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Evolutionary Claim: 

Some wolf-sized carnivorous mammals returned to the sea. Their descendants evolved into whales and dolphins. 

Reality Check:

(Unless otherwise noted, quotations below  are from the book by Henry Morris, That Their Words May Be Used Against Them, available from the Institute for Creation Research. Links are to articles and papers on the World Wide Web.)

Anonymous, "Whales with Legs," Science Digest, vol. 88 (November/December 1980), p. 25.

p. 25
"Not far from the Khyber Pass in the arid Himalayan foothills of Pakistan, University of Michigan paleontologist Philip D. Gingerich found a skull and several teeth and came to the startling conclusion that they belonged to an ancient walking whale."

"Clue: the teeth were almost identical with those from known primitive whale fossils found on the west coast of India." [Emphasis added]

Butler, P. M., "Directions of Evolution in Mammalian Dentation," in Joysey and Friday (editors), 1982, p 235-244 (as quoted by ReMine in The Biotic Message, p 312)

p. 236
Teeth are particularly prone to parallel evolution ... Hypsodonty evolved independently in many [mammalian] families.

p. 240
[In mammals] parallel evolution in the dentation is the rule, rather than the exception: comparatively few characters are unique to a single taxon.

[NOTE: "Parallel evolution" (also called "convergence") is Darwinspeak for complex biological features shared by organisms of unrelated ancestry.]

• A Whale of a Tale (Ambulocetus) by Don Batten

Bengtson, Stefan, "The Solution to a Jigsaw Puzzle," Nature, vol. 345 (June 28, 1990), pp. 765-766. Bengtson is at the Institute of Paleontology, Uppsala University, Sweden.

p. 765
"Paleontologists are traditionally famous (or infamous) for reconstructing whole animals from the debris of death. Mostly they cheat."

• A whale of a tale 8 October 2001 by Ken ham and Carl Wieland

• Whale Evolution? by Jonathan Sarfati

• Scientific Roadblocks to Whale Evolution by Sherwin

• When is a Whale a Whale?  by Duane Gish

• A dolphin with legs - NOT!  by Carl Wieland

Gingerich, Philip D., Donald E. Russell, Neil A. Wells, and S. M. Ibrahim Shah, "Origin of
Whales in Epicontinental Remnant Seas: New Evidence from the Early Eocene of Pakistan,"
Science, vol. 220 (April 22, 1983), pp. 403-406.

p. 403
"We report diagnostic cranial remains of whales of early Eocene age …
found in association with a terrestrial mammalian fauna. The post-cranial
skeleton of early Eocene whales is not known, but a comparative study of cranial
anatomy suggests that whales were probably not yet fully aquatic in the early
Eocene."

p. 405
"Consequently there is no evidence that Pakicetus could hear
directionally under water. There is no indication of vascularization of the middle
ear to maintain pressure during diving, and early Eocene whales were probably
incapable of diving to any significant depth. In terms of function, the auditory
mechanism of Pakicetus appears more similar to that of land mammals than it
is to any group of extant marine mammals."

p. 405
"The dentition and cranial anatomy of Pakicetus indicate that it was well
equipped to feed on fishes in the surface waters of shallow seas, but it lacked
auditory adaptions necessary for a fully marine existence. We do not yet know
anything about the postcranial anatomy of early Eocene whales." [Emphasis added]

• The Overselling of Whale Evolution by Ashby Camp

  Suggests that the fossil evidence for the land mammal-to-whale transition is not persuasive, let alone conclusive.

• An Email Exchange with the Smithsonian Regarding the "Pelvic" Bones of Whales  

by Jim Pamplin 

        A bit of research inspired by Episode IV of the PBS miniseries, Voyage of the Mimi.

Questions or comments? Please email  jim@darwinisdead.com .

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A CONTINUAL WORK IN PROGRESS

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