Darwinian just-so story: "deer-like" ancestor of whales
A news story says,
It sounds like a stretch, but a new study suggests that the missing evolutionary link between whales and land animals is an odd raccoon-sized animal that looks like a long-tailed deer without antlers. Or an overgrown long-legged rat.
The creature is called Indohyus, and recently dug up fossils reveal some crucial evolutionary similarities between it and water-dwelling cetaceans, such as whales, dolphins and porpoises.
And what are the main pieces of evidence linking this "deer-like" creature to whales?
The key finding connecting Indohyus to the whale is its thickened ear bone, something only seen in cetaceans. An examination of its teeth showed that the land-dwelling creature spent lots of time in the water and may have fed there, like hippos and whales. Also, the specific positioning and shape of certain molars connects Indohyus to the earliest whales, which are about 50 million years old, Thewissen said.
Some "missing link." If this is what passes for evidence of evolution, they can shove it.
posted by Larry Fafarman | 12/20/2007 05:30:00 AM
13 Comments:
Woosh! There goes another one flying over Larry's head.
No doubt you would prefer an ichthyosaur, or perhaps a sardine?
Sheesh, what's the point of carrying on about "missing links" if you're not interested when one drops into your lap?
What superficiality!
Evidence? We don't need no stinkin' evidence! Shove it!
BTW, this isn't "evidence of evolution" particularly. It is "evidence of the precise ancestry of whales". "Evidence of evolution" is too broad a category to benefit much from such a minor addition. It's rather like saying that a total solar eclipse is evidence that the moon has a rough surface. So what? You'd have to go back to the Inquisition to find those who would doubt it, and they would have been too busy burning witches at the stake to examine the evidence.
"Some 'missing link' If this is what passes for evidence of evolution, they can shove it."
Just one more opportunity for Larry to engage in his chronic denialism.
Zzzzz....
"A whale of a tale!" But typical of Darwinist fantasies. Vague and inexact data are used to erect an immense hypothesis, which can't be confirmed by any test.
So the great zoologist Pierre Grasse very properly called Darwinism "pseudoscience" and
"daydreaming," in his book The Evolution of Living Organisms. (1977.)
Grasse believed that there were some unknown, and non-Darwinist, natural laws behind "evolution" (or descent from common ancestry.)
Incidentally, watch the video "You can lead a cow to water..." on the supposed evolution of the whale from a cow-like mammal; by Darwin-skeptic David Berlinski. It's easy to Google.
< unknown, and non-Darwinist, natural laws >
Whoopee!
Talk about linking a deer-like or cow-like critter to a whale, Darwin thought he had evidence linking BEARS to whales. In Ch. VI
of the first edition of his book, he wrote:
"In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water...I can see no difficulty
in a race of bears being rendered,
by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."
Apparently so many people laughed at old Charlie's tale, that he cut it out of later editions.
My sentences keep getting pulled
apart and displaced, when I comment
here. Hmm. Could it be old Chuck's
angry ghost, haunting the blog?
Lyall Watson, in his book Elephan-
toms, proposed that whales came from elephants. More nearly the size of it, I'd say!
Watson is an (unconventional)
biologist. I think he said that
elephants go down to the sea, and
seem to call to their long-lost
kinfolk in the ocean.
Do elephants never forget? How's
that for "evidence," Darwinists?
Is old Chuck Darwin really messing
with my sentences? Or could it be these library computers? Probably.
Oh my dear, my dear! I fear
That I come from a line of those deer!
When a Darwinist spouts,
I must still all my doubts:
For they knoweth all things, I hear!
We whales can spout out a stream
Of vapor, but Darwinists seem,
With barely a clue,
To spout out their view:
And they're paid for a fishy dream.
(Willie's comments were scribbled down by Jim Sherwood.)
Many things.
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