tyls can only be traced back to the middle or the late Eocene. Such a sequence of appearance of these animals is inconsistent with our molecular data... We believe that recent molecular data will lead to the reinterpretation by palaeontologists of many fossil records of Artiodactyla to match our conclusions. Extensive morphological reversals and convergences, as well as large gaps in the fossil record, will then have to be acknowledged.60
Michel C. Milinkovitch, of the Molecular Biology Department of the University of Brussels, and J.G.M. Thewissen of Northeastern Ohio Medical School, wrote in the same issue of Nature that the Japanese scientists' findings on the origin of the whale conflicted with both morphological and paleontological data, contrary to the claims of the NAS:
The molecular analyses of Shimamura et al.3, reported on page 666 of this issue, further disrupt phylogenetic dogma. Indeed, not only do the authors confirm the close relationship between artiodactyls and cetaceans, but they propose that cetaceans are deeply nested within the phylogenetic tree of the artiodactyls. These results strikingly contradict the common interpretation of the available morphological data (supporting artiodactyl monophyly [common descent]) and, if correct, would make a cow or a hippopotamus more closely related to a dolphin or a whale than to a pig or a camel.61
Furthermore, these scientists acknowledge that this matter is still subject to debate saying:
But the issue is still controversial, because the exact means by which molecular sequence data should be analyzed remains debated.62
Analyses of other molecules have similarly produced contradictory findings. The zoologist John Gatesy states that analyses of sea mammals' blood coagulation protein have presented an evolutionary link between whales and hippopotamuses, but that this conflicts with the paleontological findings.63
As we have seen, the scientists who actually did the research openly state that the molecular comparisons performed in order to discover the origin of the whale conflict with morphological and paleontological findings. The NAS, on the other hand, adopts the opposite point of view, despite that fact that the truth of the matter is well known. It is evident that this is not a question of lack of knowledge, because the NAS claims to be one of the world's foremost scientific institutions. It appears that the NAS is deliberately making groundless claims to convince people with no knowledge of the subject, who have no means of checking the veracity of what they read, or feel no need to, that evolution is true.
We have already examined the invalidity of the evolutionist theses on the subject of the origin of whales in our article "A Whale Fantasy From National Geographic."
(www.harunyahya.com/70national_geographic_sci29.html) As we have explained there in some detail, the thesis that whales evolved from terrestrial mammals is a tale devoid of any scientific foundation. There are considerable morphological differences between the oldest whales and such extinct land mammals as Pakicetus and Ambulocetus, which are suggested as the whale's terrestrial ancestors. On the other hand, the "adaptive processes" proposed by evolutionists for "the evolution of the whale" constitute an unscientific scenario based on Lamarckian reasoning.
Sea mammals possess exceedingly distinct features. To claim that these creatures underwent the dozens of different adaptations necessary for the transition from land to sea as the result of morphological deformities brought about by random mutations is itself a major problem for the theory of evolution. The theory is quite unable to explain how such a transition might have come about. In 1982, the evolutionist science writer Francis Hitching said this on the subject:
The problem for Darwinians is in trying to find an explanation for the immense number of adaptations and mutations needed to change a small and primitive earthbound mammal, living alongside and dominated by dinosaurs, into a huge animal with a body uniquely shaped so as to be ab