RockSlider wrote:
I'm still not finding the raccoon/whale discussion that preceded that.
Hey Rock!
Not sure if you're interested, but I went back and found that I had the entire article in an old file - so here it is (Kind of long but wanted to post it all to be fair/transparent)
Here is a great one! A raccoon-like quadruped, the indohyus, that evolved into a whale! Yes, this animal was once a fish that spent millions of years growing fins and gills so it could swim and breathe. Then it realized it would be better if it could crawl out of the ocean, away from those pesky sharks and other predators. It evolved legs and lungs so it could come out of the water. It then evolved a furry exterior and became a quadruped, the indohyus. The indohyus then realized what a mistake it had made (tic), so it re-evolved fins, shrank its hind legs down to small completely internal bones, disappeared its forelegs, and went back into the water with those pesky sharks, which must not have been so bad after all, to become the largest species ever known: a whale! It’s nasal openings migrated to the top of it’s head to become single or double blowholes.
One of the many questions that this absurd “fish to quadruped to whale” notion brings out is why would whales evolve a blow hole in the first place? Evolutionauts proudly show how nostrils migrated and modified from forward to back on the “nasal” area of their heads. They proudly display this as evidence for evolution, of course, and in doing so, blind themselves to why a hole would evolve on their heads at all. What environmental pressures stimulated the formation of this unique feature? I certainly can’t think of any. How about: the ones that were the best “squirt gun” fighters won the females? Or, they could blow fish out of the water, and catch them? A remarkable invention, the blowhole. Certainly a fun one to watch. But why would evolution come up with this? Why didn’t evolution give this unique entity to all fish? Why not sharks. I could see sharks blowing water out of a blowhole just as much as whales. I wonder if indohyus could blow water out its nose, and that trait became the blowhole for whales. How did the nose become the blowhole? Which whale began the blowing of water? Which was the first? Did the other whales watch, and think, “That looks like cool! I think I’ll try it!”
From pandasthumb.com:
Nasal Drift in Earlywhale nasal drift Whales
Whales breathed with more ease when they no longer had to lift a snout above water. The nostrils migrated upward toward the top of their head, as ancient whales spent more time immersed in the water. Blowholes help to distinguish modern forms of whales. While toothed whales generally have one hole, baleens are split into two. Fig 1. Pakicetus Fig 2. Rodhocetus nostrils were higher on the skull, intermediate between its ancestors and modern whales. Fig 3. A modern gray whale can emerge from the water, inhale and resubmerge without stopping or tilting its snout to breathe.
This video will really give you an idea about how far evo-illusionists will go to fool their audience. It shows how evolution completely and willingly fakes the evidence, in this case the nasal openings of Ambulocetus, to make them look like they have migrated up its nose so it can turn into a blowhole. This video astounds me, because the foolery is so blatant.
Blowholes are covered by muscular flaps that keep water from entering the opening when the whale is under water. In the relaxed state, the flap covers the blowhole. A blowhole leads to the whale’s trachea directly, not through a series of sinuses like those of land mammals, and then to its lungs. Unlike indohyus and all land mammals, whales cannot breathe through their mouths. They can only breath through their blowholes. We can conclude that earlier whales had indohyus nostrils that made it difficult for them to breathe, because they had to stick their nose out of water. Air sacs just below the blowhole allow whales to produce sounds for communication and (for those species capable of it) echolation.
These air sacs are filled with air, which is then released again to produce sound in a similar fashion to releasing air from a balloon. According to evolution, natural selection improved indohyus nostrils by turning them into blowholes and moving it (them) back toward their forehead. With blowholes they don’t have to stick their noses out of water. Just think of how incredibly powerful that supposed glitch was, that it forced mutations and natural selection to move and modify indohyus nasal openings. I wonder about the intermediate steps involved. The steps from “no flap” to a fully functioning muscular flap. Were there “half flaps” that allowed water into the proto-whale’s lungs? Were there partial air sacs? Is there such thing as a partial balloon? Shall we all accept this without thinking about it? Because, if you think about it, you might wonder. You might question. And that is bad for evolution. And, as it usual with all evolution fables, there are no fossils that show the steps of the modification and movement of indohyus nostrils which produced whale blowholes. Just as they don’t have fossils that show the growth of giraffe necks, and bird wings. Evolutionauts always brag about how the fossil record proves evolution beyond a shadow of at doubt. And that they have millions if transitional fossils. In fact “every fossil and every species is transitional.” Reality is their “mountains of evidence” disproves their theory.
Astoundingly, evolutionauts can’t see the THOUSANDS of characteristics that are not alike at all. In fact indohyus and whales are complete opposites in almost every imaginable trait. Evolutionauts are blind to the immense number of differences. Oh, like size, fur, blow hole, water/land species, diet, habits, eye……..the list of differences is endless. Even the way whales sleep is different. They can’t fully sleep under water, or they might drown. So only half of their brain sleeps at a time. They are never fully asleep. How would the different sleep patterns of quadrupeds and whales transition? The scientists the make up these fables are to be respected and revered; certainly not doubted. Their stuff is forced into our schools and into the brains of the students. Or else! And there can be no challenges to evolution in the textbooks. With all of the evidence against this hoax, shouldn’t real scientists demand that there be a chapter on why evolution is not the answer to the Puzzle? The problem here is that most students bite the bait, become evolution believers, and in doing so forfeit their ability to think, doubt, reason, and be skeptical. They do this with the subject of evolution. Hopefully they won’t spread their newly attained gullibility and lack of reason to other fields of endeavor.
Here is an typical article based on a peer reviewed paper on whale evolution:
From:
http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/02/pr0235.htmResearchers Discover Clues to Whale Evolution
Image of 2 inner ears; caption is below Side view of a dolphin inner ear (left) demonstrating the particularly small semicircular canals (yellow / light grey) of cetaceans compared with land mammals, represented here by a bushbaby (right). Images reconstructed from computed tomography scans, adjusting for body size differences between the two animals. Each inner ear would easily fit on a penny. Image: F. Spoor.
A team of international scientists, including Hans Thewissen, an anatomist and paleontologist at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (NEOUCOM), has discovered that the inner ear of whales evolved much more quickly than expected, (another case of quick evolution or punctuated equilibrium) allowing the animals to become fully aquatic early in their evolution. The team’s research, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), (Of course they had to come up with results to continue getting funding. And who is going to challenge this finding?) shows that the semicircular canals, the organ responsible for balance and located in the inner ear, was adapted to aquatic life approximately 45 million years ago. The discovery was published in the May 9 issue of the journal Nature. Cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) have unique semicircular canals that allow them to be highly acrobatic swimmers without becoming dizzy. By investigating this organ in ancient fossils, the researchers found that early whales acquired this special trait quickly and early on in their evolution. This was a defining event that likely resulted in their total independence of life on land. (My gawd, how do they know this? Astounding. Not only do we have quadrupeds that turned into whales, we have ears the evolved for under water use “quickly”!) “The early evolutionary development of small semicircular canals by cetaceans opened an entirely new mammalian niche for habitation and contributed to the broad diversity of marine living habits that we see in whales today,” said Rich Lane, director of NSF’s paleontology program, which funded the research. “The evolutionary acquisition of such specialized organs or abilities (like the brain and upright walking habit of man) provide mechanisms by which highly evolved organisms dominate in certain environments.” The semicircular canals sense head movements and this vital information is used to coordinate the body during locomotion. This happens subconsciously, and humans only become aware of an organ of balance when things go wrong, such as during sea sickness, drunkenness and wild roller coaster rides. The researchers found that in living cetaceans the semicircular canals are much smaller than in any other mammal of the same body size. In fact, the semicircular canals of the huge blue whale are smaller than those of humans. In general, cetaceans are more acrobatic than similarly sized land animals (imagine an elephant making the jumps of a similar-sized whale). This could be the result of the small canals, because the small size makes the canals less sensitive, preventing the animal from becoming dizzy (i.e. experiencing vertigo). (Why didn’t they evolve to the same proportional size as human semi-circular canals? Is it advantageous for humans to be dizzy?) Between 40 and 50 million years ago, early cetaceans evolved from land mammals into swimmers. Over the last decade many new whale fossils have been found which show how this dramatic change happened. Skeletons of the transitional species (“whales with limbs”) demonstrate that they were adept, otter-like swimmers. (Whales with legs? Show me. There are none in the clade drawing above. Or is this where evolutionauts call normal quadrupeds “whales with legs” to fool us into believing they have transitional species when they don’t.) Just last year, Thewissen’s discovery of two early whale ancestors showed that the earliest whales were mainly land animals, and resolved a controversy over the relationships of whales, showing that they are most closely related to modern even-toed ungulates (such as pigs, hippos, camels, deer, and sheep) than to an extinct group of meat-eating mammals. (Just imagine: whales walking around on land. That must have been quite a sight!)
Those Beautiful Legs:
At left is a museum photo of a whale skeleton showing the spine. The two “bent L” shaped bones are the bones that evolutionauts say are vestigial hind legs from Pakicitus and Indohyus, supposed whale precursors. Evo-scientists say these bones correspond exactly to the hind legs of a furry quadruped. Do they look like former leg bones? If you have a great evo-imagination, they sure do. Anything looks like anything if it proves evolution. Note that these bones are completely internal. No part of them has an external remnant whatsoever. So the legs shrank, bent themselves into an “L”, fused the knee joint, and moved themselves way inside of the body of the whale? Also there are several muscles that attach to these bones, hinting that these bones have a designed use in modern whales. They have a purpose, and are not remnants of an evolutionary past. They actually are part of whale birthing apparatus. These two bones are a huge part of the “mountains of evidence” cited by evolutionauts for their fake science. These “legs”, along with chicken teeth, are two of my favorite “whale of a tale” fables that evolutionauts feed young impressionable students. At left is the remains of a Pakicetus fossil. Can you imagine assigning these bits of bones as the precursor to all whales? What kind of science is this. A few bones found in the dirt is for sure an early whale. The more I look at this science, the more amazing it gets. The following video was posted on YouTube by a favorite YouTube contributor, aaugoaa. It pretty clearly discusses how evolution turns very incomplete fossils and segments of bones into an entire “science”, the “science” of the evolution of whales.
(After I posted this - I noticed that the pictures and videos from the article are not showing up here? Sorry)
To me, I don't care what you happen to believe (or not believe) - I find the entire discussion of evolution to be fascinating on many many levels.
