I Don't Ridicule Whale Evolution Anymore

metatron

A very old book, After Its Kind, once ridiculed whale evolution as a sort of creation myth. Creatures struggled out of the water and grew legs and ran across dusty prairies and then (!) got back into the water and became aquatic again and ended up as whales. While this may sound ridiculous at first, that doesn't mean it didn't happen!

see:

http://umich.edu/news/index.html?Releases/2009/Jan09/wha

They found a goofy looking whale/cow/horse/whatever that seems intermediate by any fair estimation. Life is weirder than we may think.

metatron

Leolaia

They just did an episode on whale evolution the other week on the National Geographic series Morphed. I highly recommend you watch it; it went through chronologically the different fossil species (including the two Pakistan discoveries) and discussed how each new adaptation built on previous ones and how the changing ecology necessitated new lifestyles (such as the move from rivers to the open ocean, and then from warmer oceans to colder Arctic regions) and morphology. The CGI of Maiacetus was pretty cool too.

SacrificialLoon

I saw part of that episode on my lunch break last week. There was also one about birds too. Huzzah for transitional species!

jaguarbass

Life is weirder than we may think.

I'll agree with that.

MissingLink

http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6968

Satanus

I saw something on whale evolution on tv. It may have been the natgeo one that leo mentioned. Wierd stuff. But then, what could be dumber that an animal that spends ALL of it's time in the ocean, and needs to surface to breathe air????? Not that whales are that dumb, but how they are designed sure is.

S

hamsterbait

Wasn't an early dolphin fossil found with a hoof on the end of its fin? They reckon they came from a cow-like creature too.

HB

Leolaia

Because they evolved from lunged mammals, they do have to breathe air and hold their breaths underwater. But as the documentary pointed out, their mammal background gives them advantages over other sea animals in other ways. They are warm-blooded and can thus live in colder Arctic waters (with the help of blubber) where their major predators (such as the extinct giant shark Megalodon) could not live. Fish can only survive in ultra-cold waters by modifying their blood in other ways, such as evolving an antifreeze-like substance or by getting rid of viscuous hemoglobin altogether. Such fish may serve as food for some whale species in cold waters but sharks lack antifreeze proteins and thus are not found at deep waters or in Arctic or Antarctic waters. That makes a pretty good niche for whales that live or spend a portion of their lives in Arctic waters.

Satanus

Leo

Yes, and of course, it fits perfectly w evolutionary theory.

S

I quit!

Darwin's work has stood the test of time far better than Russell or Rutherford.

I Don't Ridicule Whale Evolution Anymore

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