Three More Fossils Appear Earlier Than Thought
They appear earlier than thought, but
show no sign of evolutionary transition
A bat, a pliosaur, and a human footprint have one thing in common: they are embarrassing the evolutionary timeline.
Holy bat skull! Fossil adds vital piece to bat evolution puzzle (University of New South Wales, 19 Oct 2023). The subtitle reveals the problem: “Bats may have lived in caves and used soundwaves to navigate much earlier than first thought.” Thought by whom? Evolutionists. They thought a primitive bat fossil lacking sonar would show up before the oldest fossil known, which is 57 million Darwin Years old.
But a near-perfectly preserved bat’s skull discovered by French palaeontologists in a cave that dates back about 50 million years has shed new light on what we thought we knew about this ancient, hypothetical creature.
The oldest specimen referred to consists of a single tooth, so it doesn’t reveal anything about the wings or sonar. A missing link should exist, evolutionists believe, to bridge the gap between a land mammal and a flying, sonar-capable bat.
“It’s very convincing that the type of echolocation some of these early bats used was indistinguishable from what many echolocating bats use today, and at 50 million years ago, this is well ahead of whales developing this ability.
“Prior to this find, we were only really certain that echolocation developed in the modern families of bats.”
When in a shameful situation, look excited. That’s the Darwin way of dodging falsification.
“We think some of the characteristics of this bat would have also characterised the last common ancestor for modern bats. So it’s exciting, and it is actually going to be an important specimen that people will get a lot of information from and use in their own analyses.”
Ancient sea monster remains reveal oldest mega-predatory pliosaur (Uppsala University, 20 Oct 2023). A pliosaur is a large marine reptile that went extinct with the dinosaurs. This specimen, called Lorrainosaurus,
The fossils of a 170-million-year-old ancient marine reptile from the Age of Dinosaurs have been identified as the oldest-known mega-predatory pliosaur – a group of ocean-dwelling reptiles closely related to the famous long-necked plesiosaurs. The findings are rare and add new knowledge to the evolution of plesiosaurs. The study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Did it look like a transitional form?
Other than a brief report published in 1994, the fossils of Lorrainosaurus remained obscure until this new study re-evaluated the finds. Lorrainosaurus indicates that the reign of gigantic mega-predatory pliosaurs must have commenced earlier than previously thought, and was locally responsive to major ecological changes affecting marine environments covering what is now western Europe during the early Middle Jurassic.
“Lorrainosaurus is thus a critical addition to our knowledge of ancient marine reptiles from a time in the Age of Dinosaurs that has as yet been incompletely understood”, says Benjamin Kear.
The only new understanding Dr Kear is getting from this fossil is that evolutionists were wrong.
Human Dates from Wrong to Worse
Researchers identify the oldest pieces of Baltic amber found on the Iberian Peninsula: imports began over 5,000 years ago (University of Granada, 19 Oct 2023). A thousand years in error: that’s what this story is about.
Baltic amber is a luxury material used in jewellery and handicrafts all over the world. Researchers from the Universities of Granada (UGR) and Cambridge, as well as the Government of Catalonia, have shown that Baltic amber arrived on the Iberian Peninsula at least in the 4th millennium BC, more than a millennium earlier than previously thought.
Study confirms age of oldest fossil footprints in America (US Geological Survey, 19 Oct 2023). Human footprints found at White Sands a couple of years ago have upset the evolutionary tale of early humans in the New World.
New research reaffirms that human footprints found in White Sands National Park, NM, date to the Last Glacial Maximum, placing humans in North America thousands of years earlier than once thought.
The dates of 21,000 to 23,000 years before the present should be questioned, because footprints do not come with dates on them. The research team used radiocarbon on pollen grains in the dirt to arrive at the ages of the prints, which may not have had any association with the pollen grains. In addition, radiocarbon dates beyond a few thousand years accumulate calibration errors, because untestable assumptions about atmospheric conditions come into play.
The assumed ages for these footprints create deep problems for evolutionary historians. One cannot extend the earliest date of human arrival in North America without upsetting applecarts all over the land. These fully-modern footprints look like families with children were carrying on normal lives way in the middle of New Mexico! What happened before that? Why are there no prints or artifacts that old between the first crossing of the Bering Strait and that distant location? And what happened after the prints were made? Did none of the humans leave any trace until thousands of years later?
Humans got to America 7,000 years earlier than thought, new research confirms (The Conversation, 5 Oct 2023). Two scientists who participated in dating the White Sands footprints explain why they are confident in the dates. But a leap from 14,000 years for the arrival of the first humans (the consensus prior to the New Mexico footprints) to 21,000 years or more represents a huge change. Even within the evolutionary camp, are historians willing to suspend credibility enough to believe that humans were walking far into America for 7,000 years without leaving any evidence of their existence?
Update 25 Oct 2023: Shortly after this article was published, another case hit the news: Humans and Neanderthals mated 250,000 years ago, much earlier than thought (Live Science, 24 Oct 2023). If this story is true, the evolutionary paleoanthropologists and geneticists were in error by 333%.
Until now, Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) were believed to have first interbred earlier than 75,000 years ago, according to a 2016 genetic analysis in the journal Nature. However, a new analysis, published Oct. 13 in the journal Current Biology, has revealed that one group of Homo sapiens from Africa interbred with Neanderthals in Eurasia around 250,000 years ago.
The ramifications of having Neanderthals and “modern” humans in contact for over 3 times as long as previously believed have not been thought out carefully. This should upset several applecarts in the paleoanthropology community, such as the degree to which the groups engaged in technology sharing, cultural contact, and networking. Obviously whatever individual(s) interbred with Neanderthals considered them to be just as fully human as they were.
We have a timeline of human history and earth history provided for us by the Maker of all things. When non-theistic scientists date things out of order with Biblically-recorded events, therefore, they are almost always wrong. But go ahead; take their dates and see what happens. It’s amusing to watch them get more mixed up within their own assumptions than they were before. We’ve reported many times that the fossil record shows fully-formed, modern-looking plants and animals “earlier than thought” in evolutionary fantasyland.
In the 1970s and 80s, the renowned creationist Duane Gish debated leading evolutionists on university campuses with Dr Henry Morris, founder of ICR. He would show photos of the “earliest fossil bat” and say that it was 100% bat. None of the evolutionists could refute it. Isn’t it amazing that in the subsequent 30-50 years since he made that argument, not one fossil intermediate form has turned up? The only intermediate fossils that have been produced then and now are the ones imprinted in the imaginations of Darwin’s true believers.