* Rebutting the Canonical Whale Evolution Story: [Updated Dec. 11, 2019] Real Science Radio host Bob Enyart begins a comprehensive series of interviews with filmmaker Carl Werner. Dr. Werner's videotaped interviews with the discoverers of the "walking whales" have caused museums around the world to change their fossil exhibits. Dr. Werner reports on one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of science. For the imagined whale-like features of creatures like Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, and Rodhocetus, one by one, are being falsified. Their "whale features" are being withdrawn by "whale evolution experts" and even by the discoverers. Two guys, from the same office, working just feet apart from each other, a teacher and his graduate student, Philip Gingerich and his student Hans Thewissen, were responsible for most of the now-failing whale story.
* RSR's List of Whale Evolution Problems: For the list itself, see below.
* Filmmaker's Bombshell Report -- Forged Whale Fossils: Dr. Werner interviewed the scientists who supplied the primary whale evolution "fossils" to the world's leading museums including the Smithsonian, Carnegie, American Museum of Natural History, NHM of London, NMNS of Tokyo, Melbourne Museum, Canadian Museum of Nature, and the NHM of Paris. Gingerich now admits that Rodhocetus had no flippers and no fluked tail (and certainly no blowhole), so what millions of evolutionists believe regarding whale fossils is based on fabricated, and fully falsified, misinformation. Hear it, read the full press release, and see it for yourself below (rather than accepting the widespread Darwinist misinformation like about Rodhocetus from princeton.edu).
* Today’s Resource: You'll just love Carl Werner's Evolution: The Grand Experiment DVD and his Living Fossils DVD! Want something else? Just browse the Science Department in the KGOV store for the best of the best in creation books, debates, and videos, or just call us at 1-800-8Enyart (836-9278).
* See this Gingerich Rodhocetus excerpt from Grand Experiment: The teacher and the student. First see this two-minute excerpt with Werner's interview with Rodhocetus discoverer Dr. Phillip Gingerich and then see the brief excerpt with Gingerich's pupil Dr. Hans Thewissen.
And now Thewissen:
* Whales are "Best" Fossil Evidence for Evolution: The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History's Curator Emeritus, the American Naturalist, the Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, a Univ. of London Paleontologist, etc. are among the many evolutionists presenting whales as the best fossil evidence for Darwinian evolution. (Click for quotes & references.) Richard Dawkins says that "one of the best examples" of intermediate fossils "is whales."
* RSR's List of Whale Evolution Problems: In the tradition of the beloved RSR List Shows, we hope the following will be helpful to you as a comprehensive yet succinct resource. (For the documentation, see Dr. Werner's videos and books and please email Bob@rsr.org your suggestions for other items to include.):
- Whales and bats share unique DNA sequences in 200 genes yet without a similar common ancestor
- The evolutionary tree based on the gene Prestin shows bats and whales "together rather than with their... evolutionary cousins"
- Ten thousand paleontologists over 150 years failed to discover whale transitions
- Two guys in a few decades discovered Ambulocetus, Rodhocetus, Pakicetus, Sinonyx and more (see below)
- The teacher Dr. Philip Gingerich became famous for discovering Rodhocetus, Pakicetus, and other whale transitions
- The student of Gingerich, Dr. Hans Thewissen, became famous for discovering Ambulocetus
- Without limb or tail bones to justify his imagination, Gingerich drew flippers and a fluked tail onto Rodhocetus
- San Diego State's whale evolution expert Dr. Berta: "Rodhocetus [used] its fluked tail for propulsion through water..."
- Gingerich admits on film to Dr. Carl Werner that additional fossils show Rodhocetus had four legs
- Lacking evidence and left with only contrary evidence, Gingerich now believes that Rodhocetus did not have a fluked tail
- Major museums begin to pull the famed Rodhocetus from their whale evolution displays
- Werner-aware articles like at Wikipedia either omit Rodhocetus or downgrade it to just one of the Protocetids
- Smaller-staffed sites like Francis Collins' BioLogos continue to showcase the completely misconstrued Rodhocetus
- Gingerich reconstructed a Pakicetus skull from fragments but now admits there was no indication of a blowhole
- After more bones were excavated, Pakicetus became a land animal but still kept its place as a whale transitional form
- Listing nine whale features, Thewissen, et al. conclude in Nature, "Pakicetids display none of these [whale] features"
- Since Gingerich and Thewissen, whales are now widely claimed to be the best fossil evidence for Darwinian evolution
- Real Science Radio often hears evolutionists, like AronRa, use Rodhocetus and Pakicetus as evidence for evolution
- Berkeley's Whale Evolution article says: "These first whales, such as Pakicetus, were typical land animals."
- Leading evolutionists focusing on teeth, ear bones, ankles, mouth, or genes thus argue for a different land ancestor
- Since 1998, leading institutions argue whether whales evolved from animals like hyenas, cats, deer, wolves, or hippos
- Darwin focused on the wide-open mouth and predator behavior to claim that whales evolved from bears
- Dr. Gingerich explains that what "is similar between hoofed hyenas and the archaic whales are the teeth."
- Tokyo Institute of Sciences focused on genome similarity and concludes that whales evolved from a hippo-like species
- The whale evolution saga pits geneticists against anatomists against paleontologists
Evolutionists change their selection of what evidence they use to show 'lineage', from DNA to fossils to genes to body plans to teeth to many specific anatomical features to proteins to behavior to developmental similarities to habitat to RNA, etc. and to a combination of such. Darwinism is an entire endeavor based on selection bias, a kind of logical fallacy. By anti-science they arbitrarily select evidence that best matches whichever evolutionary story is currently preferred." - rsr.org/selection-bias
Evolutionists change their selection of what evidence they use to show 'lineage', from DNA to fossils to genes to body plans to teeth to many specific anatomical features to proteins to behavior to developmental similarities to habitat to RNA, etc. and to a combination of such. Darwinism is an entire endeavor based on selection bias, a kind of logical fallacy. By anti-science they arbitrarily select evidence that best matches whichever evolutionary story is currently preferred." - - Neo-Darwinism claims that evolution happens in the genes, yet unlike whales, hippos have plant-eating teeth
- Geneticist claims whales evolved from hippos but paleontologists say hippos evolved tens of millions of years too late
- Howard University's whale fossil expert Prof. Daryl Domning: "this is nonsense... Hippos were very late on the scene"
- The hippo/whale jam is one part of a system-wide pattern called Evolution's Big Squeeze
- The water-deposited geologic column's flood-sorted fossils reveal no hippo bones lower than whale bones
- If today's neo-Darwinian paradigm were true, then hippo gene similarity leaves zero fossil evidence for whale evolution
- Gingerich's "problem" with hippos is that "they are all plant eaters; [but] whales today are all carnivores."
- Science: "the teeth of... mesonychids, such resemblance is sometimes overstated and... represents ... convergence"
- Though whales are among the "best" fossil evidence for evolution, experts disagree even on their land ancestor
- Thewissen reconstructed Ambulocetus' skull with a blowhole where no skull fragments existed to justify it
- The world's leading museums display a full Ambulocetus skull as though it had been found, including with a blowhole
- Smithsonian and other Darwinist artists added tiny ears reminiscent of whales without fossil evidence to support them
- Whale eyes typically line up with the upper teeth so Gingerich doubts Ambulocetus because its eyes are atop its head
- Thewissen admits in Werner's film that a major claim for Ambulocetus, a "sigmoid process" ear bone, is questionable
- Whale evolution believer and expert Dr. Berta regarding Ambulocetus refers to its "purported whale characters"
- The "sigmoid process" is "questionable" and only "purported" because it doesn't look like that diagnostic whale trait
- The other "purported" Ambulocetus "whale" features are consistent with land animals but not with whale features
- Gingerich found Rodhocetus, Pakicetus, Synonyx and also Maiacetus ("mother whale") and Artiocetus!
- So the dynamic duo found Rodhocetus, Ambulocetus, Pakicetus, Synonyx, Maiacetus, Artiocetus, and __________?
- The whale evolution cottage industry is run like a family business with proprietors who cannot be trusted
- The evolutionary lineage of the previously-believed-extinct pygmy whale is whatever researchers want it to be
- Dr. Jerry Bergman presents anatomical evidence against the claimed whale vestiges of leg and pelvic bones
- Timewise, whale "evolution" is being crushed in the industry-wide "big squeeze" as fossil finds continue to compress any time available for evolution. To not violate its own plot, the Darwinist story doesn't start animals evolving back into the sea until the cast includes land animals suitable to undertake the legendary journey. The recent excavation of whale fossils on an island of the Antarctic Peninsula further compresses the already absurdly fast 10 million years to allegedly evolve from the land back to the sea, down to as little as one million years, by this assessment based on various techniques that produced various published dates in 2016.
- More to come in 2020 (and feel free to send suggestions to Bob@rsr.org)
While maintaining his evolutionary political correctness, Wayne Carley, the president of the Nat'l Association of Biology Teachers nonetheless observed, "The very day I viewed the segment “Great Transformations," wherein P. D. Gingerich firmly stated that whales evolved from wolf-like carnivores, he and several colleagues published a paper in Science (293: 2239) showing that, in fact, whales evolved from ancestral artiodactyls." P.C. aside though, 100,000 U.S. professors think intelligent design is a significant scientific alternative to Darwinism, half-a-million U.S. medical doctors say that God brought about humans, and 30,000 U.S. public high school biology teachers do not endorse Darwinism in class.
Credit: "Just as we credit RSR's List of Fresh Fossils and our rsr.org/dino-tissue#supplement to Brian Thomas over at the Institute for Creation Research, so too we credit Dr. Carl Werner for his startling exposé of the fraudulent whale transitional fossils that enabled us to produce this latest RSR List. Thank you Brian and thank you Carl!" - Bob Enyart & Fred Williams
* RSR's Whale and Werner Resources:
- Whale Month at RSR (this show) and Pt. 2, Pt. 3, & Pt. 4
- RSR's List of Problems with the Evolution of Echolocation
- RSR's List of Genomes that Just Don't Fit (e.g. bats & whales share uninherited sequences)
- What Museums Aren't Showing You
- Rodhocetus: Whale of a Tail (and related: RSR "hip bones and fetal teeth" show)
- Dr. Carl Werner and the Living Fossils
- Many Modern Birds Found in Dinosaur Layers
- A creatard slayer rsr.org/foxlake02 with Bob about the Ambulocetus video
- Breaking News: Leading Whale Fossils Faked (an earlier show)
* Calling on a Young Evolutionist at DU to Retract Whale Claim: At the University of Denver recent biology graduate Travis Barlock debated Worldview Academy founder Bill Jack. After the debate Bob asked Travis about his favorite transitional fossils example: whale evolution, whether he was aware that the discoverer of Rodhocetus has now recanted that the creature had flippers and a fluked tail? Barlock said he was unaware of that development and that if and when he confirmed this, he would of course stop using Rodhocetus as a favorite example of evidence for evolution. We are now calling on Barlock to retract his Rodhoectus claim.
* The Partial Fossil -- A Favorite of the Evolutionist: As illustrated above by the transitional whales fiasco, Dr. Werner points out that frequently, the evolutionist's favorite transitional form is the partial fossil, surpassed in favor only by the completely missing and utterly silent fossil. For then, the Darwinist can imagine that the missing parts conform to his story. As another example of this, theistic evolution advocate Denis Lamoureux cites Acanthodians, supposedly the shark’s evolutionary ancestor. But in a 2011 John Hopkin's University Press text, The Rise of the Fossil Fishes, one expert noted that "Acanthodians remain as one of the most enigmatic of all ancient fish groups, about which we have the least amount of anatomical knowledge", as quoted by Brian Thomas.
* On Quantifying Modifcations from Land to Marine: In this short video Dr. David Berlinski observes the remarkable disinterest of evolutionists in developing a ballpark number for how many genetic changes might be required (if indeed it were possible at all by such a mechanism) to go from a land-dwelling organism to a whale...
* London's Natural History Museum Never Heard of rsr.org/whales: Apparently. Even as of December 2019!
* Life Began in the Sea? But Water is the Enemy: Remember what NASA's senior astrobiologist Dr. Mary Voytek admitted in Darmstadt Germany on July 17, 2018 when answering our Real Science Radio question.
“Dr. Voytek, rather than an asset, isn’t water the enemy of prebiotic molecules? It’s the universal solvent and outside of a living organism, water dissolves life’s building blocks like amino acids, sugars like RNA and DNA, various kinds of carbohydrates, and other polymers. Shouldn’t this chemical challenge be more openly acknowledged in astrobiology?”
You can hear Dr. Voytek in the online proceedings of the conference (and at RSR) admit that in their prebiotic chemistry research they need to "dehydrate" specimens for the experiments to proceed. So the whale evolution story that life began in the sea, evolved onto land, and then went back into the sea is in error from the start.