In my post on the oviraptisaurian I had mentioned that I was starting to feel sorry for the creationists. At least one of the people commenting on that post thought I was being silly. Well, it's happening again. Philip Gingerich (who has also done some good work on early primate origins, oh, and he is NOT related to Newt)and his team have uncovered a nearly complete Basilosaurus isis. Previously, remains of Basilosaurus had been found (for those of you who are unfamiliar with whales Basilosaurus is one of the first oceangoing species. It still has legs and does not have a blowhole) but none are as complete as the one recently found.
Basilosaurus isis
You can go to
National Geographic News or
Yahoo News for more info. You can also go to
Philip Gingerich's site which has a good overview of whale evolution. It also has some free .pdf's of some of his papers so I'll be checking it out more thouroughly! When I saw the above picture I had this mental image of Phillip Johnson lip sinking "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me" in my head - but that could be the medication.
So the proof just keeps piling up on the poor creationists. One step at a time, bit by small bit -which is how science works really, until the evidence becomes overwhelming.
