F Rosa Rubicondior: Geology
Showing posts with label Geology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geology. Show all posts

Thursday 14 March 2024

Creationism in Crisis - Rice Paddy Snakes In Thailand Diversified About 2.5 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'


Hypsiscopus murphyi sensu
Photo: Bryan Stuart
Rice paddy snake diversification was driven by geological and environmental factors in Thailand, molecular data suggests | KU News

In one of those far-away places that the simple-minded authors of the story in Genesis about a small flat Earth with a dome over it being magicked up out of nothing in the Middle East, 10,000 years ago, could never have guessed existed, and some 2.5 million years before they though Earth existed, major environmental changes were driving the diversification of a species of snake into several descendant species, just as the Theory of Evolution predicts.

If those simple-minded Bronze Age pastoralists had known about it and understood its significance in terms of the history of life on Earth and the dynamic geology of the planet, just imagine how different their imaginative tale would have been! As it was, they had to do their best with what little knowledge and understanding they had.

The snake in question was the Rice Paddy snake, otherwise known as a mud snake, and the far-away place was Thailand where the rise of the Khorat Plateau caused environmental changes that resulted in the evolutionary diversification of the Hypsiscopus genus.

The team of researchers from various American and Southeast Asian Universities, who have shown this link between environmental change and evolutionary radiation in a genus was led by Dr. Justin Bernstein, of the University of Kansas Center for Genomics. Their findings are published open access in Scientific Reports and are explained in a Kansas University news release:

Creationism in Crisis - Dinosaur Footprints In Alaska from 100 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'!


A theropod track lies in rock near the west bank of the Kukpowruk River.

Photo: Anthony Fiorillo
Alaska dinosaur tracks reveal a lush, wet environment | Geophysical Institute

About 100 million yearsd before creationism's god decided to create a small flat planet with a dome over it to keep the water about its sky out, there were dinosaurs living in what is now northern Alaska. The problem for creationists is that the people who wrote their favourite creation myths were ignorant both of dinosaurs and Alaska so had no idea their tales needed to include something about them, which is why everything they wrote about either happened within a day or two's walk if the Canaanite Hills or were plagiarized from nearby cultures.

Now a team of paleontologists and archaeologists have discovered fossilised dinosaur footprints and the remains of plants in the Nanushuk Formation that show the climate there was warmer and wetter than today, at a time when species were migrating over the landbridge between Siberia in Asia and North America.

Unlike the Paluxy hoax, which had creationists fooled for the best part of a decade, there were no human footprints (hand-carved or otherwise) associated with these dinosaur tracks.

Because creationists will try to falsify the aging of the Nanshuk Formation, claiming the method must have been flawed to such an extent that if made 10,000 years or less look like 100 million years, here is actually how the dating was done - it’s; those dreaded zircons in volcanic deposits again, plus stratigraphy based on index fossils found in rocks of known age:
Do you have any information on the Nanushuk Formation in northern Alaska and how its age was estimated? The Nanushuk Formation is a geological formation located in northern Alaska, particularly in the North Slope region. It is primarily composed of sandstone, siltstone, and shale, and it contains significant oil and gas reserves. The formation is of great interest to geologists and petroleum geologists due to its hydrocarbon potential.

The age of the Nanushuk Formation has been estimated through various methods, including biostratigraphy and radiometric dating of volcanic ash layers within the formation. Biostratigraphy involves the study of fossil assemblages found within the rocks to determine their relative ages. By comparing the fossils present in the Nanushuk Formation to those found in other formations with well-established ages, geologists can infer the approximate age of the Nanushuk Formation.

Additionally, radiometric dating techniques, such as radiocarbon dating or uranium-lead dating, can be used to determine the absolute ages of specific minerals or volcanic ash layers within the formation. These methods rely on the decay of radioactive isotopes within the rocks to estimate the time since their formation.

Through a combination of these techniques, geologists have estimated that the Nanushuk Formation was deposited during the Late Cretaceous period, approximately 70 to 80 million years ago. However, the precise age estimates may vary depending on the specific location within the formation and the methods used for dating.
The team, led by Dr. Anthony R. Fiorillo of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science, Albuquerque, USA and including Professor Paul McCarthy of University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) College of Natural Science and Mathematics, have published their findings open access in the journal Geosciences. It is explained in a UAF news item:

Saturday 9 March 2024

Creationism in Crisis - Earth's Oldest Forest Was In Present-Day Dorset, UK - 390 Million Years Before Creationism's 'Creation Week'


Cliffs of the Hangman Sandstone Formation, where many of the fossils were found.
Credit: Neil Davies
Earth’s earliest forest revealed in Somerset fossils

Archaeologists have found what are believed to be the remains of the earliest forest so far discovered in Devonian sandstone rocks dated to 390 million years ago, which makes them 4 million years older than the previous record found in New York State, and means they were living almost 390 million years before creationism's 'Creation Week' when their god decided to create a small flat planet with a dome over it, centered on the Middle East.

The fossils were discovered in coastal cliffs near Minehead, Dorset, England in what is known as the Eifelian Hangman Sandstone Formation and consist of primitive trees which were ancestral to today's trees but looked more like palm trees. The discovery is the subject of a paper in the Journal of the Geological Society and a news release from the University of Cambridge, UK.

First a little about this rock formation:

Saturday 2 March 2024

Creationism in Crisis - How Radiometric Dating Really Works - And Refutes Creationism


Example of a radioactive decay chain from lead-212 (212Pb) to lead-208 (208Pb) . Each parent nuclide spontaneously decays into a daughter nuclide (the decay product) via an α decay or a β− decay. The final decay product, lead-208 (208Pb), is stable and can no longer undergo spontaneous radioactive decay.
Source: Wikipedia

Creationism in Crisis - How Radiometric Dating Really Works - And Refutes Creationism

As a service to Creationists, I asked ChatGPT to outline the main geochronology techniques, how and when they are used by palaeontologists, what their limitations are, and how scientists allow for possible sources of error.

All creationists need do is explain how and where these techniques are wrong and what the source of error is that can make 10,000 years or less look like hundreds of millions, or billions of years, without claiming the fundamental forces which control the universe changed to such an extent that atoms would not have been able to form when the they believe the universe, Earth and all life on it were created.

Remember to supply the verified evidence because a claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, and false claims will simply demonstrate what many people already know - that creationism is a cult for people gullible enough to believe falsehoods and ignorant enough not to know they've been fooled.

How Science Works - A Fossil Whale Is Not What Was Thought - But It Still Refutes Creationism!


Size comparison of a modern blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) and the extinct Perucetus colossus, known from a fossil discovered in Peru.

Image by Cullen Townsend (https://www.cullentownsenddesign.com/)
Slimming Down a Colossal Fossil Whale | UC Davis

Scientists may have got it wrong when they thought they had the fossilised remains of the heaviest thing that ever lived, in the form of a 39 million-year-old fossil whale from the Peruvian Middle Eocene, which they called Perucetus colossus.

But, before creationists get over-excited, thinking it's the 30 million years they got wrong, they need to read on; it isn't the age they got wrong, but the estimated mass.

A new analysis by palaeontologist at the University of California Davis has put Perucetus colossus back into the same range as modern whales and lighter than the blue whale, which retains its position as the largest and heaviest organism ever to exist on Earth, dwarfing even the largest dinosaurs.

How they went about it is the subject of an open access paper in PeerJ and a news release from UC Davis:

Wednesday 28 February 2024

Creationism in Crisis - What Life Was Like 3.5 Billion Years Before 'Creation Week'


Barite quarry in the “Dresser Formation” of the Pilbara Craton. These rocks are around 3.5 billion years old and contain evidence of microbial life.

Photo: Jan-Peter Duda
Information for the Media - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Long, long ago, in that dim distant past when Earth was young, and fully 3.5 billion years before creationism's god decided to create a small flat planet with a dome over it centred on the Middle East, thermophile organisms, probably bacteria or archaea were living in a lake in a volcanic caldera in what is now the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia.

This is the conclusion of a research team led by the University of Göttingen wo have just published their work, open access, in the journal, Precambrian Research. Their work is also the subject of a brief news release by the University of Göttingen.

Thursday 22 February 2024

Creationism in Crisis - Fossil Plants from Australia, from 30 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'


Impression of lobed Proteaceae leaf (SAM P59649) from the Stuart Creek fluvial silcrete, South Australia.

A botanical Pompeii: we found spectacular Australian plant fossils from 30 million years ago

With so much of Earth's long history recorded in the geology, it’s quite astonishing that there are grown adults who still believe Earth is about 10,000 years old and was created out of noting, along with everything on it, in 6 days, with a few magic words, and that the science which shows otherwise is false or even forged.

It's even more astonishing that many of those people will live in technologically advanced societies that take products of science such as modern medicines, air transport, electricity, computers, radio and telephone communications and satellite navigation systems for granted and will never have any doubt about the truth of the science that created them.

Yet here we have yet more evidence that there were plants growing and leaving fossilised remains, 30 million years before creationists believe 'Creation Week' happened. And all they will have by the way of rationalising the facts with their evidence free-superstition is to lie about the science and claim the scientists used a flawed dating method that somehow managed to make 10,000 years look like 30 million years, or they lied about their results for some nefarious reason as part of a multi-million person conspiracy about which no-one ever breaks ranks and blows the whistle, even though they would gain instant fame and fortune if ever they did so.

And the same creationists who will tell that lie are the same people who hang on every word of a small handful of pseudo scientists who have taken an oath to always reach a required conclusion in their work, regardless of what the facts really reveal, as a condition of their employment.

How and where these fossils were found and dated, and the geological processes of silicification that preserved them, is the subject of a recent paper in the journal Gondwana Research. Andrew Rozefelds, Adjunct Assoc Professor in Central Queensland University and Principal Curator Geosciences Queensland Museum, CQ University Australia, lead author of the paper in Gondwana Research has also written about the research in an article in The Conversation, reprinted here under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Saturday 17 February 2024

Creationism in Crisis - A 4750-Year-Old Stone Plaza in Peru That Survived Creationists' Favourite Genocide


Callacpuma archaeological site, Peru
UW Anthropologists’ Research Unveils Early Stone Plaza in the Andes

Imagine for a moment that you're dating someone who told you they were 30 years old, then you discover a photograph of them as a teenager, in a newspaper dated 1984. Would you conclude that someone had been lying to you and your date was really about 55 years old, or would you assume the photograph had been faked or the newspaper had the wrong date?

Imagine now being a creationist who believed Earth was devastated by a global flood that covered the highest mountains, about 4000 years ago, which would have scoured the Earth and destroyed everything on it, then someone shows you the remains of a building in Peru that had been there for 4750 years, and showed no signs of ever being submerged in even a few feet of water, let along several thousand feet of it!

If you're a creationist, you dismiss the evidence or assume the dates are wrong or that somehow the inevitable layer of silt had been cleaned up, even if the building had managed to escape the destruction going on around it, because, if you're a creationist, the last thing you can admit to is that your beliefs could be wrong because that would make you feel less important that you think you should be, so you're prepared to perform any mental contortions necessary to avoid that thought.

And this is why belief in a literal interpretation of the Bible has been in headlong decline ever since science began providing evidence of an old Earth and evidence that there never was a global genocidal flood just a few thousand years ago, because people with intellectual integrity who value truth and have the humility to let the evidence lead their opinions, even if it leaves them feeling less important than they think they should be, have realised that the evidence tells them that the Bible is wrong, despite their mummy and daddy believing otherwise.

And of course, just such remains of a building have been found in Peru by two University of Wyoming anthropology professors, and dated to about 4750 BP. It is the remains of a stone plaza and is the oldest stone structure so far found in the Americas, being older even than the Egyptian pyramids and about the same age as Stone Henge (both of which, incidentally, also survived the alleged genocidal flood).
How they did it is explained in a University of Wyoming news release:

Wednesday 14 February 2024

Creationism in Crisis - Hundreds of Fossils From France From 470 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'


New fossil site of worldwide importance uncovered in southern France - UNIL L'ACTU

Artistic reconstruction of the Cabrières Biota.
Credit: Christian McCall (Prehistorica Art).
The news just keeps getting worse for creationism as the relentless scientific refutation of all their sacred dogmas continues unabated.

Today, it's the turn of palaeontologists from the Faculty of Geosciences and Environment at the University of Lausanne (UNIL), Switzerland, who, together with international colleagues, have just announced the discovery of a large collection of exceptionally well preserved fossils in the Lower Ordovician formation at Montagne Noire, in the Hérault department of France. The Lower Ordovician deposits were formed between about 485.4 and 470 million years before creationists believe Earth was magicked out of nothing.
Tell me all about the Lower Ordovician period particularly in the Montagne Noire, in the Hérault department of France, including how its age was determined. The Lower Ordovician period is a significant geological epoch characterized by a diversification of marine life, particularly marine invertebrates such as trilobites, brachiopods, and mollusks. It spans from approximately 485.4 to 470 million years ago. The Lower Ordovician is part of the larger Ordovician period, which is divided into three stages: Tremadocian, Floian, and Dapingian.

Montagne Noire, located in the Hérault department of France, is a region renowned for its Lower Ordovician sedimentary rocks, which provide valuable insights into the Earth's geological history during this period. The geological formations in Montagne Noire contain a wealth of fossils and sedimentary structures that have been studied extensively by geologists and paleontologists.

Monday 12 February 2024

Creationism in Crisis - Now It's Fossils of Air-Breathing Fish From Australia - From 380 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'


A 380-million-year-old predatory fish from Central Australia is finally named after decades of digging

It seems every day brings a new scientific refutation of creationism that the frauds who lead the cult and feed it disinformation need to keep hidden, or at least give the half-baked strategies for ignoring. The scientists are lying; the scientists get their dates wrong; no matter what the evidence shows, God's holy word trumps it; if you weren't there to see it, it probably didn't happen.

Maybe creationists can be satisfied with such obvious logical fallacies and evidence free assertions, but normal people will allow the evidence to lead their opinions, not the misrepresentations and lies of frauds who know nothing of the subject.

And what better evidence that the world wasn't created out of nothing by magic in a few days about 10,000 years ago, than yet more evidence that there were creatures like fish living on Earth 380 million years before creationist mythology says the magic creation happened; creatures like this fossil air-breathing, lobe-finned fish found in Devonian rocks in Central Australia.

And to make matters worse for creationists, this fish was a close relative of one of the lobe-finned fish that evolved into the terrestrial tetrapods from which all terrestrial vertebrates are descended. Taxonomists have now named this fish, Harajicadectes zhumini.

Sunday 11 February 2024

Creationism in Crisis - More Bad News For Creationists - 12 Million-Year-Old Colored Snail Shells


Fossil shell of Pithocerithium rubiginosum (height is 1.5 cm) from the Miocene sediments of Nexing in Austria (left) and isolated reddish polyene pigments on calcium fluoride disc (diameter of disc is 2 cm) (right).
Photo: Klaus Wolkenstein
Information for the Media: Surprisingly vibrant colour of 12-million-year-old snail shells - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Another terrible week for creationists is continuing today with news that a team of researchers from the University of Göttingen and the Natural History Museum Vienna (NHMW) have shown that the red pigment frequently found associated with the shells of fossilised snails from the Middle Miocene is the pigment that would have been present in the living shells, and not, as had been suggested, the product of later reactions.

This makes these pigments, from the chemical group of polyenes which includes the carotenes that give the colour to the plumage of some birds and to carrots, the oldest known pigments ever discovered. The fossil snails, Pithocerithium rubiginosum, so named from the 'rusty red' pigment they often contain, are from the Middle Miocene deposits in the geologically important Vienna Basin:

Wednesday 7 February 2024

Creationism in Crisis - How A Pterosaur Flew Like A Bird On The Wing, Over The Sea To Skye - 165 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'


Skeleton of the new pterosaur Ceoptera evansae from the Middle Jurassic of the Isle of Skye.

Trustees of the Natural History Museum London

3D models of skeleton.
Natural History Museum London
February : New species of Jurassic pterosaur discovered | News and features | University of Bristol

In another of those casual refutations of the creation myth in the Bible, archaeologists have discovered a new species of pterosaur that flew in the skies of what if now the Isle of Skye, Scotland, about 165 million years before creationism's fabled god decided to magic up out of nothing, a small flat planet with a dome over it in the Middle East.

They are thought to have lived for some 5 million years between the late Early Jurassic up to the Late Jurassic.

The fossilised skeleton fills another of those gaps in the fossil record so beloved of creationist, where the scarcity of fossils meant that the evolution of pterosaurs was poorly understood. This fossil shows that all the main clades of pterosaurs had evolved before the end of the Early Jurassic and earlier than previously thought.

The team from the University of Bristol Natural History Museum, the University of Leicester, and the University of Liverpool have named the new species, Ceoptera evansae: Ceoptera from the Scots Gaelic word Cheò, meaning mist (a reference to the Gaelic name for the Isle of Skye, Eilean a’ Cheò, or Isle of Mist - Scots Gaelic is still widely spoken on Skye), and the Latin -ptera, meaning wing. Evansae honours Professor Susan E. Evans, for her years of anatomical and palaeontological research, in particular on the Isle of Skye.

Monday 29 January 2024

Creationism in Crisis - Something For Creationists to Squawk About - Parrot-Like Dinosaurs from 67 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'


OSU-CHS student discovers new dinosaur species, publishes findings | Oklahoma State University

Between about 67 and 66 million years ago, during a period that geologists call the Maastrichtian, there was a thriving ecosystem of dinosaurs in what is now the Hell Creek formation which spans parts of Montana, Wyoming, and North and South Dakota. We know this because their remains are frequently found in this fossil-rich formation known as the Hell Creek Formation.

The great thing about this formation is the way, as the layers built up, nearby volcanoes periodically spread a layer of ash (or tufa) over it forming neat bands that can be accurately dated using one of the most accurate radiometric dating methods - Uranium-Lead (U-Pb) in zircons. This gives a maximum and minimum age of the fossils found between these layers of tufa.

I wrote about U-Pb dating in a recent blogpost, but for the sake of creationists who are about to squawk "Radiometric dating is false!", I'll expand on what I said here:

Tuesday 23 January 2024

Creationism in Crisis - Flying Reptiles In The Mendip Hills - 200 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'


Showing partial skeleton of gliding reptile Kuehneosaurus on rock from Emborough.
Credit: David Whiteside
January: Ancient flying reptiles | News and features | University of Bristol

200 million years, give or take a few thousand years, before creationists believe Earth and life on it were all created by magic from nothing in a week, gliding lizard-like reptiles related to ancestral crocodiles, were gliding from tree to tree, and probably hunting flying insects, in what is now the Mendip Hills, near Bristol, UK. The area around Bristol was then an archipelago of islands in a sub-tropical, shallow sea.

Fossil remains of these reptiles were found by University of Bristol Masters student Mike Cawthorne, researching numerous reptile fossils from limestone quarries, in what was then the biggest sub-tropical island at the time, called the Mendip Palaeo-island.

As the Bristol University press release explains:
The study, published today in Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, also records the presence of reptiles with complex teeth, the trilophosaur Variodens and the aquatic Pachystropheus that probably lived similarly to a modern-day otter likely eating shrimps and small fish.

The animals either fell or their bones were washed into caves and cracks in the limestone.

“All the beasts were small,” said Mike. “I had hoped to find some dinosaur bones, or even their isolated teeth, but in fact I found everything else but dinosaurs.

“The collections I studied had been made in the 1940s and 1950s when the quarries were still active, and palaeontologists were able to visit and see fresh rock faces and speak to the quarrymen.”

Professor Mike Benton, from Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences, explained: “It took a lot of work identifying the fossil bones, most of which were separate and not in a skeleton.

“However, we have a lot of comparative material, and Mike Cawthorne was able to compare the isolated jaws and other bones with more complete specimens from the other sites around Bristol.

“He has shown that the Mendip Palaeo-island, which extended from Frome in the east to Weston-super-Mare in the west, nearly 30 km long, was home to diverse small reptiles feeding on the plants and insects.

“He didn’t find any dinosaur bones, but it’s likely that they were there because we have found dinosaur bones in other locations of the same geological age around Bristol.”

The area around Bristol 200 million years ago in the Late Triassic was an archipelago of small islands set in a warm sub-tropical sea.

Bristol’s Dr David Whiteside added: “The bones were collected by some great fossil finders in the 1940s and 1950s including Tom Fry, an amateur collector working for Bristol University and who generally cycled to the quarries and returned laden with heavy bags of rocks.

“The other collectors were the gifted researchers Walter Kühne, a German who was imprisoned in Great Britain in the 2nd world war, and Pamela L. Robinson from University College London. They gave their specimens to the Natural History Museum in London and the Geological collections of the University of Bristol.”
Abstract

During the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic, the area around Bristol and South Wales was an archipelago of islands occupied by diverse small-sized tetrapods. The largest of these palaeo-islands was Mendip Island, now forming the Mendip Hills, and the location of some famous fossiliferous sites. These sites have not been described in detail before, and we present new data on three of them. Highcroft has yielded only sparse remains of rhynchocephalians, and Batscombe famously the gliding reptile Kuehneosuchus latissimus. Emborough yielded the richest fauna of the three, abundant pseudosuchians including crocodylomorphs as well as the gliding reptile Kuehneosaurus latus, rare trilophosaurs, a probable thalattosaur, rhynchocephalians, and the mammal Kuehneotherium. These include some of the last known taxa of clades that died out in the end-Triassic mass extinction. We report a new taxon of sphenosuchid crocodylomorph similar to Saltoposuchus and a find of Pachystropheus, an aquatic reptile shared with Holwell and the bedded Rhaetian at Blue Anchor Point, Aust and Westbury Garden Cliff. The discovery of a fish vertebra strengthens the model of Emborough fissure filling in a marginal marine location. The Emborough fauna differs from coeval assemblages from Cromhall, Tytherington and Ruthin in the scarcity of sphenodontians and the absence or great rarity of procolophonids as well as the abundance of kuehneosaurids and crocodylomorphs.

1. Introduction

The Triassic (252–201 Ma) was a crucial time in the recovery, restructuring and diversification of vertebrate life (Benton and Wu, 2022). Many modern groups including lissamphibians, turtles, lizards, crocodiles, and mammals originated or diversified in the Late Triassic, part of the process of the recovery of life from the end-Permian mass extinction, but stimulated by the Carnian Pluvial Episode 233–232 Ma, following which climates became more arid, and the new groups, including dinosaurs, had opportunities to diversify (Brusatte et al., 2010; Chen and Benton, 2012; Benton et al., 2014; Bernardi et al., 2018; Dal Corso et al., 2020; Benton 2021; Benton and Wu, 2022).

The end-Triassic mass extinction (ETME), 201 Ma, was probably caused by sharp warming from greenhouse gases erupted by the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP), associated with the beginning of rifting and opening of the North Atlantic (Blackburn et al., 2013). The environmental crisis led to widespread extinctions of many tetrapod clades including procolophonids, placodonts, kuehneosaurids, thalattosaurs, allokotosaurians and phytosaurs. Many pseudosuchians such as the rauisuchids also became extinct but the Crocodylomorpha survived leading to the modern living crocodilians. Whether the ETME was a single crisis at the end of the Triassic or began minimally 100 ka before the earliest known eruptions (Davies et al., 2017) is debated. Indeed, there is good evidence for several earlier events, one at the Norian–Rhaetian boundary (Rigo et al., 2020.1) and one equivalent to the middle of the Cotham Member in the British Rhaetian succession (Wignall and Atkinson, 2020.2), both marked by carbon isotope excursions and evidence for substantial loss of marine species. The spacing of these events is entirely dependent on estimates of the duration of the Rhaetian, with its beginning variously dated at 205.7 Ma and 201.7 Ma, making the stage either 4.2 or 0.2 Myr in duration (Maron et al., 2015; Ruhl et al., 2020.3).

These considerations around the importance of the Triassic as a whole, and the Late Triassic in particular, in documenting the origin of modern ecosystems on land and in the sea, as well as the evidence for phased bursts of extinction through the Rhaetian, place fresh importance on understanding the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic fossil faunas found bordering the Bristol Channel, around Bristol and in South Wales. These faunas are preserved across a sub-tropical archipelago (Fig. 1) in fissure fillings, deposits of soil and other debris accumulated in karstic cave systems (Whiteside et al., 2016; Lovegrove et al., 2021.1). First finds were isolated bones of the sauropodomorph dinosaur Thecodontosaurus in the Worrall Road Quarries in Bristol (Riley and Stutchbury, 1836, Riley and Stutchbury, 1840; Ballell et al., 2020.4) and then mammal remains at Holwell Quarry (Moore, 1859), and later recognition by Charles Moore that these were Mesozoic-aged fissures eroded into Carboniferous limestone. The study of the fissures began again in the late 1930s and the 1940s with the work of Walter Kühne and his discoveries of mammal remains at Holwell and elsewhere (Kühne, 1949; Savage, 1993; Whiteside and Duffin, 2017.1; Benton et al., 2024).
Fig. 1. The Bristol palaeo-archipelago, showing island locations in the latest Triassic (early Rhaetian). Overview of the whole area, showing the Mendip Palaeoisland. The blue shallow seas between the islands are areas with deposition of the Westbury beds. Fissure fill localities are marked in red, bone beds in orange. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
Map from Lovegrove et al. (2021.1).
The fissure faunas have been reviewed several times (Robinson, 1957a; Fraser, 1994; Whiteside et al., 2016), and one of the key land masses was the Mendip Palaeoisland (Lovegrove et al., 2021.1), the site of five fossiliferous fissure sites, namely Emborough, Batscombe, Highcroft, Holwell, and Windsor Hill (Fig. 1). These sites have been reported before (Robinson, 1957a; Fraser, 1994) although not extensively, but Emborough has been featured in several publications (Robinson, 1957a, Robinson, 1957.1b, Robinson, 1962) because of the remarkable specimens of kuehneosaurids, also abundantly represented at Batscombe. These unique finds, however, are not replicated at other fossiliferous fissure sites on the Mendip Island, even at Highcroft and Holwell (Fig. 1). Likewise, although Emborough has produced abundant remains of archosauromorphs, these are very rare at Holwell.

Our aim is to document three of the five Mendip Island fissure localities, Emborough, Batscombe, and Highcroft, whose terrestrial assemblages have not been published in detail before, and to present data on geology and taphonomy as well, to allow comparison with the other Late Triassic fissure faunas around Bristol and in South Wales.
Anatomical abbreviations. a, anterior; ac, anterior condyle; ace, acetabulum; amafe, anterior margin of antorbital fenestra; amp, amphicoelous; ampl, amphyplatyan; an, angular; ap, anterior projection; ar, articulation(s); artf, facet for the articular bone; at, attachment; bic, bicapitate; bs, basipterygoid; c capitulum; ca, capitelum; ce, centrum; cfo, coracoid foramen; cn, canal; co, condyle; cx, convex (surface); di, diapophysis; dis, distal; desf, surface contacting dentary; dpc, deltopectoral crest; dor, dorsal; ec, ectopterygoid; ect, ectepicondyle; ent, entepicondyle; er, erupting; fc, fibular contact; fcp, facial process; fct, facet; fl, flat surface; fla, flange; fo, foramen; fos, fossa; gl, glenoid; gr, groove; hd, head; itfe, inferior temporal fenestra; l, lateral; ls, ligament scar; mc, medial condyle; mk, meckelian; ml, midline; ms, muscle scar; ne, neural; palf, facet for the palatine; pc, pleuracrodont; pco, posterior condyle; pozy, postzygapophysis; pr, process; prz, prezygapophysis; pm, prominance; po, posterior; pp, parapophysis; prx, proximal; rid, ridge(s); saf, surangular facet; sar, sacral rib; sc, supinator crest; ser, serrations; sf, surface; sh, shallow; slf, shelf; sp, spine; spl, splenial; stfe, superior temporal fenestra; sut, suture; t tuberculum; th, tooth (teeth); tb, tubercle; tc, trochlear groove; tcn, tibia contact; tr, trochanter; tv, transverse; ven, ventral; vmaf, ventral margin for adductor fossa; wr, wear; zy, zygapophysis.

Institutional acronyms. AMNH, American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA; BRSMG, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol; BRSUG, University of Bristol, Geology Collection; NHMUK, Natural History Museum, London; SMNS, State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, Germany; TTU, Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock; UCMP, University of California Museum of Palaeontology; UNC, Department of Geological Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.


Cawthorne, Michael; Whiteside, David I.; Benton, Michael J.
Latest Triassic terrestrial microvertebrate assemblages from caves on the Mendip palaeoisland, S.W. England, at Emborough, Batscombe and Highcroft Quarries
Proceedings of the Geologists' Association (2024) S0016787823000998. DOI:10.1016/j.pgeola.2023.12.003

Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by Elsevier B.V., Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
But then what did the authors of Genesis know about the climate in, and location of, what is now south-east England 200 million years earlier, when they didn't even know about Europe and thought Earth was small, flat and just a few thousand years old? This is why so much of it is now having to be reclassified as 'allegorical' or 'metaphorical' by mainstream Christians, leaving only a dwindling cult of fruitloop fanatics still believe it is the inerrant word of an omniscient creator god, laughable though that demonstrably absurd, childish notion is.

Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It

This book explains why faith is a fallacy and serves no useful purpose other than providing an excuse for pretending to know things that are unknown. It also explains how losing faith liberates former sufferers from fear, delusion and the control of others, freeing them to see the world in a different light, to recognise the injustices that religions cause and to accept people for who they are, not which group they happened to be born in. A society based on atheist, Humanist principles would be a less divided, more inclusive, more peaceful society and one more appreciative of the one opportunity that life gives us to enjoy and wonder at the world we live in.

Available in Hardcover, Paperback or ebook for Kindle


What Makes You So Special? From The Big Bang To You

How did you come to be here, now? This books takes you from the Big Bang to the evolution of modern humans and the history of human cultures, showing that science is an adventure of discovery and a source of limitless wonder, giving us richer and more rewarding appreciation of the phenomenal privilege of merely being alive and able to begin to understand it all.

Available in Hardcover, Paperback or ebook for Kindle




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Saturday 20 January 2024

Creationism in Crisis - An Early Mammal Was Preying On Dinosaurs 125 Million Years Before Earth Existed (According To Creationists)


Fossil: Mammal attacks dinosaur - Canadian Museum of Nature
The fossil sowing the entangled skeletons of the dinosaur (Psittacosaurus) and the mammal (Repenomamus). Scale bar equals 10 cm.
125 years before Earth was magicked out of nothing, according to creationists, there were early mammals preying on dinosaurs in Canada. The problem creationist have is that they get all their information from tales made up by primitive people who knew nothing of Canada, dinosaurs or early mammals and though Earth was created by magic just a few years earlier.

This is how we can tell that their favourite source book is worthless as an account of real science, biology, geography and history. It is quite simply demonstrably and unarguably so wrong about just about everything, as we now know, that it's laughable that grown adults believe any of it.

Q: How do we know that early mammals were preying on dinosaurs 125 million years ago?

A: Because we have the evidence.

It comes in the form of a fossil of an early mammal attacking a dinosaur, dated to 125 million years old, as described in a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. The fossil shows a (smaller) mammal in the process of attacking or maybe even eating alive, a (larger) dinosaur. The pair were suddenly engulfed in a volcanic debris flow.

As a news release from the Canadian Museum of Nature explains:

Friday 19 January 2024

Creationism in Crisis - The Travels Of An Alaskan Mammoth 4,000 Years Before 'Creation Week'


Mammoths lived in interior and Arctic Alaska up until about 13,000 years ago. By analyzing the tusk of a mammoth, we can learn about where it lived throughout different times of its life.

Art by Mauricio Anton
Woolly mammoth movements tied to earliest Alaska hunting camps | UAF news and information

Readers may remember a blog post from last November which described how scientists had tracked the lifetime movements of a male Alaskan mammoth that lived 17,100 years ago, by analysing the isotope record in its tusks.

This is possible because mammoth tusks, like those of elephants, grow continually throughout their lifetime and contain a record of the stable isotopes of strontium (87Sr and 86Sr) in their food, deposited in annual growth rings similar to those of trees, which is dependent on the ratios of those isotopes in the soil the plants grew in. By comparing the record in their tusks with known isotope maps, their movement can be mapped.

Creationists should note that these are naturally-occurring, stable, i.e., not radioactive, isotopes of strontium, so they do not decay to other elements over time, nor do the ratios change significantly over time, so modern maps of these isotope ratios in the soil are valid for tens of thousands of years ago.

Now the same team who used this technique to work out the travels of a male Alaskan mammoth, 17,100 years ago, have repeated used it to map the travels of a female which lived 3,000 years late, and have shown that humans had established encampments close to the routes these mammoths used. The mammoth tusk used was excavated from the Swan Point archaeological site along with the remains of two juvenile mammoths and signs of a campfire, stone tools and the butchered remains of other animals.

The account of the discovery is published, open access in Science Advances and is explained in a news release from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks:

Thursday 18 January 2024

Creationism in Crisis - Revealing The Mysteries of Earth's Fourth Mass Extinction - 200 Million Years Before 'Creation Week'.


Skeleton of the early dinosaur Coelophysis bauri from the Late Triassic. The protracted restructuring of Early Jurassic terrestrial ecosystems coincided with the diversification of dinosaurs.

Image: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Mysteries of Earth’s ancient mass extinction event revealed

In that multi-billion year history of planet Earth, long before creationism's little god allegedly created a small, flat planet with a dome over it, and put living things on it, the real Earth had already had several mass extinctions when the ecosystem changed so radically and quickly that most species couldn't evolve fast enough to survive.

This give the lie to creationist claims that Earth is finely-tuned for life because, quite frankly, very few of the species that have evolved on it last more than a few million years before being killed off by one catastrophe or another that any omniscient deity worthy of the description could and should have foreseen and planned for.

The fourth of those mass extinctions occurred at the end of the Triassic period when a dramatic rise in greenhouse gasses due to volcanic activity led to rapid global warming and a significant shift in the planet’s biosphere, ending the Triassic period and launching the Jurassic.

The parallel with today when a rise in greenhouse gasses has been caused by industrial pollution and burning fossil fuels is striking.

Now a new insight into this mass extinction has been revealed by researchers from the University of Southern California's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, using a novel "ecospace framework" method that categorizes animals beyond just their species. It accounts for ecological roles and behaviors — from flying or swimming predators to grazing herbivores and from ocean seafloor invertebrates to soil-dwelling animals on land.

As the press release from UCSDornsife explains:

Monday 15 January 2024

Creationism in Crisis - Sturgeons in Alberta 72 million Years Before 'Creation Week'


Credit: University of Alberta
72-million-year-old sturgeon discovered in Edmonton is a fossil first | Folio

Once upon a time, just a few thousand years ago, a magic man made of nothing appeared from nowhere and said some magic words that magicked a whole universe out of nothing. Right in the middle of that universe he made a small flat planet and put a dome over it to keep the water above the sky out, then he magicked some people, some plants and some animals and this took him nearly a whole week. Even though he did it all with a few magic words, this made him so tired he needed a day off.

After a while he decided he didn't like what he had made because he had given the people free will and they were using it, so he drowned them all apart from a few, then started again without changing his original design, hoping things would turn out differently this time.

What he hadn't realised was that he had only gone and created this imaginary world in a small part of a really big Universe that had been there for billions of years and already had a planet with lots of animals on it, so, although he had started off 'going down' to chat to the humans he had magicked, he promptly disappeared, never to be seen again, almost as though he had gone back to being nothing. Meanwhile, the real planet in the real universe carried on the way it had always done, as though no magician had ever done anything magical.

One of those animals on the real planet was a fish called a sturgeon which lived in what is now Alberta, Canada, 75 million years before 'Creation Week', which is why scientist were able to find a fossil of it in rocks known to be between 84 and 72 million years old. It's little clues like this, and the complete lack of any evidence of magic, that tells us the story of that fantasy creation was wrong and made up by ignorant people who didn't know any better.

The discovery of the fossil sturgeon was announced in a paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology last August and announced to the press in a news release just a couple of days ago:
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