Faith Versus Scientific Evidence: Did Whales Evolve?

In the six day creation account of Genesis chapter 1, on the fifth day god created
all the animals in the oceans including whales, as well as the birds of the air. On
the sixth day He created the beasts of the earth such as the cattle and all those
that creepeth on the surface of the earth. But is this account true and accurate?
How can we test its veracity? Or how can it be falsified by those who have doubts
about the accuracy of the biblical creation accounts? In this article we shall
specifically look at the whale and test the claims of the bible as to whether this
animal indeed came into existence before land animals or not. The whale is also
mentioned in a key defining story of the Judeo-Christian faiths involving Jonah, in
which he is swallowed by a big fish ostensibly a whale, and vomited out three days
later. Can such claims be supported scientifically?. This article shall present some
of the evidence for the origin and development of the whale.

The first point that needs to be addressed is what is a whale? Is it a fish? The
answer is no. A whale is a mammal just like you and I. Whales give birth to live
babies after a year long pregnancy, they breastfeed their young. Whales have all the
bones that any tetrapod (four legged animal) has including vertebral column, pelvis,
leg and arm bones, smaller bones as in the wrists and digits (fingers etc). Yes
whales have legs, but the bones are internal. Whales have lungs and breath air
through their nostrils as we humans do, they must come to the surface to breath and
hold their breadth while under water. In other words whales can actually drown,
unlike fish who take in oxygen directly from the water through their gills. Like
humans whales maintain a constant body temperature, humans do this by sweating when
too hot and shivering when too cold. Dogs maintain their body temperature by panting
through the mouth. Whales have evolved their own unique method. Fish on the other
hand are cold blooded in other words they cannot maintain a constant body
temperature so when their environment becomes too cold they become inactive and
lethargic. So the conclusion is that a whale is not a fish, it is a mammal. A mammal
that lives permanently in water. It turns out that they are not the only ones. The
class of mammals that live permanently in the water are called the Cetaceans. This
group includes dolphin, orca (killer whale), manatee, porpoise, and up to 80
different species of whales, some now extinct.

The first simple test we can do to support or refute the hypothesis that whales
predate land animals is from the geological record of the remains of dead and
extinct species known as fossils. If whales predate land animals we should see
whale fossils in older geological rock formations than that of land animals. Is
this the case? So far fossils overwhelmingly show that the first land mammals date
from 265 million years ago and were a contemporary of the early dinosaurs, whereas
the oldest whale fossils are from around 40 million years ago, when the dinosaurs
were no more. The names of some of the first mammal species include Morganucodon
watsoni whose fossils have been found in Britain, China and South Africa, and
Gondwanadon tapani which was found in India. The evidence suggests these first
mammal species evolved from reptiles. So we can now answer the question, were
whales created before land animals as the bible says? No. The bible claim is false
and not supported by any evidence. So if whales are younger than land mammals as a
species, where did they come from , and why is this the case? The logical
hypothesis is that whales therefore evolved from an existing land mammal that
adapted over several million years due to environmental or other evolutionary
pressures. But how do we test this hypothesis? What is the evidence that whales
evolved from a land mammal? Once again the fossil record can be our first arena for
tackling this question.
In 1978 Philip Gingerich of the University of Michigan on an expedition to the
Sulaiman Mountains in Pakistan found the remains of an unknown hoofed wolf life land
mammal. On closer inspection the specimen had a unique ear bone found in only one
species on earth today. Yes, the whale. He named it Pakicetus, meaning whale of
Pakistan. This was a direct missing link in the evolution of whales and began an
intense effort to unravel the mystery of whale evolution. However after 50 million
years Pakicetus vanishes from the fossil record. What happened to it? Did it simply
go extinct or did it evolve into a new species? In 1984 one of Dr Gingerich?s former
student s named Hans Thewissen went back to Pakistan and later unearthed another
fossil dating 49 million years. This creature looked very much like Pakicetus but
had broader and flattened tail, as well as more powerful feet for swimming, it also
had a more slender and streamlined body. It was named Ambulocetus natans meaning the
walking and swimming whale. Like all other whale species it had the unique ear bone
called the sigmoid process. Pakicetus had evolved into Ambulocetus. Thewissen later
uncovered he remains of another land based whale ancestor in India that predated
Pakicetus. He named it Indohyus. It was a small deer like creature. As of this date
it is unclear whether the common ancestor of all Cetaceans is Pakicetus or Indohyus,
but they remain the two strongest candidates and research is on going. It took
another 15 million years for whales to evolve into the forms we are familiar with
today. It must be noted tests confirm that Ambulocetus was unable to drink sea
water. This means it would have to come out of the sea to drink fresh water. So
Ambulocetus was not a permanent marine animal. So which whale ancestor was the first
to live permanently in the sea? From Ambulocetus, the current known evolutionary
history of the whale can be summarized by some the following intermediate species.

Rhodocetus: This was the first whale ancestor to live permanently in the sea. This
species developed key adaptations to do so. One of those was the kidney which could
now filter salt from the blood which was then excreted in the urine. This enabled
Rhodocetus to drink sea water and unlike its predecessors it did not have to come
out of the sea and onto the land to drink freshwater. This means that the previous
species would not have lived too far from the coast, whereas this species could live
far out in the deep sea. This species also shows a reduction in the size of the
inner ear, this adaptation resulted in a remarkable improvement in the sense of
balance. As a result this four-legged animal could now swim and dive, turn and twist
and high speed without getting disorientated. This adaptation enabled it to evade
predators and swim at high speed.

Dorudon: This species is the first to live in groups or pods as they are known.
This is a behavior that continues to this day. Whales, dolphins etc all live in
groups and hunt in groups, and care for their young together. Each group has female
leader who determines where they will go to find food etc. Males live independently
on the fringes of the group and do not interact directly with the other group
members unless during mating season. This whale ancestor is the first to exhibit
this behavior.

Basilosaurus: This was an extremely large whale species weighing in at 6300 kilos.
It was a predatory species that branched off the main whale ancestral line.
Specimens have been found all over North Africa and even in the Sahara desert
proving that the Sahara was once part of a lush swampy environment and later part of
the Mediterranean sea which shrunk to its current size due to climate change.
However due to its enormous size and food requirements, climate change at around 35
million years ago resulted in the extinction of this species. It was the Dorudon
whale that continued on and spawned the common ancestor of Cetaceans as we know them
today.

Odontocetes: Whales communicate with one another by sonar. They do this by making a
clicking sound and with their teeth and wait for the echo to locate another whale or
a food source. This behavior is first seen in the Odontocetes. The species also
shows features enabling it to dive over a mille deep and hold its breath for over
two hours. Other whale ancestor include Protocetus, Kutchicetus, Aeitocetus,
Squalodon and many others

If we were to put the skulls of all the whale species so far, side by side in
chronological order we would notice a migration of the nostril from the front of the
head towards the back to form the famous blow hole through which modern whales
breath when they come up to the surface. We will also see the successive shrinking
of the limbs particularly the hind limbs from that of a four-legged animal in
ancestors such as Pakicetus, to the small limbs that are now internal to the body as
in modern whales. Whale evolution has so far provided some of the best demonstrable
and teachable evidence for evolution. The large number of well preserved fossils
found enables us to see in living color how features change over time to produce new
species. This is one species where you can actually line up the fossils and see the
smooth transitions over time from the original land based ancestors to the current
forms and diversity . Whales did not turn into fish. Inside every flipper is found
the bones of the mammalian hand. They swim like otters by undulating the mammalian
spine. The tail fluke is not a fish fin. Evolution works by modifying existing body
plans to fit new conditions of life, and is often constrained by developmental
pathways. No longer limited by gravity and strength of bones, evolution enabled
whales to become giants of the sea. The evolution of other cetaceans such the
dolphin have been well documented and readers are encouraged to look up and review
the material.

Around 24 years after Charles Darwin presented his theory of natural selection, a
fellow Victorian scientist named William Flower trained this powerful new idea on
one of the toughest problems in zoology: the whale. Natural historians had long
before recognized that whales are mammals, but that was about as far as they had
come in understanding the origins of cetaceans. In 1883, Flower , after careful
study posited that whales had evolved from mammals known as ungulates, a group whose
best-known characteristic is a set of hoofed feet. In other words, dolphins,
porpoises, humpbacks, orcas, and all other whales are close kin of cows, horses,
pigs, etc. Today dozens of scientific studies have demonstrated that cetaceans are
indeed the descendants of hoofed mammals. In the era of DNA testing and the
sequencing of the entire genomes of organisms we can put the evolutionary theory to
the test by actually testing the DNA of a whale and by comparing with other species
we can tell which ones it shares common ancestry with. . This testing was done by
Ursing and Arnason in Sweden in 1998. It turns out that whales closest relatives are
the pig and the hippopotamus which all share a common ancestor. The DNA shows that
the whale ancestor split from this common ancestor around 54 million years ago.
Again the evolutionary theory explanation of the development of the whale obtained
from the fossil record was accurately confirmed by DNA testing. So as usual science
in this case evolution makes a prediction which can be independently tested and
confirmed or falsified. Science wins, and even if not we are pointed in the right
direction to make the necessary corrections to our knowledge and make improvements.
Sadly no religious claim has ever stood up to such scrutiny and yet religion claims
it knows everything. Some even sacrificing their lives in the faith that their
religious rewards are waiting for them in another reality generally called the
afterlife. A place that so far has not been demonstrated to exist except as the
figment of human imagination.

So at this juncture we may pause to ask, is the biblical claim that whales were
created before land animals true and accurate? No, according to the fossil and
geological evidence land animals came first and later one of them evolved into the
whale. Also by DNA test we can easily see that the whale ancestor shared a common
ancestor with pigs and hippos. The biblical account is not true. So we shall now
turn it over to the religionists and creationists to explain to us why their god
inspired book is telling lies and spearheading falsehood, claiming it knows when it
has no clue. Was this pseudo science written by an omniscient god or was it written
on his behalf by illiterate barbarian ancient men who did not know what they were
talking about? And why did God not simply step in and correct his book for the
record instead of allowing it to continuously teach false teachings?

kwaku ba, November 2010