CETACEAN EVOLUTION (WHALES, DOLPHINS, PORPOISES)
quote:
Originally posted by Jet:
What I don't accept is that . . a whale, dolphin, or any other sea mammal is in an evolutionary journey from the sea to the land, or visa versa. . .
Jet
I agree no "evolutionary journeys" appear to be going on today, those niches have been filled in both land and sea. But when cetaceans first evolved from land mammals and entered fresh waters like rivers (and afterwards the sea), those niches were relatively empty (the extinction of the dinosaurs, including sea-going reptiles, preceded the period in which whales evolved from land mammals). More below on cetacean evolution.
There are numerous I.D.ers who accept that there is evidence for common ancestry (Michael Denton being one of them), and I know one who went from "special creation" to accepting "common ancestry" and he runs a creation/evolution listserv
http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/sitemap.htmlwhere you can ask him how he came to accept common ancestry.
EVIDENCE OF COMMON ANCESTRY OF CETACEANS AND CERTAIN SPECIES OF LAND MAMMALS (I have placed the links within reviews of creationist articles on the web that argue against common ancestry of cetaceans and land mammals, just so you can see that I've read creationist literature.)
INTRODUCTION
Whales have been trouble for scientists since Linnaeus put together the first modern taxonomy in 1735, "Amidst the greatest apparent confusion, the greatest order is visible," Linneaus wrote about classification, and yet when he tried to classify whales, he seemed only to add more confusion. Were they fish or mammals? "These are necessarily arranged with the Mammalia," he demanded, "though their habits and manners are like those of fish." Whales, he pointed out, have hearts like ventricles and auricles like mammals, they are warm-blooded, have lungs, nurse their young -- just like mammals on land. They even have eyelids that move. . .Darwin viewed the similarities that Linnaeus had found as signs that whales (including popoises and dolphins) descended from mammals that lived on land."
-- Carl Zimmer, Evolution
REVIEW OF
The Strange Tale of the Leg on the Whale by Carl Wieland
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3316.asp
The author of the above article denies that the vestigial pelvic bones in modern day whales (which are also found in other cetaceans like dolphins and popoises) is a vestigial pelvis. He writes: "They [evolutionists] believe this even though these strips of bone have a known function [to anchor the male reproductive organ], differ in males and females, and are not even attached to the vertebral column."
The author apparently does not consider that vestigial organs can also be put to new and different uses which is one of the hallmarks of nature's jury-rigged ways. Interestingly, snakes have puny vestigian pelvis bones too, where the pelvises of their ancestors used to be. And the fossil record of early whales includes one with a tiny pelvis and tiny rear legs (Basilosaurus) possibly used to aid in copulation, so the adaptation of the vestigial pelvis bones in modern whales (as an anchor for the penis) seems to have an evolutionary pedigree. The fossil record of whales eventually includes critters with a pelvis that no longer articulates with the vertebral column. So the identification of those small bones in whales/dolphins/porpoises as a "vestigial pelvis" suggests itself rather neatly.
The author denies that "vestigial femurs" which are found where a femur would normally be located (near, or attached to the whale pelvis and pointing downward on both sides of the pelvis) are "vestigial femurs." He says these are perhaps DNA malfunctions or signs of bone disease.
The author includes a section titled, "Myth Tracked Down," concerning the story in a Danish science textbook (E.J.Slijper, Whales) about a bump identified as a "tibia" on a Sperm whale. The author calls the "tibia" identification a "myth." Actually such "myths" have been documented with X-Rays according to A. V. Yablokov, Variability of Mammals (1974) who examined a number of such discoveries personally after they were discovered at whale factories in Russia. There were different varieties of such "bumps" that were found to contain remnants of a femur, remnants of a femur and the metatarsus, and, in some cases even remnants of a femur, metatarsus and phalanges [toe bones]. As for Yablokov's first hand testimony, it is not the only one: "There are many cases where whales have been found with rudimentary hindlimbs in the wild (for reviews see Berzin 1972, pp. 65-67 and Hall 1984 , pp. 90-93). Hindlimbs have been found in baleen whales (Sleptsov 1939), humpback whales (Andrews 1921) and in many specimens of sperm whales (Abel 1908; Berzin 1972, p. 66; Nemoto 1963; Ogawa and Kamiya 1957; Zembskii and Berzin 1961). Most of these examples are of whales with femurs, tibia, and fibulae; however, some even include feet with complete digits."
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html
Nor does the author mention whale embryology : "Modern adult whales, dolphins, and porpoises have no hind legs. Even so, hind legs, complete with various leg bones, nerves, and blood vessels, temporarily appear in the cetacean fetus and subsequently degenerate before birth." Amasaki, H., Ishikawa, H., and Daigo, M. (1989) "Developmental changes of the fore-and-hind-limbs in the fetuses of the southern minke whale, Balaenoptera acutorostrata." Anat Anz 169: 145-148. [PubMed]
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/refs.html
-------------------------------------
REVIEW OF
The strange tale of the leg on the whale by Carl Wieland
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3316.asp(Continued)
The author states, "Pakicetus was claimed to be a ‘walking whale’ yet the type specimen consisted only of jaw and skull fragments."
The author's statement is dated. More bones of Pakicetii have been found :
http://www.neoucom.edu/Depts/ANAT/Pakicetid.html
Also, a lot can be learned from "only jaw and skull fragments."
Here's the rest of the story of those "fragments":
"One particularly baffling fossil was the back part of a 50-million-year-old skull. It was about the size of a coyote's and had a high ridge running like a mohawk over the top of its head, where muscles could attach and give the mammal a powerful bite. When Gingerich looked underneath the skull, he saw ear bones. They were two shells shaped like a pair of grapes and were anchored to the skull by bones in the shape of an S. For a paleontologist like Gingrich, these ear bones were a shock. Only the ear bones of whales have such a structure; no other vertebrate possesses them."
- Carl Zimmer, "Forward Into The Past: The Origin of Whales," a section in Evolution: The Triump of an Idea
"The position of the inner ear bones in Pakicetus are a perfect intermediate between those of land mammals and the rotated ones of cetaceans (Thewissen & Hussain, 1993), not to mention the fact that the tympanic bullae are composed of dense bone as those of cetaceans (Gingerich, et al, 1983)."
http://www.angelfire.com/fl/direpuppy/mindblocks.html
"Pakicetids were the first cetaceans, and they are more primitive than other whales in most respects. In fact, they did not look like whales at all, and did not live in the sea. . .Although . . .it is clear that they are related to whales and dolphins based on a number of specializations of the ear, relating to hearing.
http://www.neoucom.edu/Depts/ANAT/Pakicetid.html
"Ichthyolestes. . . and Pakicetus. . . had meat eaters' teeth, but were not genuine canines, having longer, more powerful tails, longer snouts and smaller eyes than dogs. . .The two also have "several strange bones in their ears that occur only in whales," says Hans Thewissen, of Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine in Rootstown, Ohio, one of the fossils' finders."
http://www.nature.com/nsu/010920/010920-11.html
"The ear of modern whales and dolphins is specialized to listen to sounds underwater. . . The hearing organ of Eocene whales was not specialized as that of modern cetaceans. Instead it represents a compromise of adaptations relating to underwater sound reception and hold-overs of a hearing system used for listening to sounds in air. The eardrum of these cetaceans is more flat than that of their modern relatives, and the external auditory meatus is still present." Scientists have found a lot of fossils that show what the ear was like in Eocene whales."
http://www.neoucom.edu/Depts/Anat/Hearing.htm
[The adaptation of the ear bones of these land mammals (for increased hearing and sense of balance under water) preceded the diminution of limbs and other skeletal changes that eventually adapted such critters to the sea. See Nature, May 9, 2002 -- E.B]
http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/02/pr0235.htm
And here is a bit of information on the teeth found in these "jaw and skull fragments" of early whales:
"The skulls of Eocene whales bear unmistakable resemblances to those of primitive terrestrial mammals of the early Cenozoic. Early [whale] genera retain a primitive tooth count with distinct incisors, canines, premolars, and multirooted molar teeth. Although the snout is elongate, the skull shape resembles that of the
mesonychids, especially Hapalodectes. . . Pakicetus (early-mid Eocene, 52 Ma), the oldest fossil whale known, had the same skull features as Hapalodectes . . . Molars still have very mesonychid-like cusps, but other teeth are like those of later whales. . .
Whale-like skull crests and elongate jaws." [Skipping past Pakicetus and other early whales and going right to Eocetus of the late Eocene, even those whales] which have lost their hind legs entirely, still retained a 'primitive whale' skull and teeth, with unfused nostrils . . . This stage of aquatic adaptation was attained about 15 million years after the first terrestrial mesonychids."
http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/200009/0435.html
"Living whales have either no teeth or simple pegs. But the teeth of the oldest known whales looked particularly like the teeth of an extinct line of mammals called mesonychids. These animals were hoofed mammals. . .but they had powerful teeth and strong necks adapted for a life of eating meat. . .The teeth of the oldest known whales still resembled those of mesonychids in their general outline, but they were already changing. . . long gouges run along the outward sides of the lower molars. These gouges formed as the whales scraped their molars with their upper teeth. The whales had to have been making only vertical bites, not side-to-side chewing, to form them. There's fossil evidence that later whales, which also had these gouges, fed on fish. That has led to the view that Pakicetus and its contemporaries had already started eating fish or other aquatic animals."
- Carl Zimmer, "Forward Into The Past: The Origin of Whales," a section in Evolution: The Triump of an Idea
----------------------------------
REVIEW OF
A Whale of a Tale? (Ambulocetus) Don Batten
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1344.asp
The author states, ". . .there is no evidence [in Ambulocetus] of the development of the horizontal tail flukes so characteristic of whales."
Evolutionists don't expect Ambulocetus to have had tail flukes: "Unlike modern cetaceans, Ambulocetus had a long tail and thus probably lacked a tail fluke." (Thewissen, Science, January 1994, p. 211)
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/ambulo.htm(Neither does the cartilage which constitutes the tail flukes of whales preserve as well as bone does.)
Since we are talking about the tail of Ambulocetus let me add a "review within a review" of another creationist article whose author stated, "The tail movements [of the earliest whales] would begin to crush its reproductive apparatus against its pelvis. This would have a tendency to lower the animal's sexual urges somewhat and it would soon lose interest in reproduction -- not a very positive evolutionary step. Taken to extremes, this new tail movement would simply crush the whole pelvis. The selective pressures of the environment, or natural selection, would work against any such change of tail on a land-dwelling mammal."
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v7n1_tail.asp
This "tail swinging" argment is from 1984 when Gish used to show his slides of a cow evolving into a whale, calling it an "udder failure" (Gish, 1985). But even back in 1984 biologists knew that
". . .the giant river otter Pteronura) of South America possesses a horizontally widened tail that produces thrust, even though the caudal vertebrae are of a typical terrestrial form (Fish, 1998)." And the river otter hasn't become extinct yet.
"Furthermore, the swimming method of these otters (dorso-ventral undulation of the vertebral column) makes a very good analogy for the swimming method of Ambulocetus (Thewissen, 1998)."
http://www.angelfire.com/fl/direpuppy/mindblocks.html
"It is known from the fossil record that in Ambulocetus, the toes are elongated and the femur is short. The other skeletal elements are no different than other land mammals (Thewissen, et al, 1994). . . .In the earliest known protocetid, Rodhocetus, there are . . .a further reduction of the femoral length, the rearward migration of the nares (nasal bones), to above the canine teeth (this is true of Rodhocetus, but in Ambulocetus, the narial region is still unknown), the sacral vertebrae are unfused, although they still articulate fully with the pelvis, a shortening of the cervical (neck vertebrae), and probably the most important, are the changes in the caudal (tail) vertebrae. In Rodhocetus the tail vertebrae are relatively shorter, thicker, and more massive than those of land mammals, allowing for better attachment for the muscles involved in powering the, very likely, recently evolved flukes (Gingerich, et al, 1994)."
http://www.angelfire.com/fl/direpuppy/mindblocks.html
----------------------------------
REVIEW OF
A Whale of a Tale? (Ambulocetus) Don Batten
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1344.asp(Continued)
The author states, "There is no evidence of. . . the unique hearing system of whales (i.e. with no opening to the exterior)."
But "Ambulocetus had whalelike skull characteristics that are found in the Archaeocetes ["early whales"], including an ectotympanic with a large sygmoid process, a reduced zygomatic arch, a wide supraorbital process and a narrow muzzle. While these characteristics may also be present in the terrestrial Mesonychids, Ambulocetus also possessed the small protocones and large accessory cusps which distinguish the whales from the Mesochynids."
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/ambulo.htm(Apparently the author is unaware of the fossil data and research concerning the earbones of Pakicetus and other early whales.)
The author states, "There is no evidence of. . . the blow-hole."
No evolutionist expects Ambulocetus to have had a blowhole. The earliest known whale, Pakicetus, had nostrils near the tip of its snout. Ambulocetus we don't know about, but wouldn't expect it to have had a blowhole because even Rodhocetus (more adapted for the water) had no blowhole, though it did have nostrils that were moved back from the front to a place above the canine teeth. Later on we see that Basilosaurus's nostrils were in the middle of its snout, still only halfway toward its head. Even Eocetus and similar "archeocete whales" of the late Eocene that have lost their hind legs entirely, still retained a "primitive" whale's skull and teeth, and unfused nostrils.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part2b.html#ceta
See this pic of cetacean skulls [not whales, but their cetacean cousins] showing the nostrils migrating from the nose to the head over time:
http://library.furman.edu/personal/babinski/ (The pic can be enlarged to read the fine print; just right-click on pic to enlarge it, but if that doesn't work then move your cursor off of the pic to the side, and then move your cursor back on the pic, and wait for the enlargement button to appear, then click on that button).
Furthermore, "The whale embryo starts off with its nostrils in the usual place for mammals, at the tip of the snout. But during development, the nostrils migrate to their final place at the top of the head to form the blowhole (or blowholes * )."
6334_origin_of_whales_and_the_power_12_30_1899.asp
[Edited too long link. --Admin]
* "Modern day toothed whales including porpoises and dolphins have one blowhole while baleen whales have two."
http://www.rom.on.ca/wwatch/teachers-kit/whale_words.html
------------------------------
REVIEW:
A Whale of a Tale? (Ambulocetus) Don Batten
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1344.asp(Continued)
The author states, "The robustness of the femur, and presence of hooves confirm the creature as a land animal."
"Land animal?" Look at the pic and consider the size of the creature in relation to the length of its arms and legs, especially its shortened forearms, and the way its femur is relatively short compared with that of land animals. And notice how long its fingers and toes were! Seems more adapted to swimming than walking/running on land, though it probably spent time on land. Even crocodiles with their short arms and legs spend time on land, but I wouldn't call them strictly "land animals." As for Ambulocetus's "hooves," it is true that it had long fingers that ended with tiny hooves on each one but that confirms yet another link between the earliest whale-like mammals and the Family Mesonychidae which was the same Family that Pakicetus belonged to.
----------------------------------------
REVIEW OF
The Overselling of Whale Evolution by Ashby L. Camp
http://trueorigin.org/whales.asp
The author complains about the dating scheme of the Archaeocetes (early whales): "In the standard scheme, Pakicetus inachus is dated to the late Ypresian, but several experts acknowledge that it may date to the early Lutetian.[18] If the younger date (early Lutetian) is accepted, then Pakicetus is nearly, if not actually, contemporaneous with Rodhocetus, an early Lutetian fossil from another formation in Pakistan.[19] Moreover, the date of Ambulocetus, which was found in the same formation as Pakicetus but 120 meters higher, would have to be adjusted upward the same amount as Pakicetus.[20] This would make Ambulocetus younger than Rodhocetus and possibly younger than Indocetus and even Protocetus.[21] In the standard scheme, Protocetus is dated to the middle Lutetian, but some experts have dated it in the early Lutetian.[22] If the older date (early Lutetian) is accepted, then Protocetus is contemporaneous with Rodhocetus and Indocetus. In that case, what is believed to have been a fully marine archaeocete was already on the scene at or near the time archaeocetes first appear in the fossil record.[23]"
The fact that all of the above critters are clustered together in geologic time with similarly shaped skulls and intermediary earbones unlike modern day whales, and that they were all mammals adapted in varying degrees to a water habitat, and that they all preceded modern cetaceans, speaks louder than the author's reliance on dating haggles to make a case for creationism. Reminds me of the old joke about two men looking up at a tall skyscraper and arguing vehemently over whether it was exactly one hundred stories tall or one-hundred-and-one stories tall by each of their careful reckonings. Then a third man comes over, in this case the author of the above article, and argues that their disagreements prove that his hypothesis -- that the building is really only a SINGLE storey tall -- makes more sense.)
-----------------------------------
QUESTION: How did the whales's eco-location system evolve?
ANSWER: There is a fascinating discussion of what is presently known about the evolution of cetacean eco-location in Carl Zimmer's book, By the Water's Edge. Early whales including Basilosaurus's cousin Dorudon (of which we have nearly a complete fossil skeleton)
"couldn't echo-locate like modern day toothed whales."
-------------------------------------------
QUESTION: How whales evolve a process whereby the young whale could ingest mile from the mother through a water-tight sealed apparatus with the milk being pumped into the young whale instead of them having to suck by some type of random, evolutionary process?
ANSWER: "Randomness" does not phase atheistic evolutionists (who view natural selection as non-random), nor does it phase theistic evolutionists (who accept non-randomness in the evolutionary process) yet who both agree that there exists evidence for common ancestry. The fact that female whales birth their young and feed them via mammary glands reminds evolutionists that whales share their ancestry with mammals.
-------------------------------------
SUGGESTED READINGS IN WHALE EVOLUION (Followed by MORE REVIEWS, BELOW):
Carl Zimmer, At the Waters Edge(1988)
Carl Zimmer, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea(2001)
Creationist Mindblocks to Whale Evolution (By a scientist who addresses ICR concerns, and whom you can get in touch with via e-mail. If you shorten the web address below you can get to his home page featuring "news," that includes his brief description of visiting S.C. to see new cetacean fossils there):
http://www.angelfire.com/fl/direpuppy/mindblocks.html
The Origin of Whales and the Power of Independent Evidence (examines the evidence one category at a time: morphological, paleontological, embryological, etc.)
6334_origin_of_whales_and_the_power_12_30_1899.asp
[Edited too long link. --Admin]
Ambulocetus as a Fossil Transitional by Lenny Flank (a responds to Gish's analysis of Ambulocetus)
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/ambulo.htm
Evolution of cetacean locomotion, with emphasis on alterations of the vertebral column (April 19, 2002)
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~tseaton/PaleoLitFinal.htm
Introduction to the Cetacea (with links to Cetacean evolution sites at the bottom of the page)
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/cetacea/cetacean.html
FOOTNOTE to discussion of whale evolution:
Frank Sherwin III of ICR visited Eureka College in April of 2001 and although he had written an ICR impact article in Oct. of 1998 that argued against whale evolution (
Acts and Facts Magazine | The Institute for Creation Research ) he did not choose to mention them during his speech at Eureka college. Instead. . .
"Sherwin discussed bats. . .saying 'The fossil record shows that bats have always been bats.' His lone piece of support for this was a 1966 article from Scientific American, showing 'the oldest bat.' . . . The ICR seems to have backpedalled on its favorite mammal. Years ago, the typical mantra was 'Whales have always been whales.' Now that so many intermediate forms between whale and land mammal have been found, bats seem to be the current favorite mammal-without-transitions! While it is true that (probably due to fossils' fragility), there does not exist a nice bushy set of transitional forms (as is seen in horses, whales ,and humans), it is inaccurate and misleading to conclude that all evidence is tied up in a 1966 article. For example, Mark Hamrick has studied Phenacolemur, a mouse-sized flightless animal contemporaneous with early bats. The bones from its rear foot resemble those that flying lemurs use to hang from trees. 'Nobody had realized this was hanging from its hind feet before' (Hecht 1998). Eventually bats will go the way of whales, as more information about their evolution becomes known."
http://members.aol.com/anapsid5/sherwin.html
-----------------------------
REVIEW OF
"Comments on Pigliucci's rebuttal by Walter ReMine"
http://www1.minn.net/~science/pigliuc2.htm
The author states, "Classical Darwinism is contradicted by the following: The record of life shows a systematic absence of gradual change over a large-scale."
Gould and Ethridge and I daresay all modern evolutionists agree that Classical Darwinism is dead [see Zimmer's latest book on evolution for instance] There is a lot of stasis in the record of life. There are also a lot of extinctions in the record of life, peculiar to distinct geological periods. Six or seven major extinction events took place in fact, some linked with asteroid strikes of the earth. There is also evidence of gradual (small but definitely noticable) changes (like in the eyes of trilobites and the leaves of flowering plants and the teeth and tusks of elephants) over geological time. There are also places where, within ten to twenty millions of years, changes occur "suddenly" and new species radiate out and fill many niches previously unoccupied (or previously occupied by creatures that had gone extinct). We don't have a lot of fossil evidence of such "sudden" radiative evolutionary changes, neither do we have abundant fossil evidence of the record of life as a whole, but we have some evidence -- as in the case of land critters whose changes in their earbones preceded changes in their bodies but which led to their "sudden" radiating evolution to fill water-dwelling niches (after the extinction of large sea-going reptiles in the Cretaceous). For modern day "non-classical" evolutionists, the pattern of succcession of the fossil record overall, along with patterns of biogeography, comparative morphology, and molecular biology, favors evolution.
The author also cites "the failure of Darwinian Systematists to identify real ancestors."
Evolutionists admit that the fossil record only gives us rare glimpses of ancient life forms and most ancient species became extinct. So most fossils we find will NOT be "real ancestors" of creatures living today, but their extinct cousins. Horse evolution contains hundreds of species, so do early whale fossils. (There are many more teeth and fossil fragments than whole skeletons) We'll never know what every critter looked like based on such fragmentary evidence, and hence the problem identifying "real ancestors" rather than cousins. Luckily we DO have enough fossils to trace a general outline of evolutionary successions over time.
Fossilization is rare, especially for land animals that decompose readily because of the higher levels of oxygen in air, the drying and disintegrative forces of sunlight and heat, and there's air blown bacteria, fungi, molds, also insects that reach corpses quickly to lay their eggs on them, etc. There is an excellent modern day discussion of the imperfections of the fossil record in Darwin's Ghost by Steve Jones.
----------------------
QUESTION: Don't the Darwinians attempt to create the illusion that ancestors have been identified? (Creationists have identified a variety of methods used, including the creation of paraphyletic groups, and mis-use of terminology such as "intermediate form".)
ANSWER: Creationists themselves use the words "intermediate forms" and demand them, which only adds to the premium placed on the use of that term by both the general public and the press whenever a new form is discovered with characteristics that lie
"intermediate" between forms that preceded it and forms that came after it in the fossil record.
"It's tempting to build this story like a totem pole, with trotting Pakicetus at the base, Ambulocetus laying its humming jaw on top of it, and Rodhocetus, the earliest whale to swim like a whale, sitting above the two. It seems like such a smooth progression toward today's cetaceans that it must be right. But such a version would only be a vertical slice of the story. Life doesn't proceed from one point to another -- it forks and radiates like the cladograms that represent it. Paleontologists have found many other whale bones in Eocene rocks of Pakistan and India. Mostly they are teeth -- the rock surrenders a few skulls as well -- buet even teeth clearly show that their ownwers were not clones of Pakicetus or the other better-known whales. Ambulocetus kept to brackish deltas and coastal water, but Thewissne has found whale teeth fromabout the same age in what at the time was the open ocean. Gingerich has found at least three contemporaries of Rodhocetus a few million years younger than Ambulocetus: Takracetus, with a wide, flat head; Gavinocetus, with a slender skull and loose hips; and Dalanistes, a whale with a head as long and narrows as a heron's set on a long neck, with hips cemented firmly enough to its spine to walk on land. If this is a confusing picture, it should be. As time passed, certain whale species emerged that were more and more adapted to life in the water, but other species simultaneoulsy branched away in many directions. Walking and swimming whales lived side by side, or in some cases traded homes as the buckling birth of the Himalayas shuffled their habitats. Some were only a minor variation on a theme that would carry through to modern whales, but others -- heron-headed Dalamistes, for example -- belonged to strange branches unilke anything alive today. "
-- Carl Zimmer, At the Water's Edge
-----------------------
QUESTION: By the rejection of paraphyletic groups as "artificial". (This was done by cladists and other modern systematists, and became a key issue among evolutionists about how then to best sell evolution to the public.)
ANSWER: Selling ideas is an interesting topic, and I'm sure the public's own misconceptions concerning evolution and the press's need to sell magazines and newspapers combine to dumb down the subject, viz., "Another Missing Link Found!" More like "Another cousin of a previously known species found in the expected geological epoch and with intermediary characteristics!"
-----------------------
END
[Edited too long links and removed extraneous [quote]. --Admin]
[This message has been edited by Admin, 07-29-2002]
™ Version 4.2
