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tom_e_boi wrote: HaHa, okay... if you say so. I'm not out to convince anybody that I'm right or that they're wrong.

Neither am I. I am merely pointing out that the categorization of these facts regarding dolphins can certainly be viewed as circumstantial evidence that backs up the theory of evolution as the origin of all species on earth, but it is not proof. Just as many can view the complexity of nature and its multiple symbiotic systems as being circumstantial evidence of Intelligent Design. If either were proven beyond any doubt, then there wouldn't be so much debate, even among scientists. Each of us view the data with our own bias, even scientists. The dolphin thing doesn't fit the preconceived categories as decreed by many humans, therefore evolution must be true, is a leap of faith. It could just mean that certain species, dolphins among them, were created with the ability to form what would appear, by our categorizations, to make its own species. To conclude then, that all life originated from a similar chain, may be a logical leap, but it is still a leap. It is also a leap to conclude that because dolphins have lungs and give live birth, that it proves that they evolved from the land.

And though the article gives some details as to how the scientists draw this conclusion, we are left to accepting their interpretation and understanding of the DNA of these dolphins. I'm not fully convinced that scientists have DNA completely figured out. there is certainly room for some assumptions in their interpretation of that data.

Again, my beef is not with other people believing whatever they want, nor is it with the idea that this can be categorized as a new species of dolphin. My beef is with the conclusion that this is more than circumstantial evidence about the origins of life.

Yes, because oh... let's see... giving whales vestigial hind leg bones that have no function is "intelligent design." Anyways, that's all I'm going to say.

Wow. I'd say based on the cartoon drawing and the term "vestigial", this alone proves that we evolved from amoebas. Just as scientists in the first half of the 1900s considered many of our glands to be vestigial, (and....wait for it.....those scientists were WRONG!), today's scientists do not have everything figured out the way academia would have us believe. Strong circumstantial evidence, perhaps, but since whales are bucking the trend and getting back to the ocean, we might ask, "Why would a large land creature evolve back into the harsh ocean, when most other creatures apparently found it much more suitable to head to land?" Evolutionists are left to speculate on that one, too. Who knows, maybe the whale is actually trying to get back out of the ocean, and it's starting to grow legs. Or maybe it's evolving a propeller. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most haven't entertained a creationist's response. Others have already tackled this subject, so I'm going to save myself a day of typing and copy on of their responses:

" The ninth in Miller’s countdown is ‘hind leg bones in whales’. Mr. Miller begins his review of this alleged vestigial structure with the ‘just so’ story of vertebrate evolution. He describes the story of how fish might have become the first land lovers by developing hips and legs and walking out of the water. Then, for no particular reason I can understand, Mr. Miller tells us that this evidently fickle process of evolution caused these one time ‘refugees from the ocean’ to go back into the water. By this process, we are told aquatic mammals allegedly came into existence. Then “despite their apparent uselessness, evolution left traces of hind legs behind, and these vestigial limbs can be seen in the modern whale” (Miller 2009).

While the proponents of Darwinian evolution hold up the fossil evidence for whale evolution as one of the best examples of Darwin’s theory in the fossil record, the reality is far different from the hype. It is good to keep in mind that most paleontologists believe that a single-celled organism evolved from inorganic matter and continued to evolve into virtually every living organism that lives today, ever has lived in the past, or ever will in the future live on planet Earth. There is real debate, even among the evolutionary faithful, concerning whale evolution.

Dr. Carl Werner is a medical physician and the author of Evolution: The Grand Experiment. In this book, Dr. Werner interviews many of the leaders in the field of paleontology seeking real answers to the questions concerning evolution. In the chapter devoted to the fossil record of whales, Dr. Werner personally interviews several leaders in the field of whale evolution and discovers that the alleged ancestry of whales is not as unanimous as the evolutionary faithful might want us to think. There are some glaring problems with the evolution of whales, not the least of which is the fact that all whales are carnivores. Even the large filter-feeding baleen whales eat small crustacean animals called krill. Evolution scientists have chosen meat-eating land mammals such as the cat-like Sinonyx or the hyena-like Pachyaena, as the land animal precursor of whales, because of the similarities of the meat-eating teeth when compared to teeth of the oldest fossil whales (Werner 2007).

Even though a comparison of teeth is often used to trace evolutionary ancestry, in recent times DNA has been used to search for links in the phylogenetic history of living organisms. This was the case in Tokyo when researchers at the Tokyo Institute found evidence that hippopotamus DNA is the closest match to the DNA of whales when compared to all other mammal groups (Werner 2007).

But what of those alleged remnants of hips in whales? Dr. Jonathan Safarti echoes the opinions of his fellow creationists, Bergman and Howe, when he explains that many evolutionists support whale evolution by alleging that there are vestigial hind legs buried in their flesh. However, these so-called ‘remnants’ are not useless at all, but help strengthen the reproductive organs — the bones are different in males and females. So they are best explained by creation, not evolution (Safarti 1999).

There continues to be a myth that some whales have been discovered with hind legs complete with thigh and knee muscles. Dr. Carl Wieland spent much time and effort tracking down this evolutionary ‘urban legend’. In his article entitled “The Strange Tale of the Leg on the Whale,” Dr. Wieland traced the origin of this myth to a book by Dr. R. Baker in which Dr. Baker writes:

‘And every once in a while a modern whale is hauled in with a hind leg, complete with thigh and knee muscles, sticking out of its side. These atavistic hind legs are nothing less than throwbacks to a totally pre-whale stage of their existence, some fifty million years ago.’ (Baker 1986)

In an effort to document Dr. Baker’s source, Dr. Carl Wieland arranged for a colleague to contact Dr. Baker and track down the source for the statement concerning the whale-leg appendage. Dr. Baker indicated that the source for this was Everhard Johannes Slijper (1907–1968). Slijper was professor of general zoology at Amsterdam University, Netherlands and he was the world’s leading authority on whales. In chapter 2 of his classic work is entitled Evolution and External Appearance, he talks about a bone in whales that he calls the ‘pelvic bone’, which is some 30 centimeters (12 inches) long, “but unlike the pelvis of normal mammals, it is not attached to the vertebral column.” This bone serves as an anchorage for the male reproductive organs. Slijper goes on to say that sometimes “another small bone may be attached to it.” Being an evolutionist, he naturally interprets this smaller piece of bone as a throw-back to the femur, or thigh bone, of the whale’s evolutionary ancestor. However, he states that in these occasional cases, the bone in question is generally 2.5 cm (just over an inch) in length, and that it is sometimes ‘fused’ with the pelvic bone (Wieland 1998).

The attempt to further track down the alleged whale with a “hind leg, complete with thigh and knee muscles, sticking out of its side,” brought Dr. Wieland to write: “the closest thing to the claim which launched our pursuit of this whole trail is where Slijper states, ‘Thus, at Ayukawa Whaling Station (Japan), a Sperm Whale was brought in 1956, with a 5-inch tibia projecting into a 5½-inch “bump,” and a Russian factory ship in the Bering Sea had a similar experience in 1959.’ No photo is provided.”

Ignoring – for the moment – the purely anecdotal nature of the evidence, what is it that is being claimed? Sperm whales are massive — up to about 19m (62 feet) long. A 14 cm (5.5 inch) ‘bump’ on its side would look like an almost unnoticeable pimple. Inside the bump is a piece of bone, some 12.5 cm (5 inches) ‘long’. There is no evidence given of anything which could reasonably be called a ‘leg’. Slijper calls the bone inside the ‘bump’ a ‘tibia’. But we have already seen that it doesn’t take much for evolutionary believers to label abnormal pieces of bone in ways to fit their naturalistic religion (Wieland 1998).

So the search for photographic evidence of an atavistic leg, dangling uselessly from the underbelly of a whale, ends in failure. The reason such myths find a home in Darwinian theory, is due to the fact that ‘just so’ stories rarely provide any substantive evidence. Whether it the atavistic leg in whales or the prehensile tails in neonates, looks can indeed be deceiving, especially if the entire theory is based upon a faulty premise."