The Walking Whales

I recently completed this book, "Walking Whales" by Hans Thewissen - a researcher (pun), a giant in the field of whale evolution. Among them, he detailed the majority of his work and their important fossil stories, for example, fossils bridged the gap between the land and the aquatic whale's ancestors. Prior to Thewissen, there was no crocodile intermediate showing that a whale gradually shifted from land to water. More importantly, before this, the lack of whale fossils during transition was the core point of creationism, whales were always aquatic organisms.

Ambulocetus (meaning "walking whale") is the earliest whale species from Pakistan. That name is because it has short legs and big feet for swimming. Together with the other members of Ambulocetidae, it is a transient fossil that shows how whales evolved from terrestrial mammals. The name comes from the historical assumption that you can walk on land, but recent research has shown that it is completely aquatic life like modern whale. Ambulocetus is as completely aquatic as the modern whale and has a similar chest shape. Chemical analysis of teeth indicates that it can move between salt and freshwater. There is no outer ear. Its skull has a long nose (facing sideways) headed sideways at the height of the skull like a modern hippopotamus.