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Maverick Science 
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BuiltByNOF 
On Whale's Legs

Nowadays it is common to hear pleas for the teaching of Creationist

"science" alongside evolution in high schools and universities.  This

prospect would make a mockery of our educational system, in my

opinion, and would be tantamount to teaching the Flat Earth theory

alongside conventional theories of geography.  Although there

are a host of reasons why I believe this to be the case, I would

offer the following argument from the fossil record of whales

as providing compelling support for the evolutionary position

and against Creationist claims.

It has been known since Darwin's time that whales occasionally

show evidence of vestigial limbs and pelvic bones.  This is most

obvious in whale embryos, but adult whales have actually

been found with protruding limb rudiments.  (See the discussion

in P. Gingerich et al, "Hind Limbs of Eocene Basilosaurus:

Evidence of Feet in Whales," Science 249, July 13, 1990,

p. 154).  Why would an animal be born with traces of legs when

it currently has no use for legs?  That the vestigial stumps have

no functional purpose in modern whales is obvious. How, then,

are we to explain the case of the whale's vestigial structures in a
logical

manner?

The evolutionist position is at once simple and perfectly logical:

modern whales show traces of legs and pelvic girdles precisely

because they evolved from land animals with legs (most likely
artiodactyls, an ungulate mammal of which hippos are perhaps the best
modern example).

It would thus stand to reason that the earliest whales might have had

fully functional legs and that only later did their legs begin to
diminish

in utility to the point at which they appear in modern whales as

vestigial stubs concealed beneath the blubber.  It is to be

expected, moreover, that various intermediate forms will be

found between early whales with fully functional hind limbs

and modern whales with vestigial hind limbs only.

What, then, does the fossil record reveal?  Early whales,

as exemplified by Ambulocetus natans, show well-formed

fully functional hind legs.  Two other whales--Indocetus ramani

and Rodhocetus kasrani--appear later in the fossil record

and show diminished although still perfectly functional

hind limbs.  Basilosaurus isis, finally, had very tiny hind

limbs the utility of which is unknown.  (See the bibliography

appended at the end of this post for the relevant scientific

literature on these respective creatures).  In the case of

Rodhocetus, at least, where the pelvis is well-preserved,

there can be no doubt but that the legs were attached to the

pelvic girdle and that they were functional.  As P. Gingerich

et al note in their analysis of the fossil whale, "The pelvis of

Rodhocetus articulates with the vertebral column by normal

mammalian sacral synarthroses, meaning that Rhodocetus

could support its body weight on land." ("New whale from

the Eocene of Pakistan and the origin of cetacean swimming,"

Nature 368, 1994, p. 847).

The standard Creationist response when confronted with this

compelling evidence from paleontology is to simply ignore it.

Indeed I know of no credible, substantive attempt to deal with the

issue of the whale's vestigial limbs to be found anywhere in the

Creationist literature.  One possible explanation for the vestigial
limbs

one I've heard more than once in debates with Creationistsis to

view them as the product of random mutations.  Yet there is

every reason to conclude that this is a most unlikely possibility.

If the Creationists are right, it stands to reason that every
vertebrate

would be subject to similar random mutations.  Sharks, for example,

might develop vestigial limbs and hip girdles just like whales.

This hypothetical position stands in direct contrast to the
evolutionist

position, which holds that *only those vertebrates which

evolved from land animals can be expected to show

traces of hind limbs*.  Thus, it is well-known that

various species of snakes show unequivocal evidence

of vestigial hind limbs (boas, for example).  As reptiles,

snakes evolved from amphibians which

aboriginally had legs.  Sharks, on the other hand,

do not display vestigial hind limbs for the simple reason

that it is a fish and fish owe their origin to the prochordates,

none of which ever possessed legs.  Much as the presence of

vestigial limbs in whales and snakes  constitutes conclusive

proof of the evolutionist position, so too does the lack of

vestigial hind limbs in sharks tend to undermine the

Creationist position.

In an essay entitled "Senseless Signs of History,"

Stephen Gould makes a point of direct relevance to

our ongoing discussion about the hip-sockets of

whales.  Gould's subject was how Darwin went about

distinguishing his hypothesis of evolution from

that espoused by Biblical creationists:

"How do we know that a modern result [the whale]

is the product of alteration through history and

not an immutable part of a changeless universe?

This is the problem that Darwin faced, for his

creationist opponents did view each species as

unaltered from its initial formation.  How did

Darwin prove that modern species are the products

of history?  We might suppose that he looked

toward the most complex and perfected adaptations

of organisms to their environments: the butterfly

passing for a dead leaf...Paradoxically, he did

just the opposite.  He searched for oddities and

imperfections.  The gull may be a marvel of design;

if one believes in evolution beforehand, then the

engineering of its wing reflects the shaping power

of natural selection.  But you cannot demonstrate

evolution with perfection because perfection need

not have a history.  After all, perfection of

organic design had long been the favorite argument

of creationists, who saw in the consummate

engineering the direct hand of a divine architect...

But, Darwin reasoned, if organisms have a history,

then ancestral stages should leave *remnants*

behind.  Remnants of the past that don't make

sense in present terms--the useless, the odd, the

peculiar, the incongruous--are the signs of history.

They supply proof that the world was not made in

its present form...Why should the fetus of a whale

make teeth in its mother's womb only to reabsorb

them later and live a life sifting krill on

a whalebone filter, unless its ancestors had

functional teeth and these teeth survive as a

remnant during a stage when they do no harm?"

(The Panda's Thumb, pp. 28-29)

Why indeed?

Bibliography:

J. Thewissen, S. Hussain, M. Arif, "Fossil Evidence

for the Origin of Aquatic Locomotion in Archaeocete

Whales," Science 263, Jan. 14, 1994, pp. 210-212.

P. Gingerich et al, "New whale from the Eocene of

Pakistan and the origin of cetacean swimming," Nature

368, April 28, 1994, pp. 844-847.

P. Gingerich et al, "Hind Limbs of Eocene Basilosaurus:

Evidence of Feet in Whales," Science 249, July 13, 1990,

pp. 154-157.

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