In light of recent developments (SEE: Whale Hips not Vestigial), I thought it might be nice to go back a few years. The artist’s reconstruction of Pakicetus on page 66 of the November 2001 issue of National Geographic looks very similar to a dog swimming underwater. However, the artist obviously did not take into consideration the fact that the fossil was found in an area containing fossils from terrestrial creatures such as snails. The fossil also was found in a region full of iron ore that was part of a land stratum, not an aquatic one. This “ancient ancestor” was discovered in 1983 by Philip D. Gingerich, who immediately claimed the find as a primitive whale—even though he found only a jaw and skull fragments! So what makes National Geographic so sure this creature is a long-lost “walking” ancestor to modern whales? Chadwick stated: What causes scientists to declare the creature a whale? Subtle clues in combination—the 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 skull—are absent in other land animals but a signature of later Eocene whales (2001, 200[5]:68). So from mere dimples in teeth and folded ear bones, this animal “qualifies” as a walking whale? Interestingly, the skeletons of Pakicetus published by paleontologists in Nature do not resemble the swimming creature featured by National Geographic (see De Muizon, 2001, and Thewissen, et al., 2001). National Geographic displayed the Pakicetus in a swimming position, obviously trying to sway the reader into believing that the fossilized jawbone and skull fragments represented an aquatic creature. The next ancestor, the Ambulocetus natans, was proposed as a whale long before the dust settled from the 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 and swimming whale. The scientists who discovered and subsequently named this fossil cried “walking whale” prior to a complete analysis. The artist for National Geographic took a great amount of liberty in assigning webbed feet to this creature. While such feet definitely make the creature look more aquatic, it is impossible to draw any such conclusion from a study of the Ambulocetus fossils. 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 water—yet the picture 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 the Ambulocetus were not fins at all, but rather legs made for walking and supporting weight. Another problem evolutionists silently dismiss is the pelvis of the Ambulocetus. The anatomy of a whale demonstrates a backbone that continuously descends from the “back” (vertebrae) right into the tail, without any pelvic bone. The backbone of the Ambulocetus, however, ends at a bony pelvis with powerful rear legs extending from it. How do evolutionists explain the lack of a pelvis in modern whales? In an effort to explain away this loss (as well as the absence of legs), the author of the National Geographic article used a series of drawings to illustrate this obvious absence (see Chadwick, 200[5]:72-73). However, the article contradicts itself. The caption on the last picture, a modern sperm whale, stated: “Today’s sperm whale has vestigial hind limbs,” (p. 73) and yet in the paragraph above the picture the author admitted that the bones do, in fact, have a purpose. We know these bones act “as an anchor for the muscles of the genetalia” (p. 73). Evolutionists need “leftover bones” in order to help explain away the problem of the pelvis; therefore, they choose to use these alleged “vestigial hind limbs.” 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 comment in orig.). Martin’s analysis does not even address the metabolic, neuronal, reproductive, and cellular changes required for 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). espanol.apologeticspress.org/articles/2066
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 18:19:57 +0000
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