Read the 1983 article and you'll know the answer to that one.

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I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then

Does this look like a rodent to you? First off, it ain't a whale, but an ancestor of a whale. Second off, you are arguing from incredulity:"I don't think it looks like a whale ancestor therefore it isn't."This message has been edited by Yaro, 12-01-2005 06:02 PM

It might seem ludicrous to someone who has yet to look at all the pictures of skulls and skeletons that have been posted on this thread. Or to someone who hasn't read the papers linked on this thread. But, even to amateurs like me that have looked at these things, it's pretty damned obvious that it was an ancestral whale. Go back and look, and read Gingerich and Thewissen's papers.

I agree that it isn't a whale, but it's interesting that you have claimed the opposite at other times and insisted it was a whale.Which is it? A whale or not a whale.Regardless, Thiwessen calls it "the first whale", which is in my opinion, another gross overstatement.Are you now changing your stance and admitting he should not call the following "the first whale" or even "a whale"?

So you think this is a whale? Yaro now says it isn't a whale, just ancestral. Which is it?

context rantman, context.The way your are using is as if to say: "It's not a whale, where are it's flippers!" Which is a stupid statement. Your entire possition is based on your assumptions of what a whale ancestor should look like. Thiwessen's statement is in the context of whale ancesteries. He is making the statement for effect, because in essense it is "the first whale", it's the first find in a long chain of creatures that leads up to whales. Get it?

I've got this terrible feeling of deja lu, haven't we had this exact same discussion already in a previous thread.TTFN,WK

Here's the difference between you guys and me. I feel that the goal in science education should be education. So when presenting material and data to students and the public via teaching materials, the last thing you would do is include questionable assertations, overstatements, exagerrations, etc,...
The goal is not to get students to believe in a theory, but to develop the mental ability to objectively assess data and claims for themselves. So you should present all data in that light. If ou are to err, it should be on the side of not making any claim because, once again, you are trying to teach students not to try to leap at conclusions but how to view data in a scientific fashion.You would never then, if the goal is science education, suggest Pakicetus could have had webbed feet, and more likely, you would avoid making any claims at all if all you had were the skull of one animal.You evos, it seems to me, take a different stance. It seems the goal is not education, but indoctrination. You want to convince people that a theory is true, and so it's not a big deal if erreneous claims are taught because, well, the goal is not to teach students how to view data with a sober assessment, think for themselves, etc,...but the goal is to get them to understand and believe in your theory. So you say, well, even if not entirely accurate, it's USEFUL.But it's not useful at all if you are trying to educate. In fact, it's completely wrong. It sends the wrong message, and moreover it passes off falsehoods as reasonable.So the way I see this discussion is that we view the wrong claims differently because I believe in education whereas you guys think indoctrination is an acceptable means of educating minds.

randy, i'm getting tired of look at those pics. we've seen them, ok? but i want you to take another good long look at two of them right next to each other. this is the difference you're making a big deal out of. does everyone else see this? the difference is that it's swimming -- you don't even care about the length of the legs and tail, do you? you just care that it's swimming. or could it be that

THEY FOUND THE REST OF THE SKELETON?

use some common sense here, randman. one is attached to article based on the skull, the other is attached to an article based newlyfound more complete skeleton. i sincerely doubt the nature article was written by a creationist -- because that's where the revision comes from.as for the first picture, from 1983, even gingrich himself says it's wrong, on his website.

quote:

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Figure 13. Artists' restorations of Pakicetus inachus (left) and Rodhocetus balochistanensis (right), as featured on the cover of Science. These accompanied articles by Gingerich et al. (1983) and Gingerich et al. (2001). The Pakicetus cover was painted by Karen Klitz of the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology (now at U. C. Berkeley), and the Rodhocetus cover was drawn by John Klausmeyer of the University of Michigan Exhibit Museum. Based on what we know today, these animals were probably less different than shown here, and the hands and feet reconstructed for Pakicetus probably looked more like those now known for Rodhocetus. Covers ©American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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you see that? the author himself comments that the picture is innaccurate. but that's still not where your beef is. you beef is that it's the water at all, isn't it? your beef is that it's related to whales.why not just come out and say it: you don't want to believe that pakicetus is related to whales. randman, it's a whale with legs.your desire for transitionals to no exist is so strong that its completely blinded you to the obvious. take a look at the skulls of the whale, the dog, and pakicetus back on page one, and tell me it doesn't look a lot more like the whale.

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and it's already been admitted that they were in error -- why you are continuing to argue, i dunno. what is it you're TRYING to get at? a giant evo conspiracy?the picture was wrong. the author himself commented on. it was corrected and updated. welcome to the scientific process. and for godssake,

it's just a drawing

you're try to nail the entire theory of evolution based on the painting of someone who probably doesn't even study paleontology. the picture made a few things up -- so it must not be a transitional species, so evolution must be a lie. how many logical fallacies in a row is that? your argument in the op was that, essentially, pakicetus being presented with webbed feet was a lie. if it wasn't a lie because it's plausible, then that's a rebuttal to your point -- rebuttals are NOT off topic, no matter how much you want them to be.you're concerned with a percieved innaccuracy in the drawings -- if that innaccuracy is not actually wrong then your point does not stand. no, randman. paintings are not evidence for evolution. i'm sorry, they justy aren't. they're paintings.in your favored depiction, tell me, how do we know it had external ears? whiskers? fur? that specific kind of nose? how do we know hos much body fat it had?you don't seem to get yet that this stuff doesn't really matter. the evidence for it being a transitional whale is in the bones, not the paint. it has bones like a whale's bones, but in a more terrestrial form. and the fact the bones DO indicate partial adaptation to an aquatic lifestyles -- webbed feet are plausible.you still didn't answer my multiple choice question. which of the five skeletons i posted has webbed feet?

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Because it shows a semi-aquatic\terrestrial animal surface diving to catch fish?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

i'm sorry you can't follow more complex trains of thought. but the evidence that evo's present, in pictorial form, are the pictures i posted -- technical drawings and skilled reconstructions. findings made by paleontolgists are based on evidence -- and artistic interpretations are based loosely on those findings (not usually the research).there is a disconnect here between paleontologist and painter. the painter is not representing the views and findings of evolution, just a basic and sometimes faulty understanding of it.paintings are not evidence for what paleontologists (evolutionists) are presenting, they are evidence of what an artist hired by a magazine gathered by reading the article. i'm not good with subtle. yes, that's fine. take a good look at the pictures i posted from gingrich's actual study. do you understand a word of the captions, and what they mean?do you think the public would?do you think the artist who painted the picture on the cover would? the horse goes in front of the cart, randman. most people understand the take that sort of thing with a grain of salt. i can't imagine the lack of logical skills it would require to read "know only from a skull" as "look what we can tell from a skull" instead of "this is our best guess." serious lack of common sense -- i'm sorry that national geographic requires doesn't condescend to the lowest common denominator. no, randman, as anyone who read "known only from a skull" would have figured had they any common sense. no, randman, read the article again. from the skull we knew that it had aquatic features. from the full skeleton, we still know that. said the pot to the kettle. you've dodged every blindingly obvious point anyone's made in this thread. you don't want to see it, so you don't. you're content to look at your drawings, and say "aha, evolution was wrong!" you accept the science when it's on your side, but deny it when it's not. you won't even answer my VERY FIRST POST in this thread, where i asked you to compare a pakicetus skull to a whale skull and a dog skull. have you read the article yet? do you understand what skull features indicate an aquatic lifestyle? do you udnerstand what skull features indicate a terrestrial lifestyle? you have nowhere near the understanding of the material required to make a claim -- you look and say "they couldn't possibly tell that from a skull." that's just an argument from incredulity -- if you knew the first thing about paleontology you'd know that we can tell an awful lot about an animal from it's skull alone.

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see the teeth on this guy? they look familiar?now, just so you don't get your panties in a twist over this, i am in no way contending that pakicetus is related to a shark -- it's obviously a mammal and not a fish, and it has more than one kind of tooth.but what i AM contending is that it has teeth shaped like a shark's for a reason: they eat the same thing. indeed, you will even find pakicetus teeth worn in the vertical striations common to shark teeth -- in other words, it's pretty damned certain they ate fish. how do you propose pakicetus caught fish running at high speed on land? and you know he didn't have that how? but you see, pakicetus IS some sort of whale-land mammal hybrid. where do you get this complete feature nonsense? he has a skull with a lot of whale anatomy, but without a whale ear. you expect something that, if given, you would refute as a simple chimera, or better yet, a hoax. you want a complete modern whale skull on a hippo's body.the contention that this what evolution dictates as a transitional species is a pretty common strawman. when we find things with parts identical to other animals, that appears to be cobbled together, we can usually infer that it's fake. evolution, on the other hand, describes a smooth and gradual transition -- forms are not imported wholesale, but gradually change shapes.partial whale features = partial whale. yes, as i pointed out, pakicetus was the animal that overturned that idea. you know, i've been waiting to bring this up for the right moment. here's another strange aquatic mammal:it's got little nails on its flipper, ever notice that? they're not exactly hooves, but they're similar. they're anatomically very similar to these guys:so, uh, how about other semi-hoved animals? like the manatee?

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In my opinion, most of the posters have kept close to the question of "whether the way Pakicetus is presented was right or not." You agreed that was part of the topic in Message 6. Science is tentative, and scientific conclusions are subject to revision, so the meaning of "right" here has to be based on whether the presentation was a reasonable tentative judgement given the available evidence, and on whether the uncertainties were made clear.Apparently you still believe that the presentation was not "right". I took many of the postings by Yaro, arachnophilia and a few others to be attempts to find out what you mean by "right". It has been the topic all along. There have been a few off-topic posts, but their number is smaller than in many threads.

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yes. because it is related to whales -- someone skilled in paleontology or biology would easily recognize that based on its skeletal structure. he was just arguing that it was less aquatice than gingrich said, not that it wasn't a whale.what do you do with a whale that walks, randman? because we have hair, nurse our young, and generate our own warmth. wanna start another thread about this guy?he's in a group largely considered to tbe the origin of mammals -- he has some mammalian jaw anatomy and the start of a mammal's skull, regulates his own body temperature (with that sail), etc. he's still clearly a reptile, though. i don't suspect that your argument is about where we draw the line in naming things. using the fuzzy nature of transitions as evidence for transitions not happening is bad form.it is the first animal with distinctly whale-like features. it's not a modern whale, but it's also not exactly your run of the mill artiodacyl either. what would you rather we call it? "just a big rat?" it's a little more than just a big rat -- actually, it's not a rat, dog, or goat at all (although it's more closely related to the goat than those other two). the anatomy of the skull does support an aquatic lifestyle -- it ate fish, and had eyes positioned at the top of its skull. it was semi-aquatic, at least for hunting purposes. and it is related (nearly ancestral) to modern whales. the drawing? no, the drawing looks like a rat. but its skull looks like a whale skull.let's start from another angle: would agree that basilosaurus here is a whale? This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-01-2005 08:37 PM

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