These are the footnotes for some of Dr. Gish's quote mining on the lack of transitional fossils. He's writing in 1994, but he's going as far back as 1955 to show there is no good fossil history of whales. I presume (although even that is not certain) that the quotes are word-for-word accurate, but his use of them is tantamount to lying about the state of the evidence in 1994.
I have already posted information about new finds since 1994. We've learned a lot about the history of whales in the last decade.
Punctated Equilibrium says that rapid species change takes place in "hotbed" areas where isolated populations are under pressure to find a new adaptation. For example, the Rift Valley of East Africa was a hotbed of human evolution.
The hotbed of whale evolution, the place where a line of freshwater aquatic mammals lost their land adaptations and went to sea, was long undiscovered. Certainly, it was completely unknown in 1955 when Colbert lamented that whales appear suddenly and stand quite alone.
The hotbed was along the shores of the Tethys Sea, long gone, but whose sediments remain in the high mountains ringing the Indian subcontinent. Until we looked there, Colbert's lament was true.
This is not unusual. Here's a similar case.
In one small locality, there is a 1.25 meter sedimentary layer where these fossils are found. In the narrow (10cm ) layer that separates the two species, both species are found along with transitional forms.Gish cannot plead ignorance. He is clearly aware of research far later than Colbert's lament. He is certainly aware of more modern models of evolution than his "billions of transitional species" claim. He is in fact being patently, cynically dishonest. He isn't arguing to convince the people with the resources not to be fooled. He's trolling for easy marks.In other localities, no transitional forms are found, and the species are not found together. The "sudden" transition in those rocks is explained as migration from the place where the transitional forms occur.