Whales did (NOT) evolve

[Ashwin_s]

@Lynn_Munter

Don’t dismiss quite so hastily; it can still be an intermediate form without being a direct ancestor, even if it dates to after a point of divergence. How? Because of punctuated equilibrium, we know sometimes a population changes relatively fast and sometimes hardly seems to change at all. A fossil might represent a later generation of a common ancestor, without having changed much from what we would expect that common ancestor to look like, so in that sense they can be extremely useful to study.

Hi Lynn,
this is a very interesting comment. If I remember correctly, rapid evolution in the punctuated equilibrium scenario usually involves bottlenecks and isolation of species… Allowing mutations to take hold and speciation to occur.
For a whale to appear 49mya and intermediate species to still be alive and kicking at say 45mya is a rather unexpected phenomenon.
Besides , if we are speculating. Why not speculate the other way? That whales existed 60mya and just left fossils after 10my?
I think a distant cousin is more feasible.

@Lynn_Munter

Additionally, have you ever looked at a really thorough family tree? Most of what you’ll find on it is actually cousins, assuming they haven’t been edited out.

I agree with you here on the facts. It’s true that it’s very difficult to tell whether features were lost or are even examples of “convergent evolution”. My only complaint is that this kind of situation leaves a lot of room for making up stories and cherry picking facts.
There is so much room not just in family trees, but also in dating methods that “fitting” data to a narrative becomes very easy as well as tempting.