valley of the whales

most highly recommended reading from the august 2010 national geographic, or a web link: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/08/whale-evolution/mueller-text/2. (i prefer the magazine. there is something special about print and photos that you can hold in your hands.)


to too briefly summarize, the prehistoric tethys ocean is now the sahara desert---now the desert has the remains of a 50 million year string of creatures.

here evidence is presented blood evidence suggesting that whales and their ancestors descended from the mammalian order that includes pigs, deer, camel, and other even toes ungulates. ankle bones and knee bones of ancient whales have been found in the area.
thoughts are that the whale descended from a raccoon sized aquatic member of the deer family.

Thanks in large part to Philip Gingerich, the fossil record of whales now offers one of the most stunning demonstrations of Darwinian evolution rather than a refutation of it. Ironically, Gingerich himself grew up in a strictly principled Christian environment, in a family of Amish Mennonites in eastern Iowa. (His grandfather was a farmer and lay preacher.) Yet at the time, he felt no clash between faith and science. "My grandfather had an open mind about the age of the Earth," he says, "and never mentioned evolution. Remember, these were people of great humility, who only expressed an opinion on something when they knew a lot about it."

Gingerich is still baffled by the conflict that many people feel between religion and science. On my last night in Wadi Hitan, we walked a little distance from camp under a dome of brilliant stars. "I guess I've never been particularly devout," he said. "But I consider my work to be very spiritual. Just imagining those whales swimming around here, how they lived and died, how the world has changed—all this puts you in touch with something much bigger than yourself, your community, or your everyday existence." He spread his arms, taking in the dark horizon and the desert with its sandstone wind sculptures and its countless silent whales. "There's room here for all the religion you could possibly want." 

Thirty-seven million years ago,

in the waters of the prehistoric Tethys ocean, a sinuous, 50-foot-long beast with gaping jaws and jagged teeth died and sank to the seafloor."