New whale fossil represents intermediate stage between foot-powered and tail-powered swimming

originally posted by: cooperton

originally posted by: Barcs

Baaaahahaahahahahahahahahaaa!!!

Thanks for making my day I got to read some of the funniest ignorance I've read to date from you guys in this thread. Cultists through and through. LOL @ hypothesis. Stop lying, bro.

Settle down. The whale fossil that you are using as demonstration barely had any cranial remains. It's a pathetic grasping at straws to support a theory that has no actual evidence.

If you understood basic biology, anthropology or paleontology you would be all too aware that the amount of information that can be derived from post cranial remains is equally, if not more informative than having only the crania. Your consistent perspective that there isn’t anything to learned from fossils without a complete cranium is 100% incorrect.

With this specific set of fossils, we’re talking about locomotion and the vast majority of that is readily apparent in the remains in question. I’ll give you credit for sticking to your antiquated values because you feel personally offended by the factual nature of biological evolution. The only thing pathetic here is your insistence that locomotion can’t be determined without a complete crania. That you for the entertainment tonight!

originally posted by: cooperton
It would be a tragic fate. If evolution is true and all life is random and meaningless, then we were born to die... and we inevitably return back to eternal non-existence forever. Have you really thought about what it would be like to never exist again? Eternal void and emptiness. Lights out permanently. Great bed-time story to tell the kids.

What's wrong with returning to non-existence?? It's where you came from after all. It will be exactly like it was before you did exist, you won't remember a thing.

Eternal Hell sounds like a much worse bed time story for the kids and yet that's a favorite for about half the country.

originally posted by: peter vlar

If you understood basic biology, anthropology or paleontology you would be all too aware that the amount of information that can be derived from post cranial remains is equally, if not more informative than having only the crania. Your consistent perspective that there isn’t anything to learned from fossils without a complete cranium is 100% incorrect.

Pete, that was not the only underwhelming finding in the paper. The postcranial remains are also insufficient to make any sort of explanation on these remains. They claim to have "vertebral elongation", yet the vertebrae were only increased in size by .015 inches compared to the other sample. That obviously falls under the range of variability within a species, especially one as large as a whale. So my comment on the crania was one of many insufficiencies found in the paper.

Notice how Barcs in the OP doesn't make any comments on the paper, or why he supposes it is definitely a missing link for whales? It is because there is no actual concrete unambiguous evidence found in the paper. Or he just doesn't know what he's doing. Or both. But at the end of the day that paper proves nothing, and the remains are laughable to any real scientific scrutiny. But as I said before, you blind believers will accept anything that comes out insisting we are mutated apes.

originally posted by: Barcs

originally posted by: Quadrivium
Excuses?
For what?
I saw proof it is the ancestor of any whales living today. Just an assumption and speculation or at best a Hypothesis.
Nothing to Deny,

Baaaahahaahahahahahahahahaaa!!!

Thanks for making my day I got to read some of the funniest ignorance I've read to date from you guys in this thread. Cultists through and through. LOL @ hypothesis. Stop lying, bro.

Spoken like a true cultist stuck in their own dogma.

originally posted by: Aryabhata
a reply to: KKLOCO

www.sciencenews.org...

a similar creature was found in peru with pics. Not sure how to embed the pics but i imagine the one found in egypt was much like this.

Where's the whale? The title is talking about an "otterlike whale".

Last time I checked, whales didn't have feet and didn't walk on land. And pigs don't fly. Frogs don't evolve into princes. And there are also no flying horses like Pegasus, except in people's imaginations of course, some more elaborate than others. Some carrying the marketing-label saying "science", others not.


Is there no one who thinks it's a little over the top to refer to these creatures as whales, as was done in the title of that link? And if what you say is true, that it's a very similar creature as the one discussed in the OP, did the creature in the OP have feet and walk on land (as the creature depicted in the artful picture in your link)?

How big is an otter anyway compared to a whale?

PROBLEMS WITH THE “PROOF”

What, though, of the fossils that are used to show fish changing into amphibians, and reptiles into mammals? Do they provide solid proof of evolution in action? Upon closer inspection, several problems become obvious.

First, the comparative size of the creatures placed in the reptile-to-mammal sequence is sometimes misrepresented in textbooks. Rather than being similar in size, some creatures in the series are huge, while others are small.

A second, more serious challenge is the lack of proof that those creatures are somehow related. Specimens placed in the series are often separated by what researchers estimate to be millions of years. Regarding the time spans that separate many of these fossils, zoologist Henry Gee says: “The intervals of time that separate the fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their possible connection through ancestry and descent.”34* [whereislogic: synonyms for "definite" are: "factual/truthful"; note that science/knowledge is a familiarity with facts/truths/certainties/realities, so for anything to be labeled as "scientific" or "science", it is a requirement that it is factual/truthful. That is, if one is being honest about how one uses language, and not too busy promoting or expressing agnostic philosophies of vagueness under the marketing-label "science", as most who like to be called "scientists" have a tendency to do when their primary activities revolve around marketing, promoting and selling their own unverified philosophies/ideas, as the philosophers and marketeers they really prove to be by doing so.]

Commenting on the fossils of fish and amphibians, biologist Malcolm S. Gordon states that the fossils found represent only a small, “possibly quite unrepresentative, sample of the biodiversity that existed in these groups at those times.” He further says: “There is no way of knowing to what extent, if at all, those specific organisms were relevant to later developments, or what their relationships might have been to each other.”35*

[Footnotes]

Henry Gee does not suggest that the theory of evolution is wrong. His comments are made to show the limits of what can be learned from the fossil record.

Malcolm S. Gordon supports the teaching of evolution.

34. In Search of Deep Time​—Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life, by Henry Gee, 1999, p. 23.

35. Biology and Philosophy, p. 340.

Source: Has All Life Descended From a Common Ancestor? (The Origin of Life—Five Questions Worth Asking)

originally posted by: mOjOm

What's wrong with returning to non-existence?? It's where you came from after all. It will be exactly like it was before you did exist, you won't remember a thing.

Something cannot come from nothing, and something does not return to nothing. I will change form and so will you.

Eternal Hell sounds like a much worse bed time story for the kids and yet that's a favorite for about half the country.

People will get what they want, and that is the tragedy of hell. Burnt in their own passions, their minds will be fogged by the smoke that billows out of the insatiable desires of their heart. Straying from the archetype of Love, they are left with suffering and arguing or "gnashing of teeth".

originally posted by: cooperton

originally posted by: peter vlar

If you understood basic biology, anthropology or paleontology you would be all too aware that the amount of information that can be derived from post cranial remains is equally, if not more informative than having only the crania. Your consistent perspective that there isn’t anything to learned from fossils without a complete cranium is 100% incorrect.

Pete, that was not the only underwhelming finding in the paper. The postcranial remains are also insufficient to make any sort of explanation on these remains. They claim to have "vertebral elongation", yet the vertebrae were only increased in size by .015 inches compared to the other sample. That obviously falls under the range of variability within a species, especially one as large as a whale. So my comment on the crania was one of many insufficiencies found in the paper.

Something doesn’t become ‘underwhelming’ ‘inefficient’ or lack worth and merit simply because You, Cooperton, declare it to be such on a message board. I hate to use this analogy But the simple fact that you lack a background in this area makes you incredibly unqualified to make such cut and dry statements of opinion as if you’re repeating facts when you are just giving your opinion.

There is more than enough physical material to see the clear differences in primary form of locomotion from splitting time between land and water, using their limbs for swimming, to a more corocodillian type of swimming that shows it spent far more time in the water than the land.

It’s one example though. I’ll get excited when I see more than one specimen to compare anatomies

Notice how Barcs in the OP doesn't make any comments on the paper, or why he supposes it is definitely a missing link for whales? It is because there is no actual concrete unambiguous evidence found in the paper. Or he just doesn't know what he's doing. Or both. But at the end of the day that paper proves nothing, and the remains are laughable to any real scientific scrutiny.

I Don’t know what Barcs has to do with this specific conversation so unlike you, I’m not going to distract myself with
Further non sequitors to help you avoid facts

But as I said before, you blind believers will accept anything that comes out insisting we are mutated apes.

Repeating ignorant lies doesn’t make them true. I blindly believe nothing. I look at all sides And all data before making conclusions. You’re the one who approaches this from a died in the wool point of willful ignorance because every little thing has to meet the approval of your specific god. You’re the only blind believer here pal. Wish Jesus a happy birthday 3 1/2 month early from me.

originally posted by: peter vlar

Something doesn’t become ‘underwhelming’ ‘inefficient’ or lack worth and merit simply because You, Cooperton, declare it to be such on a message board.

Just like this mostly incomplete specimen doesn't become an 'intermediate species' just because scientists - fallible scientists - declare it to be so.

There is more than enough physical material to see the clear differences in primary form of locomotion from splitting time between land and water

The post-cranial data is rather pathetic in proving their point. The fact they even mention "vertebral elongation", despite a max increase of only 0.015 inches, clearly shows they have no logical reason to conclude this is an intermediate species. It is wishful speculation, but evolution journals will take anything because the evidence is so sparse.

The whole study is based on the assumption that evolution is true, and then tries to fit all observations into that narrative. It's backwards science.