More “Earlier Than Thought” Surprises

When the facts don’t
fit the narrative,
speed up evolution.

At CEH, we continue to be amused at how many things don’t fit the Darwinian timeline. They can always stretch or squeeze their Gumby Clocks to get around the problems, but at some point this should appear suspect as a strategy.

Here are the latest phenomena that appear “earlier than thought.” Notice how Darwinians add or subtract millions of years with reckless abandon.

Diversity of water striders emerged earlier than previously thought (22 Jan 2026, Bavarian Natural History Collections). The most comprehensive genetic analysis of these water-walking insects to date found a surprise—a surprise for evolutionists, that is. “Most lineages originated much earlier than previously known, some up to 50 million years,” the press release states. The evolutionists attribute the rapid evolution to “various geological and climatic processes that took place on Earth at that time.”

How could that be? Perhaps a landslide landed in a pond where the bugs were swimming and launched them into the air. Thinking “Evolve or perish!” they diversified on the way down, landing in a bigger pond as a new lineage. Or maybe a volcano or earthquake did it. If those explanations fail, they can always fall back on the catch-all answer to everything: climate change. 

How did birds evolve? The answer is wilder than anyone thought (13 Jan 2026, Nature). Notice that reporter Michael Marshall does not ask “Did birds evolve?” because that would be a CLM (career-limiting move) at Darwin’s favorite rag, Nature. But he is baffled: “Discoveries in Jurassic rocks reveal that birds were adept fliers earlier than scientists realized.” A fossil bird named Baminornis from China, described in 2025, upset the timeline.

This was a surprise, Wang says. Given how early Baminornis was, one might have expected to find a transitional stage — “maybe some birds have a shorter tail but still do not have a pygostyle” — but instead, his team found a Jurassic bird with a fully formed pygostyle. He argues that this means the first birds might have predated Archaeopteryx and Baminornis. “It pushed back the emergence of the origination of birds much earlier than we thought,” he says. “Is it possible that maybe some middle or early Jurassic birds had already evolved?”

Darwin expert confibulator Stephen Brusatte was ready with a talking point to keep the Darwin narrative going:

“It’s telling us that birds already had been experimenting and developing more-sophisticated aerodynamic and flying styles by the end of the Jurassic,” says Brusatte. The fact that Archaeopteryx and Baminornis were so different suggests that birds were already diversified, hinting at an earlier evolutionary history than previously thought.

It’s never just a history. It must be an evolutionary history. But did the birds really “experiment” on sophisticated aerodynamic flying styles by chance mutations and natural selection?

Fossil study rewrites timeline of evolution of hearing in mammals (19 Dec 2025, University of Chicago). Reptiles hear through their bones, but the complexities of hearing in mammals with a middle ear (eardrum and ossicles) was thought to be a more recent invention. This press release says, “3D models of the jaw and associated middle ear bones of the Triassic mammal ancestor ‘Thrinaxodon’ show that the switch to mammal-like hearing with an eardrum evolved much earlier than previously thought.“

Four camera-type eyes in the earliest vertebrates from the Cambrian Period (21 Jan 2026, Nature). Although this paper does not use the phrase “earlier than thought,” it speaks of camera-type eyes (ponder that) in the earliest vertebrates from the Cambrian Explosion.

Here we describe two pigmented features situated between the lateral eyes in two species of myllokunmingids, the earliest known fossil vertebrates (approximately 518 million years ago), and interpret these as pineal/parapineal organs. In both myllokunmingid species, the pineal complex contains abundant melanin-containing melanosomes identical to those in the retinal pigment epithelium in the lateral eyes, together with a distinctive, regularly ovoid structure interpreted as a lens. Our results indicate that the lateral eyes and pineal complex in myllokunmingids probably functioned as camera-type eyes capable of image formation. Thus, we propose that the four camera-type eyes represent an ancestral vertebrate character, corroborating hypotheses about the deep homology between the eyes and pineal complex.

Humans Also Evolved Earlier Than Thought

Research shows humans making fire 350,000 years earlier than thought (10 Dec 2025, University of Liverpool). The controlled use of fire is a distinctive human capability. The new date in Darwin Years is seven times earlier than they used to claim.

A team of researchers led by the British Museum has unearthed the oldest known evidence of fire making, dating back over 400,000 years, in a field in Suffolk. The discovery shows humans were making fire around 350,000 years earlier than previously known.

Sites in Africa suggest humans used natural fire over a million years ago, but the discovery at the Palaeolithic site in Barnham evidences the creation and control of fire, which carries huge implications for human development and evolution. Until now, the oldest known evidence of fire making was from 50,000 years ago, found in northern France.

Oldest known rock art is a 68,000-year-old hand stencil with claws (21 Jan 2026, New Scientist). Early rock art, dated by evolutionists as earlier than Neanderthal artifacts, have been found in Sulawesi. “Newly discovered rock art sites in Sulawesi, Indonesia, that date to nearly 68,000 years ago,” writes reporter James Woodford, “are thought to be the oldest rock art in the world, pre-dating Neanderthal hand stencils in Spain by 1100 years.”

In 2024, Maxime Aubert at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia, and his colleagues reported that they had found the world’s oldest known “representational” art on the island – a pig depicted alongside human-like figures, that was at least 51,200 years old. Now, his team have announced the discovery of a further 44 rock art sites in south-eastern Sulawesi, and dated one partial hand stencil at a site called Liang Metanduno, on Muna Island, east Sulawesi, to 67,800 years ago.

Previously, the world’s oldest known rock art was a hand stencil at a Neanderthal site in northern Spain, dated to a minimum age of 66,700 years old – 1100 years younger than the new Sulawesi site.

And yet the newly found stencils on a cave wall are more clearly representations of animals and human hands than the later Neanderthal hand prints and lines. Representational art is a distinctively human capability. This implies that such ability predated the supposedly more “primitive” Neanderthal kind. Why were the hand shapes drawn elongated with pointed ends like claws?

“This indicates a playfulness on the part of the modern human artist; altering an otherwise ‘ordinary’ hand stencil in this manner is a sign of creative imagination and abstract thinking that is not evident in the human hand mark left behind by the Neanderthal.”

This means that playfulness, creative imagination and abstract thinking also predated Neanderthals. The researchers think these humans were on their way to Australia. That would indicate high intelligence for travel across the seas.

Humans returned to British Isles earlier than previously thought at the end of the last ice age (19 Jan 2026, The Conversation). This date revision is only 500 years earlier than they used to claim, but it does seem baffling to them to imagine modern humans choosing to live in cold climes. Maybe they don’t understand how Canadians and Alaskans get along.

This finding was difficult to understand, as it coincided with what were then considered cold glacial climates that would have been unlikely to support the resources people needed to survive in Britain.

And so the saga continues. The Darwin timeline represents not a history, but an evolutionary history: a history that evolves, with stretchable clocks that maintain the Darwinian narrative at all costs.

Being a Darwinist means you never have to admit you were wrong. You never get fired. You have job security. In fact, evolutionists even act excited when evidence proves them wrong!

What a scam Charlie pulled on the world. 

For fun, search for the phrase “earlier than thought” here at CEH. Many hits!