TheArtist writes:
There are so many different species of animals, you could make infinitely many different transitional diagrams to ‘prove’ that one species evolved into another when in fact evolution would totally disagree that the particular animal evolved in such a way.
Actually, there is no claim that any of the animal species depicted in the cladogram evolved into any other species depicted. In fact, the cladogram indicates that this is probably not the case. The "transitional diagrams" used in cladistics (called cladograms) indicate relationships between lineages, not ancestry. The implication is that the lineages share an ancestor.
Mesonychids and Pakicetus for example could be two different and unrelated animals, putting them next to each other in such a diagram does not prove that the one evolved into the other.
But no such claim is made. They are placed next to each other based on very good anatomical evidence, geographic evidence. The thought was that the Mesonychids (a sub-order) shared an ancestor with Pakicetus. More recent research indicates that cetaceans are more likely to share an ancestor with another non-mesonychid artiodactyl.
By the way, there is one characteristic that is common to all of these organisms that exists only in whales, i.e., cetaceans. That is a sure-fire sign that they are related somehow.
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