It was not until 1979 that paleontologists had their rst indisputable

evidence about whale transition. Pakicetus was discovered by Philip

Gingerich in Pakistan. Later, in 1995, Hans Thewissen found
Ambulocetus. Whales with legs are now known from Pakistan, India,
Egypt and the U.S.A.

It took less than 15 million years for the whale lineage to move from land,
through shallow bays and coastal waters, to deep marine environments.
By 40 million years ago whales had become essentially the animals we
know today.

The evolution of whales involved much more than legs becoming ippers
or vestigial organs. The fossil series demonstrates how their breathing
apparatus changed, their ears changed and other body parts changed.

Whales did not turn into sh. Inside every ipper is found the bones of the
mammalian hand. They swim like otters by undulating the mammalian
spine. The tail uke is not a sh n. Evolution works by modifying existing
body plans to t new conditions of life, and is often constrained by
developmental pathways. No longer limited by gravity and strength of
bones, whales could become giants of the sea.

As Stephen Gould concludes, "If you had given me a blank piece of paper
and a blank check, I could not have drawn you a theoretical intermediate
any better or more convincing than Ambulocetus. Those dogmatists who
by verbal trickery can make white black, and black white, will never be
convinced of anything, but Ambulocetus is the very animal that they
proclaimed impossible in theory."
Natural History magazine, May 1994.


Researchers Discover Clues to Whale Evolution

Cetaceans have unique semicircular canals that allow them to be highly
acrobatic swimmers without becoming dizzy. By investigating this organ
in ancient fossils, the researchers found that early whales acquired this
special trait quickly and early on in their evolution. This was a dening
event that likely resulted in their total independence of life on land.

The research paper by Spoor F. et al., Vestibular Evidence for the
Evolution of Aquatic Behaviour in early Cetaceans, Nature 417:163-166
(2002),


Side view of the inner ears of, left to right, a land mammal (bushbaby), a
land-living early whale from Pakistan ( 50-million-year-old Ichthyolestes), a
marine early whale from India (45-million-year-old Indocetus), and a
modern dolphin. The latter two aquatic species have much smaller
semicircular canals than the former two. Image reconstructed from
computed tomography scans, adjusting for body size di#erences
between the animals. Each inner ear would easily t on a penny. [Image
by F. Spoor]