Rhinos in Canada

 

Image courtesy of Julius Csotonyi

Joel Kontinen

Ancient 'frosty' rhino from Canada's High Arctic rewrites what scientists thought they knew about the North Atlantic Land Bridge

Rhinos were not supposed to life so far from the equator.  The evolutionists have a reason for this – they claim that the land bridge had brought the continents together, no mention of a global flood which is the more plausible examination as fossils from the flood could have brought to Canada.

Darwinists think that it took millions of years for these animals to reach Canada.

Scientists have called the animal Epiatheracerium itjilik, with the species name meaning "frost" or "frosty" in Inuktitut. These creatures were similar in size to modern Indian rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis), according to a statement from the Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN). The newly identified fossils are the only specimen found to date and show that the animal died of unknown causes as a young adult.

"What's remarkable about the Arctic rhino is that the fossil bones are in excellent condition," Marisa Gilbert, a CMN paleobiologist and co-author of a new analysis of the remains, said in the statement. "They are three-dimensionally preserved and have only been partially replaced by minerals. About 75% of the skeleton was discovered, which is incredibly complete for a fossil."

The bones were preserved inside the 14-mile-wide (23 kilometers) impact crater thanks to it rapidly filling with water. The crater formed from an asteroid or comet around the same time that the Arctic rhino lived, which suggests the rhino died inside the crater before it became a lake.

The climate in this region was far warmer then than it is today, and plant remains show that the Canadian High Arctic — specifically, Devon Island in Nunavut, where the crater is located — hosted a temperate forest, according to the statement.

As the Miocene epoch (23 million to 5.3 million years ago) transitioned into the Pliocene epoch (5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago) and finally gave way to the last ice age, the fossils were broken up by freeze and thaw cycles and gradually pushed to the surface of the crater. Researchers then found the fossils in 1986.

 Source:

Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent 2025 Scientists Discover 'Frosty' Polar Rhino That Roamed the Canadian Arctic 23 Million Years Ago 29 October

 

 

 

 

Denisovans may have interbred with mysterious group of ancient humans

 

Illustration of a teenage girl who is the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father. Image courtesy of John Bavaro Fine Art/Science Photo Library

Joel Kontinen

For only the second time, researchers have obtained the full genome of a Denisovan, a group of ancient humans who lived in Asia. The DNA was extracted from a single 200,000-year-old tooth found in a Siberian cave.

Denisovans were the first ancient humans to be described using just DNA. A sliver of finger bone from Denisova cave in Siberia held DNA unlike that of either modern humans or the Neanderthals from western Eurasia. The genome revealed that Denisovans interbred with modern humans: people in South-East Asia, including the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, carry Denisovan DNA.

Based on the number of mutations in the genome and comparisons to other ancient humans, the team estimated that the individual lived about 205,000 years ago. In line with this, the sediments in which the tooth was found were dated to 170,000-200,000 years ago. In contrast, the other high-quality genome is from a Denisovan who lived 55,000-75,000 years ago, meaning that the new genome reveals a much earlier stage of Denisovan history.

Based on comparisons with other remains from Denisova cave, the team says there seem to have been at least three discrete Denisovan populations. The oldest group included the male whose tooth was analysed. A second group replaced this older population at Denisova cave, thousands of years later.

The third group, not represented at the cave, interbred with modern humans, based on DNA testing. In other words, all the Denisovan DNA in modern humans comes from a population of Denisovans that we know little or nothing about.

The new genome reveals that Denisovans repeatedly interbred with Neanderthals, who sometimes lived in or near Denisova cave.

The Denisovans also seem to have interbred with an unidentified group of humans. They might also  have interbred with Homo erectus.

According to Genesis, we all are members of the human  race,  the  descendants of Adam  and Eve.

Source:

Michael Marshall 2025 Denisovans may have interbred with mysterious group of ancient humans | New Scientist 31 October

Prehistoric crayons provide clues to how Neanderthals created art

 

Reconstruction of a Neanderthal girl. Christopher P.E. Zollikofer. Anthropological Institute, University of Zurich Image from Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

Ochre artefacts found in Crimea show signs of having been used for drawing, adding to evidence that Neanderthals used pigments in symbolic ways.

A remarkable yellow crayon unearthed in Crimea, still sharp after more than 40,000 years, indicates that painting lines on objects was part of Neanderthal culture. This discovery is the firmest evidence yet that some Neanderthal groups used coloured pigments in symbolic ways.

According to evolution, the use of ochre – an iron-rich mineral with red, yellow or orange hues – has ancient roots, dating back at least 400,000 years in Europe and Africa. Bits of ochre are found at many Neanderthal sites, where they seem to have been used for practical purposes such as tanning clothing and as fire accelerants, as well as sometimes smeared on shell beads.

Neanderthals may have also used ochre to decorate their bodies, clothing and other surfaces, but such traces have long since disappeared. To investigate further, Francesco d’Errico at the University of Bordeaux, France, and his colleagues carried . out a detailed analysis of ochre pieces found at Neanderthal sites in Crimea, Ukraine. By studying how ochre pieces were modified by Neanderthals, as well as performing a microscopic analysis of how they became worn down, the researchers could build a picture of how the objects were used.

“It was a tool that had been curated and reshaped several times, which makes it very special,” says d’Errico. “It’s not just a crayon by shape. It’s a crayon because it was used as a crayon. It’s something that may have been used on skin or  rock to make a line – the reflection, perhaps, of an artistic activity.”

The research team also identified another more ancient broken crayon, perhaps 70,000 years old, made from red ochre.

“It tells us so much just from those small bits of ochre,” says Pomeroy. “It’s that little bit of humanity that we can relate to. It really brings those individuals into touching distance.”

The Crimean crayon discoveries add to the small but growing body of evidence indicating the artistic talents of Neanderthals, such as 57,000-year-old finger carvings on a cave wall in France and mysterious circles crafted from stalagmites 175,000 years ago in another French cave.

They also lend weight to the idea that symbolic behaviour has very deep roots in our evolutionary past, rather than being a capacity that developed relatively recently only in Homo sapiens. 

Some evolutionists think that ability for symbolic behaviour is undoubtedly shared by the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Denisovans and Neanderthals more than 700,000 years ago.

On the other hand, creationists think that the date of 700,000 years is from evolution, they are not supported by facts.

Source:

Alison George 2025 Prehistoric crayons provide clues to how Neanderthals created art | New Scientist 29 October

See a spectacular shot of a once-in-a-millennium comet

 

Image courtesy of Josh Dury/SWNS

Joel Kontinen

Would you like to see a comet that will not return for a thousand years?

Captured here over Somerset, England, Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) made its closest approach to Earth on 21 October and won't be seen again for another thousand years.

Source:

New Scientist 2025 See a spectacular shot of a once-in-a-millennium comet | New Scientist 22 October

 

We may finally know why birds sing at dawn

 

Zebra finches are commonly studied in captivity by biologists. Image courtesy of Alamy

Joel Kontinen

Why do birds sing in the morning?  Perhaps they like to sing at that time of day.  God has given us much pleasure in nature.  

Birds all over the world break into a dawn chorus every morning – now experiments in zebra finches suggest both a mechanistic and a functional explanation for this phenomenon.

The dawn chorus of birdsong has inspired poets and nature lovers for thousands of years, but the reason why birds all over the world start the day this way is an enduring mystery.

Now, a series of experiments in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) suggests that while darkness inhibits singing, birds build up a stronger motivation to sing in the night that causes them to burst into song when the dawn breaks. The study also hints that a morning workout for the vocal muscles helps birds finesse their songs.

 Source:

James Woodford 2025 We may finally know why birds sing at dawn | New Scientist 24 October

Giant star Betelgeuse has a 'Betelbuddy' — and it's very little indeed

 

This image of Betelgeuse is a color composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). (Image courtesy of ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin.)

Joel Kontinen

The star Betelgeuse has a smaller star that’s named Betelbuddy. Betelgeuse is about 700 times the size of our sun and thousands of times brighter.

"It turns out that there had never been a good observation where Betelbuddy wasn't behind Betelgeuse," Anna O’Grady, a postdoctoral fellow at CMU,"said in a statement. "This represents the deepest X-ray observations of Betelgeuse to date.”

Impressively, capturing an image of Betelbuddy was only the start of the discoveries. The researchers had anticipated the companion to be a white dwarf or a neutron star, but they saw no signs of accretion, a distinct signature of both types of objects. Instead, they suspect it might be a young stellar object about the size of our sun.

And herein lies the next major discovery. The size ratio between Betelgeuse and Betelbuddy challenges what we currently know about binary stars. Typically, binary stars have similar masses. But Betelgeuse is about 16 to 17 times the mass of our sun, whereas Betelbuddy has about the same mass as our sun.

"This opens up a new regime of extreme mass ratio binaries,” O’Grady said. "It's an area that hasn’t been explored much because it's so difficult to find them or to even identify them like we were able to do with Betelgeuse."

Stars come in all sized but there is only one planet, that harbors life.

Source:

Stefanie Waldek 2025  Giant star Betelgeuse has a 'Betelbuddy' — and it's very little indeed | Space 22 October

Neanderthal-human hybrids may have been scourged by a genetic mismatcht

 

Reconstruction of a Neanderthal girl. Christopher P.E. Zollikofer. Anthropological Institute, University of Zurich Image from Wikipedia.

Joel Kontinen

When Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred, a genetic variation affecting red blood cells may have hindered reproduction in women who we re hybrids, and this might have played a part in Neanderthals’ demise.

According to evolutionists, the Neandertals and Homo sapiens lived side by side for about 50,000 to 45, 000 years ago.   That is a lie, because all people are the descendants of  Adam and Eve.

Darwinist say that modern humans may indeed have wiped out Neanderthals – but not through war or morder alone. A new study suggests that when the two species interbred, a slow-acting genetic incompatibility increased the risk of pregnancy failure in hybrid mothers. A similar mismatch between n mothers and fetuses may also help explain a subset of pregnancies that fail today.

Darwinist know from genetic studies that there was sustained interbreeding between Homo esapiens and Neanderthals between approximately 50,000 and 45,000 years ago. The Neanderthals went extinct around 41,000 years ago, but some of their DNA has persisted in modern humans with non-African ancestry, making up around 1 to 2 per cent of the genome.

Source:

 James Woodford 2025 Neanderthal-human hybrids may have been scourged by a genetic mismatch | New Scientist 20 October