Proposed Origins of The Whale - Part One
It's a detailed subject, so you will have to excuse the long posts. These are from notes I composed some time back, in order to get a better sense of the nonsense for myself:
I would like now to expose the very shaky foundations on which the supposed whale Family tree Lies.
1966 was the year it was first tentatively proposed that Archaeocetes, a supposed early precursor to whales, evolved from Mesonychids, an ancient carnivorous Land animal. Both Dissacus and Ankalagon were the only mesonychids known at the time and were thought too well developed evolution wise to be anything other than a sister group the the archaeocetes.
Three more genera of middle Paleocene mesonychids have since been identified but consist only of fragmented cranium pieces. One also has lower jaw fragments(Hukoutherium).
However no one has suggested any of these genera for ancestor of the archaeocetes, and thus mesonychids continue to be classified as a "sister group" to the archaeocetes.
In 1997 one Robert L. Carroll, in his book, Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution, stated: "It is not possible to identify a sequence of mesonychids leading directly to whales".
In actuality It is not even possible to identify a single ancestral species. Mesonychids are excluded from the actual chain of descent by the evolutionary criteria.
Evolutionists believe that mesonychids evolved into archaeocetes, despite the inability to identify any species in the actual lineage, because mesonychids and archaeocetes have some surface similarities.
These similarities, however, are not enough to make the case for ancestry, especially in light of the even greater differences. The subjective nature of such comparisons is evident from the fact so many groups of mammals and even reptiles have been suggested as ancestral to whales.
Leigh Van Allen,the man who originally proposed the mesonychid relationship, based his ideas on the most general of similarities. Van Allen stated that :"Many features of the skull of Protocetus, an early archaeocete, are not similar to those of either the Hyaenodontidae or the Mesonychidae (or to any other terrestrial mammal known to me) and probably represent to a considerable extent a reorganization of the skull, the chain of effects resulting from adaptation to hearing, feeding, locomotion, and other functions in an aquatic existence"
This point was further noted by Edwin Colbert who said: “In
general this archaeocete skull appears as if it might have been derived from a mesonychid type, but there is little beyond certain general resemblances to support such a relationship."
Evolutionists next port of call on their explanatory tour of the origin of whales is that an amphibious archaeocete evolved into a fully marine archaeocete. It is believed that this
transformation is documented by a sequence of intermediate forms, what one
writer (Stephen J Gould) called the “sweetest series of transitional fossils an evolutionist could ever hope to find." This series includes Pakicetus inachus, Ambulocetus natans,
Rodhocetus kasrani, Indocetus ramani, Protocetus atavus, and Basilosaurus isis.
It is incumbent upon me to point out that, in calling these creatures a series of transitional fossils, the evolutionists dont mean that they form a lineage of ancestors and descendants.
In fact, they admit that these archaeocetes cannot be strung in procession from ancestor to descendant in a natural Ladder. What they mean is that these fossils show a
progressive development within Archaeoceti of some features found in the later, fully formed marine types such as Basilosaurus
The current proposed order of the archaeocetes, in terms of both
morphological and stratigraphical criteria, is:
Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Rodhocetus, Indocetus,
Protocetus, and Basilosaurus. One problem oversight is that the stratigraphical relationships of most of these fossils are still open to debate.
To give just a brief example , Pakicetus inachus is dated to the late Ypresian, but experts acknowledge that it may date to the early Lutetian. In true evolutionist practice the stratigraphical arrangement in the standard scheme has been influenced by their morphology to create a tidy picture. (circular thinking)
Specialists admit there is a lack of clear ancestor to descendant
relationships from Protcetids to basilosaurids and in fact the immense size difference between the two casts doubt on the hypothesis. It has been calculated that, even in a rapidly evolving line, changes in size are usually on the order of only 1-10 percent per million years and this really precludes the evolution of the afore mentioned species.
Interestingly in the morphological similarity stakes some experts now believe Protocetus was fully marine, (remember if you will the embarrassment of evolutionists when live specimens of Coelacanth, once believed to be amphibious were found and proved to be in fact deep ocean dwellers) it is questionable whether the features of Basilosaurus can be characterized as more advanced.
With regards to the evolutionist claim that modern whales stem from archaeocetes, an area still under hot dispute, despite the conclusive claims some people like to make, the degrees of difference are even harder to bridge.
George Gaylord Simpson has this to say. "Thus the Archaeoceti, middle Eocene to early Miocene, are definitely the most primitive of cetaceans, but they can hardly have given rise to the other suborders. The Odontoceti, late Eocene to Recent, are on ahigher grade than the Archaeoceti and, on the average, lower than the Mysticeti, middle Oligocene to Recent, but apparently were not derived from the former and did not give rise to
the latter".
A. V. Yablokov, wrote, “It is now obvious to most investigators that Archaeoceti cannot be regarded as direct ancestral forms of the modern cetaceans."
Currently leading thinkers in the field believe that archaeocetes are ancestral to whales, but there is no agreement on which family of archaeocetes is involved. In fact, all three families (Protocetidae, Remingtonocetidae, and Basilosauridae) have been proposed.This is particularly revealing when one considers how radically different
Remingtonocetidae is from the other archaeocetes.
In addition, no Ladder of descent from archaeocetes to modern whales has been identified. The phylogenetic relationships among major lineages within the Cetacea continue to be very poorly understood which is why recent phylogenies are dominated by dead ends, broken lines, and question marks. As for Basilosaurus isis, it is generally recognized that Basilosaurinae was an isolated subfamily that had nothing to do with the origin of modern whales.
More recently molecular biologists say whales evolved from a cow-like (or hippo-like) artiodactyl.
Did you follow that logic? Don’t feel bad if you didn’t. It wasn’t very logical. Pakicetus has ankle bones just like artiodactyls, which are land mammals that run very well. This isn’t very surprising to us because Pakicetus was a land animal that could run very well. Pakicetus wasn’t a whale, or even remotely like a whale. But the name “Pakicetus” means “whale found in Pakistan" (wishful thinking).
Therefore, it is by definition, a cetacean (a whale). Since Pakicetus has arbitrarily been called a whale, and since it is related to the artiodactyls, therefore all whales evolved from artiodactyls. Anyway, that’s the logic.
