Nature: Whale Evolution and Indohyus

The marine mammals known as cetaceans originated about 50 million years ago in south Asia, but their terrestrial ancestor is something of a mystery. Hans Thewissen and colleagues now provide the missing Eocene piece of the jigsaw.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Nature
• Journal
• Magazine
• Ancient
• Primitive
• Whale
• Evolution
• Transitional
• Fossils
• Form
• Darwin

[Mickster6988240]

Having these transitional fossils is nice. But it won't do a thing to convince creationists. They "know" that these are all just different animals, not descendants of each other. If, a century from now, we have a hundred transitional fossils between whales and their ancestors, creationists will still deny that they're an evolutionary chain.

[kshackleton]

You must work really hard at being this stupid.

There is no such thing as a "missing link". I said that Ida is an example of a transitional species, and she still is.

I also said that the "bulk of the evidence suggests that Ida belongs in our lineage rather than with lemurs".

Ida is no lemur, lemurs are modern creatures. The new find might change where we place Ida, not surprising since she shares traits of both lineages.

[kshackleton]

@Rhinogradentian

I made my comments two years ago, not long after Ida had become public knowledge. Thanks for the update....cheers.

[Rhinogradentian]

@kshackleton Ida is more cloesly related to primitive lemur ancestors, it is in the wrong lineage to have given rise to monkeys and humans, Eosimias, Shoshonius and Neocrolemur and even the modern tarsier ARE part of the lineage that eventually produced monkeys, apes, and humans.

[waysworth]

@SevenSixTwoNato thank you for a bit of factual information. I'm not convinced of this theory of whale evolution, but willing to listen to the clues which make so many believe it to be true. My little rant was no doubt aimed at those bible-bashing, book-burning, know-it-alls who think that, unquestioningly repeating popular opinion makes them seem intelligent, and that my saying that the argument presented was weak and unconvincing, marks me (quite wrongly) as a creationist.

[SevenSixTwoNato]

@waysworth Yes, the earliest fossil whales have teeth. Mysticetes do not appear in the fossil record until much later, and the earliest representatives have both teeth and baleen.

[EqualAndFree]

Whales are FISH and people can live in their stomachs. The Bible says so.

[waysworth]

following this theory it would mean that toothed whales were the first, and that the non-toothed whales evolved from them. Is this shown in the fossil record?

Do the earliest whale fossils have teeth or not?

If you are unable to answer these questions without looking them up, then you know nothing more about whale evolution than I do, and should therefor be asking questions, rather than offering opinions as though they were facts.

[waysworth]

I guess it would be stupid to suggest, that it actually started as an aquatic animal, and is in fact a transitional ancestor (evolving in the same direction as just about everything else) which later became a wolf.

[mmmmmarcus]

@lukebccb the bible is a book written by shepherds in the bronze age. You believe in things that have no evidence supporting them. Faith is inherently dishonest, and requires total, utter ignorance of well-known facts that support natural selection. What'cha gonna do next, claim Atheism is a religion?

[info145]

i was hoping they'd go all the way through the evolution, up to a Basilosaurus

[lukebccb]

Oh, and as masturbation will make you go blind, my masturbation - which doesn't exist - is only done to where I need glasses.