Not at all like a whale

Creation Archive > Volume 27 Issue 2 > Not at all like a whale

	First published: Creation 27(2):20–22 March 2005 Browse this issue

by Alexander Williams and Jonathan Sarfati

The Bible teaches that whales and other sea creatures were created before land animals,¹ and were to reproduce ‘after their kind’, not change into a different kind (Genesis 1:20–25). However, evolutionists believe that whales evolved from land creatures. For a long time, Darwin and his followers didn’t even have remotely plausible fossil evidence to support their ‘faith’. E.g. evolutionary whale experts like the late E.J. Slijper admitted in 1962: ‘We do not possess a single fossil of the transitional forms between the aforementioned land animals [i.e. carnivores and ungulates (hoofed animals)] and the whales.’²

The fantasies of evolutionary thinking Evolution’s fairy tales Right: The original reconstruction1,2 based on only the skull fragments represented in blue1,2 (below). Evolutionists often make grandiose claims based on insignificant fossil finds. Artists’ reconstructions can exaggerate their significance. The general public doesn’t realise just how much artistic and imaginary licence is added to these announcements. New evidence A much more complete fossil skeleton3 (below) with its far more reasonable artistic reconstruction (see illustration of Pakicetus below), shows just how completely wrong and imaginative the original claims were. If this is what happens when new evidence is found, what about when it is lacking? Evolutionary educators continue to promote human and animal evolution stories as fact, based on very fragmented ‘evidence’. References and notes Gingerich, P.D., Wells, N.A., Russell, D.E. and Shah, S.M.I., Origin of whales in epicontinental remnant seas: new evidence from the early Eocene of Pakistan, Science 220(4595):403–406, 22 April 1983. Gingerich, P.D., Evidence for evolution from the vertebrae fossil record, Journal of Geological Education 31:140–144, 1983. Thewissen, J.G.M., Williams, E.M., Roe, L.J. and Hussain, S.T., Skeletons of terrestrial cetaceans and the relationship of whales to artiodactyls, Nature 413(6853):277–281, 20 September 2001.

Since then, some fossil discoveries have made the alleged whale evolution a centrepiece of evolutionary propaganda.³ Evolutionists trumpet these and other supposed ‘missing links’ as proving goo-to-you evolution right, and the Bible wrong by implication.

Pakicetus, the almost-whale from Pakistan?

For example, on the cover of the prestigious journal Science,⁴ there was a picture of an alleged transitional creature. It looked like it had just splashed into the sea, and was chasing fish. However, it had feet and legs more like a land animal’s, but on the way to becoming flippers. This same picture also appeared in a journal for teachers⁵ to help them indoctrinate students into evolution. The author, Philip Gingerich, proclaimed in another article for popular consumption:

‘In time and in its morphology, Pakicetus is perfectly intermediate, a missing link between earlier land mammals and later, full-fledged whales.’⁶

So what was all this based on? In fact, only the bones in the inset (right)! Note that there’s nothing below the skull. And it’s even worse—only the stippled parts of the skull represent actual fossil evidence, while the rest is ‘reconstructed’. So how could they know what any of the body looked like below the skull? Answer: they couldn’t! So one must wonder how the editors of the two journals allowed so much speculation to be built on so few facts.

New discoveries have blown away this imaginative ‘reconstruction’. A prominent evolutionary whale expert, Thewissen, and colleagues, unearthed more bones of Pakicetus, and published their work in the journal Nature.⁷ The commentary on this paper in the same issue⁸ says, ‘All the postcranial bones indicate that pakicetids were land mammals, and … indicate that the animals were runners, with only their feet touching the ground.’ (See skeleton, right.) This is very different from Gingerich’s picture of an animal right at home in the sea!

What can we learn from this?

• It’s always important to check the original source of any claim. Often, the popular reports go way beyond the actual evidence, which is not revealed. However, Gingerich was frank about what he actually found.

• We never have all the scientific data—new evidence comes in all the time. Missing-link claims are usually based on fragments of bones; when more bones are discovered, the specimen turns out to be clearly one type of creature or another; not transitional at all.

• The Bible, the written Word of the all-knowing God, never changes. This shows the folly of churchians who ‘reinterpret’ (i.e. disbelieve) the Bible because of ‘science’. If they had reinterpreted the biblical teaching on the creation of whales because of Pakicetus, then they would have to reinterpret their reinterpretation now that Pakicetus has been shown to be a swift land animal. We should be reminded of the eminent surgeon and Christian apologist, Dr Arthur Rendle Short. He had accepted theistic evolution largely because of ‘Piltdown Man’, and always wrestled with the unscriptural corollary of death before sin. But he died just before this hoax was exposed.⁹

Illustration of Pakicetus by Carl Buell from <www.neoucom.edu/Depts/Anat/Pakicetid.html>, 20 May 2004.

• Are the evolutionists deliberately deceptive? In Gingerich’s case, no, because he showed the actual evidence, so his claim was not an intentional fraud like the Piltdown hoax. We must remember that the data are always interpreted within a framework. Since Gingerich is a committed materialist, evolution is the only game in town. So he must interpret fossils in an evolutionary framework. Therefore it’s not surprising that a few scraps of bone are wishfully thought to be a ‘missing link’. The moral of the story is: ‘Fossils are fickle, bones will sing any song you want to hear.’¹⁰

Is Gingerich therefore completely blameless? No—his choice of materialism at some time in his life—contradicting the church teaching of his youth¹¹—was a sinful rejection of the evidence for a Creator (Romans 1:18–32). The Pakicetus fiasco is a perfect illustration of the ‘futile thinking’ that results (vv. 21–22).

References and notes

1. This refutes ‘progressive creationists’ like Hugh Ross, who deny transformism but accept the evolutionary timescale and order of events. Whales appear above land mammals in the fossil record, so Ross asserts that whales were created in an age after land mammals were created. In reality, the fossil record is not a sequence of creation or evolution, but a sequence of burial in the global Flood and its aftermath.
2. Slijper, E.J., Whales and Dolphins, University of Michigan Press, USA, p. 18, 1962.
3. Jones, S., Almost Like a Whale: the Origin of Species Updated, Doubleday, London, UK, 1999.
4. Gingerich, P.D., Wells, N.A., Russell, D.E. and Shah, S.M.I., Origin of whales in epicontinental remnant seas: new evidence from the early Eocene of Pakistan,Science 220(4595):403–406, 22 April 1983.
5. Gingerich, P.D., Evidence for evolution from the vertebrae fossil record, Journal of Geological Education 31:140–144, 1983.
6. Gingerich, P.D., The whales of Tethys, Natural History, p. 86, April 1994.
7. Thewissen, J.G.M., Williams, E.M, Roe, L.J. and Hussain, S.T., Skeletons of terrestrial cetaceans and the relationship of whales to artiodactyls, Nature 413(6853):277–281, 20 September 2001.
8. de Muizon, C., Walking with whales, Nature 413(6853):259–260, 20 Sep. 2001.
9. See the book by his son, Prof. John Rendle-Short, Green Eye of the Storm, Part 3, Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, UK/Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA, 1998.
10. Shreeve, J., Argument over a woman, Discover 11(8):58, 1990 (in reference to stories of human evolution).
11. Cited in Quammen, D., Was Darwin Wrong? National Geographic 206(5):31, November 2004.

Help keep these daily articles coming. Find out how to support AiG.