As I said, all he did was point to another page. He didn't summarize the objection in his note or attempt to answer it. If you consider that addressing the issue, well okay, but most publications I've been associated with wouldn't be satisfied with that.
And the 1996 findings, as far as I can tell, were peer reviewed. (Google is very much my friend.) In an e-mail to Edward Babinski in 2004, Thewissen wrote, "In 1994, we described some vertebrae, most leg bones, but no pelvis. In 1996, we described many more vertebrae, as well as the pelvis." In 1996, Thewissen and two others published "Ambulocetus natans, an Eocene cetacean (Mammalia) from Pakistan" in Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, a peer-reviewed journal. That's as far as I can go, since I don't read German, but it's a good bet that that's where they "described" the pelvis. SIX YEARS before Batten's addendum tries to wave away the evidence.
Not only that, in 2001 National Geographic published a photo of the Ambulocetus skeleton that clearly showed the pelvic girdle--the lower photo in your post. So by 2002, when that addendum was written, there were at least two sources from which Batten could have confirmed the additional bones--if he'd actually been interested in finding all the facts, that is, rather than just enough for his purposes.
All this material has been available to AiG since 2004, courtesy of Edward Babinski. And yet so far, they've done nothing about it. How about that.
Well, then what is this all about?
Journal of Vertebrate PaleontologyArticle: pp. 405–422 | Abstract | PDF (2.24M) Additional holotype remains of Ambulocetus natans (Cetacea, Ambulocetidae), and their implications for locomotion in early whalesA. Department of Biology, Hiram College, Hiram, Ohio 44234, E-mail: madarsi@hiram.edu, B. Department of Anatomy, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, 4209 State Route 44, Rootstown, Ohio 44272, E-mail: thewisse@neoucom.edu, C. Department of Anatomy, Howard University, 520 W Street, Washington, D.C. 20059 Continued excavation at the type locality of Ambulocetus natans led to the recovery of a majority of the axial skeleton of the holotype of this early Eocene cetacean, including both innominates, the sacrum, and most of the thoracic cage and thoracolumbar vertebral column. Additional appendicular, caudal, and cranial materials were also recovered, resulting in a specimen that is now approximately 80 percent complete. This new material allows refined interpretations of its functional morphology. Ambulocetus has a longer thoracolumbar column than that reported for later remingtonocetid and protocetid genera, suggesting that previous estimates of spinal length derived from models of mesonychid ancestry may be inaccurate. Ambulocetus also possesses a co-ossified ecto–mesocuneiform, a character found in some early and middle Eocene artiodactyls, but not mesonychids. New postcranial material provides further evidence of a systemic shift to aquatic locomotion. Received: October 6, 2000; Accepted: June 16, 2001 DOI: 10.1671/0272-4634(2002)022[0405:AHROAN]2.0.CO;2 |