The following comes from:
Jamie L.
Jensen and Seth M. Bybee, Let’s Talk About Science and Religion (Salt
Lake City: Deseret Book, 2023), 25-26
For context,
the authors are discussing the relationship between whales and mammals who live
on land:
Fossil evidence discovered in the late 1900s, however,
revealed ancient creatures that appear to be intermediate forms between a
four-legged, land-dwelling mammal and the two-legged, seal-dwelling mammal
whales of today. An ancestor of whales from 50 million years ago had teeth to
hunt fish and other features adapted for life in the water, but its ears were
not yet adapted for aquatic hearing or deep divine. (10) Later fossils
from 48 million years ago showed the animal’s ears had adapted for an aquatic
environment. (11) And fossils from 46 million years ago show a powerful
swimming tail (one that moved up and down), reduced hind limbs that would have
been inefficient on land, nostrils that had moved back on the snout toward the
top of the head, and ears highly adapted to aquatic life. (12) By 36
million years ago, we can see nostrils that had fused into a single blowhole
toward the top of the head and hint limbs that would have been completely
incapable of supporting the animal on land, confirming that these animals had
become entirely aquatic. (13) (14)
Additionally, all these creatures share the unique
bone structures of the ankle and inner ear of modern-day whales. (15)
Using modern molecular techniques, scientists have compared the DNA of modern
whales with other mammals and found that hippos are their closest living
relatives. (16) In addition, modern whales have all the bones of a human
hand in their flippers (17) and even leftover pelvic bones. (18)
Thus, the evidence suggested to scientists that modern whales descended from a
land-dwelling, four-legged mammal and evolved into their current two-limbed
aquatic form. Gap closed. With this new scientific understanding came a danger
for those who had based their faith in God on the unexplainable appearance of
modern whales in the ocean at the beginning of time, for these individuals, the
newly discovered scientific evidence might shake that faith. And sometimes,
tragically, to avoid losing their faith, instead of being patient and waiting
for further understanding, some individuals may pretend these data do not exist
or try to explain them away with alternate, nonscientific scenarios or even
conspiracy theories.
Notes for
the Above
(10) J. G. M. Thewissen et al., “Eocene Mammal Faunas
from Northern Indo-Pakistan,” Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 21, no.
2 (2001): 347-66
(11) Thewissen et al., “Developmental Basis for
Hind-Limb Loss,” 8414-18.
(12) Philip D. Gingerich et al., “New Whale from the
Eocene of Pakistan and the Origin of Catecean Swimming,” Nature 368
(1994): 844-47.
(13) Mark D. Uhen, “Middle to Late Eocene
Basilosaurines and Dorudontines,” in The Emergence of Whales: Evolutionary
Patterns in the Origin of Cetacea, ed. J. G. M. THewissen (New York:
Plenum, 1998), 29-61.
(14) E. A. Buchholtz, “Implications of Vertebral
Morphology for Locomotor Evolution in Early Cetacea,” in The Emergence of
Whales, 325-51.
(15) Thewissen et al., “From Land to Water,” 272-88.
(16) Masato Nikaido et al., “Phylogenetic Relationships
among Cetartiodactyles Based on Insertions of Short and Long Interspersed Elements:
Hippopotamuses Are the Closest Extant Relatives of Whales,” Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences 96, no. 18 (1999): 10261-66.
(17) “Sperm Whales’ Amazing Adaptations,” American
Museum of Natural History, April 15, 2013.
(18) For example, see John Struthers, “On the Rudimentary
Hind-Limb of a Great Fin-Whale (Balaenoptera Musculus) in Comparison
with Those of the Humpback Whale and the Greenland Right-Whale,” Journal of Anatomy
and Physiology 27, no. 3 (1893): 291-335.
