The BBC story concluded, "Darwin forecast the transition from land to sea via fresh water in his seminal work On the Origin of Species, published 150 years ago this year." Darwin's predictions are still unfulfilled. According to Benton, "It is hard to imagine how [great blue whales and dolphins] evolved from terrestrial mammal ancestors, and yet that is what happened." Paleontologist Edwin Colbert stated what creationists have been saying for decades--whales have always been uniquely designed ("adapted") as whales and appear abruptly in the fossil record.Benton's full quote reads, "Looking at a great blue whale...or a fast-swimming dolphin, it is hard to imagine how they evolved from terrestrial mammal ancestors, and yet that is what happened." He's not saying that in the face of all the evidence it's still hard to imagine, as Sherwin implies; he's saying that the relationship isn't apparent to the casual observer.
And by using the same tense for Colbert's quote as for the rest of the article, Sherwin would like us to believe the BBC story contained the quote. In fact, Colbert's quote is from a book written in 1955, well before the major discoveries in the sequence of whale evolution.
I read both, and it’s clear you are making a distinction without a difference.
heh I would have bet the ranch that if I looked up the Edwin Colbert quote that I’d find that it was either terribly out of context, or from half a century ago (or both).
One wonders why quoting from a book written fifty-four years ago would be necessary. Perhaps a clue might be found here.
A sample:
Until fairly recently, the fossil history of the earliest whales (known as Cetaceans) was quite unknown. Edwin Colbert pointed out in 1955, "These mammals must have had an ancient origin, for no intermediate forms are apparent in the fossil record between the whales and the ancestral Cretaceous placentals. Like the bats, the whales (using the term in a general and inclusive sense) appear suddenly in early Tertiary times, fully adapted by profound modifications of the basic mammalian structure for a highly specialized mode of life." (Colbert, 1955, p. 303) The oldest whales then known, the Archaeocetes, already exhibited all of the typical whale characteristics, including lack of rear limbs, paddle-like front limbs, and a tail with a horizontal fluke for propulsion. The teeth of the Archaeocetes, however, very closely resembled an ancient group of carnivores called Mesonychids, which were wolf-sized scavengers that lived in the early Eocene period. Based on these similarities, most paleontologists hypothesized that the whales were the evolutionary descendents of the terrestrial Mesonychid carnivores.The first hint that they were probably right came in 1983, when researcher Phil Gingerich found a 52-million year old skull in shallow deposits in Pakistan. Although fragmentary, the skull had teeth that were nearly identical with those of Mesonychids and the Archaeocetes. The configuration of the bones at the rear of the skull, however, were different from those in the Mesonychids, and were identical to that of the Archaeocetes. Gingerich thus concluded that the animal, which he named Pakicetus, was a very primitive whale. "In time and in its morphology," Gingerich reported, "Pakicetus is perfectly intermediate, a missing link between earlier land mammals and later, full-fledged whales." (Gingerich, The Whales of Tethys, Natural History, April 1994, p. 86)
... and ...
The most recent discovery in cetacean evolution has also been the most spectacular. In January 1994, Hans Thewissen announced the discovery of several 49 million year old Archaeocete skeletons, the most complete one consisting of parts of the skull and jaw, a number of vertebrae, some ribs and nearly complete front and hind limbs. The large limb bones were fully capable of supporting the animal's weight on land, and were also capable of paddling it through the water using an up-and-down motion of the spine (although it lacked the loose sacral bones found in the Zhou skeleton). Thewissen named the animal Ambulocetus natans ("the swimming whale that walks"). In morphology and in timing, it is a perfect intermediary between the Mesochynids and the younger Archaeocetes.
Quite an interesting article.