Associated Press – November 04, 2006:

Japanese researchers said Sunday that a bottlenose dolphin captured last month has an extra set of fins that could be the remains of back legs, a discovery that may provide further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land.

Fossil remains show dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and share the same common ancestor as hippos and deer. Scientists believe they later transitioned to an aquatic lifestyle and their hind limbs disappeared.

Though odd-shaped protrusions have been found near the tails of dolphins and whales captured in the past, researchers say this was the first time one had been found with well-developed, symmetrical fins, Hayashi said.

“I believe the fins may be remains from the time when dolphins’ ancient ancestors lived on land … this is an unprecedented discovery,”



  1. Angel H. Wong says:

    *crosses fingers in hopes to find a mutant bear with two penises*

  2. James Hill says:

    You liberals are so cute. The evolution talking points ran over the dirty ocean talking points and no one even noticed.

  3. Smartalix says:

    3, 21, 27,

    This may be a pollution-induced deformity, but it is a telling one. Some deformities are caused when extra genes are “turned on” by pollutants. However, the type of deformity can tell you what genes are triggered.

    Sometimes the zygote splits poorly, and portions of the cell get twinned while others do not. Sometimes you get a four-legged chicken and sometimes you get a two-headed snake.

    Sometimes “dormant” genes are switched on, and you get multiple nipples or a vestigial tail. These mutations demonstrate that we are not too far from our animal cousins.

    Some whales, like the Blue, have vestigial hip bones inside their flesh. If a dolphin had extra limbs in the exact place legs would be, it is evidence of genes that haven’t been “on” in a long while.

  4. JimR says:

    #24 WokTiny….
    I’m just tossing this out there as well… thinking out loud about Noah’s Ark. This is scientific stuff so you’re probably not interested… you know, facts and reality…

    So there’s Noah the sherpa, floating 8.860 feet above sea level for at least a few days, and not an oxygen tank in sight and no winter coat. (The tallest mountain is the world, Mount Everest, 8.848 feet above sea level, and I added a few feet so that nobody could bounce-tread off the peak.)

    Then theres the water… 40 days and nights, 960 hours. That’s over 9 feet of rain per hour over the entire surface of the earth. Where did all that water come from and where did it go?

    Would all that weight and extra worldly girth nudge us into a larger orbit? What would all that extra mass do to the moon?

    Can clouds 8860 feet up hold that much water. Now that I think about it, just tossing this out, but 40 days of cloud cover… it would be freezing cold, so it would be snowing, not raining… at least after the first day or so…

    I suppose nobody in the whole world thought about holding on to, or getting on something that floats and riding it out… of course being that high up with no air… but then Noah and all the animals managed to do it, so why not the floating survivors… but then if all the animals survived why I don’t see any elephants braving the mountains today… but then…

  5. jag says:

    genetic mutation any1?

  6. OhForTheLoveOf says:

    The Lord said to Noah
    there’s gonna be a floody floody
    Lord said to Noah
    there’s gonna be a floody floody
    Get my children (clap)
    out of the muddy muddy
    Children of the Lord.

    Chorus
    So rise and shine
    and give God the glory glory
    Rise and shine
    and give God the glory glory
    Rise and shine and (clap)
    give God the glory glory
    Children of the Lord.

    The Lord said to Noah
    you’re gonna build an arky arky
    Lord said to Noah
    you’re gonna build an arky arky
    Build it out of (clap)
    gopher barky barky
    Children of the Lord.

    Sing chorus

    The animals, they came on
    they came on by twosies twosies
    Animals, they came on
    they came on by twosies twosies
    Elephants and (clap)
    kangaroozies roozies
    Children of the Lord.

    Sing Chorus

    It rained and poured
    for forty daisies daisies
    Rained and poured
    for forty daisies daisies
    Drove old Noah (clap)
    almost crazy crazy
    Children of the Lord.

    Sing Chorus

    The sun came out
    and dried up the landy landy
    Sun came out
    and dried up the landy landy
    Everything was (clap)
    fine and dandy dandy
    Children of the Lord.

    Sing Chorus

  7. Steve Martin says:

    Yeah…

    … I like to… Get Small…

    … until I got pulled over…

    … and the trooper says, “Are you small?”

    “No, no, I’m tall, I’m tall!!”

    … trooper says, “Well, I’m gonna have to measure ya…”

    Of course, if you do that nowadays, you can get a ticket for it…

  8. Curmudgen says:

    #27 Kat I hope you were referring to my post for what you say is very true. It may have been the pollution that wreaked havoc on me or it may have been a pox obtained from my ignoring the WORD.

    BtW. that was a real classy comeback, But I won’t fault you for that since English must not be your first language,

    I won’t continue since “I am so full of it” and one knows that you can’t carry that “crup” around, so I think I’ll just find another mental giant like you to dump on.

  9. JackNco says:

    “U r so full of it! this probably a birth defect or some kind of deformation from water pollution! God made all animals and evolution is a load of crup!

    Comment by Kat — 11/6/2006 @ 2:52 pm ”

    Wow now thats a well constructed argument!

    msn – Deafeningsilence_@hotmail.com please add me ide love to hear all the finer points to your argument!

    See just how many swear words and profanities you can throw at me before you storm off or block me?

    John

  10. JimR says:

    “The sun came out
    and dried up the landy landy”

    Thanks for thata toe atapping tune. Clap.

  11. Stiffler says:

    This dolphin obviously is severely handicapped and its quality of life will never be that of the other dolphins in the ocean. Therefore, according to the new British standards of killing those handicapped (see earlier blog topic if in question), the dolphin must die so that it is not a burden on society.

  12. joshua says:

    #41,,,stiffler….the Dolphin already did die….it was caught by the Japanese, no fish, mammal or otherwise lives when the Japanese are around.

  13. sdf says:

    Wasn’t this confirmed decades ago? I guess American science really has devolved.

  14. Miguel Correia says:

    #25 “I wish the scientific world would concentrate less on the history of the beginning and work on preventing the beginning of the end.”

    They are doing so. The main concern is global warming. Everytime they issue an alert about global warming, naysayers come out criticisizing them, talking about their hidden agendas, etc.

    #27, If your understanding of nature is as good as your written English, there is nothing else needed to be said.

    For those of you who haven’t understood evolution, you can do a very simple experiment. Grab your kids and visit the nearest zoo with an open mind. If it has chimpanzees, play close attention to their social behaviour. It’s amazing how similar their family interactions are comparing to ours when they are “nothing more than animals”.

    By the way, the theory is not that we descend from monkeys, but from a common branch. Hence the theory doesn’t also say dolphins descend from monkeys, but we all descend from another common branch earlier down in the chain of evolution. Ultimately, it appears that we all evolved from single-cell beeings.

  15. Ascii King says:

    One dolphin? That’s a pretty small sample. What does this say about all the kids born siamese? I’m not a creationist, but I just can’t see one dolphin holding that much meaning.

    Is this the sort of proof we are using to argue evolution?

  16. Smartalix says:

    45,

    No, but it is a supporting anecdote.

     As for “Siamese” twins, they are the result of incomplete zygote division (as I explained in my earlier comment).

  17. WokTiny says:

    #34 not that its really on topic, but… since you care enough to address my off topic post, I’ll return the favor. in post #24 I said … could it even be that ‘the world’ meant ‘the known world’ … which you seemed to miss. I’m just saying its possible, its also possible that our tallest mountain was not the same then…. who knows…. I’m just an ignorant child. also, you talk about air, but the the water level was higher, the air would follow, breath would not be a problem. I’m not being terribly serious here, or making assertions as to what the earth was doing then, whenever. there doesn’t seem to be talk of rain before the flood, perhaps it didn’t rain, but the ground remained moist from subterrainian springs until some terrible event brought the water up. or perhaps the mass of the earths water was polar ice, which got struck to rain in the same event that killed the dinosaurs (read that with a wink, and don’t flame me) I’m just saying that the description is breif, but found in almost every culture’s writings, in one form or another. something happened for sure, what and how is unknown; and frankly, I’m not very concerned about it.


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