Robert sent in the link https://www.livescience.com/animals/extinct-species/deadly-cyclone-unearths-fossils-of-giant-marine-creatures-that-lived-80-million-years-ago … with the comment, the fossils appear to be from at least two different groups of marine reptiles. What are marine creatures doing on dry land? Could s similar process, such as a cyclone, have deported them in the first place. However, we may note the date is in itself instructive, as 80 million years ago was within the Cretaceous period. That ended, a few million years later, with the asteroid that brought the dinosaurs to an end. One may wonder if geochronology, based as it is on uniformitarian principles, may be at fault once again.
The cyclone struck the North Island of New Zealand, super charging mountain streams and rivers, displacing large rocks and boulders. The power of water is phenomenal as anyone who has looked at the aftermath of a flash flood will know. Some of the dislodged rocks contained fossilised material from a mososaur, an enormous marine reptile. The cyclone, last February, turns streams and rivers into raging torrents and there is enough displaced rocks to keep paleontologists busy for a long time.
At https://phys.org/news/2023-05-million-year-old-pterosaur-bones-oldest-australia.html … pterosaur bones, going back 107 million years ago, were found in Australia.
At https://phys.org/news/2023-05-clams-fell-evolution-extinction.html … clams and evolution, and extinction. Bivalves include clams, mussels, scallops, and oysters, and have been extent over a long period of time. All the way from the extinction event associated with the Cambrian Explosion. Many other lineages evolved into different forms and formations but bivalves have remained basically the same animals – or nearly so. In other words, they have not evolved over the last 500 million years. As far as evolutionary science is concerned this is puzzling. What it does show is that bivalves are adapted to their niche environment and no extinction event has managed to eradicate them. It was not necessary to evovle.
At https://phys.org/news/2023-06-ancient-extinct-skink-magnitude-bigger.html … a large ancient lizard found fossilised in Australia turns out to be a variety of skink – but much larger than its relatives in the modern world. The ancient skink was also armour plated.
At https://phys.org/news/2023-06-paleo-americans-mastodons-mammoths-megafauna-eastern.html … humans in the Americas, including those using the Clovis point, killed and scavenged Ice Age megafauna. Stone tools have been found amongst the bones of mammoth and other animals. This story keeps on being revived and the idea is to provide a link between human hunting and the demise of megafauna. The idea of a catastrophic end to megafauna is out of the question amongst a goodly number of mainstream researchers. Catastrophism provides an immediate and total finality to megafauna whereas hunting them would have taken many generations in order to erase them completely. It may be no accident that this defence of the mainstream uniformitarian landscape came out about the same time there was a conference on catastrophism and the Younger Dryas episode.
At https://phys.org/news/2023-06-ants-specialized-communication-center-social.html … is all about ants, and their social behaviour – as well as communication skills. They use scent markers to communcate with each other – and can change behaviour by the use of alarm pheromenes, in order to change behavior or as a warning of danger. So this is how ant powder works – getting rid of the blackfly farmers from my beans.