Lucretius said:
I just went to talk.origins and found a list of transitionary fossils for both whales and artiodactyls. I'm good.
Should have gone to apologetics press to find out there aren't any.
here's a sample of their blurb from
http://www.apologeticspress.org/modules.php?name=Read&cat=5&itemid=2644
Cows (or Antelopes?) to Whales?
As Quammen continued his (by now) greatly weakened defense of evolution, he dug still deeper into his bag of alleged evolutionary intermediate forms, bringing to the readers attention the work of Philip Gingerich of the University of Michigan. Gingerich, a paleontologist, is well known in evolutionary circles for his work on whale evolution. Falling back on his own field of literature, Quammen wove a tale about being in Gingerichs office and having him put a small lump of petrified bone, no larger than a lug nut, into my hand. It was the famous astragalus, from the species he had eventually named
Artiocetus clavis. It felt solid and heavy as truth (p. 31). This, from a man whose experience in biology amounts to walking through rain forests and talking to biologists! What Quammen forgot to share with his readers was the fact that this solid heavy truth (the astragalus) was discovered down a slope, over 2 meters away from the embedded fossils that were identified as
Artiocetus. In the original report, Gingerich admitted: No other mammalian specimens were found in the vicinity (Gingerich, et al., 2001, 293:2240). Nevertheless, this solid evidence was
assumed to be a part of a fossil (found in a different location) that proved whale evolution. This appears to be the
modus operandi for those who promote whale evolution. Find a bit of a jaw or skull, have an artist draw a four-legged creature, call a press conference, and offer up unprovable speculations about how whales evolved from land mammals.
The origin of whales has dominated media headlines over the past several years as scientists have wrestled with why aquatic creatures would grow legs, walk the Earth, and then inexplicably decide to return to the water (thus explaining the differences between fish and aquatic mammals such as dolphins and whales).
Scientific Americans editor, John Rennie, in his now-infamous July 2002 issue, concluded: Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as
Ambulocetus and
Rodhocetus helped to make that transition (2002, 287[1]:83). Daryl Domning, a paleontologist at Howard University, stated: We essentially have every stage now from a terrestrial animal to one that is fully aquatic (Mayell, 2001). That bold declaration was made in
National Geographic News on-line, October 10, 2001, after a sea-cow skeleton was found in Seven Rivers, Jamaica. Evolutionists contend that this find, which they have labeled an entirely new genus and species, played an important role in helping terrestrial animals make the transition from land to water.
In 1859, Darwin suggested that whales arose from bears, sketching a scenario in which selective pressures might cause bears to ultimately evolve into whales. But, embarrassed by criticism (and, we might add, rightly so!), he removed his hypothetical swimming bears from later editions of the
Origin of Species (see Gould, 1995, p. 359). Evolutionists were unsure how to proceed, since they knew that whales were different from fish; thus, a different evolutionary account was required. Whales are warm-blooded vertebrates that regulate their internal temperature via heat generated by a high metabolism. Like most mammals (the exception being the duck-billed platypus), female whales bear live young, which are nursed by mammary glands. While adult whales are not covered in hair or fur, they do acquire body hair temporarily as fetuses. These features make whales unequivocally mammaliana fact that poses a mountainous hurdle for evolutionists.
The November 2001 issue of
National Geographic presented additional propaganda in an article titled Evolution of Whales. While the official scientific names and full-color reconstructions contained in the article appear quite impressive, the data are far from it. A closer examination of two alleged whale predecessors
Pakicetus and
Ambulocetusreveals that these creatures had little in common with whales, and thus do not represent the animals ancient ancestors.
[Remember our earlier statement that November is not a very good month for
National Geographic? The fraudulent
Archaeoraptor creature appeared in
November 1999. Two years later, in
November 2001, the whale-evolution gaffe was published. Then, three years later, in
November 2004, Quammens pitiful defense of evolutionusing such erroneous examples as horse evolution and
Archaeopteryxappeared. You would think that Bill Allen, the editor of
National Geographic, would learn something from these repeated embarrassing failures. Apparently not. Surely, theres a message of some kind here.]
Pakicetus was discovered in 1983 by Gingerich, who claimed the find as a primitive whale
even though he found only a jaw and skull fragments (see Gingerich, 1994, 2001). So what makes
National Geographic so sure this creature is the long-lost walking ancestor of modern whales? Douglas Chadwick (author of the November 2001 article) stated:
What causes scientists to declare the creature a whale? Subtle clues in combinationthe arrangement of cups on the molar teeth, a folding in a bone of the middle ear, and the positioning of the ear bones within the skullare absent in other land animals but a signature of later Eocene whales (2001, 200:68).
Artists rendition of an aquatic
Pakicetus
So, from mere dimples in teeth and folded ear bones, this animal somehow qualifies as a walking whale? Interestingly, prominent whale expert J.G.M. Thewissen and his colleagues later unearthed additional bones of
Pakicetus (Thewissen, et al., 2001). The skeletons of
Pakicetus published by Thewissen, et al. do not look anything like the swimming creature featured in either Gingerichs original article or in
National Geographic. In fact, in a commentary in the same issue of
Nature in which the article by Thewissen, et al. was published, the following statement appeared: All the postcranial bones indicate that pakicetids were land mammals, and
indicate that the animals were runners, with only their feet touching the ground (see de Muizon, 2001, 413:260).
National Geographic, however, deceptively chose to display the
Pakicetus in a swimming position, obviously trying to sway the reader into believing that Gingerichs fossilized jawbone and skull fragments represented some type of aquatic creaturewhich they do not.
The next alleged ancestor,
Ambulocetus natans, was proposed as a whale long before the dust settled from its fossilized remains. The name itself,
Ambulocetus natans, comes from the Latin words
ambulare (to walk),
cetus (whale), and
natans (swimming), meaning quite literally a walking, swimming whale. The scientists who discovered and subsequently named this fossil screamed walking whale well in advance of a complete analysis, and the illustrator for
National Geographic exercised a vast amount of artistic license in assigning webbed feet to the creature. While such feet definitely make the creature look more aquatic, it is impossible to come to any such conclusion from a study of the fossils themselves. Soft tissues (such as webbed feet) normally do not fossilize well. There is no evidence this creature ever spent any amount of time in the wateryet the drawing shows an animal with rear legs that appear to be built for an aquatic environment. An examination of the actual skeleton (see Carroll, 1998, p. 335) quickly dispels the notion that the rear legs performed as obligatory fins. The legs on
Ambulocetus were not fins at all, but rather legs made for walking and supporting weight.
While artists make the transition appear easy, the logistics of going from a terrestrial environment to an aquatic one would be incredibly complex. Evolutionist Anthony Martin admitted: Principally it meant developing a new mode of locomotion (from walking to swimming), a physiology to cope with a dense medium (water rather than air), new methods of detecting and catching prey, and a means of breathing efficiently at the sea surface (1990, p. 12, parenthetical items in orig.). Martins analysis did not even address the metabolic, neuronal, reproductive, and cellular changes required for such animals to live underwater. Duane Gish summed it up well when he stated:
It is quite entertaining, starting with cows, pigs, or buffaloes, to attempt to visualize what the intermediates may have looked like. Starting with a cow, one could even imagine one line of descent which prematurely became extinct, due to what might be called an udder failure (1995, p. 198).
Udder failure indeed!
Yet in his
National Geographic article, David Quammen related the story of Philip Gingerichs find of additional fossils that challenged the prevailing view in paleontology. According to Quammen,
It was half of a pulley-shaped anklebone, known as an astragalus, belonging to another new species of whale. A Pakistani colleague found the other half. When Gingerich fitted the two pieces together, he had a moment of humbling recognition
. Here was an anklebone, from a four-legged whale dating back to 47 million years, that closely resembled the homologous anklebone in an artiodactyl. Suddenly he realized how closely whales are related to antelopes (p. 31, emp. added).
Is this not the most fascinating tale of a whale youve ever heard? Gingerich finds two pieces of bone, fits them together, suggests that they look like the anklebone of an artiodactyl (a hoofed land animal, like an antelope), and then leaps from that to the statement:
Here was an anklebone, from a four-legged whale! If this were not so serious, it would be laughable. Terry Mortensen, in a review of the November 2004 issue of
National Geographic that he authored, hinted at this when he wrote:
Hold on! When was the last time you saw a four-legged whale? Evolutionists are playing language games to call the fins and tail of a whale legs. But if, as National Geographic says, the fossil closely resembled the anklebone in artiodactyls, then how on earth could this single piece of fossil evidence be interpreted as being in any way related to whales? (2004)
Won't let me post the images - they're at their web site
ALLEGED WHALE EVOLUTION
Top left: Gingerichs first reconstruction
Bottom left: what he actually found
Top right: more complete skeleton
Bottom right: more reasonable reconstruction
(courtesy of Answers in Genesis; used by permission)
Good question. Why would anyone think that antelopes and whales are somehow related? The answer, of course, has to do with homology and its use as a proof in evolutionary theory. One argument frequently brought out as the big gun in support of the evolution has to do with what are known as the comparative sciences (comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, comparative physiology, comparative cytology, comparative biochemistry, etc.). As scientists have worked in these related fields, and have learned to compare one organism with another, basic similarities have arisen among, and between, various groups. When making comparisons of parts of organisms, scientists commonly speak of
homologous structures, suggesting that these particular structures go through similar stages of development, have similar attachments, etc. In discussing these comparative arguments and homology, R.L. Wysong noted:
Much of the case for amoeba to man evolution is built upon arguments from similarity. Evolutionists argue that if similarity can be shown between organisms through comparative anatomy, embryology, vestigial organs, cytology, blood chemistry, protein and [size=-1]DNA[/size] biochemistry, then evolutionary relationship can be proven (1976, p. 393).
Michael Denton, in his text,
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, devoted a large portion of the book to such arguments and wrote: Since 1859 the phenomenon of homology has been traditionally cited by evolutionary biologists as providing one of the most powerful lines of evidence for the concept of organic evolution (1985, p. 143). Denton is correct in his assessment. Charles Darwin himself thought of the argument from homology as one of the greatest single proofs of his theory. Denton commented that homology provided Darwin with apparently positive evidence that organisms had undergone descent from a common ancestor (p. 143). Darwin stated as much in
The Origin of Species when he wrote: We have seen that the members of the same class, independently of their habits of life, resemble each other in the general plan of their organization.... Is it not powerfully suggestive of true relationship, of inheritance from a common ancestor? (1962, pp. 434-435). Denton therefore observed: The phenomenon of homology has remained the mainstay of the argument for evolution right down to the present day (p. 144).
There's lots more . . .
