Older than Thought Again: Lizards

Darwinism is a worldview that can’t keep its story straight.
It keeps shuffling around the pieces on its timeline.

 

What’s 35 million years to a Darwinist? No big deal.

Fossil discovery in storeroom cupboard shifts origin of modern lizards back 35 million years (University of Bristol, 2 Dec 2022).

A specimen retrieved from a cupboard of the Natural History Museum in London has shown that modern lizards originated in the Late Triassic and not the Middle Jurassic as previously thought.

Who thought that? Creationists didn’t. They’re not embarrassed. But Darwinists have no shame. They can be totally wrong and not blink, because they know that the public worldview game is rigged. They can say that “all scientists accept evolution” and get away with it, even if it requires moving a “modern-type lizard” back by 35 million Darwin years. They know the media will go along with whatever they say.

As a modern-type lizard, the new fossil impacts all estimates of the origin of lizards and snakes, together called the Squamata, and affects assumptions about their rates of evolution, and even the key trigger for the origin of the group.

It’s no big deal, because one-party rule (the Darwin Party) and censorship gives them immunity from falsification. They can rearrange things on their mythical timeline. A few ancestors of lizards must have just evolved faster; that’s all. Something else must have triggered lizards to make their debut. The Stuff Happens Law has an infinite supply of potential triggers. Whatever it was, the Tinkerer was on hand to create scaly skin, new kinds of eyes and habits, new digestive systems, and a whole revised anatomy.

In fact, finding an anomaly once in awhile might be part of the game. It keeps the storytellers employed as saviors of evolutionary theory. They can be heroes of their college or university, rescuing Darwinism from the latest uncooperative fossil. Perhaps this fossil was hidden away in a cupboard for such a time as this.

“In terms of significance, our fossil shifts the origin and diversification of squamates back from the Middle Jurassic to the Late Triassic,” says co-author Professor Mike Benton. “This was a time of major restructuring of ecosystems on land, with origins of new plant groups, especially modern-type conifers, as well as new kinds of insects, and some of the first of modern groups such as turtles, crocodilians, dinosaurs, and mammals.

“Adding the oldest modern squamates then completes the picture. It seems these new plants and animals came on the scene as part of a major rebuilding of life on Earth after the end-Permian mass extinction 252 million years ago, and especially the Carnian Pluvial Episode, 232 million years ago when climates fluctuated between wet and dry and caused great perturbation to life.”

The anomalous fossil was actually a blessing in disguise. The first squamate lizard joined all the other creatures that were evolving at the time of “major rebuilding” going on by chance. Stuff was happening all over the place!

The press release ends with praise for this fossil, treating it like a holy relic. Behold a fragment of the bones of the True Lizard.

Dr Whiteside concluded: “This is a very special fossil and likely to become one of the most important found in the last few decades. It is fortunate to be held in a National Collection, in this case the Natural History Museum, London.

Now, the public will want to visit the chapel in London and view the reliquary, genuflecting to Father Darwin with reverence.

All Aboard the Darwin Bandwagon

Bristol: Fossil shows lizards millions of years older than thought (BBC News, 2 December 2022). The UK’s premiere news organization joins the Bristol bandwagon. The lead propagandist at Bristol, David Whiteside, gets to speak uninterrupted by any challenger.

“As we continued to investigate the specimen, we became more and more convinced that it was actually more closely related to modern day lizards than the Tuatara group.”

Ancient lizard with teeth like butcher knives ‘re-calibrates the whole shebang’ of reptile evolution (Live Science, 2 Dec 2022). For clickbait, reporter Jennifer Nalewicki emphasizes the deadly teeth of this palm-sized fossil, and breathlessly describes what an upset it represents. But then she is on hand to rescue Darwin from any qualms. With deft nurturing, she forestalls any nightmares that impressionable young biology students might have, worrying about rumors of headaches Father Darwin is suffering after hearing the “whole shebang” of his timeline suffered a big earthquake. All is well. The picture is better now. She comforts little Greta who is whimpering in the corner with soothing words, saying that the fossil will help with climate change.

C. microlanius’ age rewrites the origins of modern-day lizards and snakes, revealing that squamates were alive more than 30 million years earlier than previously thought. This discovery “helps complete the picture” of squamate evolution, Benton said.

“A key question in modern biology is to understand the really successful groups, like squamates (lizards and snakes) with over 11,000 species,” Benton said. “How did they get so successful and how do they respond to climate change? So, checking back in time we need to know just when, where and how that huge modern group originated — our fossil now re-calibrates the whole shebang and draws it back 35 million years.”

A Triassic crown squamate (Whiteside et al., Science Advances, 2 Dec 2022). This is the scientific paper which came out on the day of the press releases, on cue because of the Embargo Racket (7 Feb 2013) that lets only qualified Darwin Party members get the first messaging out to the world. Complete with a dozen references to evolution, the Darwin Party insiders keep control in their publication of the data.

A key question for phylogenetic-macroevolutionary studies is to determine the extent to which these different events triggered different phases of squamate diversification. Furthermore, dating the origins of major clades correctly provides data on which to test whether the macroevolution of these reptiles was driven primarily by changing physical environments (changing temperatures, moving continents, and aftermath of crises), by new ecological opportunities (e.g., burgeoning insects in the mid-Cretaceous associated with diversification of flowering plants), or by innovation (new adaptations).

Translation: Think of all the wonderful new stories we can tell with the newly-“calibrated” timeline! Now, university teams can form to tell new stories about what triggered this lizard to start a new Squamate Evolution family. One team can explore whether climate change did it. Another can suppose that moving continents did it. Another can look for a crisis that triggered chance to call up the necessary mutations for blind nature to select by chance. Another team can imagine a wealth of new insects flying about, conjuring up images of toothy lizards emerging to eat them. Any or all of these things were driving this creature to go forth, evolve, and diversify. Give these bones a few million years, and presto! Modern lizards!

The anomaly actually helps the whole Darwin Party shebang. Now, all the other handlers can get busy rewriting textbooks, rearranging museum displays, and recording new YouTube videos. The public will be assured that these creatures were driven. They wanted to evolve.

Shebang. Shazam. Darwinians, speaking with forked tongue, reveal the depth of chicanery in their reptilian worldview.