Mammals

Evolution Says .....

Mammals evolved from the dinosaurs. Sea mammals evolved from land animals that returned to the sea. The fossil evidence proves all this.

The Facts Are .....

(1) Many textbooks, lectures, and articles written in defence of Darwinian evolution contain reference to the 'fact' that there are many significant examples of links in the fossil record between whales and land animals. What is often cited as the 'proof' is a picture in a book which displays a whale-like creature which has legs. Quoting a drawing by an artist, which is an expression of their own interpretation of a particular fossil, is not scientific proof. Moreover, the specimen from which pictures are often drawn is named Pakicetus, a fossil known only from an incomplete skull. No other parts of the skeleton were found. Pakicetus was described as a whale that walked on land, a set of ideas not based on fossil facts. Journal of Geological Education, Vol. 31, 1983 p:140-144; Science, Vol. 220, 1983 p:403-406

(2) A fossil which has been described as being a whale with feet, is a snake-like skeleton (often called a 'king lizard') found in an Egyptian lake bed. Its finders have stated that the supposed feet could never have been used for walking or even as rudders to stabilize swimming. Palaeontologists have stated that the limb bones are a vestige of a time when the whale's ancestors walked on land. Apart from not being a whale, there are problems with the hind limb structure. The drawings displayed of the hind 'leg' are actually from other specimens. Some of these bones have not even been found, they are just 'reasonably inferred'. The Press-Enterprise, July 1, 1990 p:A-15

(3) Scientists have claimed recently that they have found a 'walking whale' which they say is the ancestor of modern whales. The skeleton of the fossil is very incomplete, with no hip bones, humerus or shoulder-blades. Most of the backbone is missing, and there is no guarantee that all the bones came from the same species. The reconstruction from these scant parts would not be sufficient to confirm whether the animal swam or walked. Science, January 14, 1994 p:210-212

(4) Fossil intermediates used in the past to 'prove' the evolution of pinniped marine animals (seals etc) have been rejected by André Wyss of the American Museum of Natural History (New York). His examination of the flippers of true-seals, sea-lions and walruses has lead him to believe that they came from a common ancestor - a land mammal like the otter. This shows that intermediate forms shown in textbooks are not really intermediates, and that evolution is not proved by fossil evidence. Nature, August 4, 1988 p:383-384, 427-428

(5) The platypus has long been held up as a transitional form between mammals and birds because of its mixture of physical characteristics. It is interesting to note, that the more typical mammals are found in much lower rock layers than the egg-laying platypus. Thus, using evolutionary reasoning, mammals actually evolved before the platypus. Scott M. Huse, "The Collapse of Evolution", Baker Book House: Grand Rapids (Michigan), 1983 p:110

(6) "Because of the nature of the fossil evidence, paleontologists have been forced to reconstruct the first two-thirds of mammalian history in great part on the basis of tooth morphology." Written by Barbara J. Stahl (St Anselm's College, USA) in her book "Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution", McGraw-Hill: New York, 1974 p:401

(7) "The (evolutionary) transition to the first mammal, which probably happened in just one or, at most, two lineages, is still an enigma." Written by evolutionist and science writer Roger Lewin in his article "Bones of Mammals' Ancestors Fleshed Out", in Science, Vol. 212, No. 4502, June 1981 p:1492