on other animals that lived in the same ecosystem, which included frogs, lizards, turtles, and even mammals like Patagorhynchus pascuali, a semi-aquatic monotreme related to modern echidnas and platypuses.

“Kank coexisted with larger carnivores such as Maip macrothorax, a formidable megaraptorid dinosaur more than 10 metres long, which may have been capable of preying upon it,” Dr Motta adds.

The genus of the newly discovered species pays homage to a myth of the Aonikenk, the southernmost group of the indigenous Tehuelche people of Patagonia.

“Kank refers to an old giant rhea [a large, flightless South American bird] whose powerful running steps left the imprint of its toes in the sky, forming the constellation known as Choiols,” explains Dr Motta.

“In Latin, this constellation is called Crux, the Southern Cross — which points toward the southernmost region of the planet, where Kank was discovered.”

Similarly, the species name — “australis”, literally “from south” — is also a nod to the latitude of the discovery.

With their initial study complete, the researchers are planning further digs into the Chorrillo Formation.

“The site where Kank was discovered has provided extensive information about the Late Cretaceous environment of southern Patagonia, so continuing excavations there is crucial,” explains Dr Motta.

“Finding more Kank fossils will help us better understand its biology and ecological role.”

In the meantime, the team are also studying new fossils from four sites in northern Patagonia.

“These findings indicate that unenlagiids were widely distributed during the Late Cretaceous,” Dr Motta says.

He adds: “We are particularly interested in investigating the environments they colonised and speciated in — especially in ecosystems dominated by large apex predators such as abelisaurids and megaraptorans.”

Publication:
Motta, M. J., Aranciaga Rolando, A. M., Rozadilla, S., Agnolín, F. L., Egli, F. B., Álvarez Herrera, G. P., … Novas, F. E. (2026).
New unenlagiid from the Chorrillo Formation (Late Cretaceous, Maastrichtian), SW Patagonia, Argentina.
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2026.2656456

ABSTRACT
Unenlagiids constitute a group of paravian theropods up to now represented in Gondwanan landmasses. They are particularly diverse in northern Patagonia, where at least seven species were discovered in Upper Cretaceous beds. In southern Patagonia, by contrast, the record is restricted to a few isolated remains of indeterminate taxa from Argentina and Chile. The aim of the present contribution is to describe an unenlagiid, Kank australis gen. et sp. nov. from the Maastrichtian beds of southern Santa Cruz, southern Patagonia, Argentina. Kank australis is represented by vertebrae, isolated pedal phalanges, and shed teeth. The holotype individual has a unique combination of characters, including a highly pneumatized cervical vertebra with well-developed parapophysis and carotid processes. Further, a pedal phalanx II-2 resembles those of troodontids due the reduction of the distal condyles, and differs from other known unenlagiids. The apomorphic condition of the few available elements suggests that Kank australis was probably distinct from its kin and reinforces the hypothesis that Unenlagiidae was a morphologically disparate clade.

Motta, M. J., Aranciaga Rolando, A. M., Rozadilla, S., Agnolín, F. L., Egli, F. B., Álvarez Herrera, G. P., … Novas, F. E. (2026).
New unenlagiid from the Chorrillo Formation (Late Cretaceous, Maastrichtian), SW Patagonia, Argentina.
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2026.2656456

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Informa UK Limited (Taylor & Francis). Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

So, yet again, palaeontology has done what creationism never does. It has taken a fragmentary fossil record, placed a new discovery within a coherent evolutionary framework, and used anatomy, geology, geography and comparative biology to explain why this animal existed where and when it did. Kank australis is not an isolated curiosity; it is another piece of a much larger pattern — the diversification of bird-like theropod dinosaurs in the Late Cretaceous world of Gondwana.

For evolutionary science, there is nothing embarrassing or unexpected about such a creature. A long-jawed, probably fish-eating paravian dinosaur, with neck adaptations suggestive of rapid striking movements, is exactly the sort of specialised form that natural selection can produce when an animal lineage explores a particular ecological niche. Nor is there anything mysterious about its mixture of features. Evolution does not produce organisms according to neat human categories; it modifies existing structures, producing mosaics of traits in branching lineages, some of which survive, while most eventually vanish.

Creationism, by contrast, has no explanatory framework for any of this. It cannot explain why bird-like dinosaurs occur in the rocks where evolutionary theory expects them, why they appear in a temporal sequence tens of millions of years before modern birds diversified, or why their anatomy shows precisely the kind of transitional, mosaic pattern expected of common descent. All it can do is pretend the evidence does not say what it plainly says, or wave it away with empty assertions about “kinds”.

Kank australis is therefore not just another fossil dinosaur. It is another small but telling reminder that the history of life is written in rocks, bones, anatomy and geography, not in Bronze Age origin myths. Once again, the evidence fits evolution naturally and effortlessly, while creationism is left trying to force yet another inconvenient fossil into a story of which it was never part.

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Refuting Creationism - Bizarre Creature From The Long History of Earth Before 'Creation Week'

2026-05-30T14:31:25.320+01:00

Reconstruction of Labrujasuchus expectatus, a new species of Shuvosauridae from Late Triassic rocks of Ghost Ranch, New Mexico

Art by Jorge Gonzalez, © NHMLAC Dinosaur Institute.

New Species of Bizarre, Bipedal, Toothless Crocodile Relative from the Triassic Discovered | Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County

Evolution, proceeding without a plan and lacking any sense of direction, can produce some truly bizarre creatures which, despite their appearance, survived perfectly well in the environments in which they evolved. Indeed, it would be bizarre to suppose otherwise, given that natural selection favours those forms that work well enough to survive and reproduce over those less well fitted to do so. To suppose otherwise would rival creationism for irrationality.

In this post, I’ll deal with a bizarre distant relative of the crocodiles; in the next, I’ll write about a strange theropod dinosaur from 70 million years ago that comes close to what any creationist might imagine a transitional species between dinosaurs and birds should look like.

Creationism is, of course, itself the product of an evolutionary process, forced into ever more bizarre forms by the hostile environment of scientific evidence. Modern creationism has therefore, by a similar process, become almost as bizarre as the life forms it is forced to deny in order to survive.

The sad thing is that creationists are denied the wonder of the truth about our planet as revealed in increasingly astonishing detail by science, because the facts must be waved aside and denied in order to cling to the childishly simplistic belief in magic and a world full of evil conspirators diligently working to trick them into changing their minds.

Who, for example, could have predicted that a distant relative of the crocodiles walked on two legs, had tiny arms, and had a toothless mouth tipped with a beak? It is almost as bizarre as the mental gymnastics creationists need to perform to dismiss it and force-fit the evidence into the predetermined conclusion that it must have been magically created within the last few thousand years and then allowed to go extinct for no apparent purpose — or that the evidence must either have been forged, misinterpreted or planted to test or deceive us.

Nevertheless, this creature, Labrujasuchus expectatus, did exist about 212 million years ago, in the Late Triassic, and its description is the subject of a recent paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Its fossilised remains were unearthed in Late Triassic rocks at the Hayden Quarry, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, USA, by a team of palaeontologists led by Dr Alan H. Turner of Stony Brook University, New York, USA, with colleagues including Dr Nathan D. Smith of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, California, USA.

To add insult to injury for creationists, this find fills one of those beloved gaps into which creationists try to force fit their creator god. The gap was that between two earlier discovered shuvosaurs from the region. It's discovery was thus a predicted by the Theory of Evolution, not by a book of Bronze Age mythology.

Shuvosauridae — crocodile-line reptiles that looked like ostrich dinosaurs. Shuvosauridae is an extinct family of Late Triassic archosaurs belonging to the crocodile-line branch of the archosaur family tree, the Pseudosuchia. That makes them distant relatives of modern crocodiles and alligators, not dinosaurs, although their appearance could easily mislead anyone expecting crocodile relatives to look vaguely crocodile-like.

The typical shuvosaurid body plan was anything but crocodilian in the modern sense. They were lightly built, long-necked, long-legged animals that walked on their hind legs, had reduced forelimbs, and, in the best-known forms, toothless jaws tipped with a beak. In overall outline, they converged strikingly on the body plan later seen in ostrich-like theropod dinosaurs, especially the ornithomimosaurs, despite being on the opposite side of the archosaur family tree.

That makes them a particularly good example of convergent evolution: unrelated lineages, faced with similar functional opportunities or constraints, arriving independently at similar anatomical solutions. In this case, the crocodile-line shuvosaurids evolved a bipedal, small-armed, beaked body form that would later be repeated in bird-line dinosaurs.

The group includes Shuvosaurus inexpectatus from Texas, Effigia okeeffeae from New Mexico, Sillosuchus longicervix from Argentina, Sonselasuchus cedrus from Arizona, and the newly described Labrujasuchus expectatus from Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. The North American forms are mostly known from Late Triassic rocks of the south-western United States, especially the Chinle and Dockum formations, which preserve a remarkable record of archosaur evolution before dinosaurs became the dominant large land animals.

Their diet is not known with certainty for every member of the family, but the toothless beak and jaw structure of Effigia suggest a specialised herbivore feeding on relatively soft plant material. That, too, is a reminder that crocodile-line archosaurs in the Triassic were far more diverse than modern crocodiles might lead us to imagine. Some were armour-plated herbivores, some were apex predators, some were aquatic or semi-aquatic, and some, like the shuvosaurids, were bipedal, beaked oddities experimenting with a body plan more familiar from dinosaurs and birds.

Shuvosauridae therefore illustrates one of the great lessons of the Triassic: evolution was not marching towards modern forms, nor following a script. It was producing multiple experiments in anatomy and ecology, many of which left no living descendants. The shuvosaurids were one of those evolutionary experiments — successful for a time, bizarre by modern expectations, and entirely inexplicable as the product of any simple-minded notion that animals were created as fixed, recognisable “kinds”.

The paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology was accompanied by a press release from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County:

New Species of Bizarre, Bipedal, Toothless Crocodile Relative from the Triassic Discovered
Unearthed in Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, Labrujasuchus expectatus — the ‘Witch Croc’ — highlights the weirdness of life during the dawn of the dinosaurs and the legacy and ongoing discoveries at an iconic site 20 years into excavation
Los Angeles, CA (May 26, 2026) — In the Triassic, the modern animals we know were just beginning to diversify into a menagerie of forms and body plans that rhyme with the lifestyles of extinct and living animals better known to the public, but nested in groups that ended up taking wildly divergent paths. Case in point: Labrujasuchus expectatus.

Described in Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Labrujasuchus looked very much like ornithomimosaurs, a group of bipedal dinosaurs from the Cretaceous with body plans similar to those of modern ostriches. But Labrujasuchus comes from the branch of archosaurs that led to crocodiles, famously four-legged and full of teeth. The newly-described Labrujasuchus navigated the world on two legs with tiny arms and a toothless mouth tipped in a beak—about as far away from a crocodile as possible.

In the Triassic, you can expect the unexpected.

Among the primordial Star Wars bar denizens of the epoch were the lagerpetids, bipedal dinosaur cousins whose relatives would take to the skies as pterosaurs; the funky tree-dwelling Drepanosaurus, with a single tree-sloth-like claw on its hands and a little one on its prehensile tail; and the aquatic reptilian mini-tank, Vancleavea, to name a few. Labrujasuchus expectatus, the newest identified member of Shuvosauridae—a group of ancient crocodile relatives with body plans resembling bipedal, small-armed theropod dinosaurs—stepped into this world of bizarre reptiles with both feet.

One of only five identified species, Labrujasuchus expectatus fills the gap between two earlier discovered shuvosaurs from the region, an evolutionary link paleontologists knew was waiting to be found. The discovery was the expected unexpected, which inspired the species name ‘expactatus’. The witchy genus moniker, Labrujasuchus, references the ‘Ranchos de los Brujos,' or Ranch of the Witches, an old Spanish name for Ghost Ranch, and the Greek word Σοῦχος (suchus) meaning “crocodile”.

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Video and 3D model by Jorge Gonzalez

We see a lot of the successful strategies for modern animals and non-avian dinosaurs first arise in the Triassic, and shuvosaurs are a great example of that convergent evolution. Bipedalism is certainly a unique path for crocodile relatives to take, but it’s a path well-trod by dinosaurs and later birds. It obviously worked for these animals.

Dr. Alan H. Turner, lead author.
Department of Anatomical Sciences
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, New York, U.S.A.

Legend has it, the local rancheros gave the site the name ‘Ranchos de Los Brujos’ to keep folks away from the cattle-rustling operations of the Archuleta brothers. We wanted to give a nod to that colorful history, and honor the incredible role Ghost Ranch has played in expanding our view of the Triassic. We also wanted to highlight how the fossil record works—finding one shuvosaur from earlier in the Triassic and one from later meant that we paleontologists knew there were probably more from in-between waiting to be discovered and described.

Dr. Nathan D. Smith, co-author
The Dinosaur Institute
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

This summer is the 20th anniversary of Nate and his colleagues coming out to do excavations at Ghost Ranch, and we’re so proud to play a central role in making that incredible research possible. Whether visitors are seeking its iconic landscape and spiritual healing or digging into ancient history, Ghost Ranch is a place like nowhere else on the planet. We’re looking forward to collaborating with Dr. Turner, Dr. Smith, and all their colleagues to continue sharing this extraordinary place for years to come.

Joanne Lefrak, not an author of the paper.
Director of Experience and Social Impact
Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center
New Mexico, USA.
Marking 20 Years of Collaboration at Ghost Ranch

With its bizarre assortment of creatures, the Triassic can feel like it belongs to another Earth entirely, but the body plans of long-gone weirdos reverberate through time, mirroring our modern weirdos, who are often in danger of going extinct. In short, understanding the Triassic past helps us better understand and protect our present, and perhaps nowhere on Earth gives a better view of that long-gone epoch than Ghost Ranch. Home to four quarries excavated by paleontologists for decades, Ghost Ranch continues to produce some of the most exquisitely produced fossils from the epoch.

Made famous by Georgia O’Keeffe’s dramatic paintings of its colorful badlands, Ghost Ranch hosts a multi-year, ongoing excavation project co-led by Dr. Smith at NHMLAC’s Dinosaur Institute, to collect Late Triassic creatures from the Hayden Quarry.

Publication:
Turner, A. H., Kernan, C. E., Laing, A., Pritchard, A. C., Stocker, M. R., Irmis, R. B., … Nesbitt, S. J. (2026).
A new shuvosaurid (Archosauria, Poposauroidea) from the Late Triassic (Norian) Hayden Quarry of New Mexico, U.S.A.
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2026.2618182

Abstract
Bipedal shuvosaurid archosaurs were present for much of the Late Triassic Period. The clade is particularly diverse in Upper Triassic assemblages in the western U.S.A. Isolated bones are easily differentiated from contemporary archosaurs, but the two named North American species, Shuvosaurus inexpectatus and Effigia okeeffeae, display remarkably similar skeletons. Here we describe a new shuvosaurid species, Labrujasuchus expectatus, gen. et sp. nov., from the middle Norian (∼212 Ma) Hayden Quarry of northern New Mexico, U.S.A., located within the Petrified Forest Member of the Chinle Formation, that fills the temporal gap between the two species. The holotype consists of a partial skeleton, with additional shuvosaurid material from the Hayden Quarry likely pertaining to this taxon. This taxon is distinguished by four autapomorphies and assignable to Shuvosauridae based on a deep fossa present on the posterodorsal edge of the coracoid, the proximal portion of the humerus less than twice the width of the midshaft, the anteromedial tuber of the femur large and ‘hooked’ posteriorly, and a ventrally descended posterolateral portion of the femoral head. Recent Bayesian estimates of archosaur phylogeny and divergence times suggested a Middle Triassic split for Shuvosauridae as well as a decrease in the rate of morphological evolution for the clade relative to that of other archosaurs. The anatomical similarity of L. expectatus with other shuvosaurids is consistent with these estimated low rates, and the long gaps in the fossil record for the clade suggest that much of their evolutionary history remains to be sampled.

Turner, A. H., Kernan, C. E., Laing, A., Pritchard, A. C., Stocker, M. R., Irmis, R. B., … Nesbitt, S. J. (2026).
A new shuvosaurid (Archosauria, Poposauroidea) from the Late Triassic (Norian) Hayden Quarry of New Mexico, U.S.A.
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2026.2618182

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Informa UK Limited (Taylor & Francis). Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

So, once again, we have evidence of an extinct animal exactly where evolutionary biology says we should expect to find it: in rocks of the right age, in the right geological context, with anatomical features that make sense when understood in terms of descent with modification, ecological opportunity and convergent evolution.

Labrujasuchus expectatus was not a modern crocodile, nor a dinosaur, nor some impossible hybrid. It was a crocodile-line archosaur from a time when that branch of the archosaur family tree was experimenting with a remarkable variety of body forms. Some were heavily armoured, some were top predators, some were herbivores, and some, like the shuvosaurids, evolved a bipedal, beaked body plan that would later be echoed, independently, by bird-line dinosaurs.

There is nothing in that which creationism predicts, explains or illuminates. A doctrine based on the magical creation of fixed “kinds” a few thousand years ago has no rational place for a 212-million-year-old, toothless, two-legged crocodile-line reptile from the Late Triassic. It can only deny the evidence, misrepresent it, or pretend that the scientists who uncovered and described it are somehow part of a conspiracy against superstition.

Science, by contrast, does not need to force the fossil into a predetermined conclusion. It can place it in a testable framework of anatomy, stratigraphy, phylogeny and evolutionary history. That is why discoveries like Labrujasuchus are not embarrassing anomalies for science, but expected additions to a steadily improving picture of life’s deep past.

For creationism, every such fossil is another problem to be waved away. For evolutionary science, it is another piece of the puzzle falling into place.

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Creationism Refuted - Evolution of Gigantism in British Island Wrens

2026-05-29T22:10:24.146+01:00

A Shetland Wren, Troglodytes troglodytes zetlandicus, Kergord, Mainland, Shetland

Photo credit: Dr Michał Jezierski

New research helps scientists unlock evolution of gigantism in Scottish island wrens - University of Birmingham

Creationists will continually demand evidence for evolution being observed, then, when the evidence is provided, immediately insist that science should adopt their childish parody of evolution, in which one species turns into an unrelated species in a single miraculous event. That is not evolution as any biologist understands it. In fact, if such a thing were ever observed, it would falsify the Theory of Evolution, not confirm it.

By demanding evidence for something no scientist has ever claimed happens, creationists imagine they are somehow refuting science, or at least providing a plausible anti-Darwin argument for people who do not understand the science.

So this example of evolution in living populations will almost inevitably be dismissed by creationists using that same disingenuous tactic. It is evidence for the evolution of island gigantism in isolated populations of the wren, Troglodytes troglodytes, on Scottish islands. And, to rub salt in creationists' wounds, it is not merely a single isolated example, but multiple examples of gigantism evolving in island environments — an example of parallel evolution in response to similar environmental pressures acting on different local populations.

In other words, this is not some local curiosity that can be waved away as a one-off oddity, but the predictable result of isolation, restricted gene flow and similar island conditions acting on related populations. The evidence has just been published, open access, in the Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society by researchers led by the University of Birmingham.

The researchers, led by Dr Michał Jezierski, examined four subspecies of island wren, each isolated on a specific Scottish island or archipelago — Shetland, Fair Isle, the Outer Hebrides and St Kilda. Each of these subspecies is geographically isolated, yet exposed to broadly similar island environments, and each differs significantly from the wrens found throughout mainland Britain and continental Europe.

The study showed that the wrens of St Kilda and Shetland show little evidence of interbreeding with the mainland population. These two populations have evolved spectacular island gigantism: a wren from England will typically weigh about 7–10 grams, while a St Kilda wren weighs about 13–16 grams. The largest St Kilda wrens are therefore more than twice the weight of the smallest mainland wrens, and their genetic distinctiveness is so marked that the researchers say they may be on the way to becoming separate species.

Importantly, the genomic evidence shows that the Shetland and St Kilda wrens are genetically distinct from each other, despite having evolved similar enlarged body sizes. In other words, the same broad evolutionary outcome has arisen independently in separate island populations, rather than being inherited from a single already-giant ancestor. That is exactly what evolutionary biology predicts: related populations, isolated in similar environments, can be shaped in similar directions by similar selection pressures, even when the detailed genetic route differs.

Island Gigantism - Evolution in Isolation. Island gigantism is part of what biologists call the “island rule”: when mainland animals become isolated on islands, small species often evolve larger bodies, while large species often evolve smaller ones. This is not magic, and it is not a sudden transformation. It is natural selection, genetic drift, founder effects, restricted gene flow and altered ecological pressures acting over many generations.

Islands are unusual evolutionary laboratories. They often lack the full range of mainland predators, competitors and parasites. They may also have empty ecological niches that mainland animals cannot exploit because those niches are already occupied. In those circumstances, a small animal that would normally survive by hiding, fleeing or reproducing quickly may instead benefit from becoming larger, stronger, more competitive, longer-lived, or better able to survive periods of food shortage.

Examples include:

Giant tortoises - The giant tortoises of the Galápagos and Aldabra are among the best-known examples of island giants, although their history is more complicated than a simple small-to-large transformation. Their large size probably helped tortoises colonise remote oceanic islands in the first place, but island conditions then allowed giant forms to persist and diversify.
Flores giant rat - The island of Flores, Indonesia, has produced unusually large rodents, including the living Flores giant rat, Papagomys armandvillei. Fossil deposits at Liang Bua, the same cave system associated with Homo floresiensis, also contain evidence of large and giant murine rodents, showing how island ecosystems can produce extreme size shifts in small mammals.
New Zealand giant wētā - New Zealand’s giant wētā are large, flightless insects that evolved in an island environment where mammals were absent before human arrival. In effect, some insects were able to occupy ecological space that, on continental landmasses, would more often be occupied by small mammals.
Lord Howe Island stick insect - The Lord Howe Island stick insect, Dryococelus australis, sometimes called the “tree lobster”, is a large, flightless island insect. It was thought to have been exterminated after rats reached Lord Howe Island, but a tiny surviving population was later found on Ball’s Pyramid, a nearby volcanic sea stack.
New Zealand moa - The extinct moa were flightless birds that evolved in New Zealand, where there were no native land mammals apart from bats. In the absence of mammalian herbivores, these birds became the dominant large browsing animals in many New Zealand ecosystems.
Madagascar elephant birds - Madagascar’s extinct elephant birds were another spectacular example of island bird gigantism. These huge, flightless birds evolved in isolation on Madagascar and, like the moa, show how islands can produce evolutionary outcomes very different from those on continents.
Canary Island giant lizards - Several lizards in the genus Gallotia evolved large body sizes in the Canary Islands. Some forms survive today, while others are extinct, their history illustrating both the creative power of island evolution and the vulnerability of island endemics once humans and introduced predators arrive.

A useful caution is the Komodo dragon. It is often presented as a simple example of island gigantism, but fossil evidence suggests that giant monitor lizards had already evolved elsewhere in the Australasian region before the modern Komodo dragon became restricted to Indonesian islands. So, even here, the science is more interesting than the slogan.

The important point is that island gigantism is not a one-off anomaly. It is a repeated evolutionary pattern, seen in mammals, birds, reptiles and invertebrates, whenever isolation changes the selective pressures acting on a population. The Scottish island wrens are simply a living, local example of the same broad evolutionary principle.

Source notes:

The “island rule” is supported by large comparative studies of island vertebrates, though its strength varies between groups. [1] Giant tortoises are classic island giants, but Galápagos tortoise research notes that large size may have aided oceanic colonisation rather than always evolving only after island arrival. [2] The Flores rodents, Lord Howe Island stick insect and Komodo dragon caveat are supported by the Liang Bua/Flores literature, IUCN/CSIRO conservation material, and fossil work on giant varanids. [3]

The publication in the Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society is accompanied by a press release by the University of Birmingham:

New research helps scientists unlock evolution of gigantism in Scottish island wrens
Island birds could be the key for researchers to better understand the evolutionary paths that lead to ‘island syndromes’.
A new study of British Wrens has provided new insights into the inner workings of ‘island syndromes’, according to research led by the University of Birmingham.

The paper, published in the Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society, reveals that different subspecies of island Wrens are evolving independently, with the team finding particularly strong evidence of ‘island gigantism’ in two of the studied populations.

Researchers examined four subspecies of island Wrens, each found on a specific island or archipelago in Scotland – Shetland, Fair Isle, the Outer Hebrides, and St Kilda. Each of these subspecies is geographically isolated (but exposed to broadly similar environments on different Scottish islands), and each differs significantly from the Wren subspecies found across mainland Great Britain and continental Europe.

Island gigantism is a biological phenomenon in which the size of an animal species isolated on an island increases dramatically in comparison to its mainland relative. This is most famously exemplified by the giant tortoises of the Galapagos, and the extinct Dodo of Mauritius; both of which far exceed the sizes of their continental ancestors.

Led by Dr Michał Jezierski, the study’s findings represent one of the most in-depth explorations of the population-level processes giving rise to island syndromes. These evolutionary phenomena, detected across disparate types of animals and plants across Earth’s islands, involve a suite of evolutionary changes in island species including; island gigantism, longer lifespans, slower rate of reproduction and, in birds, a tendency towards lower flight ability.

Key findings from the study include:

Wren populations on Shetland and St Kilda show minimal evidence of interbreeding with their cousins from mainland Britain.
These two subspecies have evolved spectacular island gigantism; a Wren from England will weigh 7-10g on average, whereas on St Kilda they range from 13-16g.
The largest St Kilda Wrens are more than twice the size of the smallest on mainland Great Britain, putting them within the top 25% of cases of island gigantism in birds worldwide.

We found that all four Scottish Wren subspecies are genetically distinct from the Wrens of mainland Britain; with the Wrens of Shetland and St Kilda being especially distinct in both appearance and song. Their genetic distinctiveness is so high, that it is likely they are on their way to becoming new species.

Dr Michał T. Jezierski, lead author.
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, UK.

A Wren from mainland Britain will weigh 7-10g on average, whereas on St Kilda they range from 13-16g.

By comparing these four Scottish island subspecies with mainland Wrens, using body measurements, song recordings, and whole genome sequencing, researchers were able to explore the differences in biology between the different island populations in more detail than has previously been possible, allowing them to further investigate the ways in which island syndromes evolve.

Islands host 20-30% of species worldwide and are famous for their unusual wildlife – from Madagascan lemurs to Komodo Dragons. Similar conditions found across the world’s islands, including lower predation and competition than on adjacent mainlands, are driven by their inherent isolation. Although island syndromes may be found across much of our planet’s biodiversity, their underlying mechanisms are poorly understood.

Our research suggests that islands with similar environments can produce similar evolutionary outcomes using different genetic pathways. The Wrens of Scotland provide us with a powerful case study to understand the mechanisms by which island biodiversity is generated worldwide.

William J. Smith, co-author School of Life Sciences
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, UK.

Our genomic data indicates that Shetland and St Kilda Wrens are genetically distinct from each other, despite their similarities in physical appearance. This means that their island gigantism is a case of ‘parallel evolution’, where a similar original population (probably colonists from the British mainland) made it to each island archipelago, and then independently evolved to become island giants.

Dr Michał T Jezierski.

Shared traits, different genetics

Whole genome comparisons showed that each island population is genetically distinct and largely isolated: while the Wrens of Shetland and St Kilda are physically similar, the regions of their genomes that show the most differences from mainland Wrens are largely independent from each other.

By contrast, Wrens from Fair Isle and the Outer Hebrides are more similar to those on the British mainland: highlighting that island evolution does not proceed in the same way, even within a relatively small geographic region, with each population representing a related, but largely independent, evolutionary unit.

Our genomic data indicates that Shetland and St Kilda Wrens are genetically distinct from each other, despite their similarities in physical appearance. This means that their island gigantism is a case of ‘parallel evolution’, where a similar original population (probably colonists from the British mainland) made it to each island archipelago, and then independently evolved to become island giants. In the process, their songs also became very different from those of ‘mainland’ British birds.

Dr Michał T Jezierski.

Understanding the ‘micro’ processes that lead to ‘macro’ patterns

The ‘giant’ size of the Wrens has evolved alongside other island associated traits, including distinctive songs and subtle differences in plumage and body proportions, supporting the idea that island environments consistently shape evolution in predictable directions.

The ‘why’ of island syndromes remains a mystery, and researchers do not yet fully know how changes in body size, or other island syndromes, represent adaptations to the special ecological conditions on islands. However, these latest findings amongst Wren populations may provide a great case study with which Birmingham researchers can further investigate this field of evolutionary science.

Publication:
Michał T Jezierski, Jenny C Dunn, Carolina R F Chagas, William J Smith
Parallel evolution of island syndromes coincides with limited parallel genetic differentiation in a passerine bird Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society 5(1), 2026, kzag008, https://doi.org/10.1093/evolinnean/kzag008

Abstract
Islands host elevated levels of species endemism, as geographic isolation and unique ‘insular’ environments promote in situ evolution. As these conditions are broadly repeated across islands globally, similar ecological pressures act on geographically separate island populations leading to phenotypic convergence among island endemics. These so-called ‘island syndromes’ have received considerable interest with respect to phenotypic comparisons within and between species. However, the patterns of genetic change underpinning the evolution of island syndromes have received less attention. An outstanding question, which is also of interest to the broader study of convergent evolution, is whether phenotypic convergence among island populations is associated with evolution across shared genomic regions. Here, we examine putative parallel island syndrome evolution of the Eurasian wren Troglodytes troglodytes, a passerine bird. In the British Isles, four island populations in Scotland are recognized as distinct subspecies, different to the subspecies found across ‘mainland’ Great Britain. We examine the evolution of island syndromes in these four subspecies, finding trait-based idiosyncrasies, but also identifying that the St Kilda and Shetland subspecies are both within the 25% most extreme cases of avian island gigantism worldwide. Our population genomic and phylogenetic analyses reveal these subspecies to be monophyletic and distinct from the ‘mainland’ subspecies of Great Britain. Among the four Scottish island subspecies, patterns of evolution across the genome are mostly population specific. However, 3.6% of the top 1% of genomic windows which are most differentiated from mainland wrens are shared between the subspecies endemic to Shetland and St Kilda. Our results suggest that the parallel insular phenotypes of wrens in the British Isles co-occur with largely distinct patterns of genetic evolution, likely driven by reductions in genetic diversity and drift, although partial genetic parallelism cannot be excluded. Furthermore, very low gene flow and potential phenotypic reproductive boundaries, such as distinct songs, may reflect ongoing speciation.

So, once again, creationists are left with the evidence they keep demanding, but never seem willing to accept when it is placed in front of them. Here are living populations of the same species, isolated on different islands, diverging genetically and morphologically from their mainland relatives, and doing so in broadly similar ways under broadly similar environmental pressures. That is not a belief, an assumption, or a philosophical preference; it is measured, testable, observable evolutionary biology.

Of course, no wren has obligingly turned into a duck, a mouse, or a cabbage in a single generation, so creationists who rely on that infantile caricature of evolution will pretend nothing of interest has happened. But biology was never obliged to conform to creationist misrepresentation. Evolution proceeds by accumulated change in populations over time, shaped by mutation, selection, drift, gene flow, isolation and ecological opportunity. The Scottish island wrens show exactly that process in action.

What makes this example especially awkward for creationists is that it is not merely a single population becoming unusual in isolation. Similar enlarged forms have evolved independently in different Scottish island populations. That is parallel evolution: repeated, predictable evolutionary change under similar conditions. It is precisely the kind of pattern we should expect if populations evolve naturally, and precisely the kind of pattern that makes no sense if every species was separately manufactured in its present form a few thousand years ago.

And so, yet again, science explains the evidence while creationism is left explaining it away. The wrens of St Kilda, Shetland, Fair Isle and the Outer Hebrides are not anomalies to be ignored; they are another small but elegant demonstration that evolution is not merely something inferred from fossils and genomes, but a continuing natural process, still shaping living populations today.

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Malevolent Design - How Honey Bees And A Parasitic Fungus Have Teamed Up

2026-05-29T12:51:13.735+01:00

“Invasional Mutualism” Between Honey Bees and Myrtle Rust Pathogen | Blog

Figure 1.
Foraging of urediniospores by bees on plants infected with myrtle rust. a. Honey bee forager collecting Austropuccinia psidii urediniospores from leaves of broadleaf paperbark [Melaleuca quinquenervia (Myrtales, Myrtaceae)], Bungawalbin, New South Wales, Australia; b. A. psidii urediniospores in the opening of a Geraldton wax [Chamelaucium uncinatum (Myrtales, Myrtaceae)] flower bud in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

Photographs by Geoff Pegg.

A paper published in March 2026 in NeoBiota is entirely unsurprising to an evolutionary biologist, but deeply awkward for anyone trying to present nature as the intelligent design of an omnibenevolent creator. It reports what appears to be a mutually beneficial relationship between the introduced Western honey bee, Apis mellifera, and the invasive fungal plant pathogen myrtle rust, Austropuccinia psidii. It is a neat example of how evolution has no foresight, no moral purpose and no long-term plan. Symbiotic alliances can arise naturally between different species when there is an immediate benefit to both, even when the longer-term consequences for one or both partners — and for the wider ecosystem — may be destructive.

Myrtle rust, Austropuccinia psidii, is an invasive rust fungus in Australia. It infects more than 500 species in the Myrtaceae family, which includes many of Australia’s culturally, ecologically and economically important native plants, including eucalypts, paperbarks and related species. In Australia, the pathogen is regarded as a serious threat to native ecosystems, with around 17% of endemic vegetation considered at risk. The other partner in this apparent mutualism is also an introduced species: the Western honey bee, Apis mellifera.

The basis of this relationship is an exquisite example of the sort of functional complexity creationists routinely try to claim as evidence for intelligent design. That, of course, raises the obvious question: why would an omnibenevolent designer design a fungal pathogen capable of damaging so much of Australia’s native vegetation, and then provide it with a convenient pollinator-assisted dispersal system?

The mechanism is ingenious, but only in the blind, short-term sense in which natural selection can be ingenious. The bright yellow urediniospores of myrtle rust are collected by honey bees much as pollen is collected. The bees pack the spores into their pollen baskets and carry them back to the hive. For the fungus, this provides a potential route for dispersal beyond simple wind movement. For the bees, the spores are not just inert particles accidentally mistaken for pollen; they have real nutritional value. The researchers found that myrtle rust spores contained more than 22% protein and all ten amino acids regarded as essential for honey bee nutrition, making them comparable with high-quality pollen.

Laboratory feeding trials also showed that honey bee larvae could develop normally on a diet based on myrtle rust spores, with survival, development time and body weight similar to larvae reared on a high-quality pollen diet. Even more concerning from a biosecurity point of view, the spores remained viable inside honey bee colonies for at least nine days, meaning that hives could potentially act as reservoirs and transport systems for the pathogen.

So, the fungus gains a mobile vector, while the bees gain an alternative protein source. But what benefits both in the short term could be damaging in the longer term. As myrtle rust damages Myrtaceae-rich habitats, it can reduce the availability of flowers and pollen. That, in turn, could encourage honey bees to rely more heavily on fungal spores or other alternative foods, while the fungus benefits from the continued movement of bees and managed hives. The result could be a damaging ecological feedback loop, with plant-pollinator networks and forest regeneration placed under increasing pressure.

This is precisely the kind of outcome that any omniscient, intelligent designer should have foreseen and avoided. It is also precisely the kind of outcome that a mindless evolutionary process can produce without difficulty. Natural selection rewards immediate reproductive or nutritional advantage; it does not plan for ecological stability, protect biodiversity, or ensure that mutually beneficial relationships remain harmless in the long term.

What is Invasional Mutualism? In ecology, mutualism is a relationship between two different species in which both gain some immediate benefit. Classic examples include flowering plants and their pollinators, or fungi and plant roots in mycorrhizal associations. The relationship need not be planned, balanced, moral or beneficial to the wider ecosystem; it only needs to give each partner enough of a short-term advantage for the interaction to persist.

Invasional mutualism occurs when two introduced or invasive species help one another become established, spread or persist in a new environment. Instead of acting as isolated invaders, they interact in a way that makes the invasion more successful or more damaging.

In the case of Western honey bees and myrtle rust in Australia, both partners are alien to the ecosystem. The honey bee, Apis mellifera, was introduced to Australia and is now widely used in managed pollination. Myrtle rust, Austropuccinia psidii, is an invasive fungal pathogen of plants in the Myrtaceae family, which includes eucalypts, paperbarks, bottlebrushes, lilly pillies and many other native Australian plants.

The apparent mutualism is simple but potentially serious:

The bee benefits because myrtle rust spores resemble pollen closely enough to be collected and are nutritionally useful, containing protein and essential amino acids.

The fungus benefits because bees collect the spores, pack them into their pollen baskets and carry them back to the hive, potentially helping the pathogen disperse.

The ecosystem loses because the fungus attacks native plants, damages new growth, reduces fertility, causes defoliation and can kill susceptible species.

This is not the harmonious balance of a benevolent design. It is a short-term ecological bargain produced by natural processes. Each partner gains something immediately, but the wider consequence may be the destabilisation of plant-pollinator networks, the increased spread of a destructive pathogen and further pressure on Australia’s already vulnerable native flora.

That is exactly what evolution predicts: local advantages, opportunistic interactions and no foresight. Natural selection can produce impressive functional relationships, but it cannot look ahead and ask whether the eventual outcome will be good for forests, bees, native pollinators, or biodiversity.

The research and its implications for Australian flora were also discussed in a Pensoft® blog, published to mark World Bee Day on 20 May.

“Invasional Mutualism” Between Honey Bees and Myrtle Rust Pathogen
New research from NeoBiota uncovers an invasional mutualism between Western honey bees and myrtle rust, with potentially troubling consequences for Australia’s native ecosystems.
Surprising Interaction

Apis mellifera on leaves with myrtle rust.

Photo credit to Geoff S Pegg.

New research published in NeoBiota has found that the Western honey bee – an introduced species to Australia – and the devastating, invasive plant fungus known as myrtle rust (Austropuccinia psidii) may have formed a mutually beneficial relationship known as an “invasional mutualism.”

Myrtle rust is notorious for devastating ecologically and culturally significant native plants in the Myrtaceae family, putting 17% of Australia’s endemic vegetation at risk. While rust fungi generally rely strictly on wind to spread, researchers discovered that bees may actively forage on the bright yellow fungus spores, packing them into their pollen baskets and carrying them back to the hive just as they would regular pollen.

Through a series of experiments, the team made three significant findings. Firstly, the rust spores proved to be quite nutritious. They contained over 22% protein and all 10 essential amino acids, meeting the threshold required for bee colonies to survive. In fact, the fungus matched the nutritional quality of high-value floral pollen, like willow pollen.

Researcher taking samples from a beehive.

Beehive in the forest.

Photo credit to Caroline Hauxwell.

In laboratory feeding trials, larvae raised on a diet of myrtle rust spores grew up perfectly healthy, developing at the same speed and reaching similar body weights as bees raised on a traditional high-quality pollen diet. As the researchers explain:

These findings suggest that spore foraging may not be an aberration, but a viable foraging strategy for honey bees.

And perhaps the most alarming discovery is that the myrtle rust spores remain viable and capable of causing new plant infections for at least nine days inside a beehive which could pose significant biosecurity risks

A Devastating Ecological Feedback Loop

Taking samples from a beehive.

Photo credit to Caroline Hauxwell.

This discovery challenges the assumption that invasive species always act independently, and it carries major environmental consequences. As myrtle rust kills off keystone taxa in the Myrtaceae family, such as eucalypts, paperbarks, and other ecologically and culturally significant species, particularly in Australia, fewer flowers and less pollen become available for bees to forage on. Beyond the direct biodiversity loss, as the fungus kills these plants, fewer flowers and less pollen are available for the bees.

Under such conditions, bees may increasingly turn to alternative protein sources, such as fungal urediniospores
—the researchers explain.
This could set off a devastating ecological feedback loop.
Over time, this dynamic may destabilise plant-pollinator networks and forest regeneration, particularly in regions with high Myrtaceae endemism. While generalist foragers like A. mellifera may buffer their colony health by switching to spores or non-Myrtaceae pollen sources, the long-term ecological cost could be substantial, especially for specialist pollinators that lack such flexibility.

The authors

The risks extend beyond ecosystems. Because spores remain viable inside a hive for over a week, commercial beehives – regularly transported across the country over three to seven days to pollinate crops – now represent a significant pathway for human-assisted spread of the pathogen.
As the lead author, Sacchi Shin-Clayton (University of Cambridge) emphasises:
Apis mellifera is an introduced species used as a commercial pollination agent worldwide, and shifting honey bee colonies between agricultural sites to boost pollination has become a standard practice. This reliance on honey bee colonies and shifting between multiple sites is quite concerning, given the demonstrated interaction between A. mellifera and myrtle rust, and its longevity within colonies.

Despite this, current biosecurity strategies for managing myrtle rust do not account for the movement of commercial beehives, leaving a critical gap in disease management approaches.
We propose that honey bees be explicitly considered in both epidemiological models and the formulation of management and containment strategies
—the researchers urge.
Recognising pollinators as potential vectors of invasive plant pathogens is an essential next step – one that could prove critical for protecting Australia’s vulnerable native forests. This World Bee Day is a timely reminder that our relationship with bees is more complex than it might seem. Protecting them and the ecosystems they move through will require us to understand that complexity better.

Publication:
Shin-Clayton S, Mortensen AN, Beggs JR, Buxton MN, Hauxwell C, Bateson MF, Jochym M, Pegg GS, Pattemore DE (2026)
Honey bees as potential vectors of the invasive rust pathogen Austropuccinia psidii: nutritional mutualism and implications for pathogen spread.
NeoBiota 106: 75-90. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.106.169027

Abstract
Myrtle rust fungus, Austropuccinia psidii (Basidiomycota, Pucciniales), infects more than 500 species in the Myrtaceae family and is a significant threat to keystone plant taxa, particularly in Australia. Urediniospores are primarily dispersed by wind, but there are several reports of animal-mediated dispersal events. Recent observations of Apis mellifera (Western honey bees) collecting urediniospores of A. psidii raise the possibility of a novel mutualistic interaction between these two alien species. Here, we test two key conditions required for such a mutualism: (1) that spores remain viable after entering hives and (2) that they provide nutritional benefit to the pollinator. We show that A. psidii spores remain viable for at least nine days within honey bee colonies and match or exceed the nutritional quality of known high-protein pollens. Trials using artificial rearing of bee larvae further demonstrate that A. psidii spores support normal development and survival in honey bee brood. These findings suggest that spore foraging may not be an aberration, but a viable foraging strategy for honey bees. Our results support the hypothesis of a mutualism and dispersal of these plant pathogens, whereby nutritional benefits to A. mellifera facilitate the long-distance dispersal and epidemiology of A. psidii. This has implications for models of pathogen spread, especially in regions where managed hives are regularly transported over long distances in agricultural pollination services landscapes. Recognising pollinators as potential vectors of invasive plant pathogens is essential for developing more effective biosecurity and conservation strategies.

Shin-Clayton S, Mortensen AN, Beggs JR, Buxton MN, Hauxwell C, Bateson MF, Jochym M, Pegg GS, Pattemore DE (2026)
Honey bees as potential vectors of the invasive rust pathogen Austropuccinia psidii: nutritional mutualism and implications for pathogen spread.
NeoBiota 106: 75-90. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.106.169027

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

So here we have another example of nature behaving exactly as evolutionary theory says it will behave, and not at all as creationism would require it to behave. There is no foresight, no moral purpose and no concern for ecological harmony. There is only the immediate advantage available to organisms capable of exploiting it. The bee obtains a usable food source; the fungus gains a potential dispersal mechanism; the wider Australian ecosystem may pay the price.

For creationists, this is an uncomfortable problem. If they insist that complex, functional interactions between organisms are evidence of intelligent design, then they must explain why their putative designer intelligently designed a pathogenic fungus to mimic pollen, feed honey bee larvae and use an introduced insect to help spread itself through some of Australia’s most important native plant communities. And if they argue instead that this is not design but corruption, degeneration or the consequence of “sin”, they have abandoned their own argument that functional complexity points to design whenever it suits them.

For an evolutionary biologist, however, there is no mystery. Natural selection does not produce what is kind, sustainable or ecologically wise; it produces what works well enough, here and now, to enhance survival and reproduction. A relationship that is mutually beneficial today can become destructive tomorrow. A short-term advantage can generate long-term instability. Evolution has no mechanism for pausing to consider the health of Australian forests, the survival of vulnerable Myrtaceae, or the eventual consequences for pollinators and plant communities.

That is why examples like this are so revealing. They show, yet again, that the living world is not the product of a perfect moral intelligence designing for balance and benevolence, but of blind, opportunistic, natural processes acting on immediate advantage. The result can be beautiful, intricate and ingenious — but also wasteful, cruel and ecologically disastrous. In other words, it looks exactly like evolution, and nothing like intelligent design.

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Refuting Creationism - How Our Blood Cells Have Evolved From Our Single-Celled Ancestor from 700 Million Years Ago

2026-05-28T14:12:56.336+01:00

The origin of blood cells can be traced back approximately 700 million years to when human ancestors were single-celled organisms. When these ancestors evolved into multicellular organisms (animals), macrophages emerged as the first blood cells. Over the course of subsequent evolution, various blood cells, such as mast cells, diversified.

KyotoU / Yosuke Nagahata

The 700-million-year history of our blood cells | EurekAlert!

In a stunning, albeit unwitting, rebuttal of creationist claims, a team of researchers at Kyoto University is due to publish, on 29 May 2026, the results of their investigation into the evolutionary history of animal blood cells in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). The paper, entitled "Animals have expanded the evolutionary legacy of unicellular ancestors in blood cells", is unlikely to please those creationists who keep assuring their dupes that biomedical scientists are about to abandon 'Darwinism' and adopt creationism instead.

It will also disappoint those who insist there is no evidence for the evolution of complex multicellular organisms from single-celled ancestors — what they like to caricature as the 'microbes-to-man hypothesis', as though humans, preferably modern Americans, were the preordained end-point of the entire history of life. That, of course, is creationist teleology masquerading as biology: the assumption that evolution must have been aiming at us because Bronze Age religion says humans are the central purpose of creation.

What the Kyoto University team found was not a sudden, magical appearance of blood cells, but a deep evolutionary continuity. They developed a new method for comparing gene-expression profiles across different animal cell lineages and species, and included unicellular organisms in the comparison in order to trace the possible origin of blood cells back to our single-celled animal ancestors.

Among human blood-cell lineages, macrophages showed the closest resemblance to unicellular organisms. This is hardly surprising, since macrophages still behave in a remarkably cell-autonomous way: they move through tissues, detect targets, engulf bacteria, clear dead cells and remove unwanted material — behaviour strongly reminiscent of free-living phagocytic cells.

The team then traced the gene FOS, commonly expressed in blood cells across animal species, back to a single-celled ancestor that lived about 700 million years ago, around the time when the first animals were evolving. The implication is that the earliest animal blood cells did not appear from nowhere. They arose when early multicellular animals repurposed genetic programmes inherited from their unicellular predecessors.

From there, the researchers were able to reconstruct a family tree of blood-cell lineages spanning roughly 700 million years. Their analysis suggests that early blood cells were macrophage-like, that mast cells later branched from that macrophage lineage, and that prototypic T cells and red blood cells subsequently branched from mast cells. Prototypic B cells, meanwhile, appear to have branched from the macrophage lineage after mast cells had already diverged.

In other words, the blood and immune cells circulating in our bodies today are not isolated, specially-created structures with no history. They are modified descendants of ancient cellular systems, inherited, repurposed and diversified during the evolution of animals from unicellular ancestors.

So, far from supporting the creationist claim that there is no evidence for the evolution of complex life from single-celled ancestors, the evidence is literally circulating in our blood. It is also circulating in the blood and immune systems of other animals, carrying with it a molecular and cellular legacy hundreds of millions of years older than the creation myths of the Bronze Age.

And, as usual, the Theory of Evolution provides the only coherent explanation for the observable facts. The research does not point to separate acts of creation, nor to a sudden magical appearance of blood cells fully formed and without ancestry. It shows descent with modification, inherited genetic programmes, divergence of cell lineages, and the repurposing of ancient biological mechanisms — exactly the pattern evolutionary theory predicts, and exactly the pattern creationism cannot explain without special pleading.

The Main Types of Mammalian Blood Cell. Mammalian blood is made up of plasma, the liquid component, and the so-called “formed elements”: red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. Strictly speaking, in mammals only the white blood cells are complete, nucleated cells. Mature red blood cells have lost their nuclei, and platelets are small cell fragments produced from larger bone-marrow cells called megakaryocytes.

Red blood cells, or erythrocytes, are the oxygen-carrying cells of the blood. In mammals they are flattened, flexible, biconcave discs packed with haemoglobin, the iron-containing protein that binds oxygen in the lungs and helps deliver it to tissues. Their lack of a nucleus gives them more internal space for haemoglobin, but also means they cannot divide or repair themselves in the way most cells can.
Platelets, or thrombocytes, are not true cells in mammals but fragments of cytoplasm released by megakaryocytes in the bone marrow. Their main role is in haemostasis — the prevention of blood loss. They stick to damaged blood-vessel walls, clump together and help trigger the clotting process that seals wounds.
White blood cells, or leukocytes, are the immune cells found in the blood. They are much less numerous than red blood cells, but far more varied. They include cells involved in inflammation, defence against bacteria, viruses and parasites, allergic reactions, antibody production and the coordination of immune responses.
The five main types of white blood cell normally recognised in a blood count are neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils, monocytes and lymphocytes.

Neutrophils are the most abundant white blood cells in many mammals, including humans. They are rapid-response cells, especially important in fighting bacterial and fungal infections. They engulf and destroy microbes and are often abundant in pus at sites of infection.
Eosinophils are involved particularly in responses to parasites, especially worms, and also play a role in allergic inflammation and asthma. Their granules contain toxic proteins that can damage large parasites which are too big to be swallowed whole.
Basophils are rare circulating white blood cells involved in allergic and inflammatory responses. They release substances such as histamine and are functionally related, though not identical, to mast cells, which mostly reside in tissues rather than circulating freely in the blood.
Monocytes are large white blood cells that circulate in the blood before migrating into tissues. Once in tissues, they can develop into macrophages or related cells. Macrophages engulf bacteria, dead cells and debris, and also help alert and organise other parts of the immune system.
Lymphocytes include several major immune-cell lineages. B cells can develop into antibody-producing plasma cells; T cells help coordinate immune responses or kill infected cells; and natural killer cells form part of the innate immune response, especially against virus-infected and abnormal cells.

These categories are useful, but they are simplified. Modern immunology recognises many further subtypes within each broad class — such as helper T cells, cytotoxic T cells, regulatory T cells, memory B cells, dendritic-cell-like monocyte derivatives and many others.

For the purposes of understanding blood evolution, however, the important point is that mammalian blood is not a collection of unrelated, specially-created cell types. It is a diversified system of related cell lineages, many of them traceable back through deep evolutionary history to ancient cell behaviours such as movement, engulfment, signalling and defence against other organisms.

The forthcoming PNAS publication was announced in a Kyoto University news release published by EurekAlert!.

The 700-million-year history of our blood cells
How animals expanded the evolutionary legacy of our unicellular ancestors
Kyoto, Japan -- Almost all animal species -- including humans -- have blood cells, but between different species our blood tells different stories. The lineage and components of blood cells vary widely, and this variety is a testament to how animals have evolved to protect themselves from infectious diseases.

Thanks to advances in hematology and immunology, we now have detailed knowledge of the components and functions of both human and mouse blood cells. However, their evolutionary history has remained largely unknown. This inspired a team of researchers at Kyoto University to investigate when and how blood cells originated, and how they diversified.

The team began by developing a new analytic method to compare gene expression profiles across various cell lineages and animal species. With this they were able to construct phylogenetic trees of cell lineages and estimate the evolutionary history of these lineages in animals. They also included unicellular organisms in their comparison in order to trace the origin of blood cells back to possible single-celled ancestors.

Among the various lineages of human blood cells the team observed, macrophages showed the most striking resemblance to unicellular organisms, suggesting that early blood cells were macrophage-like. They then traced the gene FOS -- commonly expressed in blood cells across animal species -- back to a single-celled ancestor that lived 700 million years ago, suggesting that the first blood cells emerged around the same time as the onset of multicellular animals.

This finding implies that early animals generated the first blood cells by repurposing genetic material inherited from single-celled progenitors. The team's analysis also revealed that mast cells branched off from the macrophages, and that prototypic T cells and red blood cells subsequently branched off from the mast cells. Furthermore, prototypic B cells branched off from the macrophages after the segregation of mast cells.

Ultimately, the scientists were able to reconstruct the family tree of blood cells over the 700-million-year span, revealing that evolutionary history has been imprinted in our bodies as differentiation pathways of these cells. This work illustrates that the blood and immune cells circulating in our bodies can be considered a successful extension of the legacy left to us by our single-celled predecessors.

I feel deeply moved by these findings, which represent the culmination of our work and illustrate that the differentiation pathways of vertebrate blood cells reflect the 700-million-year evolutionary history of these cells.

Hiroshi Kawamoto, lead author.

When I let it sink in that this legacy from so long ago is circulating within my body as blood cells, I feel closer to our distant ancestors.

Yosuke Nagahata, first author
Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Spain.

The researchers expect that the method developed in this study could help unravel the evolutionary origins of diseases such as cancer, leading to a better understanding of mechanisms and the development of new treatments.

Publication:
"Animals have expanded the evolutionary legacy of unicellular ancestors in blood cells" appeared on 29 May 2026 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, with doi: 10.1073/pnas.2528110123

Significance
This study provides a transcriptome-based model for the evolutionary history of animal blood cells, from emergence to divergence. The initial blood cells emerged in early animals inheriting unicellular ancestors’ features, followed by the evolution of mast cells in bilaterian ancestors to fight against parasites. Thereafter, in deuterostome/vertebrate ancestors, T/NK cells and erythrocytes/thrombocytes arose from the ancestral mast cells, while B cells evolved from the ancestral macrophages. Along with diversification of blood cell lineages, prototypic thymus formed at the gill edges in chordate ancestors. We finally found a vestige of the evolutionary history in murine hematopoiesis by detecting widely retained macrophage and mast cell potential. These findings shed light on a reciprocal relationship between the evolutionary history and current development pathways.

Abstract
Blood cells are common and unique to animals, enabling them to address critical challenges of defense and transport. Thus, their evolution represents a defining innovation in metazoan multicellular life. However, their evolutionary trajectory about how blood cells emerged and diversified throughout animal history remains unclear. Here, we present a combination of bioinformatics and functional data that demonstrate that the metazoan blood cell program most likely originated through the repurposing of an ancestral premetazoan toolkit governed by Fos. This primordial program established the macrophage-like initial blood cells at the metazoan root. Then, the first lineage bifurcation at the origin of Bilateria drove the emergence of a specialized mast/killer lineage, characterized by acquisition of granular proteases for antiparasitic defense. Subsequent deuterostome/vertebrate innovations branched T/NK and erythrocyte/thrombocyte lineages from mast cells while B cells derived from macrophages. Our data also show that a prototypic thymus formed at the gill edges of a chordate ancestor. In line with the evolutionary history, the modern hematopoietic pathway shows a vestige of the phylogeny; differentiation potentials of phylogenetically old cell lineages expressing Fos such as macrophages and mast cells are widely retained, and ancient HSCs with limited lineage potentials have been inherited as origo-lineage progenitors. Our framework provides the history of blood cells showing an adaptive innovation built upon ancient unicellular foundations.

Y. Nagahata, Y. Nishimura, R. Kaitani, J.C.K. Leong, I. Oda-Ishii, H. Kohtsuka, S. Abe, T. Ishida, M. Carmona-Rivas, S.R. Najle, E. Casacuberta, K. Ikuta, T. Miura, M. Ogasawara, N. Irie, Y. Satou, I. Ruiz-Trillo, & H. Kawamoto
Animals have expanded the evolutionary legacy of unicellular ancestors in blood cells
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123(23) e2528110123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2528110123 (2026).

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

So yet again, creationists are left with the familiar problem: the evidence is not merely inconsistent with their mythology; it is exactly the kind of evidence that should not exist if their mythology were true. Blood cells should not carry a traceable evolutionary history stretching back hundreds of millions of years to unicellular ancestors if they were created independently, fully formed, and without ancestry just a few thousand years ago.

But they do. Their genes, their behaviours and their relationships to one another make sense as the products of descent with modification. They do not make sense as the products of separate magical acts of creation. The macrophage-like behaviour of some immune cells, the branching relationships between blood-cell lineages, and the repurposing of ancient genetic programmes all point in the same direction: continuity, ancestry and evolutionary tinkering.

This is why modern biomedical science does not need creationism. It explains nothing, predicts nothing and adds nothing to our understanding. Evolution, by contrast, provides a coherent framework in which the origin, diversification and function of blood cells can be understood as part of the wider history of animal life.

And there, circulating quietly in every creationist’s bloodstream, is another awkward little fact they would rather not think about: their own blood cells are carrying the molecular legacy of their single-celled ancestors. Not a trace of special creation; not a hint of magic; just the unmistakable signature of evolution doing what evolution does — modifying what already exists and turning ancient biological machinery to new uses.

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How we Know The Bible Is Wrong - This Evidence Wouldn't Exist If The Genesis Myths Were Real History

2026-05-27T17:46:13.065+01:00

An artist’s reconstruction of a Marathousa 1 paleolithic woman producing a digging stick from a small alder tree trunk with a small stone tool. This kind of wood was used for the Marathousa 1 digging stick. Use-wear analysis of stone tools at Marathousa 1 shows evidence of woodworking.

Credit: Original art by G. Prieto, copyright K. Harvati.

Earliest evidence of wooden tools used by humans - University of Reading

This is another of those pieces of evidence that should not exist if the Bible narrative were true — yet it does. The only honest conclusion is that the Bible narrative is false. It simply never happened. In scientific terms, this is falsification.

The evidence was published on 26 January 2026 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). It consists of two worked wooden objects discovered at Marathousa 1, in Greece’s central Peloponnese, by an international team led by researchers from the University of Reading, the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment. The tools have been dated to about 430,000 years ago, making them the earliest known hand-held wooden tools and pushing back direct evidence for this kind of technology by at least 40,000 years.

That is awkward evidence for creationists, because the Bible is commonly interpreted by them as saying that humans were created only about 6,000–10,000 years ago, followed by a catastrophic global flood that supposedly covered even the highest mountains. Such an event should either have obliterated fragile evidence of wooden tool use or buried it beneath a thick, worldwide layer of flood sediment containing the remains of the animals and plants destroyed in that catastrophe. And, of course, loose wooden tools submerged in a global flood would hardly be expected to remain neatly preserved in the archaeological context in which they were used.

Yet these wooden tools exist. They were recovered from secure Middle Pleistocene deposits, not from some chaotic jumble of flood debris. They are associated with stone tools, worked bone and butchered animal remains, including elephant, showing that Marathousa 1 was a lakeshore site used by early humans for a range of activities, including butchery and woodworking. In other words, the evidence is not floating around without context; it forms part of a coherent archaeological scene about 420,000 years older than the creationist date for the magical creation of Earth and everything on it.

One of the objects is a small alder trunk fragment with clear traces of shaping and use-wear, consistent with a multifunctional digging stick probably used at the edge of the ancient lake. The other is a much smaller worked piece of willow or poplar, possibly representing a previously unknown type of small Pleistocene wooden tool. A third piece of alder, initially investigated as a possible artefact, appears instead to have been marked by a large carnivore, possibly a bear — another indication that humans and carnivores were exploiting the same lakeshore environment.

The Marathousa 1 site lay in the Megalopolis Basin, a region that appears to have acted as a glacial refugium during a critical period in human evolution, when more complex behaviours and more diverse technologies were developing. The finds show early humans using not just stone, but wood and bone too — exactly what we should expect from intelligent, adaptable hominins making use of the materials around them, and exactly what is so rarely preserved because wood normally decays long before it can fossilise or survive archaeologically.

Marathousa 1 — a 430,000-year-old lakeshore butchery site. Marathousa 1 is a Lower Palaeolithic open-air archaeological site in the Megalopolis Basin of Greece’s central Peloponnese. During the Middle Pleistocene, the area was not the dry inland landscape seen today but part of a palaeolake system, with shallow water, marshy margins and fine-grained sediments that helped preserve animal bones, stone tools, worked bone and, in exceptional cases, wood. The site was discovered in 2013 during targeted palaeoanthropological survey work and has since become one of the most important early human sites in south-eastern Europe. [1]

The archaeological remains show that early humans repeatedly used the lakeshore for practical activities, especially the processing of large animals. Excavations have revealed stone artefacts, worked bone, cut-marked animal bones and the remains of a straight-tusked elephant, Palaeoloxodon antiquus, together with other large mammals. The association of tools and butchered bones in the same stratigraphic context shows that this was not a random accumulation of fossils but a preserved activity area where hominins were exploiting animal carcasses beside the ancient lake. [1]

The exceptional preservation at Marathousa 1 is due largely to its fine-grained, waterlogged lake-margin sediments. Wood normally rots away quickly and is therefore almost invisible in the deep archaeological record, leaving stone tools to give a misleadingly narrow picture of early human technology. At Marathousa 1, however, the sediments preserved pieces of wood long enough for researchers to identify two objects deliberately shaped and used by hominins: an alder stick probably used for digging or stripping bark, and a much smaller willow or poplar object that may represent a previously unknown type of Pleistocene wooden tool. [2]

The site has been dated by combining several independent lines of evidence rather than by radiocarbon dating, which cannot reach anywhere near this far back. The main methods include post-infrared infrared stimulated luminescence dating of potassium-rich feldspar grains from the sediments, electron spin resonance dating of animal teeth and mollusc shells, stratigraphy, sedimentology, and comparison with known climatic stages of the Pleistocene. Luminescence dating measures when mineral grains were last exposed to sunlight before burial, while ESR dating measures radiation damage accumulated in tooth enamel or shell since burial. [3]

The current age estimate places the wooden tools at about 430,000 years old, during Marine Isotope Stage 12, one of the severe glacial stages of the Middle Pleistocene. Earlier work produced age estimates within the broader 0.5–0.4 million-year range, but the current interpretation favours a date around 430,000 years ago. This makes Marathousa 1 important not merely as a butchery site, but as evidence that early humans in southern Europe were using a range of materials — stone, bone and wood — in a complex technological repertoire far earlier than the biblical timescale allows. [2]

The publication of the paper was accompanied by a press release from the University of Reading:

Earliest evidence of wooden tools used by humans
An international team led by researchers from the University of Reading, the University of Tübingen and Reading and Senckenberg Nature Research Society has discovered the earliest known hand-held wooden tools used by humans.
A study jointly led by Professor Katerina Harvati from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen and Dr Annemieke Milks at University of Reading describes discoveries from the Marathousa 1 site in Greece’s central Peloponnese which date back 430,000 years.

Published today (Monday, 26 January) in the journal PNAS, the finds consist of two objects crafted and used by humans, one made of alder wood and the other of willow or poplar. The objects represent the oldest hand-held wooden tools ever found, pushing back evidence of this type of tool use by at least 40,000 years.

Other finds of stone tools and the remains of an elephant and other animals indicate that the site, once on the shore of a lake, was used for butchering animals. The site was used by early humans around 430,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene – the period from around 774,000 to 129,000 years ago.

The Middle Pleistocene was a critical phase in human evolution, during which more complex behaviors developed. The earliest reliable evidence of the targeted technological use of plants also dates from this period.

Professor Katerina Harvati, lead author
Department of Geosciences Paleoanthropology
Institute for Archaeological Sciences
Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen
Tübingen, Germany.

Worked stones and bone artefacts from the site highlighted the skill and diverse activities of the people who once lived there, so the research team took a closer look at the associated finds made of wood.

Specimen Marathousa ID 39, the digging or multifunctional stick

Photograph by D. Michailidis, copyright K. Harvati.

Unlike stones, wooden objects need special conditions to survive over long periods of time. We examined all the wooden remains closely, looking at their surfaces under microscopes. We found marks from chopping and carving on two objects – clear signs that early humans had shaped them.

Dr Annemieke Milks, first author.
Department of Archaeology
University of Reading
Reading, U.K.

Meticulous examination

The research team identified two wooden artefacts that had been worked by humans: a small piece of an alder trunk shows clear signs of having been shaped as well as signs of wear and tear. The stick was probably used for digging at the edge of the lake, or for removing tree bark. A second, very small piece of wood from a willow or poplar tree shows signs of working and possible signs of use.

A third find – a larger piece of alder trunk with a groove pattern – had been clawed by a large carnivore, possibly a bear, and not shaped by humans, the researchers concluded.

The oldest wooden tools come from places such as the United Kingdom, Zambia, Germany, and China and include weapons, digging sticks, and tool handles. However, they are all more recent than our finds from Marathousa 1.

Dr Annemieke Milks.

There is only one older piece of evidence of wood used by humans, from the Kalambo Falls site in Zambia, dating to around 476,000 years ago. Yet that wood was used not as a tool but as structural material.

Specimen Marathousa ID 13, the small wooden tool which is a new wood tool type, documented here for the first time. Currently its function is not known.

Photograph by N. Thompson, copyright K. Harvati.

We have discovered the oldest wooden tools known to date, as well as the first evidence of this kind from southeastern Europe. This shows once again how exceptionally good the conditions at the Marathousa 1 site are for preservation. And the fact that large carnivores left their mark near the butchered elephant alongside human activity indicates fierce competition between the two.

Professor Katerina Harvati.

The team also included researchers from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the University of Ioannina, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Publication:
A. Milks, M. Ntinou, S. Koutalis, D. Michailidis, G.E. Konidaris, D. Giusti, N. Thompson, G. Tsartsidou, E. Panagopoulou, V. Tourloukis, P. Karkanas, & K. Harvati
Evidence for the earliest hominin use of wooden handheld tools found at Marathousa 1 (Greece)
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123(6) e2515479123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2515479123 (2026).

Significance The specimens presented here represent the earliest known handheld wooden tools, recovered at the Middle Pleistocene site Marathousa 1 (Greece). The site provides evidence of hominin activities in a MIS12 glacial refugium, including the manufacture and use of lithic and bone artifacts, alongside butchery of straight-tusked elephants and other fauna. The wooden tools include a worked alder trunk likely used for digging, and a small willow/poplar tool, possibly used in manufacturing lithics. A further alder trunk fragment with claw marks attests to carnivore presence and possible hominin-carnivore competition at the site. The wooden tools from Marathousa 1 represent the earliest handheld wooden tools, and include a new tool type, together demonstrating the importance of systematic investigation of early wood remains.

Abstract
The Middle Pleistocene (MP; ca. 774 to 129 ka) marks a critical period of human evolution, characterized by increasing behavioral complexity and the first unambiguous evidence of plant-based technologies. Despite this, direct evidence for early wooden tool use remains exceptionally rare. Here, we present the earliest handheld wooden tools, identified from secure contexts at the site of Marathousa 1, Greece, dated to ca. 430 ka (MIS12). Through a systematic morphological, microscopic, taphonomic, and taxonomic analysis of the sampled wood macroremains, two specimens were securely identified as modified by hominins: one small alder (Alnus sp.) trunk fragment bears clear working and use-wear traces consistent with a multifunctional stick likely used in digging at the paleolakeshore; and one very small willow/poplar (Salix sp./Populus sp.) artifact exhibits signs of shaping and potential use-wear. A third specimen, a large alder trunk segment, shows deep, nonanthropogenic striations interpreted here as claw marks from a large carnivoran. The wooden tools were excavated together with butchered elephant remains, small lithic artifacts and debitage, and worked bone, underscoring the diversity of engagement with a variety of different raw materials for technological purposes at Marathousa 1. These finds extend the temporal range of early wooden tools. They represent both the use of expedient larger handheld tools as well as a much smaller, likely finger-held wooden tool, which is uniquely small for the Pleistocene, expanding known functional purposes of early wood technologies. Moreover, they highlight the Megalopolis Basin’s exceptional preservation conditions and its role in understanding the evolution of hominin behavior.

A. Milks, M. Ntinou, S. Koutalis, D. Michailidis, G.E. Konidaris, D. Giusti, N. Thompson, G. Tsartsidou, E. Panagopoulou, V. Tourloukis, P. Karkanas, & K. Harvati
Evidence for the earliest hominin use of wooden handheld tools found at Marathousa 1 (Greece)
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123(6) e2515479123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2515479123 (2026).

© 2026 National Academy of Science of the USA.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

And that is the central problem for creationists: this evidence should not be there. If the Bible narrative were real history, there should be no 430,000-year-old lakeshore butchery site in Greece, no Middle Pleistocene sediments preserving wooden tools, no associated stone tools and butchered elephant remains, and no coherent archaeological context showing early humans exploiting a lake-margin environment hundreds of thousands of years before the alleged creation of the world.

Nor can the evidence be rescued by invoking a global flood. A catastrophic flood covering the highest mountains would not carefully preserve fragile wooden objects in situ in fine lake-margin deposits, alongside the remains of the animals being butchered and the tools used to process them. It would produce a chaotic destruction layer, not a recognisable archaeological site with stratigraphy, palaeoenvironmental context, and multiple independent lines of dating converging on the Middle Pleistocene.

What Marathousa 1 gives us is not a theological puzzle but a scientific one: a rare glimpse of early human behaviour that is normally lost because wood decays. It shows that hominins were not merely chipping stone but were making practical use of perishable materials too — wood, bone and whatever else served their needs. That is precisely what evolutionary anthropology predicts: adaptable, tool-using primates gradually expanding their behavioural repertoire over immense periods of time.

Creationism, by contrast, predicts none of this. It has no explanation for why such evidence exists, why it occurs in the geological context it does, why it is associated with extinct Pleistocene animals, or why independent dating methods place it hundreds of thousands of years outside the biblical timescale. All it can do is deny, distract or invent ad hoc excuses after the fact.

So once again, the evidence does not merely fail to support the Bible narrative; it actively contradicts it. Marathousa 1 is another small but solid piece of the vast, interlocking body of evidence showing that Earth and life on it are ancient, that humans have a long evolutionary history, and that the creationist version of events is not history at all, but mythology being asked to do the work of science and providing simplistic answers for simpletons for whom learnign is hard and learning science is impossible.

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Refuting Creationism - The Fossil Record Confirms Evolution - And Falsifies Creationism

2026-05-26T20:55:49.842+01:00

Reconstruction of a hypothetical deep-water paleocommunity from the new fossil site in Canada’s Northwest Territories, based on fossils recovered by the researchers.

Alex Boersma

Fossil Trove Expands Range of Squishy Early Animals - American Museum of Natural History

A paper published on 20 May 2026 in Science Advances by a team of palaeontologists led by Scott D. Evans of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, very neatly illustrates the difference between evolutionary biology and creationism. It reports the discovery of a rich new Ediacaran fossil site in the Mackenzie Mountains of Canada’s Northwest Territories, containing fossils that appear earlier in the record, and in deeper-water settings, than current models of the Ediacaran biota had led palaeontologists to expect.

That is not a problem for evolution; it is how science progresses. Unexpected evidence does not destroy a scientific theory merely because it requires a refinement of detail. In this case, the discovery extends the known geographical, ecological and chronological range of part of the Ediacaran biota — the strange, mostly soft-bodied organisms that preceded, and helped set the stage for, the later Cambrian diversification of animal life.

When asked what would falsify the theory of evolution, the evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane is said to have replied, “a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian”. He was making the simple point that evolutionary theory predicts a broad historical sequence: mammals should not appear before vertebrates, vertebrates should not appear before animals, and rabbits should not appear hundreds of millions of years before their ancestors. A genuine rabbit in Precambrian rocks would be an anachronism so extreme that it would call the whole historical framework into question.

But that is not what palaeontologists have found here. The newly reported fossils are not out of sequence; they are exactly the kind of organisms that belong in late Precambrian rocks. The surprise is not that they are in the wrong part of life’s history, but that some of them appear a little earlier, in a wider geographical range, and in somewhat different environments than previously recognised. In other words, the anomaly is chronological and ecological, not evolutionary.

To a creationist, of course, the question of falsification has to be avoided, because the honest answer is deeply uncomfortable. The fossil record as a whole does not show a sudden magical creation of all living things a few thousand years ago. It shows succession: organisms appearing, diversifying, changing and disappearing through vast spans of geological time. The dating of the rocks, using multiple independent geological and radiometric methods, consistently points to an ancient Earth and a long history of life, not to a recent creation week followed by a global flood.

That is why every such discovery is awkward for creationism but routine for science. Fossils are not distributed randomly, as they would be if all life had been created at once and then jumbled together in a recent catastrophe. They occur in a recognisable sequence, constrained by stratigraphy, radiometric dating, comparative anatomy, developmental biology and, for later organisms, genetics. The details are continually revised, but the broad pattern remains overwhelmingly consistent with evolution and wholly inconsistent with Biblical literalism.

By any honest application of the scientific method, that should be enough to falsify the creationist narrative beyond reasonable doubt. That it does not do so for creationists is not because the evidence is weak, but because the conclusion is protected from evidence. When the conclusion is sacred, facts become things to be explained away, misrepresented or ignored.

For evolutionary biologists, however, an unexpected fossil is not an embarrassment to be dismissed, but a clue to be investigated. If the evidence shows that part of the White Sea assemblage was present in Laurentia earlier than previously recognised, and in deeper-water environments, then the scientific response is to refine the model. The theory is not weakened by that process; it is strengthened, because it can absorb new evidence, generate better questions and produce a more accurate account of what happened.

The fossils described in this paper include more than 100 specimens, with several groups not previously recorded from North America, including Dickinsonia, Funisia, Kimberella and Eoandromeda. Some are estimated to be about 567 million years old, overlapping with the older Avalon assemblage and extending the known range of the White Sea assemblage by around 5–10 million years. The researchers also found that these organisms lived in deeper-water settings than had previously been recognised for this assemblage, supporting the idea that some early animal innovations may have begun offshore before spreading into shallower environments.

The Ediacaran Biota and Its Three Broad Assemblages. The Ediacaran Period, roughly 635–541 million years ago, was the final period of the Precambrian, immediately before the Cambrian. It marks one of the most important transitions in the history of life: the change from a world dominated largely by microbes and microbial mats to one in which large, complex, multicellular organisms began to occupy the seafloor.

The organisms of the Ediacaran biota were mostly soft-bodied, which makes their fossilisation unusual and often exceptional. Some were frond-like, some were disc-shaped or quilted, some were tubular, and others appear to have been capable of movement across the seafloor. Many do not fit neatly into modern animal groups, although some may represent early relatives of later animal lineages. Their importance lies not in being “modern” animals, but in showing that complex body plans, ecological interactions and animal-like behaviours were already developing before the Cambrian diversification.

Palaeontologists often divide the Ediacaran fossil record into three broad assemblages: Avalon, White Sea and Nama. These are not separate creations or unrelated faunas, but useful scientific groupings based on differences in age, environment and fossil communities.

The Avalon assemblage, known especially from Newfoundland and other sites, is generally the oldest of the three. It is associated with deep-water settings and includes many frond-like organisms that appear to have lived attached to the seafloor. These communities show that large, complex life was already established in marine environments long before the Cambrian.
The White Sea assemblage, named after fossil localities near the White Sea in Russia, is younger and typically more diverse. It includes well-known Ediacaran organisms such as Dickinsonia, Kimberella and Funisia. Some of these fossils have been interpreted as evidence of movement, feeding behaviour and possibly early forms of sexual reproduction, making this assemblage especially important for understanding the emergence of recognisably animal-like lifestyles.
The Nama assemblage, known from sites such as Namibia, is generally the youngest of the three and approaches the boundary with the Cambrian. It includes organisms with more resistant or skeletal elements, hinting at the ecological and evolutionary changes that would become much more obvious during the Cambrian diversification.

The new fossils from the Mackenzie Mountains of north-western Canada are important because they complicate and improve this picture. They show clear evidence of White Sea assemblage organisms in ancient rocks of Laurentia, the ancestral core of North America, and some of them appear around 5–10 million years earlier than previously documented examples. They were also found in deposits interpreted as deeper-water settings than expected for this assemblage.

That does not overturn evolution; it refines it. The discovery suggests that some Ediacaran organisms were more widespread, appeared earlier and occupied a broader range of environments than palaeontologists had previously recognised. It is therefore a good example of how science works: not by protecting a fixed story from inconvenient facts, but by adjusting the story when new evidence demands it.

The paper’s publication was accompanied by a news item from the American Museum of Natural History:

Fossil Trove Expands Range of Squishy Early Animals
Hundreds of millions of years before the age of dinosaurs, during a time known as the Ediacaran, life existed mostly in the oceans, and the seafloor was covered with soft organisms unlike anything alive today.
With shapes ranging from delicate fern-like fronds to segmented blobs, fossils of Ediacaran organisms represent the first direct evidence of multicellular animal life as well as the origins of animal movement and sexual reproduction.

Now, researchers have uncovered a remarkable site in Canada’s Northwest Territories where they have found more than 100 Ediacaran fossils, including six groups never before seen in North America. These fossils are older and found in much deeper water settings than have been previously described. The work is published today in the journal Science Advances.

Reconstruction of a hypothetical deep-water group from the new fossil site in Canada’s Northwest Territories, based on fossils recovered by the researchers.

Alex Boersma.

For 3 billion years, life on Earth was dominated by microbes. Then, all the sudden, we get these strange-looking marine animals big enough to see and capable of behaviors we would find familiar today. If we want to understand this transition, when life first became large, complex, and unmistakenly animal, this new site has tremendous potential.

Scott D. Evans, lead author
Division of Paleontology (Invertebrates)
American Museum of Natural History
New York, NY, USA.

Ediacaran species are linked to a diverse set of animal groups, including mollusks, nematodes, comb jellies, and cnidarians—a group that spans jellyfish and corals. Because most Ediacaran organisms were soft-bodied, their fossils are rare. Although these fossils have been identified on every continent except Antarctica, our understanding of Ediacaran life primarily comes from just a handful of sites, providing limited insight into this roughly 40-million-year interval in Earth’s history.

Ediacaran life is sorted into three groups, representing different times in the geologic record. These “assemblages” are called Avalon (575-559 million years ago), White Sea (559-550 million years ago), and Nama (550-538 million years ago).

Until this study, fossils from the White Sea assemblage had mostly been found in Russia and Australia. Now, researchers have uncovered clear evidence of this assemblage in North America, in the remote, ancient rocks of Canada’s Mackenzie Mountains.

In addition, the researchers determined that some of these North American fossils are estimated to be about 567 million years old, 5-10 million years older than previously documented White Sea specimens and overlapping with the time of the older Avalon assemblage.

Not only is this new site highly diverse, but also it is from a part of the rock succession where we have previously lacked fossil remains.

Associate Professor Justin Strauss, co-author.
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH, USA.

[Jusin Strauss] has been exploring this area for about 15 years. The fossils were found on the traditional lands of the Sahtú Dene and Métis, who provided the research team with guidance and permission to access the site.

In this study, the researchers found clear evidence of the White Sea assemblage in ancient rocks of Canada’s Mackenzie Mountains in the Northwest Territories, on the traditional lands of the Sahtú Dene and Métis, who provided the research team with guidance and permission to access the site.
Scott Evans/© AMNH

Among the finds made for the first time in North America are:

Dickinsonia, a flat organism resembling a round mat, with a divided circular body that moved around on the sea floor, lacking a mouth, and instead absorbing bacteria and algae through its entire bottom surface;
an immobile tubular organism called Funisia that lived in clusters and offers the oldest evidence of sexual reproduction in the fossil record, likely with coordinated release of sperm and eggs into the water column like coral;
Kimberella, an organism with a muscular foot that fed by scraping the sea floor, widely interpreted as an early relative of mollusks and now potentially the oldest fossil bilaterian—the group of animals with distinct front, back, top, and bottom with symmetric left and right sides;
and Eoandromeda, a possible comb jelly with eight spiral arms

A fossil of Eoandromeda, a possible comb jelly with eight spiral arms.
Scott Evans/© AMNH

The scientists also discovered that these organisms lived in deeper-water environments than previously recognized for the White Sea assemblage. This finding supports a growing hypothesis that early animals may have originated in offshore, deep-marine settings before expanding into shallower waters over time, the opposite of what is typical of animal evolution after this time.

We think of the deep ocean as a dark, inhospitable place, but it is also relatively stable, with few fluctuations in things like temperature and oxygen essential to most animal life. This stability may have provided key opportunities to support early animal life.

Scott D. Evans.

Publication:
Scott D. Evans et al.
Discovery of White Sea assemblage fossils from Laurentia.
Sci. Adv. 12, eaed9916(2026). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aed9916

The paper's significance for understanding the pre-Cambrian evolution of life is also explained in an article in The Conversation by two researchers from Curtin University, Australia: Chris Kirkland, Professor of Geochronology, and Anthony Clarke, Research Fellow in the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Their article is reprinted below under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency.

Rare 567‑million‑year‑old fossils refine our understanding of early animal evolution

A fossil of Dickinsonia, a flat organism that moved around on the sea floor, lacking a mouth and instead absorbing bacteria and algae through its entire bottom surface.

Scott Evans

Chris Kirkland, Curtin University and Anthony Clarke, Curtin University From butterflies to blue whales, corals and worms, Earth is home to an incredible diversity of animals. How all of these animals evolved from earlier, simpler ancestors is one of the most exciting stories in the history book of life on our 4.5 billion-year-old planet.

A new study, published today in Science Advances, adds crucial information to this story. Led by Scott Evans, assistant curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the American Museum of Natural History, it draws on rare 567-million-year-old fossils to show animal evolution may have started far earlier than previously thought.

Reconstruction of a hypothetical deep-water paleocommunity from the new fossil site in Canada’s Northwest Territories, based on fossils recovered by the researchers.

Alex Boersma

Ancient life on the seafloor Long before life on land or even fish, Earth’s seafloor was home to large and complex animals.

Some of these soft-bodied and strange animals were shaped like pancakes. Others were more like soft tubes or spirals that pressed into the mud.

We call this time, from about 635 to 538 million years ago, the Ediacaran Period. Do animals from this period represent our ancient ancestors before the Cambrian explosion, which produced most of the basic groups of animals we know today? Or are they failed evolutionary experiments?

To help us answer these questions, we divide the Ediacaran fossil record into three broad chapters: the Avalon, White Sea and Nama assemblages. Each represents a distinctive community of Ediacaran animals that tend to appear in different times and environments.

These chapters help scientists track how early animal life changed from mostly deep-water organisms that were stuck in mud to more diverse shallow-water communities that included animals.

The Avalon assemblage is the oldest chapter, dominated by simple yet strange deeper water organisms. The White Sea assemblage is the middle chapter. It is characterised by larger, more varied animals, including forms such as the famous Dickinsonia, a ribbed, oval organism a bit like a quilted placemat. The Nama assemblage comes last and includes some of the earliest animals with hard shell-like parts.

A reconstruction of an Ediacaran ecosystem.

Ryan Schwark/Wikimedia, CC BY

Combining fossil hunting with geological detective work

The team behind the new study combined fossil hunting with geological detective work. They collected and photographed fossil-bearing rocks from the remote Mackenzie Mountains in Canada, compared the fossils with other Ediacaran organisms, and studied nearby rocks to reconstruct where and when these animals lived.

Remarkably, several of the fossils, with frond-like forms, segmented and quilted bodies resembled those from the White Sea assemblage. That matters because the White Sea animal community was previously best known from famous sites in Russia and Australia.

The new fossils show that similar communities had also reached the deep waters of Laurentia, the ancient continent that included much of present-day North America.

In early animal evolution, a few million years can matter. The fossil-bearing rocks appear to correlate with nearby layers dated at about 567–566 million years old.

If that correlation is correct, this makes the community considerably older than the classic White Sea assemblage, which is usually placed at about 560–550 million years ago. Their discovery pushes back the timing of some important early animals, including mobile forms such as Dickinsonia.

It also dramatically changes the environmental picture.

White Sea-type fossils are usually associated with shallower marine settings. But these rocks suggest the Canadian animals lived in a deep-water slope environment. Together, that implies these early animal communities were both more geographically widespread and more environmentally flexible than previously recognised.

That raises an intriguing question. Did early animal ecosystems first develop far offshore, in deeper and perhaps more stable marine settings, before later becoming common in shallower seas?

The site in Canada’s Northwest Territories where researchers have uncovered a wide diversity of fossils.

Scott Evans

Blurring the boundaries

The discovery matters because it blurs the boundaries between the classic Ediacaran “chapters”. The Avalon and White Sea assemblages may not represent a clean handover, with one world disappearing and another suddenly replacing it.

Instead, the new Canadian fossils suggest overlap: Avalon-style frond-like organisms and more diverse White Sea-style animals may have shared the darkness and lived together in similar deep-water settings.

That makes early animal evolution look less like a sudden switch and more like a gradual ecological expansion. Animals were experimenting with new body shapes, new ways of living on the seafloor, and perhaps new ways of moving and feeding.

The roots of modern animal diversity may therefore lie in a long, uneven process that began in deeper marine environments far from the warmth of the Ediacaran sun, and before many animal groups became common in shallower seas.

A broader evolutionary idea

The study also raises a broader evolutionary idea.

Environments help shape life. A soft-bodied animal living on a quiet, deeper seafloor faced different challenges from one living in shallow water affected by waves, light, currents and shifting sediment. Those pressures can influence which body shapes and behaviours are useful and are passed on.

This is where the idea of convergent evolution can become helpful. Convergent evolution is when unrelated organisms evolve similar solutions to similar problems like wings in birds, bats and insects, or streamlined bodies in fish, dolphins and extinct marine reptiles.

In this sense evolution is repeated problem-solving under changing environmental rules over billions of years.

The same broad solutions, tubes, fronds, flattened bodies, may have been tried repeatedly as early animals explored the seafloor.

Over deep time, life can look uncannily inventive. But it’s shaped by the relentless testing ground of Earth itself.

Chris Kirkland, Professor of Geochronology, Curtin University and Anthony Clarke, Research Fellow, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin 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
The dawn of animal life is preserved by fossils of the Ediacara Biota, which have been separated into three biotic assemblages: the Avalon, White Sea, and Nama. Geographic and temporal isolation of these faunas leads to uncertainties regarding patterns of change. We report the discovery of unambiguous fossil communities belonging to the White Sea assemblage from the paleocontinent of Laurentia in the Blueflower Formation, Mackenzie Mountains, Canada. Unlike previous localities, sedimentological and geochronological evidence supports an older origin and deeper-water setting for this assemblage, including the oldest motile bilaterians. Fossil communities overlap temporally with the Avalon assemblage and are recognized in similar deep-water paleoenvironments. These results provide support for a hypothesized pattern of offshore origination followed by habitation of shallower environments through time, potentially unique to the early radiation of animals.

Fig. 1. Location and setting of Ediacaran fossils.
(A) Ediacaran [~555 million years (Ma)] paleogeographic map created with data from Merdith et al. (74) with reconstructed position of Sekwi Brook locality in Laurentia (L) and other key Ediacaran localities in the paleocontinents of South Australia (SA), Kalahari (K), Baltica (B), and Avalonia (Av). (B) Geologic map created with data from Roots et al. (75) with distribution of map units and location of Sekwi Brook fossil discoveries (encircled by yellow dashed line); inset map of NWT, Canada. Fm, formation; fms, formations; approx., approximate; BB, Backbone; IB, Ice Brook; RT, Ravensthroat; SB, Sheepbed. (C) Neoproterozoic stratigraphy of the Mackenzie Mountains displaying regional radiometric age constraints (22, 23, 76) and stratigraphic occurrence of fossils in the <~567 Ma lower (l.) Blueflower Formation. Re-Os dates from different localities occur at stratigraphic heights indistinguishable at the resolution of this figure. C., creek; Cyro., Cryogenian; u., upper.

Fig. 2. Stratigraphy, sedimentology, and selected photographs of the fossiliferous lower Blueflower Formation at Sekwi Brook.
(A) Schematic stratigraphy of the Rackla Group at Sekwi Brook created with data from Macdonald et al. (12) including carbon isotope chemostratigraphy and approximate locations of the Shuram CIE (dark blue shading) and correlated geochronological constraints (yellow stars) based on regional correlations (see fig. S1). Light blue shading highlights detailed measured section of the lower Blueflower Formation from this study, displaying both lithological attributes and the stratigraphic position of new fossil horizons (bolded, italicized accession numbers). sh/slt, shale/siltstone; sand., sandstone; conglom., conglomerate; mdstn, carbonate mudstone; wk/pck/grn, wackstone/packstone/grainstone. (B) Thin- to medium-bedded lime mudstone and calcareous shale with rare beds of coated grain-bearing wackestone/packstone/grainstone locally displaying distinct Bouma subdivisions from the basal ~10 m of the lower Blueflower Formation. Yellow circle around rock hammer for scale. (C) Thin-bedded sandy limestone turbidite package with amalgamated normal-graded units displaying Tabc/Tbc Bouma subdivisions from ~28 m in the measured section. These facies are commonly fossiliferous and locally host TOS [see fig. S2 (E to G)]. (D) Slump folded interval (fold hinge outlined with dashed blue line) in interbedded calcareous shale and thin- to medium-bedded lime mudstone and wackestone/packstone/grainstone from ~112 m in the measured section. For scale, length of hammer (B and D) is 330 mm; pencil (C) is 145 mm. ‰, per mil.

Fig. 3. Ediacaran fossils from the Blueflower Formation.
(A to C) Sekwitubulus; (C) poorly preserved Sekwitubulus (white arrows) integrated into the mat-based community; (D) Aspidella and poorly preserved Sekwitubulus (white arrows) integrated into the mat-based community; (E) Mawsonites with stalk (white arrow); (F) probable Arboreomorpha; (G to I) unassigned “petaloids”; (J) Swartpuntia?, with overlapping petaloids (white arrow). (A to G) From float but interpreted as in situ hyporelief impressions, (H to J) preserved three-dimensionally, potentially indicating transport before burial. All specimens from the informal lower Blueflower Formation with the exception of (J) from the upper member. PWNHC catalog nos. (A) 2025.21.41; (B) 2025.21.44; (C) 2025.21.56 (D) 2025.21.12; (E) 2025.21.51; (F) 2025.21.13; (G) 2025.21.10; (H) 2025.21.40; (I) 2025.21.59; (J) 2025.21.39. Scale bars, 10 mm.

Fig. 4. Taxa from the lower Blueflower Formation.
(A) Funisia, including disarticulated specimens (white triangles); white box in (A) magnified in (B) with Sekwitubulus (white arrow) and potentially branching Funisia (white triangle); (C) Funisia holdfasts (white triangles); (D to G) Dickinsonia, white box in (D) magnified in (E); (D to I) Aulozoon [white arrow in (D)] including example (H) with rounded termination (white rectangle) magnified in (I); (J) Kimberella; (K and L) Kimberichnus; white box magnified in (L); (M) Eoandromeda; (N) new taxon? PWNHC catalog nos. (A and B) 2025.21.44; (C) 2025.21.15; (D and E) 2025.21.07; (F) 2025.21.52; (G) 2025.21.29; (H and I) 2025.21.11 a-b; (J) 2025.21.45; (K and L) 2025.21.41; (M) 2025.21.35; (N) 2025.21.28. Scale bars, 10 mm

Fig. 5. Paleoenvironmental distribution of Ediacaran faunal assemblages through time.
Each bar represents the number of genera described from each time bin in the depositional environment indicated [after (4)]. Numbers above bars indicate total genera. Inset reconstruction by A. Boersma of a hypothetical paleocommunity from the deep-water lower Blueflower Formation based on fossils recovered here from Sekwi Brook.

Scott D. Evans et al.
Discovery of White Sea assemblage fossils from Laurentia.
Sci. Adv. 12, eaed9916(2026). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.aed9916

Copyright: © 2026 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, what creationists would like to pretend is a problem for evolution turns out to be nothing of the sort. The discovery of Ediacaran fossils earlier, more widely distributed, and in deeper-water settings than previously recognised does not contradict the evolutionary account; it enriches it. It adds detail to a picture that was already being assembled from geology, palaeontology, comparative biology and evolutionary theory.

The important point is that these fossils are not in the wrong sequence. They are not mammals in the Precambrian, birds before fish, or flowering plants before land plants. They are Ediacaran organisms in Ediacaran rocks, exactly where evolution says such organisms should be found. The adjustment is to the fine detail of their timing, distribution and ecology, not to the broad fact of life’s long evolutionary history.

Creationism, by contrast, has no useful explanation for any of this. It does not predict the Avalon, White Sea and Nama assemblages; it does not predict the orderly succession of fossils through deep time; it does not predict why soft-bodied Ediacaran organisms should be found in rocks hundreds of millions of years older than any modern mammal, bird or flowering plant. Its only response is to deny, distort or dismiss the evidence.

Science does something very different. It treats new evidence as information, not as a threat. If fossils are found earlier than expected, scientists ask why. If they are found in a different environment, scientists revise their understanding of the ecology. If they are found on a different palaeocontinent, scientists refine their view of how widely these organisms had spread. That is not weakness; it is the strength of a method that is accountable to reality.

And that is the lesson creationists never seem able to learn. Evolutionary biology can cope with new facts because it is a scientific explanation, not a sacred conclusion. Creationism cannot cope with them because its conclusion was fixed before the evidence was ever examined. The fossils from the Mackenzie Mountains therefore do not merely illuminate the strange world of the Ediacaran seas; they also illuminate the gulf between science, which follows the evidence, and dogma, which tries to make the evidence disappear.

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How Creationists Lie To Us - Ken Ham Shows Us His Cult Is For Fools Who Believe Lies

2026-05-25T23:03:15.940+01:00

Tiny fossils found in 1.7 billion-year-old mud yield clues to the evolution of complex life.

The creationist Ken Ham’s website, Answers in Genesis (AiG), is notorious for the way it exploits the ignorance of its target readership and their eagerness for spurious “scientific” validation of evidence-free superstition. For example, AiG recently posted on X, formerly Twitter, asserting that the fossil record is “the graveyard of the global flood”:

The fossil record is the graveyard of the global flood. pic.twitter.com/1OWyNcEk5o

— Answers in Genesis (@AiG) May 20, 2026

What AiG does not say, of course, is that fossils are not found in a chaotic jumble, as would be expected from a single global catastrophe. They occur in a consistent geological sequence, with older rocks containing older fossil assemblages and younger rocks containing later ones. The succession is not random; it records changing environments, extinctions, radiations and evolutionary transitions over immense spans of time. The rocks themselves contain independent evidence of their age and origin — including stratigraphic relationships, geochemical signatures, volcanic ash layers where present, and other dating markers — and many sedimentary sequences accumulated gradually over thousands, millions, or even hundreds of millions of years.

Nor do fossil-bearing rocks show the global mixing that a planet-wide genocidal flood should have produced. Instead, they preserve organisms that lived in particular environments at particular times. Marine organisms occur in marine sediments; freshwater organisms in freshwater deposits; terrestrial organisms in terrestrial deposits. Local and regional faunas remain local and regional.

We do not find Australian marsupials randomly mixed through Cambrian marine deposits, nor African mammals churned together with Jurassic dinosaurs and Ordovician trilobites. If a flood had covered even the highest mountains, tearing up ecosystems across the planet and carrying bodies wherever the currents took them, that is exactly the kind of disorder we should expect. It is not what the fossil record shows.

So, far from proving there was a global genocidal flood just a few thousand years ago, fossils in sedimentary rocks demonstrate exactly the opposite. They record a long, ordered, localised and historically structured history of life on Earth. That history is not only incompatible with the childish flood myth promoted by AiG; it is one of the strongest lines of evidence for evolution over deep time. And that is probably why Ken Ham’s creationist organisation needs its followers to believe otherwise. The tactic is perfectly plain and deliberately dishonest: if the facts contradict your claims, misrepresent the facts.

A striking example of this ordered fossil record over geological time has just been published in Nature by a team of palaeontologists and geobiologists led by Maxwell A. Lechte, of the University of Sydney, NSW, Australia, and Leigh Anne Riedman, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. They analysed core samples of ancient sedimentary mudstone, drilled decades ago by mineral exploration companies in Australia’s Northern Territory and later stored by the Northern Territory Geological Survey.

These core samples preserve mudstones formed from seafloor sediment in an ancient inland sea that covered much of northern Australia more than 1.5 billion years ago. Within them are microscopic fossils of organisms that lived and died in those ancient environments. Scientifically, the important point is not merely that these rocks expose the absurdity of AiG’s flood apologetics, but what they reveal about early life and the conditions in which it evolved. In this case, the microfossils suggest that some of the earliest known eukaryotes — the lineage that eventually gave rise to animals, plants, fungi and algae — were associated with oxygenated seafloor settings and were probably dependent on oxygen, unlike many of their prokaryotic predecessors.

Unlike creationists, the scientists were not looking for something they could twist to fit a predetermined conclusion. They were asking what could be learned from the evidence. The result is a clearer picture of the early evolution of complex cells, the environments in which they lived, and the long natural history of life on Earth — a history written in the rocks, not in Bronze Age mythology.

The two lead authors have just published their own account of the research and what they learned from it in The Conversation. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Published: May 21, 2026 12.08am BST

Tiny fossils found in 1.7 billion‑year‑old mud yield clues to the evolution of complex life

Drill cores of sedimentary rock which contains microscopic fossils.

Maxwell Lechte

Maxwell Lechte, University of Sydney and Leigh Anne Riedman, University of California, Santa Barbara

Stored in an open-air warehouse in tropical Darwin, Australia, are dozens of trays containing cylindrical cores of rock. They are from drill holes bored hundreds of metres below the surface by mineral exploration companies decades ago.

Some of these cores at the Northern Territory Geological Survey are mudstone – a type of sedimentary rock formed from hardened seafloor mud. The companies that drilled these cores were largely unaware that within these mudstones were fossils of microscopic organisms buried on the seafloor of an ancient inland sea that covered much of northern Australia over 1.5 billion years ago.

As our new study, published today in Nature, shows, these fossils are crucial for addressing a longstanding puzzle about the major evolutionary leap that led to all complex life on Earth: the origin of eukaryotes.

Layers of 1.7 billion-year-old sedimentary rocks, Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory.

Maxwell Lechte

Small but complex

All life on Earth can be placed into one of two types which are fundamentally different at the cellular level.

Prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) have simple cellular organisation and are mostly single celled. Eukaryotes – including all animals, plants, algae and fungi – are very different. They have much more complicated cells featuring a nucleus and other specialised structures such as organelles which perform specific jobs.

The eukaryotic revolution transformed the planet. It led to the rise of animals and, eventually, to us. Based on observations from the genes of living organisms, it is now widely agreed that the last common ancestor of all living eukaryotes resulted from the symbiotic union of (at least) two prokaryotic microbes: an archaeon and a bacterium.

The first evidence for eukaryotic life comes in the form of these fossils of single-celled organisms. They show a level of cellular complexity not seen among prokaryotes, but common in eukaryotes.

Eukaryote fossils can be found around the world in rocks dating back at least 1.5 billion years. The fossils of the Northern Territory, the oldest of which date back to 1.75 billion years ago, are the oldest currently known eukaryote fossils globally.

But the ancient world in which early eukaryotes evolved remains shrouded in mystery. And so many fundamental aspects regarding their nature are unknown.

Oxygen – friend or foe?

Many types of bacteria can live and grow in places without oxygen. But nearly all eukaryotes alive today use oxygen for their survival. That’s because aerobic respiration – breaking down food using oxygen – provides the vast amounts of energy that complex life demands.

But the idea that oxygen has always been beneficial for all eukaryotes has come under fire in recent years. This follows the surprising discoveries of enigmatic eukaryotes that can thrive in conditions without oxygen.

There is also mounting evidence from the geological record that when eukaryotes were first evolving, oxygen was likely much scarcer. This means oxygen-free marine habitats would have been the norm. Collectively, these observations have called into question the assumption eukaryotes have depended on oxygen since their inception.

Genetic studies of living microbes belonging to groups considered closest to the ancestors of the first eukaryote can offer key insights into eukaryote ancestry. But only the fossil record can tell us about long-extinct lineages. And only geology can offer a window into the kind of world these organisms lived in.

Fossils of single-celled eukaryotic organisms with complex surface features such as extensions and plates.

Leigh Anne Riedman

More than 12,000 fossils

For our new study, we crushed up samples of the mudstone cores stored in Darwin, then dissolved them. We identified more than 12,000 fossils by analysing the organic residue left behind by this dissolution under a microscope.

We also studied the mudstones the fossils were preserved in to better understand what the environment was like when the sediments were deposited. This offered insight about the habitats in which these eukaryotes lived. And by analysing the chemistry of these mudstones, we could determine whether oxygen was present in the ancient seawater.

Our results show that eukaryote fossils were found in environments ranging from coastal mudflats to the open sea. But they were present only in samples deposited in oxygenated settings. Samples from oxygen-free environments contained only simple, prokaryotic forms.

This suggests that even the oldest known eukaryotes that lived on Earth 1.7 to 1.4 billion years ago were dependent on oxygen. These data lend support to a long-held hypothesis that oxygen played a key role in driving the evolution of early eukaryotes.

Resolving the drivers and context of the major evolutionary leap represented by early eukaryotes is one of the major outstanding questions in the life sciences. Ongoing studies of these enigmatic, ancient microfossils will no doubt tell us more about our own origins – and our place in the cosmos.
Maxwell Lechte, Research Associate in Geobiology, University of Sydney and Leigh Anne Riedman, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Earth Science, University of California, Santa Barbara

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
The evolution of the eukaryotic cell paved the way for the emergence of all complex life on Earth. Despite its significance, the environmental context of early eukaryote evolution is largely unknown^1,2. Here we use the geological record to reconstruct the habitats of the oldest known fossil eukaryotes, approximately 1.75–1.4 billion years old. Our integrated palaeontological, sedimentological and geochemical analyses show that although fossil eukaryotes are found in samples deposited in a range of environments from coastal to offshore, they are almost entirely restricted to those from settings with oxygenated bottom waters. This distribution suggests these organisms were aerobes (obligate, facultative and/or microaerophilic) and, given their size and morphological complexity, probably possessed mitochondria. Furthermore, their near absence from otherwise fossiliferous anoxic samples suggests a benthic habit, as planktonic eukaryotes would be expected to be present in both oxic and anoxic samples. We propose that eukaryotes were largely restricted to oxic benthic habitats for much of the Proterozoic eon, only expanding into planktonic habitats during the Neoproterozoic era (1–0.54 billion years ago). This late ecological expansion could account for the mismatch between the appearance of eukaryotic body fossils and molecular biomarkers³ and explain the stepwise increase in eukaryote diversity during the Neoproterozoic era⁴.

Lechte, M.A., Riedman, L.A., Porter, S.M. et al. Early fossil eukaryotes were benthic aerobes.
Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10533-4

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

The contrast could hardly be clearer. AiG’s claim depends on treating the fossil record as though it were a single catastrophic dump of dead organisms, swept together in one brief episode of divine violence. But the rocks do not show that. They show order, sequence, locality, environmental context and immense age. They show organisms preserved where they lived, in sediments laid down under recognisable conditions, in layers that can be correlated and dated by multiple independent methods.

In this case, the evidence is not a chaotic graveyard from a recent flood, but a window into an ancient Proterozoic seafloor more than 1.5 billion years old. The microscopic fossils in these mudstones are not randomly mixed with dinosaurs, mammals, flowering plants or modern marine life, as a genuine global flood should have produced. They belong to their own time and place, and they help scientists reconstruct the slow emergence of complex cellular life in an oxygenated world long before animals, plants, or Ken Ham’s preferred mythology had appeared.

That is the central problem for creationism. The evidence does not merely fail to support its claims; it positively contradicts them. The fossil record is not a jumble; it is a sequence. Sedimentary rocks are not an indiscriminate flood deposit; they are archives of changing environments over deep time. Fossils are not props in a Bible story; they are data points in the long, natural history of life on Earth.

So, when Answers in Genesis declares that “the fossil record is the graveyard of the global flood”, it is not making a scientific argument. It is selling a slogan to people it hopes will not look too closely. Science, by contrast, does look closely — at the rocks, the chemistry, the fossils, the dating, and the environmental context — and what it finds is not a recent act of supernatural destruction, but a deep, ordered, evolving history of life, written patiently in stone.

And that, of course, is why creationist apologetics has to misrepresent it. The facts do not need faith, slogans, or special pleading. They only need to be examined.

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Malevolent Design - Fungi That Turn Spiders Into 'Zombies'

2026-05-24T22:04:31.513+01:00

Spider infected with Gibellula pseudosolita

Chang, Chen-xin, et al (2026)

Inside the Hidden World of Spider-Attacking Fungi | Blog

Parasites are hard enough for creationists to force-fit into their predetermined belief that all things were created by an omnibenevolent god, short of resorting to the near-blasphemous claim that 'Sin' somehow gave a rival creator unfettered access to their god's supposedly perfect creation in order to corrupt and destroy it. That rather undermines the claim of perfection in the first place, because a perfect creation, by definition, ought not to be corruptible.

But even harder for creationists to explain are parasites which, judged by their own favourite pseudo-scientific slogans — 'complex specified information' and 'irreducible complexity' — appear exquisitely adapted not merely to parasitise a living organism, but to consume it from within and then use its body as a platform for producing more parasites. In Pensoft's own popular description, these are "zombie" fungi: araneopathogenic fungi that parasitise spiders, mummify them, and then grow spore-producing structures from their bodies.

For example, newly identified spider-attacking fungi have recently been reported in two papers, published respectively in IMA Fungus and MycoKeys. Together, they add to the growing picture of a hidden diversity of highly specialised fungal parasites adapted to exploit spiders in different habitats.

The first is a new species of Purpureocillium fungus, belonging to the Purpureocillium atypicola group: Purpureocillium atlanticum. It was discovered in Brazil's Atlantic Forest, where it infects trapdoor spiders hidden in their burrows in the forest floor. The fungus covers the spider in cotton-white mycelium and eventually sends a purple fruiting structure up from the spider's cephalothorax, allowing spores to be released above the burrow. This discovery also shows that Purpureocillium atypicola, originally discovered in Japan in 1897 and thought to be a single species, is actually a global complex of multiple species.

The second paper reports three new species of Gibellula fungi — Gibellula pseudopigmentosa, Gibellula pseudosolita, and Gibellula sinensis — discovered on spiders in China and Laos. These fungi erupt from spider bodies in stalked, branch-like structures, and the species were distinguished from one another by differences in their reproductive structures, spore-forming bodies and phylogenetic relationships.

Other Examples of Parasite-Induced “Zombification”. The spider-attacking fungi described here are part of a much wider natural phenomenon: parasites that alter the body, behaviour or survival priorities of their hosts in ways that increase the parasite’s own chances of reproduction. The popular term “zombification” is dramatic, but it captures a real biological pattern — the host is made to serve the parasite’s life cycle rather than its own.

Zombie-ant fungi — Ophiocordyceps species. These fungi infect ants, alter their behaviour, and cause them to climb vegetation and clamp onto leaves or twigs before dying. The fungus then grows a fruiting body from the ant, releasing spores from a position better suited to infecting more ants.

The lancet liver fluke — Dicrocoelium dendriticum. This parasitic flatworm uses ants as an intermediate host. Infected ants are induced to climb vegetation and clamp themselves to grass stems, increasing the chance that they will be eaten by grazing mammals, where the parasite can complete the next stage of its life cycle.

Horsehair worms — Nematomorpha. These long, thread-like worms develop inside insects such as crickets and grasshoppers. When mature, they induce the host to seek water — often fatal for the insect — allowing the adult worm to emerge into the aquatic environment it needs for reproduction.

The “zombie snail” fluke — Leucochloridium. This trematode infects snails and produces colourful, pulsating broodsacs in the snail’s tentacles. The altered appearance, and changes in the snail’s behaviour, make the snail more conspicuous to birds, which then eat the infected tissues and spread the parasite.

Toxoplasma gondii in rodents. This protozoan parasite can reduce rodents’ normal aversion to cat odour. Since Toxoplasma reproduces sexually in cats, making infected rodents more likely to be eaten by cats can benefit the parasite.

The emerald cockroach wasp — Ampulex compressa. This parasitoid wasp delivers a precise sting into a cockroach’s nervous system, reducing its escape behaviour. The wasp then leads the subdued cockroach to a burrow, lays an egg on it, and leaves it as living food for the developing larva.

Bodyguard caterpillars — Glyptapanteles wasps. Some parasitoid wasps lay eggs inside caterpillars. After the wasp larvae emerge and pupate, the still-living caterpillar remains nearby and behaves like a bodyguard, violently defending the wasp pupae before eventually dying.

These examples are not evidence of benevolent design, but of evolutionary arms races. Natural selection can favour any heritable trait that improves a parasite’s transmission, even when the result is grotesque from the host’s point of view. In that sense, “zombie” parasites are exactly the sort of thing evolution predicts: opportunistic, wasteful, cruel and effective.

[More examples of these parasites can be found in my book, The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is Not Good.]

The two papers, both published by Pensoft, are accompanied by a post in Pensoft Blog:

Inside the Hidden World of Spider-Attacking Fungi
Newly discovered groups of “zombie” fungi have been found to mummify spiders and adapt their physical forms.
Deep within the humid leaf litter of China and the dense canopies of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, a silent ambush unfolds.

While we often think of spiders as the ultimate predators of the undergrowth, they have an arch-nemesis: araneopathogenic fungi. These “zombie” fungi are capable of parasitising spiders by hijacking their bodies and consuming them from the inside out.

Two studies published in the open-access peer-reviewed scientific journals MycoKeys and IMA Fungus, respectively, offer insight into this macabre world of spider assassins.

In Southeast Asia, researchers led by Chen-xin Chang of the Guizhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine have identified three new species of Gibellula fungi in China and Laos, which erupt from spiders in branch-like structures: Gibellula pseudopigmentosa, Gibellula pseudosolita, and Gibellula sinensis. These species are distinguished from one another by their slight variations in sexual reproductive structures and morphology. The below figure displays morphological plates, showing the three fungi species at both a macroscopic and microscopic level – notice their unique conidial heads and spore arrangements, coloured in blue.

To identify new species of spider-pathogenic fungi, the research group conducted field surveys in the forest leaf of China and Laos, where they collected specimens for detailed laboratory study. A combination of traditional microscopy and modern DNA sequencing rendered the discovery possible. The fungi’s sighting in Laos is particularly significant because it provides the first formal record of the Gibellula genus in the region.

This study – published in MycoKeys – therefore serves to fill a major distributional gap in Southeast Asia, as well as expand our understanding of the morphological diversity within this group of spider-pathogenic fungi.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, a study led by Joao Paulo Machado De Araújo of the University of Copenhagen and the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew, published in IMA Fungus, described a new species of Purpureocillium fungus belonging to the Purpureocillium atypicola group: Purpureocillium atlanticum. This fungus specifically targets trapdoor spiders inhabiting burrows on the forest floor, where it mummifies the host in white mycelia and subsequently emerges from its cephalothorax in the form of a purple fruiting body.

The discovery was notably featured in The Guardian, where it was placed alongside other unusual botanical and fungal discoveries compiled by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Purpureocillium atypicola was originally recorded in Japan by Yasuda (1894), and was thought to be a single species found all over the world for over a century. The discovery of the Purpureocillium atlanticum in Brazil is significant because it finally confirms that Purpureocillium atypicola is actually a global complex of many unique species.

To identify this new fungus, De Araújo’s research group used taxogenomics, a method which entailed bringing portable DNA sequencing gear directly into the Brazilian rainforest. By analysing the genetic code of the fungus and its environment immediately in the field, they were able to identify the specimen within just four days as opposed to waiting months for traditional lab results.

Both of these studies highlight the impressive diversity of spider-pathogenic fungi across distinct global environments. They additionally reveal the different evolutionary strategies of their respective species – while Purpureocillium atlanticum has adapted to infect underground trapdoor spiders by producing purple stalks to escape burrows, the Gibellula species represent the most diverse genus of spider parasites, found primarily in forest debris.

Phylogeny of hypocrealean fungi (A), highlighting the Purpureocillium atypicola complex (B) and morphology of the new species, P. atlanticum (C–G).
Photo credit: Araújo et al.

As researchers continue to map these complex ecological networks, it becomes clear that preserving threatened biomes, including the Atlantic Forest and the jungles of Southeast Asia, is critical to expanding our knowledge in fungal taxonomy.

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Publications:
Chang, Chen-xin, Hui Chen, Chanhom Loinheuang, Yong-dong Dai, Yao Wang.(2026)
Morphological and Phylogenetic Analyses Reveal Three New Species of Gibellula (Cordycipitaceae, Hypocreales) from Spiders.
MycoKeys. 127, 135-154, https://doi.org/10.3897/mycokeys.127.177871.

Araújo, João P. M., Natalia A. S. Przelomska, Rhian J. Smith, Elisandro R. Drechsler-Santos, Genivaldo Alves-Silva, Kelmer Martins-Cunha, Tsuyoshi Hosoya. 2025.
A New Species of Purpureocillium (Ophiocordycipitaceae) Fungus Parasitizing Trapdoor Spiders in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and Its Associated Microbiome Revealed Through in Situ “taxogenomics”.
IMA Fungus. 16 e168534. https://doi.org/10.3897/imafungus.16.168534.

Abstract
The genus Gibellula (Cordycipitaceae) comprises spider-pathogenic fungi. Three new species, G. pseudopigmentosa, G. pseudosolita, and G. sinensis, were discovered on spiders in the leaf litter of forests in Yunnan and Jilin provinces, China, and in Vientiane Prefecture and Oudomxay Province, Laos. Morphological and multi-locus phylogenetic analyses (based on nrSSU, ITS, nrLSU, tef-1α, rpb1, and rpb2) support their recognition as distinct taxa. Gibellula pseudopigmentosa is distinguished from its sister species, G. pigmentosinum, by smaller perithecia and shorter ascospores. Gibellula pseudosolita differs from its close relatives by producing multiple synnemata per host and possessing smaller conidia. Gibellula sinensis is characterized by shorter conidiophores and smaller conidial heads compared with morphologically similar species. This study presents the first formal record of Gibellula from Laos, significantly expanding the known distribution of the genus in Southeast Asia and contributing to our understanding of its diversity.

Figure 1.
Phylogenetic tree of Gibellula and related genera based on a combined six-locus dataset (nrSSU + ITS + nrLSU + tef-1α + rpb1 + rpb2). Branch support values (RAxML-BS/BI-PP) above 70%/0.7 are shown. Ex-type materials are marked with “T.” Bold labels indicate sequences generated in this study.

Figure 2.
Morphology of Gibellula pseudopigmentosa. A. Fungus on a spider; B. Perithecia; C. Ascus; D, H. Conidiophores; E. An ascus with an apical apparatus; F. Conidia disarticulating at the septa to form part-spores; G. Conidia; I. Conidial head; J, K. Colonies on PDA (obverse and reverse). Scale bars: 10 mm (A); 100 µm (B–D, H); 10 µm (E–G); 30 µm (I); 30 mm (J, K).

Figure 3.
Morphology of Gibellula pseudosolita. A, B. Fungus on a spider; C. Detail of a synnema; D. Conidiophores arising on a synnema; E, F. Conidial head; G. Conidia on PDA; H. Conidia on a synnema; I, J. Colonies on PDA (obverse and reverse). Scale bars: 20 mm (A, B, I, J); 15 mm (C); 100 µm (D); 30 µm (E, H); 10 µm (F); 5 µm (G).

Figure 4.
Morphology of Gibellula sinensis. A, B. Fungus on a spider; C. Detail of a synnema; D–G. Conidiophores showing conidial heads; H. Conidial head; I, J. Conidia. Scale bars: 10 mm (A, B); 5 mm (C); 40 µm (D–G); 10 µm (H–J).

Chang, Chen-xin, Hui Chen, Chanhom Loinheuang, Yong-dong Dai, Yao Wang.(2026)
Morphological and Phylogenetic Analyses Reveal Three New Species of Gibellula (Cordycipitaceae, Hypocreales) from Spiders.
MycoKeys. 127, 135-154, https://doi.org/10.3897/mycokeys.127.177871.

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

Abstract
Our planet is inhabited by an estimated 2.5 million species of fungi, of which fewer than 10% have been scientifically described. Some of the most understudied yet remarkable fungal species are those capable of parasitizing arthropods, notably insects and spiders. Here, we explore the hidden diversity of a spider-attacking (araneopathogenic) fungus and its associated microbiome in one of the world’s most biodiverse yet threatened biomes, the Atlantic Forest. We apply a field-based “taxogenomic” approach, comprising the integration of classical fungal taxonomy and genomic characterization of a sample’s endogenous, associated, and incidental DNA. The data we produced in the field reveal a new species of Purpureocillium fungus belonging to the P. atypicola group, parasitizing trapdoor spiders, and provide a snapshot of its associated bacterial and fungal microbiota. Molecular, morphological, and ecological data support P. atypicola as a complex of cryptic species infecting a variety of ecologically distinct spider species globally. We call for consolidated efforts to accelerate and facilitate the publication of both new species and the characterization of the genomic composition of their associated taxa.

Araújo, João P. M., Natalia A. S. Przelomska, Rhian J. Smith, Elisandro R. Drechsler-Santos, Genivaldo Alves-Silva, Kelmer Martins-Cunha, Tsuyoshi Hosoya. 2025.
A New Species of Purpureocillium (Ophiocordycipitaceae) Fungus Parasitizing Trapdoor Spiders in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and Its Associated Microbiome Revealed Through in Situ “taxogenomics”.
IMA Fungus. 16 e168534. https://doi.org/10.3897/imafungus.16.168534

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

So here we have yet another example of the natural world behaving exactly as though it is the product of amoral, undirected evolutionary processes, and not at all as though it was designed by an omnibenevolent intelligence. These fungi are not merely parasites in the loose sense of living at another organism’s expense; they are highly specialised organisms whose life cycles depend on infecting, killing, mummifying and then exploiting the bodies of spiders as spore-dispersal platforms.

For creationists, the difficulty is obvious. If complexity, specificity and interdependent function are supposed to be evidence of intelligent design, then these spider-attacking fungi would have to be counted as intelligently designed too. Their structures, host specialisation, reproductive strategies and ability to exploit spider bodies are not crude accidents; they are precise biological adaptations. The problem is that they are adaptations for doing something grotesque: turning another living animal into a fungal nursery.

Evolution has no difficulty explaining such things. Natural selection is not kind, merciful or forward-looking. It does not work towards moral improvement or ecological niceness. It simply preserves whatever variations improve survival and reproduction in a given environment. For a parasite, that can mean becoming better at finding hosts, evading their defences, consuming their tissues and using their remains to infect the next victim. However unpleasant the result may seem to us, it is exactly the sort of outcome an unintelligent, competitive, evolutionary process can produce.

Creationism, by contrast, has to pretend that these horrors are either not really horrors, not really designed, or somehow the consequence of a magical corruption of a once-perfect creation. But that merely moves the absurdity one step back. A perfect creation that can be corrupted into a world of parasites, pathogens, predation and zombifying fungi was never perfect in any meaningful sense. And an all-knowing designer who made, permitted or foresaw such life cycles is not rescued by calling them “fallen”; it is simply left with responsibility for the system in which they occur.

The spider-attacking fungi described in these papers are therefore not a problem for evolutionary biology. They are a problem for creationism. They show, once again, that life is not arranged as the product of benevolent design, but as the result of countless evolutionary arms races, in which organisms exploit whatever opportunities natural selection opens up — even when that means turning another creature’s body into a launching platform for the next generation of parasites.

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Refuting Creationism - What Was Before The Big Bang? It Wasn't Nothing!

2026-05-23T15:26:57.337+01:00

Forget sci-fi wormholes — physicists now think Einstein’s mysterious “bridge” may connect two directions of time itself.

Credit: AI/ScienceDaily.com

Wormholes may not exist – we’ve found they reveal something deeper about time and the universe

A paper published open access in January 2026 in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity should, if creationists could understand it, shoot one of their favourite foxes: the supposed killer question, "What came before the Big Bang?"

Only a creationist could believe the absurd notion that once literally nothing existed as a state of being, and that a god — presumably also made of nothing, because there was nothing to make it from — simultaneously existed and created everything out of that nothing by casting a magic spell, spoken in a language there was no-one else to communicate with in. The first intuitive mistake in that convoluted nonsense is the assumption that the default state of existence is non-existence.

Creationists, however, hypocritically try to hold science to a much higher standard than they apply to their own nonsensical superstitions. While demanding answers to what they imagine are "Gotcha!" questions of science, they routinely dismiss any answer with a wave of the hand. One favourite "Gotcha!" is: what was there before the Big Bang? The usual response is that, in the simplest version of standard cosmology, the question may be meaningless, because time and space themselves are part of the universe being described. If time does not extend through t = 0, then there is no "before" in the ordinary sense. But to a teleologically minded creationist, the answer that there was no "before" at the Big Bang sounds like a cop-out — a way of avoiding the question.

But what if there was a "before", not in the naive sense of empty time waiting around for a universe to be inserted into it, but in the deeper sense that what we call the Big Bang may have been a transition between two time-related phases of a larger physical system?

That this is at least a theoretical possibility comes from the work of three theoretical physicists, Enrique Gaztañaga and K. Sravan Kumar of the Institute of Cosmology & Gravitation, University of Portsmouth, UK, and João Marto of the Departamento de Física, Centro de Matemática e Aplicações (CMA-UBI), Universidade da Beira Interior, Portugal. They have revisited the work of Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, whose 1935 paper led to the idea of Einstein–Rosen bridges. These were later popularly interpreted as "wormholes" connecting different regions of spacetime, although that was not the original purpose of the idea.

Using a quantum-field-theoretic approach, Gaztañaga, Kumar and Marto argue that Einstein–Rosen bridges may not be space-travel tunnels at all, but mathematical bridges connecting two complementary components of a quantum state — two microscopic arrows of time. In one component, time flows in the direction we experience; in the other, it is mirrored in the opposite direction. Near black holes, or in expanding and collapsing universes, both components may be needed for a complete quantum description.

This offers a possible route through the black hole information paradox: the puzzle of how information can be preserved when matter crosses an event horizon and a black hole eventually evaporates. In the authors’ interpretation, information is not destroyed; it continues to evolve through the time-reversed, mirror component of the quantum state. That would preserve the quantum requirement that information is not simply lost, without requiring science-fiction wormholes, time machines or supernatural intervention.

The idea also opens the possibility that what we call the Big Bang was not an absolute beginning, but a bounce — a quantum transition from a preceding phase of cosmic evolution. In that scenario, our universe could even be the interior of a black hole formed in an earlier, parent cosmos, where collapse on one side becomes expansion on the other. The Big Bang, in other words, would not be a magical creation event, but a natural physical gateway.

That possibility also recalls an earlier speculative but serious scientific idea proposed by Lee Smolin in 1992, known as cosmological natural selection. Smolin suggested that black holes might give rise to new universes, with the physical constants of each descendant universe varying slightly from those of its parent. Universes whose laws favour the formation of many black holes would therefore tend to leave more descendant universes, rather as organisms that leave more offspring become over-represented in a biological population.

This is not evolution by genes, of course, and it is not established fact. It is a speculative cosmological hypothesis. But it is scientific speculation of the proper kind: naturalistic, mathematically framed, open to criticism and, in principle, vulnerable to observational evidence. It stands in stark contrast to creationism, which answers the same question with nothing more substantial than magic, asserted certainty and Bronze Age mythology.

One of the authors of the paper, Enrique Gaztanaga, also wrote an article in The Conversation, explaining their idea for a lay readership. His article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Published: January 15, 2026 1.09pm GMT

Wormholes may not exist – we’ve found they reveal something deeper about time and the universe

remotevfx.com/Shutterstock

Enrique Gaztanaga, University of Portsmouth

Wormholes are often imagined as tunnels through space or time — shortcuts across the universe. But this image rests on a misunderstanding of work by physicists Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen.

In 1935, while studying the behaviour of particles in regions of extreme gravity, Einstein and Rosen introduced what they called a “bridge”: a mathematical link between two perfectly symmetrical copies of spacetime. It was not intended as a passage for travel, but as a way to maintain consistency between gravity and quantum physics. Only later did Einstein–Rosen bridges become associated with wormholes, despite having little to do with the original idea.

But in new research, my colleagues and I show that the original Einstein–Rosen bridge points to something far stranger — and more fundamental — than a wormhole.

The puzzle Einstein and Rosen were addressing was never about space travel, but about how quantum fields behave in curved spacetime. Interpreted this way, the Einstein–Rosen bridge acts as a mirror in spacetime: a connection between two microscopic arrows of time.

Quantum mechanics governs nature at the smallest scales such as particles, while Einstein’s theory of general relativity applies to gravity and spacetime. Reconciling the two remains one of physics’ deepest challenges. And excitingly, our reinterpretation may offer a path to doing this.

A misunderstood legacy

The “wormhole” interpretation emerged decades after Einstein and Rosen’s work, when physicists speculated about crossing from one side of spacetime to the other, most notably in the late-1980s research.

But those same analyses also made clear how speculative the idea was: within general relativity, such a journey is forbidden. The bridge pinches off faster than light could traverse it, rendering it non-traversable. Einstein–Rosen bridges are therefore unstable and unobservable — mathematical structures, not portals.

Nevertheless, the wormhole metaphor flourished in popular culture and speculative theoretical physics. The idea that black holes might connect distant regions of the cosmos — or even act as time machines — inspired countless papers, books and films.

Yet there is no observational evidence for macroscopic wormholes, nor any compelling theoretical reason to expect them within Einstein’s theory. While speculative extensions of physics — such as exotic forms of matter or modifications of general relativity — have been proposed to support such structures, they remain untested and highly conjectural.

Two arrows of time

Our recent work revisits the Einstein–Rosen bridge puzzle using a modern quantum interpretation of time, building on ideas developed by Sravan Kumar and João Marto.

Most fundamental laws of physics do not distinguish between past and future, or between left and right. If time or space is reversed in their equations, the laws remain valid. Taking these symmetries seriously leads to a different interpretation of the Einstein–Rosen bridge.

Rather than a tunnel through space, it can be understood as two complementary components of a quantum state. In one, time flows forward; in the other, it flows backward from its mirror-reflected position.

This symmetry is not a philosophical preference. Once infinities are excluded, quantum evolution must remain complete and reversible at the microscopic level — even in the presence of gravity.

The “bridge” expresses the fact that both time components are needed to describe a complete physical system. In ordinary situations, physicists ignore the time-reversed component by choosing a single arrow of time.

But near black holes, or in expanding and collapsing universes, both directions must be included for a consistent quantum description. It is here that Einstein–Rosen bridges naturally arise.

Solving the information paradox

At the microscopic level, the bridge allows information to pass across what appears to us as an event horizon – a point of no return. Information does not vanish; it continues evolving, but along the opposite, mirror temporal direction.

This framework offers a natural resolution to the famous black hole information paradox. In 1974, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes radiate heat and can eventually evaporate, apparently erasing all information about what fell into them — contradicting the quantum principle that evolution must preserve information.

The paradox arises only if we insist on describing horizons using a single, one-sided arrow of time extrapolated to infinity — an assumption quantum mechanics itself does not require.

If the full quantum description includes both time directions, nothing is truly lost. Information leaves our time direction and re-emerges along the reversed one. Completeness and causality are preserved, without invoking exotic new physics.

These ideas are difficult to grasp because we are macroscopic beings who experience only one direction of time. On everyday scales, disorder — or entropy — tends to increase. A highly ordered state naturally evolves into a disordered one, never the reverse. This gives us an arrow of time.

But quantum mechanics allows more subtle behaviour. Intriguingly, evidence for this hidden structure may already exist. The cosmic microwave background — the afterglow of the Big Bang — shows a small but persistent asymmetry: a preference for one spatial orientation over its mirror image.

This anomaly has puzzled cosmologists for two decades. Standard models assign it extremely low probability — unless mirror quantum components are included.

Echoes of a prior universe?

This picture connects naturally to a deeper possibility. What we call the “Big Bang” may not have been the absolute beginning, but a bounce — a quantum transition between two time-reversed phases of cosmic evolution.

Was the big bang really the beginning?

Triff/Shutterstock

In such a scenario, black holes could act as bridges not just between time directions, but between different cosmological epochs. Our universe might be the interior of a black hole formed in another, parent cosmos. This could have formed as a closed region of spacetime collapsed, bounced back and began expanding as the universe we observe today.

If this picture is correct, it also offers a way for observations to decide. Relics from the pre-bounce phase — such as smaller black holes — could survive the transition and reappear in our expanding universe. Some of the unseen matter we attribute to dark matter could, in fact, be made of such relics.

In this view, the Big Bang evolved from conditions in a preceding contraction. Wormholes aren’t necessary: the bridge is temporal, not spatial — and the Big Bang becomes a gateway, not a beginning.

This reinterpretation of Einstein–Rosen bridges offers no shortcuts across galaxies, no time travel and no science-fiction wormholes or hyperspace. What it offers is far deeper. It offers a consistent quantum picture of gravity in which spacetime embodies a balance between opposite directions of time — and where our universe may have had a history before the Big Bang.

It does not overthrow Einstein’s relativity or quantum physics — it completes them. The next revolution in physics may not take us faster than light — but it could reveal that time, deep down in the microscopic world and in a bouncing universe, flows both ways.
Enrique Gaztanaga, Professor of Astrophysics at Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth

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

The formulation of quantum field theory in Minkowski spacetime, which emerges from the unification of special relativity and quantum mechanics, is based on treating time as a parameter, assuming a fixed arrow of time, and requiring that field operators commute for spacelike distances. This procedure is questioned here in the context of quantum field theory in curved spacetime (QFTCS). In 1935, Einstein and Rosen (ER), in their seminal paper (Einstein and Rosen 1935 Phys. Rev. 48 73–77) proposed that ‘a particle in the physical Universe has to be described by mathematical bridges connecting two sheets of spacetime’ which involved two arrows of time. Recently proposed direct-sum quantum theory reconciles this ER’s vision by introducing geometric superselection sectors associated with the regions of spacetime related by discrete transformations. We further establish that the quantum effects at gravitational horizons involve the physics of quantum inverted harmonic oscillators that have phase space horizons. This new understanding of the ER bridges is not related to classical wormholes, it addresses the original ER puzzle and promises a unitary description of QFTCS, along with observer complementarity. Furthermore, we present compelling evidence for our new understanding of ER bridges in the form of large-scale parity asymmetric features in the cosmic microwave background, which is statistically 650 times stronger than the standard scale-invariant power spectrum from the typical understanding of inflationary quantum fluctuations when compared with the posterior probabilities associated with the model given the data. We finally discuss the implications of this new understanding in combining gravity and quantum mechanics.

Enrique Gaztañaga et al 2026
A new understanding of Einstein–Rosen bridges
Class. Quantum Grav. 43 015023 DOI 10.1088/1361-6382/ae3044

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

The important point here is not that this hypothesis has been proved, nor that cosmologists have now definitively answered what, if anything, preceded the Big Bang. The point is that science can ask such questions without retreating into magic. It can frame possibilities in mathematics, test them for internal consistency, compare them with what is already known, and discard or modify them if they fail. That is how knowledge advances.

Creationism, by contrast, has no such mechanism for self-correction. It begins with the answer it wants — a magic creator — then tries to force every gap in current knowledge into service as evidence for that conclusion. But a gap in scientific knowledge is not evidence for a god; it is merely an invitation to investigate further. Time and again, where creationists once parked their god, science has found natural processes.

Whether Gaztañaga and colleagues are right or wrong in detail, their work illustrates the enormous difference between science and superstition. Here is a naturalistic proposal that treats the Big Bang not as an inexplicable supernatural conjuring trick, but as a possible physical transition in a wider cosmic structure. It may turn out to be correct, partly correct, or wrong — but it is the sort of wrong that can teach us something, because it is grounded in physics rather than faith.

And that is the real problem for creationism. It offers no comparable research programme, no equations, no predictions, no observations that could prove it wrong, and no reason to prefer it over any other creation myth. Its answer to "What came before the Big Bang?" is simply, "Our preferred god did it", which explains nothing because it merely replaces one mystery with a bigger, unevidenced one.

Science does not need to know everything to be superior to creationism. It only needs to keep doing what creationism cannot do: ask honest questions, follow the evidence, revise its models, and look for natural explanations. If the universe had a "before", science is the only method likely to discover it. If it did not, science is still the only method capable of explaining why that question may be meaningless. Either way, magic is redundant.

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Creationism Refuted - Australian Crocodiles Are Fatal To Creationism

2026-05-22T16:20:09.518+01:00

Jorgo Ristevski, CC BY

129,000 years of crocodiles: what we know about Australasia’s ancient apex predators

According to Bronze Age Biblical mythology, existing species should have no ancestors because they were all supposedly magicked into existence fully formed during a few days of creation, just a few thousand years ago.

That childish belief has to be clung to by creationists despite the evidence of the real world, which tells a very different story: not of sudden manufacture, but of deep evolutionary history, extinction, replacement and survival. The iconic saltwater crocodiles of northern Australia provide a good example. They are not isolated products of a one-off act of creation, but living survivors of a much richer Australasian crocodylian history stretching back tens of millions of years, during which crocodile relatives occupied a variety of ecological niches, including those of formidable predators.

Modern Australia has only two native crocodile species: the freshwater crocodile, Crocodylus johnstoni, and the Indo-Pacific or saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus porosus. But the fossil and archaeological evidence shows that these are merely the remnant survivors of a once more diverse crocodylian fauna, including the now-extinct mekosuchines, a distinctive Australasian group whose members included species very unlike the crocodiles familiar today.

Now a group of researchers from the University of Queensland and Griffith University, together with colleagues from several other institutions, has pieced together the fragmentary evidence from 26 fossil and archaeological sites across Australasia to build a clearer picture of the crocodylians that once lived in the region, and of their interactions with humans. Their review of the evidence was recently published, open access, in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

The study shows that the late Pleistocene record of Australian crocodylians is still incomplete and often difficult to date securely, but it nevertheless reveals a lost diversity. The extinct mekosuchines appear to have declined and disappeared on mainland Australia around the same broad period as other Australian megafauna, while some survived much later on south-west Pacific islands such as New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Fiji. There, their remains occur in archaeological contexts, suggesting that they persisted until after human arrival and may have been affected by human activity.

Three of the authors have also written an article in The Conversation, explaining their research and its significance for understanding the evolutionary history of these reptiles. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Published: May 19, 2026 9.08pm BST

129,000 years of crocodiles: what we know about Australasia’s ancient apex predators

Jorgo Ristevski, CC BY

Jorgo Ristevski, The University of Queensland; Julien Louys, Griffith University, and Nicole Boivin, The University of Queensland

The sight of a saltwater crocodile basking on a mudbank is one of the most iconic and intimidating images of northern Australia. Yet the crocodiles that inhabit the region today are just the survivors of a much richer and stranger lost world.

Until recently, Australasia was home not just to the familiar crocodiles found in tropical waterways, but also to a unique cast of crocs unlike any living species.

Our recent review of evidence from the past 129,000 years reveals a dramatic story of extinctions, human encounters, and survival against the odds.

Mekosuchines – the lost rulers of Australasia

Modern crocodiles are members of the genus Crocodylus, but an entirely different group of crocodylians known as mekosuchines once dominated the region.

For more than 50 million years, mekosuchines were the apex predators of Australasia. Some even survived to meet humans.

These remarkable animals came in an astonishing variety of shapes and sizes, inhabiting many different environments.

Some were giant semi-aquatic ambush predators, much like the saltwater crocodiles that still patrol northern rivers today. Others were much smaller “dwarf” species that inhabited islands such as New Caledonia. Most terrifyingly, some species possessed blade-like serrated teeth and probably hunted their prey on land.

A fragmentary puzzle

We pieced together a record of crocodylians over the past 129,000 years from scattered and highly fragmentary remains recovered from more than 20 archaeological and palaeontological sites.

Most are located in Australia, though some are found in New Guinea, and a handful more across the southwest Pacific. At archaeological sites on the Australian mainland, as well as in the Torres Strait and New Guinea, researchers have uncovered the broken bones and teeth of modern crocodile species, showing that these formidable reptiles have shared landscapes with people for thousands of years.

Ancient rock art, some dating back around 20,000 years, reveals that Indigenous Australians were closely observing and depicting these animals for millennia. The distribution of archaeological remains and rock art closely mirrors the modern ranges of crocodiles today. This points to a long and relatively stable coexistence between humans and these powerful predators.

Crocodylian remains have been found at sites across Australasia dated over the past 129,000 years.

Jorgo Ristevski, CC BY

Archaeological evidence shows that humans did occasionally eat crocodiles, and sometimes even crafted pendants from their teeth. Yet such discoveries are quite rare. When ancient archaeological sites do yield crocodile bones, there are usually only a handful of them.

The evidence suggests crocodiles were hunted only rarely. This is not surprising.

Adult saltwater crocodiles are enormous, immensely powerful, and highly lethal to humans. For ancient communities, engaging with these apex predators would have been a hazardous undertaking, and something mostly avoided.

But modern crocodiles weren’t alone in these ancient landscapes. Fossils show they shared them with the mekosuchines.

On mainland Australia, mekosuchines are currently only known from fossils. Most remains date from more than 40,000 years ago. We currently have no evidence of these extinct crocs from archaeological sites or in ancient rock art.

We don’t know if humans and mekosuchines ever directly interacted in Australia. Their disappearance occurred around the same time as the extinction of other Australian megafauna, potentially after a long period of coexistence with humans. The exact cause of their demise in Australia remains a mystery.

Island extinctions

However, the story is different on the islands of New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Fiji. There, some mekosuchine species managed to survive into much more recent times. And humans almost certainly encountered them directly.

The extinct crocs of New Caledonia and Vanuatu were small, reaching less than two metres in length as adults. They also likely lived more on land than today’s semi-aquatic crocodiles. Their small statures and terrestrial lives would have made them far more accessible for human hunters.

Size comparisons between the largest (the living saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus porosus) and smallest (the extinct dwarf crocs of New Caledonia and Vanuatu, Mekosuchus) known crocodylian species from the past 129,000 years in Australasia.

Jorgo Ristevski, CC BY

Tragically, the known record of these island mekosuchines ends within a few centuries of human settlement. In several cases, their remains were found in association with human artefacts and middens.

In one example from Vanuatu, a mekosuchine limb bone appears to bear the gnaw marks of a rat, an invasive species introduced to the island by humans. While definitive proof is elusive, it seems likely that direct or indirect human involvement may be the reason for the disappearance of these “dwarf” island crocodylians.

Lessons for the Anthropocene

We are now living through the Anthropocene, an age when humans are profoundly influencing the planet and extinctions are accelerating, as is particularly evident in Australia.

The prehistoric past is not just a record of vanished worlds, but a warning for the future. Understanding how apex predators like crocodiles responded to past climatic changes, environmental upheaval, and human impacts provides important clues for their conservation in the future.

To truly unravel these questions will take the combined work of palaeontologists, archaeologists, ecologists and conservationists. Just as crucial will be deep engagement with Indigenous knowledges and land managers, whose long histories of observing and living alongside these animals offer clues for protecting the world’s remaining crocodiles, and the threatened ecosystems they inhabit.
Jorgo Ristevski, Researcher, Palaeontology, The University of Queensland; Julien Louys, Professor, Palaeontology, Griffith University, and Nicole Boivin, Honorary Professor, Archaeology, The University of Queensland

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
In this study, we synthesize the known late Quaternary crocodylian record in Australasia through literature review and direct assessment of fossil and zooarchaeological material. The late Pleistocene record, mainly from Australia, consists of partial skeletal remains mostly referable to the extinct Mekosuchinae, with some attributable to Crocodylus. The youngest reliably dated mekosuchine fossil is ∼20 000 years old, suggesting mekosuchine decline and extinction coincided with that of other Australian megafauna. In contrast, three south-west Pacific islands—New Caledonia, Vanuatu, and Fiji—were Holocene refuges for mekosuchines, whose remains occur in archaeological contexts, indicating human interaction. Their extinction followed soon after human arrival, suggesting anthropogenic influence as a potential key factor. Crocodylus johnstoni occurs in palaeontological (potentially 28 kya) and archaeological sites in Australia. Crocodylus porosus has an ambiguous fossil record potentially going back over 40 kya, but is definitively present by the Holocene. Most Crocodylus remains come from coastal sites overlapping modern ranges. Archaeological evidence supports crocodile utilization by humans in Australia, Torres Strait, and New Guinea. The fragmentary nature of the known fossil material, as well as the current lack of reliable dates, leaves many unanswered questions about the morphology, palaeobiology, and disappearance of mekosuchines.

Jorgo Ristevski, Julien Louys, Sue O’Connor, Adam M Yates, Molly Husdell, Gilbert J Price, Sean Ulm, Ian J McNiven, Steven W Salisbury, Nicole Boivin
The late Quaternary crocodylian record from Australasia Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 207(1), May 2026, zlag065, https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlag065

The archaeological evidence does not show a world in which all species appeared fully formed in a single act of magic a few thousand years ago. It shows a world with a long, complex, and changing history: lineages appearing, diversifying, moving, adapting, declining and sometimes disappearing altogether. The crocodiles of Australasia are not exceptions to that pattern; they are another illustration of it.

What makes this especially awkward for creationists is that the evidence comes from the very places where humans and these animals overlapped. Bones, fossils, archaeological deposits, dating methods, extinction patterns and surviving species all fit into a coherent picture of ecological and evolutionary change over tens of thousands, and in the wider crocodylian lineage, millions of years. None of it requires a magic creation, a global flood, or a sudden population reset by eight survivors in a wooden boat.

By contrast, creationism contributes nothing to understanding this evidence. It does not predict why extinct mekosuchines should be found in some places and not others, why island species should survive later than mainland forms, why modern Australia should be left with only two native crocodile species, or why the fossil and archaeological record should show succession, disappearance and survival rather than a single, simultaneous act of creation.

Science, however, can take fragmentary evidence from scattered sites and turn it into a testable, revisable account of the past. That account may be incomplete, but it is grounded in evidence and open to correction. Creationism begins with a conclusion dictated by ancient mythology and then tries to force the facts to fit it. The difference is the difference between investigation and dogma.

So, once again, the evidence does what evidence so often does: it quietly dismantles creationist certainty. The bones of ancient crocodiles do not speak of a recent magical creation; they speak of deep time, changing environments, extinction, survival and evolution — exactly the sort of history predicted by biology, archaeology and palaeontology, and exactly the sort of history creationism has to deny.

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Refuting Creationism - Why T. Rex Evolved Tiny Arms - No Intelligence Involved

2026-05-21T22:25:04.243+01:00

Why meat-eating dinosaurs like T. rex evolved tiny arms | UCL

Although they may have retained some residual function, what the forelimbs of Tyrannosaurus rex were almost certainly not used for was grabbing and holding large prey. They were far too short and mechanically limited for that role, especially in a predator whose real killing equipment was a massive skull, powerful jaws and bone-crushing bite. So, creationists need to explain why an intelligent designer would have equipped one of the most formidable predators ever to walk the Earth with such apparently inadequate little arms in the first place.

These apparent design failures are, of course, entirely understandable as the result of an evolutionary process operating over deep time. Just such an explanation has now been proposed by three researchers from University College London (UCL) and the University of Cambridge, who have published their findings in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It almost goes without saying that their explanation is an application of the Theory of Evolution, with no suggestion that the authors are about to abandon it in favour of creationism — as creationists have been confidently predicting for the best part of half a century, despite the singular lack of any peer-reviewed scientific movement in that direction.

The researchers found a strong association between the evolution of large, robust skulls and the reduction of forelimbs in several groups of non-avian theropod dinosaurs. In other words, the tiny arms of T. rex were not merely a side-effect of the whole body becoming larger. They were more closely linked to the evolution of powerful heads and jaws, suggesting a shift in hunting strategy in which the skull became the principal weapon and the forelimbs became less important.

The authors are careful to point out that correlation does not prove causation. But the pattern is consistent with an evolutionary arms race in which large predatory dinosaurs increasingly relied on massive skulls and crushing bites to tackle large prey, rather than on grasping forelimbs. As lead author Charlie Roger Scherer put it, trying to grab and hold a huge herbivorous dinosaur with claws would not have been ideal; attacking and holding with the jaws may have been far more effective.

For their study, the researchers developed a new way to quantify skull robustness, using factors such as how tightly the bones of the skull were connected, the compactness of the skull, and bite force. On this measure, T. rex scored highest, followed by Tyrannotitan, a large South American theropod that lived more than 30 million years earlier.

The study also showed that forelimb reduction evolved independently in at least five theropod groups: tyrannosaurids, abelisaurids, carcharodontosaurids, megalosaurids and ceratosaurids. That makes this a case of convergent evolution: different lineages arriving at a similar anatomical result because similar selective pressures favoured a similar functional solution.

The evolutionary sequence is straightforward in this case: as the prey became larger so the jaw and skull needed to become larger to kill and consume the prey. The mouth then became the primary means of gripping and killing the prey and the forelimbs, which are not needed for locomotion, became increasingly redundant but liable to injury, so there was an advantage in reducing their size. The fact that there was convergence in different lineages, is strongly suggestive that this mechanism evolved for the same reasons, multiple times.

The Evolution of the Tyrannosaurs. Tyrannosaurus rex was not the starting point of the tyrannosaur story, but one of its final and most extreme products. The wider group, Tyrannosauroidea, had a long evolutionary history stretching back into the Middle Jurassic, more than 100 million years before T. rex. For much of that time, tyrannosauroids were not gigantic apex predators, but mostly small to medium-sized, lightly built theropods living alongside, and often in the shadow of, other large carnivorous dinosaurs.[1]

Early tyrannosauroids included animals such as Proceratosaurus from Jurassic Britain and Guanlong from Jurassic China. These were not simply miniature versions of T. rex. Some had crests, longer arms and more generalised predatory bodies. Their importance lies in showing that tyrannosaurs did not appear suddenly as fully formed, giant, short-armed killing machines. The famous late Cretaceous body plan was assembled gradually, piece by piece, over tens of millions of years.[1,2]

Several Early Cretaceous tyrannosauroids also show how different the early members of the group were from their later descendants. Dilong paradoxus, from China, was small and gracile, with relatively long arms and three-fingered hands. It also preserved evidence of filamentous protofeathers, showing that at least some early tyrannosauroids were not the purely scaly monsters of older popular reconstructions.[3]

The discovery of Yutyrannus huali, also from Early Cretaceous China, pushed that point further. This was a much larger tyrannosauroid, yet it too preserved long filamentous feathers. That does not prove that an adult T. rex was fully feathered, and skin impressions from later tyrannosaurids suggest at least some scaly areas. But it does show that feathers were part of the wider tyrannosauroid evolutionary background, not an irrelevant bird-like novelty.[4]

By the Late Cretaceous, especially in Asia and western North America, tyrannosaurids had become the dominant large predators. Genera such as Albertosaurus, Gorgosaurus, Daspletosaurus, Tarbosaurus and Tyrannosaurus show the familiar trend towards massive skulls, powerful jaws, thick teeth, strong hind limbs, keen senses and reduced forelimbs. This was not a single act of design, but a long evolutionary sequence in which the skull and jaws increasingly took over the role of subduing prey.[1,5]

Recent work has added further detail to this picture. In 2025, researchers described Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, a Mongolian tyrannosauroid from the lower Upper Cretaceous, as a form close to the origin of Eutyrannosauria — the group that includes the large, late Cretaceous tyrannosaurs. Their analysis suggests a complex history of dispersal between Asia and North America, with tyrannosaur evolution involving migration, ecological opportunity and divergent growth patterns, rather than a simple straight-line progression from small ancestor to giant descendant.[6]

So the tiny arms of T. rex are not an isolated oddity needing to be excused as good design. They are part of a broader evolutionary pattern in which tyrannosaurs changed from relatively small, long-armed predators into large, skull-dominated apex predators. The result looks puzzling if imagined as the work of a designer starting from scratch, but it makes sense as the outcome of descent with modification, changing ecological pressures, and the evolutionary reworking of inherited anatomy.

The publication in Proceedings of the Royal Society B is accompanied by a news release from UCL.

Why meat-eating dinosaurs like T. rex evolved tiny arms
The evolution of tiny arms in several groups of meat-eating dinosaurs was likely driven by the development of strong, powerful heads, which were used to attack prey, according to a new study led by researchers at UCL and Cambridge University.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, looked at data for 82 species of theropod (two-legged, mainly meat-eating dinosaurs), finding that shortening of forelimbs occurred across five groups, including tyrannosaurids, the family that included Tyrannosaurus rex.

The team, including Dr Elizabeth Steell at Cambridge and Professor Paul Upchurch at UCL, found that smaller arms were closely linked to the development of large, powerful skulls and jaws, more so than to larger overall body size, indicating that tiny arms were not just a by-product of bodies getting bigger.

The researchers suggested that the increasing size of prey, in the form of gigantic sauropods (long-necked, long-tailed plant-eaters) and other large herbivores, may have resulted in a shift to hunting using jaws and head instead of claws.

Everyone knows the T. rex had tiny arms but other giant theropod dinosaurs also evolved relatively small forelimbs. The Carnotaurus had ridiculously tiny arms, smaller than the T. rex. We sought to understand what was driving this change and found a strong relationship between short arms and large, powerfully built heads. The head took over from the arms as the method of attack. It’s a case of ‘use it or lose it’ – the arms are no longer useful and reduce in size over time. These adaptations often occurred in areas with gigantic prey. Trying to pull and grab at a 100ft-long sauropod with your claws is not ideal. Attacking and holding on with the jaws might have been more effective.

While our study identifies correlations and so cannot establish cause and effect, it is highly likely that strongly built skulls came before shorter forelimbs. It would not make evolutionary sense for it to occur the other way round, and for these predators to give up their attack mechanism without having a back-up.

Charlie Roger Scherer, lead author.
Department of Earth Sciences
University College London
London, UK.

For the study, researchers developed a new way to quantify skull robustness, based on factors including how tightly connected the bones of the head were, the dimensions of the skull (a more compact shape is stronger than an elongated shape), and bite force.

On this measure, the T. rex scored highest, followed by the Tyrannotitan, a theropod nearly as massive as T. rex who lived in what is now Argentina in the Early Cretaceous period (more than 30 million years earlier than T. rex).

The team said that increasingly gigantic prey may have resulted in an “evolutionary arms race”, where theropods developed strong skulls and jaws to better subdue this prey, and in many cases grew to gigantic sizes themselves.

Separately, the team compared forelimb length to skull length, classifying five groups of dinosaurs as having reduced forelimbs: tyrannosaurids, abelisaurids, carcharodontosaurids (including the Tyrannotitan), megalosaurids and ceratosaurids.

They found reduced forelimbs had a stronger link with skull robustness than with skull size or overall body size. The secondary importance of overall body size was illustrated by the fact that some theropods with strongly built heads and tiny arms were not very large, the researchers said, citing the Majungasaurus, an apex predator in Madagascar 70 million years ago, but weighing a mere 1.6 tonnes, about a fifth of the T. rex.

The researchers noted that the forelimbs appeared to reduce in size in different ways, with hands and the lower part of the arm (past the elbow) shortening the most in abelisaurids (with late abelisaurids such as the Majungasaurus having exceptionally tiny hands). In tyrannosaurids, on the other hand, each element of the forelimb was reduced at a similar rate.

The team concluded that the same outcome (tiny forelimbs) was likely achieved through potentially different developmental pathways in different species.

A team of five academics work on different aspects of dinosaur evolution at UCL, with strong collaborative links to the Natural History Museum. The extended research group comprises four research fellows and postdoc researchers, and more than 10 PhD students. At least four of the PhD students are working on dinosaur evolution, with the others looking at a wider array of other evolutionary questions relating to vertebrates, including crocodiles and birds.

Publication:
Charlie Roger Scherer, Elizabeth Steell, Paul Upchurch
Drivers and mechanisms of convergent forelimb reduction in non-avian theropod dinosaurs. Proc Biol Sci 1 May 2026; 293 (2071): 20260528. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2026.0528

Abstract
Forelimb reduction has been observed in numerous and disparate non-avian theropod dinosaurs, resulting in the hypothesis that reduced forelimbs evolved convergently. Clades with reduced forelimbs also possess high degrees of cranial robusticity and gigantic body sizes. Here, we provide a novel quantification of forelimb reduction across Theropoda, and create and implement a cranial robusticity scoring system, and analyse this dataset using bivariate and comparative phylogenetic analyses. Results indicate that forelimb reduction is strongly correlated with cranial robusticity and gigantism. Reduced/vestigial forelimbs evolved in at least five theropod lineages in concert with increased cranial robusticity and gigantism. Abelisaurids, carcharodontosaurids and tyrannosaurids show the greatest forelimb reduction relative to the skull. Repeated forelimb reduction across theropods was facilitated by increased cranial robusticity and greater body size that was potentially influenced by an upward trend in prey body size. These events resulted in a shift from subduing prey using grasping forelimbs to using powerful bites and robust skulls.

Charlie Roger Scherer, Elizabeth Steell, Paul Upchurch
Drivers and mechanisms of convergent forelimb reduction in non-avian theropod dinosaurs. Proc Biol Sci 1 May 2026; 293 (2071): 20260528. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2026.0528

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 the famously tiny arms of Tyrannosaurus rex are not an embarrassment for evolutionary biology; they are exactly the sort of thing evolution explains. They are the result of history, contingency and trade-offs: inherited anatomy being modified over time as natural selection favoured a different way of killing prey. As the skull became larger, stronger and more effective as the main predatory weapon, the forelimbs became less important, and so there was no evolutionary pressure to maintain them as large, powerful grasping organs.

That is why this feature is so difficult to explain as the work of an intelligent designer. A designer starting from scratch could simply have produced an animal with both a massive, bone-crushing skull and proportionately useful forelimbs, or dispensed with the arms altogether. Instead, what we see is the familiar evolutionary pattern: not perfect engineering, but modified inheritance; not clean-sheet design, but anatomical compromise shaped by changing selection pressures.

Creationism has no scientific explanation for this. It can only wave the problem away by declaring, without evidence, that the tiny arms must have had some unknown purpose, or that the designer’s motives are beyond human understanding. But that is not an explanation; it is an excuse for not having one. It predicts nothing, explains nothing, and adds nothing to our understanding of tyrannosaur biology.

The Theory of Evolution, by contrast, not only explains why such apparently odd features exist, but also provides a framework in which they can be tested. The prediction is that similar ecological and functional pressures should produce similar anatomical trends in separate lineages — and that is exactly what this study found. Forelimb reduction evolved independently in several theropod groups, associated not with divine whim, but with the repeated evolution of large, robust skulls and powerful jaws.

In other words, the tiny arms of T. rex are not a mystery for science; they are evidence of evolution doing what evolution does — adapting existing structures to changing circumstances, often imperfectly, always historically, and never with the foresight or tidiness that intelligent design would require. Once again, the evidence fits the evolutionary model and leaves creationism with nothing more substantial than incredulity, special pleading and the hope that no one looks too closely.

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Refuting Creationism - Europe's Most Complete Stegosauria Skull - From 150 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

2026-05-20T20:13:30.898+01:00

Europe’s most complete stegosaurian skull unearthed in Teruel, Spain | Pensoft.blog

Another day, another dinosaur. At least, that must be how it feels to creationists trying to cling to demonstrably false beliefs by ignoring the evidence and pretending each new discovery is either a mistake, a fraud, or a sinister attempt by scientists to undermine their faith.

This time the problem comes from Teruel, Spain, where palaeontologists from the Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis have described an exceptionally well-preserved partial skull of a stegosaurian dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Villar del Arzobispo Formation, dating to about 150 million years ago. Their results, published in May 2025 in the Pensoft journal Vertebrate Zoology, identify the fossil as belonging to Dacentrurus armatus, and as the most complete stegosaurian skull yet found in Europe.

That matters because stegosaurian skulls are notoriously rare. Their bones were fragile, and the animals’ skulls were small compared with their heavily built bodies, so cranial material is much less commonly preserved than vertebrae, limb bones, plates or tail spikes. A skull as complete as this one is therefore not just another fossil for a museum drawer, but a valuable piece of anatomical evidence for understanding how these plated, quadrupedal herbivores evolved.

Using this specimen, the researchers were able to refine the known anatomy of Dacentrurus armatus and reassess the evolutionary relationships of stegosaurs more generally. Their analysis supports the division of Stegosauria into two major clades, Huayangosauridae and Stegosauridae, and they formalise a further grouping, Neostegosauria, to include later-diverging stegosaurids. In other words, one skull from Spain helps clarify not only a single European dinosaur species, but the wider evolutionary history and geographical spread of the iconic plated dinosaurs.

If nothing else, work such as this illustrates how science treats a new discovery: not as a threat to be denied, explained away or forced into conformity with dogma, but as additional evidence to be tested against existing knowledge. Where necessary, classifications are revised, hypotheses are adjusted, and understanding moves a little closer to reality.

Creationism, by contrast, starts with the conclusion and then tries to make the evidence fit. Science starts with the evidence and changes the conclusion when the evidence demands it. That is why a 150-million-year-old stegosaur skull from Spain is a contribution to human knowledge, not a theological inconvenience to be waved away.

What Were The Stegosaurian Dinosaurs? Stegosaurians were a group of armoured, plant-eating, four-legged dinosaurs best known for the rows of bony plates and spines that ran along the neck, back and tail. The most familiar member of the group is Stegosaurus, from the Late Jurassic of North America, but stegosaurians were a wider and more varied group, known from North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. They belonged to the ornithischian dinosaurs, within the armoured dinosaur group Thyreophora, the same broad branch that later included the heavily armoured ankylosaurs. [1]

Their basic body plan was distinctive: a small head, relatively weak-looking jaws, a bulky body, strong limbs, a long tail, and a line of plates, spikes or both along the upper surface of the body. In Stegosaurus, the forelimbs were shorter than the hindlimbs, giving the animal its characteristic arched profile, while its broad feet supported a heavy, slow-moving herbivore. The Natural History Museum describes Stegosaurus as a large plant-eater, up to about 9 metres long, living around 152–145 million years ago. [1]

The plates are one of the most debated features of stegosaurs. Early interpretations treated them as armour, but that explanation is now less favoured because the plates were thin and relatively fragile. Modern interpretations usually suggest a role in display, species recognition, sexual signalling, intimidation, heat regulation, or some combination of these. The presence of grooves for blood vessels in some plates has supported the idea that they may have helped dump or absorb heat, although display remains a strong possibility. [2]

The tail spikes, by contrast, were much more obviously defensive. In Stegosaurus, these spikes formed the famous “thagomizer” at the end of the tail, and would have been a formidable weapon against predators such as Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus. A heavy tail swung sideways, armed with long bony spikes, would have made even a large theropod think twice before attacking from behind. [1]

Despite their size, stegosaurs had small skulls and relatively small teeth. This once raised the question of how such large animals processed enough food, but studies of skull mechanics suggest that at least some stegosaurs had efficient jaws and could feed effectively on plants such as ferns, cycads and other Jurassic vegetation. The old idea that Stegosaurus had a “second brain” in its hips is also a myth; the enlarged space in the sacral region was not a brain, but probably related to storage of energy-rich substances such as glycogen. [2]

Stegosaur fossils are often incomplete, and skulls are especially rare because the skull bones were fragile and much less likely to survive fossilisation than vertebrae, limb bones, plates or spikes. That is why the new skull from Teruel is important. It provides unusually detailed information about the head of Dacentrurus armatus, a European stegosaur, and helps palaeontologists reassess how different stegosaurian groups were related to one another. [3]

Recent work supports the view that Stegosauria can be divided into two major clades, Huayangosauridae and Stegosauridae, with a newly formalised group, Neostegosauria, including several later-diverging, medium- to large-bodied stegosaurs from Europe, Africa, North America and Asia. That is a good example of how palaeontology works: a rare fossil does not merely add another name to a list; it can change the branching pattern of an entire evolutionary tree. [4]

The publication in Vertebrate Zoology was accompanied by A post in Pensoft.blog

Europe’s most complete stegosaurian skull unearthed in Teruel, Spain
A new study by palaeontologists from the Fundación Dinópolis, published in the journal Vertebrate Zoology, rewrites the evolutionary history of this dino group.

Close-up photograph of the Dacentrurus armatus skull found in Riodeva (Teruel, Spain).

Palaeontologists from the Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis have published new research in the prestigious scientific journal Vertebrate Zoology published by Senckenberg. The article describes a partial stegosaurian skull discovered in the municipality of Riodeva (Teruel, Spain) and proposes a new hypothesis about the evolutionary history of plated dinosaurs.

Stegosaurs were dinosaurs mainly characterized by being plant-eaters, moving on all fours, and displaying two rows of plates and/or spines from the neck to the end of the tail. The specimen studied was recovered during the palaeontological excavations led by the Fundación Dinópolis at the “Están de Colón” fossil site, located in sediments of the Villar del Arzobispo Formation, dating to the Late Jurassic epoch (around 150 million years ago). It is the best-preserved stegosaurian skull ever found in Europe and has been identified as belonging to the species Dacentrurus armatus.

The detailed study of this exceptional fossil has allowed us to reveal previously unknown aspects of the anatomy of Dacentrurus armatus, the quintessential European stegosaur, which in 2025 marks 150 years since its first description. Dinosaurian skulls are rarely preserved due to the extreme fragility of their bones. This discovery is key to understanding how stegosaurian skulls evolved. Furthermore, alongside the anatomical study, we have also proposed a new hypothesis that redefines the evolutionary relationships of stegosaurs worldwide. As a result of this work, we have formalized the definition of a new group called Neostegosauria.

Sergio Sánchez Fenollosa, co-author
Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis
Museo Aragonés de Paleontología
Teruel, Spain.

Head of a Dacentrurus armatus sculpture on display at Dinópolis (Teruel, Spain).

Illustration of Dacentrurus armatus.
Credit: Adrián Blázquez / Fundación Dinópolis.

According to the researchers, this new group includes medium to large-sized stegosaurian species that at least lived in what is now Africa and Europe during the Middle and Late Jurassic, in North America during the Late Jurassic, and in Asia during the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous.

This dual achievement–both the study of an exceptional fossil and the proposal of a new evolutionary hypothesis–positions this research as a global reference in stegosaurian studies. This fossil site from Riodeva continues to be a subject of research and still holds numerous relevant fossils, including more postcranial elements from the same adult specimen and, notably, juvenile individuals, a particularly rare combination in this type of dinosaurs. These discoveries continue to exponentially increase the palaeontological heritage of the province of Teruel, making it one of the iconic regions for understanding the evolution of life on Earth.

Alberto Cobos, co-author.
Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis
Museo Aragonés de Paleontología
Teruel, Spain.

3D rendering of a fossilized piece of dinosaur skull.

Cranial reconstruction of a stegosaur, showing the studied fossil in its anatomical position.

Set of images of the most complete stegosaurian skull found in Europe, belonging to Dacentrurus armatus and recovered from Riodeva (Teruel, Spain).

Publication:
Sánchez-Fenollosa S, Cobos A (2025)
New insights into the phylogeny and skull evolution of stegosaurian dinosaurs: An extraordinary cranium from the European Late Jurassic (Dinosauria: Stegosauria). Vertebrate Zoology 75: 165-189. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.75.e146618

Abstract
Stegosauria is an iconic clade of thyreophoran dinosaurs mainly characterized by two parasagittal rows of osteoderms that extend from the neck to the end of the tail. The fossil record of stegosaurian cranial material is remarkably fragmentary and scarce. This study describes the most complete stegosaurian skull from Europe and proposes a new hypothesis for the phylogenetic relationships of stegosaurs. This new cranial material was recovered from beds of the Villar del Arzobispo Formation (Upper Jurassic, Teruel, Spain) and is confidently referred to Dacentrurus armatus. It provides valuable insights into the anatomy of this species and enhances the understanding of skull evolution in stegosaurs. Furthermore, the diagnosis of D. armatus is updated with the identification of a new autapomorphy. Stegosaurian phylogenetic nomenclature is also revised. Maximum Parsimony has been applied to analyse a new stegosaurian data matrix. Phylogenetic analyses suggest that Stegosauria is divided into two major clades: Huayangosauridae and Stegosauridae. These analyses support Isaberrysaura mollensis as a stegosaur and place it within Huayangosauridae, a clade that also includes several Jurassic stegosaurs from Asia. For the first time, Mongolostegus exspectabilis is included in a phylogenetic analysis, the results of which suggests that a lineage of huayangosaurids or early-diverging stegosaurids persisted in Asia until at least the late Early Cretaceous. The new tree topologies challenge the synonymization of the genera Stegosaurus and Wuerhosaurus. Moreover, it is concluded that a taxonomic re-evaluation of Early Cretaceous Chinese stegosaurs is necessary. Alcovasaurus longispinus and Kentrosaurus aethiopicus are recovered as dacentrurines.

Figure 1.

A, B location and geological setting of the Están de Colón (RD-34) fossil site in Riodeva (Teruel, Spain). C stratigraphic section of the Villar del Arzobispo Formation in the Riodeva area. Cartography and stratigraphic section modified from Campos-Soto et al. (2019).

Sánchez-Fenollosa S, Cobos A (2025)
New insights into the phylogeny and skull evolution of stegosaurian dinosaurs: An extraordinary cranium from the European Late Jurassic (Dinosauria: Stegosauria). Vertebrate Zoology 75: 165-189. https://doi.org/10.3897/vz.75.e146618

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by Pensoft. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

So here again we have a fossil that is not merely “another dinosaur”, but another piece of evidence in a much larger and increasingly detailed evolutionary picture. A fragile skull, preserved in Late Jurassic rocks in Spain, has helped palaeontologists refine the anatomy of Dacentrurus armatus, clarify relationships within Stegosauria, and improve our understanding of how these iconic plated dinosaurs evolved and spread.

None of that was predicted by creationism. Nor could it have been. Creationism has no explanatory framework for why related animals should appear in a branching pattern through time and geography, why their anatomy should show both shared inheritance and local variation, or why new discoveries should fit into an evolutionary sequence rather than appear as disconnected acts of magical manufacture.

Science, by contrast, not only expects new evidence to modify and improve existing classifications; it depends on it. The discovery of a rare stegosaur skull in Teruel did not cause palaeontologists to abandon evolutionary theory. It gave them more data with which to test, refine and strengthen their understanding of stegosaur evolution. That is how a real evidence-based discipline works.

And that is precisely the problem for creationists. Every new fossil, every improved analysis, and every revised evolutionary tree adds yet more detail to a history of life measured in tens and hundreds of millions of years — a history that unfolded long before any human culture invented its creation myths, and long before anyone imagined that the entire universe had been created in a few days for the benefit of one species of ape.

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Creationism Refuted - A Giant, Intelligent Predatory Octopus - 100 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

2026-05-19T01:17:27.020+01:00

A sketch of the giant octopus.

Image: Yohei Utsuki
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Hokkaido University.

Giant octopuses may have ruled the oceans 100 million years ago – Hokkaido University

To a conspiracy-theorist creationist who sees science as an organised plot to trick them into changing their mind, it must seem that the whole world and its dog are ganging up on them. The “conspiracy” has now spread to a team of researchers led by Shin Ikegami of Hokkaido University, Japan, who have announced the discovery of fossilised jaws of giant octopuses that may have been apex predators in Late Cretaceous seas, about 100 million years before creationism’s mythical “Creation Week”. Some of these animals may have reached nearly 20 metres in length, making them among the largest invertebrates yet described.

To a creationist, apparently, it is more plausible to believe that a god self-assembled out of nothing, then made an entire universe out of nothing by magic just a few thousand years ago, than to accept that Earth and life on it are the result of long, slow, scientifically demonstrable natural processes. So, when the evidence says otherwise, the evidence must somehow be forged, misrepresented or misunderstood. Besides, Bronze Age people who thought the world was flat, with a solid dome over it, said so — and what better evidence could there be than that?

What the team of researchers from several Japanese research institutions, together with Jörg Mutterlose of Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, discovered was recently published in Science. Using high-resolution grinding tomography and an artificial intelligence model, they identified fossil jaws hidden inside rock samples from the Late Cretaceous period. The fossils, from Japan and Vancouver Island, date from between about 100 and 72 million years ago. They had been preserved in calm seafloor sediments, retaining fine details, including wear marks that reveal how these animals fed.

Based on the size and shape of the jaws, the researchers estimate that some of these extinct finned octopuses, especially Nanaimoteuthis haggarti, may have reached nearly 20 metres in total length. Their jaws show heavy chipping, scratching, cracking and polishing, consistent with repeated forceful biting into hard prey such as shells, bones or other resistant material. These were not passive, soft-bodied animals drifting harmlessly through the Cretaceous seas; they appear to have been powerful, active predators, competing in ecosystems otherwise assumed to have been dominated by large marine reptiles and sharks.

One especially intriguing finding was asymmetrical wear on the jaws. In two species, one side of the biting surface was more heavily worn than the other, suggesting that these animals may have favoured one side when handling difficult prey. This sort of behavioural lateralisation is associated in modern animals with complex neural processing, raising the possibility that advanced predatory behaviour, and perhaps a degree of intelligence, had already evolved in these early octopus relatives. The discovery also pushes the fossil record of finned octopuses back by about 15 million years, and the broader octopus record by about 5 million years.

What is high-resolution grinding tomography? High-resolution grinding tomography is a way of finding and digitally reconstructing fossils that are hidden inside solid rock, especially when ordinary preparation or X-ray CT scanning cannot distinguish the fossil clearly from the surrounding matrix. It is a modern version of an older serial-sectioning technique pioneered by William Sollas at Oxford in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but now using digital imaging and computer reconstruction rather than drawings or wax models.

The basic idea is simple but technically demanding. A rock sample containing a fossil is embedded in resin or otherwise stabilised, then a precision grinding machine removes an extremely thin layer from the surface. The newly exposed surface is photographed or scanned. Another thin layer is then ground away, and the process is repeated many hundreds or thousands of times. The resulting stack of two-dimensional images is then aligned and processed by software to produce a three-dimensional digital model of the fossil.

This makes the method especially useful for fossils that are too delicate to remove from the rock mechanically, or where the fossil and the surrounding rock are too similar in density or composition for CT scanning to work well. In some cases, grinding tomography can reveal microscopic internal structures, fine anatomical details, and wear marks that would otherwise remain invisible.

There is, however, an obvious drawback: grinding tomography is destructive. The original physical specimen is gradually ground away during the process. What remains is the digital record — a permanent stack of images and a virtual 3D fossil that can be examined, measured, rotated, sliced, enlarged and shared with other researchers. For rare or important specimens, researchers normally document the sample carefully before grinding it.

In the Hokkaido University study of Cretaceous octopus jaws, this technique allowed researchers to detect fossilised beaks hidden inside Late Cretaceous rock samples from Japan and Vancouver Island. Combined with an artificial intelligence model, the method revealed jaws and fine wear patterns that showed these ancient octopuses were powerful predators capable of biting hard prey.

It is important to note that high-resolution grinding tomography is not a dating method. It does not tell scientists how old the fossil is. Instead, it is an imaging and reconstruction method. The age comes from the geological context of the rock layers in which the fossil is found, while grinding tomography reveals what is physically preserved inside the rock.

In other words, this is not speculation, guesswork or “interpretation” in the creationist sense; it is painstaking physical evidence, layer by layer, turned into a three-dimensional digital fossil that can be checked, measured and reanalysed.

The publication in Science was accompanied by a Hokkaido University press release:

Giant octopuses may have ruled the oceans 100 million years ago
Fossil evidence suggests that some of the earliest octopuses were enormous, powerful predators in the Cretaceous oceans
Today’s octopuses are intelligent, remarkably flexible animals that lurk in reefs, hide in crevices, or drift through the deep sea. But new research suggests that their earliest relatives may have played a far more predatory role in ocean ecosystems. A study led by researchers at Hokkaido University has found that the earliest known octopuses were giant predators that hunted at the very top of the food web, alongside large marine vertebrates. The study was published in Science on 23 April 2026.

Octopuses are soft-bodied animals and so they rarely fossilize well. This makes their evolutionary history especially difficult to trace compared with animals that leave behind bones or shells. In this study, the researchers used fossil jaws of early octopuses, a feeding organ with a high fossilization potential, to reconstruct their hidden history.

Using high-resolution grinding tomography and an artificial intelligence model, they found fossil jaws hidden inside rock samples from the Late Cretaceous period, spanning 100 to 72 million years ago. These fossils, found in Japan and Vancouver Island, had been well preserved in calm seafloor sediments, retaining fine wear marks that revealed how these animals fed.

The fossils belonged to a group of extinct finned octopuses, known as Cirrata. By analyzing the size, shape, and wear patterns of the jaws, the team concluded that these animals were active predators that likely crushed hard prey with powerful bites.

Our findings suggest that the earliest octopuses were gigantic predators that occupied the top of the marine food chain in the Cretaceous. Based on exceptionally well-preserved fossil jaws, we show that these animals reached total lengths of up to nearly 20 meters, which may have surpassed the size of large marine reptiles of the same age.

The most surprising finding perhaps was the extent of wear on the jaws. [The fossil jaws showed extensive chipping, scratching, cracking, and polishing, all signs of a strong biting force.] In well-grown specimens, up to 10% of the jaw tip relative to the total jaw length had been worn away, which is larger than that seen in modern cephalopods that feed on hard-shelled prey. This indicates repeated, forceful interactions with their prey, revealing an unexpectedly aggressive feeding strategy.

Professor Yasuhiro Iba, corresponding author
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Hokkaido University
Sapporo, Japan.

These findings suggest that these ancient octopuses were powerful and active hunters that consumed abundant prey.

The discovery changes what scientists thought about the early history of octopuses. The new fossils extend the earliest known record of finned octopuses by around 15 million years and the broader octopus record by around 5 million years, placing them as far back as about 100 million years ago.

One especially intriguing clue came from uneven wear on the jaws. In the two species examined, one side of the biting part was more worn than the other, suggesting that these animals may have preferred using one side of the jaw more heavily. This kind of behavioral asymmetry, known as lateralization, is associated in modern animals with advanced neural processing. The research suggests that even these early octopuses may already have shown complex behavior linked to intelligence.

For decades, scientists have largely viewed ancient marine ecosystems as being dominated by vertebrate predators, while invertebrates were thought to occupy lower levels of the food web. The new findings suggest that giant octopuses were an unexpected exception: invertebrates that rose to the top tier of the marine food web and competed with large vertebrates.

(Video: Shin Ikegami, Kanta Sugiura, Yasuhiro Iba, Jörg Mutterlose, Yusuke Takeda, Mehmet Oguz Derin, Aya Kubota, Kazuki Tainaka, Harufumi Nishida)

This study provides the first direct evidence that invertebrates could evolve into giant, intelligent apex predators in ecosystems that have been dominated by vertebrates for about 400 million years. Our findings show that powerful jaws and the loss of superficial skeletons, common characteristics of octopuses and marine vertebrates, were essential to becoming huge, intelligent marine predators.

Professor Yasuhiro Iba.

The research opens the door to reconstructing entire ancient ecosystems with unprecedented detail. By combining digital fossil-mining with AI, the team expects to uncover many more hidden fossils.

Publication:
Shin Ikegami et al.
Earliest octopuses were giant top predators in Cretaceous oceans.
Science 392, 406-410 (2026). DOI:10.1126/science.aea6285

Abstract
Top predators drive changes in ecosystem structure. For the last ~370 million years, large-sized vertebrates have dominated the apex of the marine food chain, while invertebrates have served as smaller prey. Here we describe invertebrate top predators from this “age of vertebrates,” the earliest finned octopuses (Cirrata) from Late Cretaceous sediments (~100 to 72 million years ago), as identified based on huge, exceptionally well-preserved fossil jaws and their wear. This extensive wear suggests dynamic crushing of hard skeletons. Asymmetric wear patterns further indicate lateralized behavior, suggesting advanced intelligence. With a calculated total length of ~7 to 19 meters, these octopuses may represent the largest invertebrates thus described, rivaling contemporaneous giant marine reptiles. Our findings show that powerful jaws, and the loss of superficial skeletons, convergently transformed cephalopods and marine vertebrates into huge, intelligent predators.

Shin Ikegami et al.
Earliest octopuses were giant top predators in Cretaceous oceans.
Science 392, 406-410 (2026). DOI:10.1126/science.aea6285

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

So, once again, the evidence is not doing what creationists need it to do. Instead of a young Earth, a recent magical creation, and neatly separated “kinds” appearing without ancestry, we have another example of deep-time biology preserved in stone: extinct cephalopods, already highly specialised predators, swimming in Cretaceous seas tens of millions of years before humans, before modern mammals, and long before creationist mythology says the universe itself existed.

And this is not a case of scientists finding something and forcing it into an evolutionary story. The fossils were hidden inside rock, revealed layer by layer by high-resolution grinding tomography, reconstructed digitally, compared anatomically with living cephalopods, and interpreted in the light of wear patterns, jaw structure, sedimentary context and known cephalopod biology. In other words, the conclusion comes from the evidence, not from a sacred text that must be protected from contradiction at all costs.

The result is a richer, more interesting picture of life in the Late Cretaceous oceans. These were not primitive, half-formed creatures waiting for creationists to decide whether they belonged in one “kind” or another. They were highly adapted animals, apparently capable of powerful biting, possibly showing behavioural lateralisation, and occupying major predatory roles in ecosystems already shaped by millions of years of evolutionary history.

For science, this is exactly how knowledge advances: new techniques reveal new evidence, new evidence modifies the picture, and the history of life becomes clearer. For creationism, however, every such discovery is merely another awkward fact to be explained away, denied, or folded into an ever more desperate excuse about “kinds”, “Flood deposits”, or a global conspiracy by scientists who, for some mysterious reason, keep finding exactly the sort of evidence evolution predicts.

The fossil jaws of these giant Cretaceous octopuses are therefore more than just a remarkable palaeontological discovery. They are another small but solid piece of the vast, cumulative, mutually reinforcing body of evidence showing that life has a long, complex, branching history. And, as usual, no gods, magic spells, or Bronze Age origin myths were required to explain it.

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Creationism Refuted - Another Giant Dinosaur - From SouthEast Asia, Over 100 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'

2026-05-17T22:53:05.705+01:00

Artistic impression of Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis

‘Last titan’: Southeast Asia’s biggest dinosaur discovered | UCL News - UCL – University College London

I wrote recently about how and why dinosaurs are such a problem for creationists, which is why some of them resort to the desperate and ludicrously implausible claim that non-avian dinosaurs were contemporaneous with modern humans.

Their problem has now become a little worse with the announcement, in a paper in Scientific Reports, of the discovery of a new species of long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur from Thailand. The study was led by palaeontologists from University College London (UCL), Mahasarakham University, Suranaree University of Technology and Sirindhorn Museum in Thailand. The dinosaur has been named Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis and is described as the largest dinosaur yet found in Southeast Asia. Its fossilised bones were discovered about ten years ago at the edge of a communal pond in Chaiyaphum Province, north-eastern Thailand.

The scale of the animal is impressive. One of its front leg bones, the right humerus, was 1.78 metres long — about the height of an adult human. From the preserved spine, ribs, pelvis and limb bones, the researchers estimate that Nagatitan was about 27 metres long and weighed around 27 tonnes, roughly the same as nine adult Asian elephants.

Nagatitan was a sauropod — one of the long-necked, long-tailed, herbivorous dinosaurs that included animals such as Diplodocus and Brontosaurus. More specifically, it was a somphospondylan titanosauriform, belonging to Euhelopodidae, a clade of sauropods so far known only from Asia. It lived during the Early Cretaceous, about 100–120 million years ago, in what was then a semi-arid landscape crossed by meandering rivers and inhabited by fish, freshwater sharks, crocodile-like reptiles, pterosaurs, smaller herbivorous dinosaurs and large theropod predators.

Somphospondylan sauropods. Somphospondylans were a major branch of the sauropod dinosaurs — the long-necked, long-tailed, four-legged herbivores that included the largest land animals ever to live. More precisely, they were titanosauriform sauropods, closely related to the titanosaurs and more distantly related to the brachiosaurids, such as Brachiosaurus. In the new Nagatitan paper, the authors classify it as: Sauropoda → Titanosauriformes → Somphospondyli → Euhelopodidae.

The name Somphospondyli means “spongy vertebrae”, referring to the internal structure of their backbone bones. These vertebrae were not solid blocks of bone, but were riddled with small air spaces, known as camellae, giving them a honeycomb-like structure. This was part of the sauropod system of skeletal pneumaticity — air-filled spaces in bones, probably linked to a bird-like air-sac respiratory system — which helped reduce weight without sacrificing too much strength.

This was an important evolutionary innovation. Sauropods were already enormous animals, but their long necks, massive torsos and pillar-like legs imposed severe engineering problems. Lighter, air-filled vertebrae helped make such large bodies mechanically possible. In animals such as Nagatitan, this would have been especially important because even with weight-saving bones, it still reached about 27 metres in length and 25–28 tonnes in mass.

Sauropod gigantism was probably the result of an evolutionary feedback loop. Long necks allowed these animals to feed across a large area without constantly moving their massive bodies, while large bodies allowed larger guts, longer digestion times and better extraction of nutrients from tough vegetation. Increasing size also reduced vulnerability to predators, especially once adults grew beyond the prey range of even large theropods. At the same time, their small lightweight heads, air-filled vertebrae and bird-like respiratory system made neck elongation mechanically and physiologically possible. It was therefore a complex interaction of feeding efficiency, competition, predator pressure and inherited anatomy, rather than a simple arms race with trees.

Somphospondylans first appeared in the Late Jurassic or earliest Cretaceous and survived until the end-Cretaceous extinction, 66 million years ago. They became a diverse, globally distributed group, and by the later Cretaceous the titanosaurian branch of this lineage included the last surviving sauropods.

One Asian branch of the somphospondylans was the Euhelopodidae, the group to which Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis has been assigned. Euhelopodids are especially important because they show that Asia had its own distinctive sauropod history, not merely a few stray representatives of lineages better known from elsewhere. The new Thai fossil adds to that picture by showing that large-bodied euhelopodid sauropods were still present in Southeast Asia during the Early Cretaceous.

The publication in Scientific Reports is accompanied by a news item from UCL:

‘Last titan’: Southeast Asia’s biggest dinosaur discovered

A new type of long-necked plant-eating dinosaur – the largest ever found in Southeast Asia – has been revealed in a study led by researchers at UCL, Mahasarakham University, Suranaree University of Technology and Sirindhorn Museum in Thailand.

14 May 2026

The dinosaur, described in a new paper in the journal Scientific Reports, was identified from bones found at the edge of a pond in north-eastern Thailand 10 years ago.

Analysing spine, rib, pelvis and leg bones, including a front leg bone 1.78 metres long (as long as a human), the research team estimated that the dinosaur would have weighed 27 tonnes – about the same as nine adult Asian elephants – and measured 27 metres in length.

It has been named Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, with “Naga” referring to a mythological aquatic serpent in Thai and Southeast Asian folklore, “Titan” referring to the giants of Greek mythology and chaiyaphumensis meaning “from Chaiyaphum”, the Thai province where the fossils were discovered. It is the 14th dinosaur to be named in Thailand.

It belonged to the sauropod family of dinosaurs – long-necked, long-tailed plant-eaters that included the Diplodocus and Brontosaurus – and lived in the Early Cretaceous period between 100 and 120 million years ago.

Our dinosaur is big by most people’s standards – it likely weighed at least 10 tonnes more than Dippy the Diplodocus (Diplodocus carnegii). However, it is still dwarfed by sauropods like Patagotitan (60 tonnes) or Ruyangosaurus (50 tonnes).

Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul, co-lead author
Department of Earth Sciences
University College London
London, UK.

Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul, standing next to a leg bone.

We refer to Nagatitan as ‘the last titan’ of Thailand. That is because it was discovered in Thailand’s youngest dinosaur-bearing rock formation. Younger rocks laid down towards the end of the time of the dinosaurs are unlikely to contain dinosaur remains because the region by then had become a shallow sea. So this may be the last or most recent large sauropod we will find in Southeast Asia.

Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul.

During the Early Cretaceous the environment would have been arid to semi-arid – a preferred habitat for sauropods who appeared to thrive in these environments, relying on the surface area of their long necks and tails to shed heat and regulate their body temperature.

The area where the specimens were found also appeared to be part of a meandering river system, which would have been home to fish, freshwater sharks and crocodiles.

Nagatitan would have lived alongside smaller plant-eating dinosaurs such as iguanodontians and early branching ceratopsians (cousins of the Triceratops), as well as big meat-eaters including carcharodontosaurians and spinosaurids, and flying reptiles called pterosaurs eating fish from the river.

Nagatitan was a somphospondylan sauropod – a subgroup of sauropod that became widespread about 120 million years ago. The authors found that it specifically belonged to a narrower group within the somphospondylans called Euhelopodidae, which represents a group of somphospondylan sauropods only found in Asia.
Nagatitan is distinct from other species due to a combination of unique features on its spine, pelvis and legs. A life-size reconstruction of the dinosaur is on display at the Thainosaur Museum at Asiatique in Bangkok.

My dream is to continue pushing to get Southeast Asian dinosaurs recognised internationally. More international collaborations between Thailand and other institutions like UCL can further our understanding of the region’s palaeobiology and apply it to a global context. This all starts with identifying and describing the specimens we have found first. We have a large collection of sauropod fossils that have not yet been formally described - these may include a number of new species.

I’ve always been a dinosaur kid. This study doesn’t just establish a new species but also fulfils a childhood promise of naming a dinosaur.

Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul.

This discovery comes out of a new collaboration between UCL and colleagues in Thailand. The material was studied both in Thailand and at UCL - 3D scanning and printing has meant that we can study the specimen and collect data without having to travel (good for reducing carbon footprint). We have had a long-standing interest in the evolution of these gigantic plant eaters and have good collaborative links with researchers around the world. It is great to work with Thai colleagues and start to get insights into what was happening in Southeast Asia during the Jurassic and Cretaceous.

Professor Paul Upchurch, co-author
Department of Earth Sciences
University College London
London, UK.

A team of five academics work on different aspects of dinosaur evolution at UCL, with strong collaborative links to the Natural History Museum. The extended research group comprises four research fellows and postdoc researchers, and more than 10 PhD students. At least four of the PhD students are working on dinosaur evolution, with the others looking at a wider array of other evolutionary questions relating to vertebrates, including crocodiles and birds.

Although Thailand is a small country within Asia, we have a very high diversity in dinosaur fossils, possibly the third most abundant in Asia in terms of dinosaur remains. We’ve only really been studying dinosaurs in Thailand about 40 years (since the first dinosaur was named in 1986), and already we have a surge of younger generation palaeontologists, who are actively undertaking research and promoting palaeontology and its importance within the country.

Dr Sita Manitkoon, corresponding author
Palaeontological Research and Education Centre
Mahasarakham University
Khamriang
Maha Sarakham, Thailand.

Publication:
Sethapanichsakul, T., Khansubha, SO., Manitkoon, S. et al.
The first sauropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Khok Kruat Formation of Thailand enriches the diversity of somphospondylan titanosauriforms in southeast Asia. Sci Rep 16, 12467 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-47482-x

Abstract
Sauropod dinosaur remains comprise the majority of the Mesozoic vertebrate fossil record in Thailand. However, they are rare and fragmentary in the Aptian–Albian (Lower Cretaceous) Khok Kruat Formation, the stratigraphically youngest fossil-bearing Mesozoic Thai stratigraphic unit. Based on a partial postcranial skeleton, we present the first diagnostic sauropod specimen from this formation, which represents a new somphospondylan titanosauriform, Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis n. gen. n. sp. Nagatitan is diagnosed by two autapomorphies and a unique character combination, including the presence of two distinct hyposphene-hypantrum morphologies within the middle–posterior dorsal vertebrae. Phylogenetic analyses under maximum parsimony, using a data matrix containing 153 taxa and 570 characters, produce well-resolved topologies that place Nagatitan within the somphospondylan clade Euhelopodidae. Nagatitan does not form an endemic subclade with the approximately contemporaneous Southeast Asian euhelopodids Phuwiangosaurus and Tangvayosaurus, with a suite of anatomical features distinguishing these taxa. We estimate a body mass of 25–28 tonnes for Nagatitan, and suggest it was part of a broader middle Cretaceous body size increase in Asian titanosauriforms, facilitated by rising temperatures and expanded suitable habitat. The discovery of Nagatitan expands the known diversity of Southeast Asian sauropods and improves our understanding of titanosauriform biogeography within the region.

Fig. 1

Geographic position of (a) Chaiyaphum Province on a map of Thailand¹²²> and (b) Ban Pha Nang Sua locality on a geological map of Chaiyaphum Province. This map was drafted by the first author T.S, modified from the geological map of northeastern Thailand created by Hongsabal (2023)¹²³ for the Department of Mineral Resources, Thailand. Scale bar is 20 km.

Fig. 3

Schematic representation of the skeleton of Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis gen. et sp. nov. Preserved bones are highlighted. Scale bar equals 1 m.

Fig. 4

Non-sauropod faunal remains discovered in the Ban Pha Nang Sua locality: (a) Allosauroid tooth (SDM2025-1-562) in labial view, (b) spinosaurid tooth (SDM2025-1-561) in labial view, (c) crocodyliform tooth (specimen lost during the excavation) in lingual view, (d) Heteroptychodus steinmanni tooth (SDM2025-1-563) in apical view, and (e) mold of cf. Yunnanoconcha sp. (SDM2025-1-560) in external view. (f) Stylized illustration displaying the vertebrate fauna assemblage known from the Khok Kruat Formation modified from Manitkoon et al. 202318. Shaded black silhouette indicate tentative taxa. Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis gen. et sp. nov. shaded in blue. Scale bars equal 10 mm.

Sethapanichsakul, T., Khansubha, SO., Manitkoon, S. et al.
The first sauropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Khok Kruat Formation of Thailand enriches the diversity of somphospondylan titanosauriforms in southeast Asia. Sci Rep 16, 12467 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-47482-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)

What Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis gives us, then, is not merely another spectacular dinosaur, nor simply another reminder that these animals lived tens of millions of years before anything resembling modern humans existed. It is another piece of a much larger and highly coherent scientific picture: fossils preserved in datable rocks, anatomical features that place the animal within a known evolutionary hierarchy, and biogeographical evidence showing how different sauropod lineages diversified across ancient Asia.

For creationists that is the real difficulty. Nagatitan does not appear as an isolated curiosity, as though dropped fully formed into the fossil record without relatives, history or context. It fits neatly into a nested pattern: sauropod, titanosauriform, somphospondylan, euhelopodid. Its bones show the same mixture of shared inherited features and distinctive specialisations that evolutionary theory predicts. Its age, anatomy and geography all make sense as part of the long evolutionary history of sauropods in Asia.

That is how science works. A few bones found at the edge of a pond in north-eastern Thailand can be compared with fossils from elsewhere, placed in a phylogenetic framework, dated by their geological context, and used to refine our understanding of dinosaur evolution. No magic, no special creation, no desperate need to squeeze 100 million years of Earth history into a few thousand years of mythology — just evidence, comparison, testable interpretation and the willingness to revise conclusions when new discoveries are made.

And once again, the evidence points in exactly the wrong direction for creationism. Instead of a jumble of unrelated animals created during a single mythical week, the fossil record gives us lineages, transitions, branching relationships and deep time. Nagatitan, the “last titan” of Southeast Asia, is therefore not just a giant dinosaur. It is another giant problem for anyone still trying to pretend that the history of life can be explained without evolution.

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