King of the whales

For a long time, one of the biggest evolutionary mysteries was the evolution of whales and dolphins.

Even for someone steeped in the evolutionary model, it was hard to imagine how these aquatic creatures descended from terrestrial mammals.  That they did was undeniable; not only do some species have vestigial hip and hind leg bones, inside their flippers they have exactly the same number and arrangement of arm bones as you have -- one humerus, radius, and ulna; seven carpals; five metacarpals; and fourteen phalanges.  If whales were a "special creation," it's hard to imagine why a Creator would have given them 29 articulated arm bones and then completely encased them in a flat, muscular flipper.

Skeleton of a baleen whale (drawing from the Meyers Konversationslexikon (1888) [Image is in the Public Domain]

So their relationship to terrestrial mammals was obvious, but what wasn't obvious is how they got to where they are today.

Then in 1981 a fossil bed was uncovered in the Kuldana Formation of Pakistan, a sedimentary deposit from what was a shallow marine estuary back in the early Eocene Epoch (on the order of fifty million years ago), that contained a treasure trove of fossilized cetaceans.  This allowed researchers to piece together the evolution of whales and dolphins, placing them in Order Artiodactyla (their closest terrestrial relatives appear to be hippos).  

Skeleton of Ambulocetus, one of the amphibious species of cetaceans linking their terrestrial ancestors with today's aquatic whales [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Notafly, AmbulocetusNatansPisa, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Back in the Eocene, some of these proto-cetaceans were some badass apex predators.  Take Basilosaurus -- the name is Greek for "king lizard," a misnomer, at least the "lizard" part -- which lived in the Tethys Ocean, a body of water that has since been largely erased by plate tectonics.  (The Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas are about all that's left of it.)  Basilosaurus could get to twenty meters in length, and probably ate large fish like sharks and tuna.  It's Basilosaurus that got me to thinking about this topic in the first place; a couple of loyal readers of Skeptophilia sent me a link to an article about a new fossil discovery in Peru.  It's hard to imagine it, but the now bone-dry Ocucaje Desert of southern Peru was once the floor of a shallow sea, an embayment of the (at that point) rapidly shrinking Tethys.  It's provided huge numbers of Eocene fossils, but the one they just found is pretty spectacular; a complete, well-preserved skull of a Basilosaurus that when it was alive was on the order of seventeen meters from tip to tail.

"This is an extraordinary find because of its great state of preservation," said Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi, part of the team that found the fossil.  "This animal was one of the largest predators of its time.  At that time the Peruvian sea was warm.  Thanks to this type of fossil, we can reconstruct the history of the Peruvian sea."

It's fascinating that we're still piecing together the evolution, ecology, and geology of the ancient world -- in this case, a world with carnivorous proto-whales twice as long as a school bus, equipped with big nasty pointy teeth.  Life in the seas back then must have been risky business.  If ever time travel is invented, I'd love to go back and see it for myself -- preferably from a safe distance.  And as interested as I am, I doubt I'd be donning my scuba gear to get a closer look.

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Whales, fossils, and the limitations of commons sense

One of my favorite things about science is its ability to jolt us out of our preconceived notions.

We all have common-sensical ideas about how the universe works, and they allow us to function pretty well most days.  The problem is, some of them are correct and some of them are wildly wrong, and how do you tell which is which?  As physicist Sean Carroll eloquently puts it, in his wonderful book The Particle at the End of the Universe:

It's only because the data force us into corners that we are inspired to create the highly counterintuitive structures that form the basis for modern physics...  Imagine that a person in the ancient world was wondering what made the sun shine.  It's not really credible to imagine that they would think about it for a while and decide, "I bet most of the sun is made up of particles that can bump into one another and stick together, with one of them converting into a different kind of particle by emitting yet a third particle, which would be massless if it wasn't for the existence of a field that fills space and breaks the symmetry that is responsible for the associated force, and that fusion of the original two particles releases energy, which we ultimately see as sunlight."  But that's exactly what happens.  It took many decades to put this story together, and it never would have happened if our hands weren't forced by the demands of observation and experiment at every step.

That's why I find it frustrating when someone says, "Oh, that can't be right, it sounds ridiculous," and forthwith stops thinking about it.  We've seen over and over that "sounding ridiculous" is not a reliable indicator of the truth of a claim.  The only acceptable criterion is hard evidence -- as long as you've got that, what your claim sounds like is entirely irrelevant.

This point comes up every year in my AP Biology class when we talk about the evolutionary history of whales.  The fossil record for whales was pretty lousy, because being marine mammals their skeletons are mostly destroyed by scavengers and degraded by seawater, not to mention the fact that many of them end up in the abyssal regions of the ocean floor.  After that, we'd only find them if those deep oceanic sediments get scooped up by the movement of tectonic plates and thrust up onto land -- something that (1) doesn't happen that often, and (2) results in significant deformation of the rocks formed, thus completely destroying any fossils that were present.

It wasn't until a fossil bed was discovered in Pakistan in the early 1980s that we actually got any data on what the ancestors of today's whales looked like.  The northern parts of Pakistan and India -- i.e., the Himalayas -- were formed in exactly the way I've described above.  We lucked out, though, because at least one rock formation not only has ancestral whale fossils, but ones that survived in reasonably good condition.

Now, here's the counterintuitive part; the fossils found in Pakistan and India have conclusively shown that the nearest living non-cetacean relatives of whales are hippos...

... and artiodactylid ruminants.  For example, cattle, sheep, goats, deer, and antelopes.

This is the point where people look at a picture of a blue whale and a white-tailed deer and say, "Hang on a moment.  That can't be right."  But it is -- as confirmed not only from the fossil record, but from extensive genetic studies.

We just got further confirmation of this relationship from an entirely different fossil bed -- this one from mid-Eocene (i.e., about forty million years old) rocks in Peru.  A team led by paleontologist Olivier Lambert, of the Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique, has discovered not only a new species but an entirely new genus of proto-cetaceans.  Called Peregocetus pacificus, it catches whale evolution right in the middle between the terrestrial ancestors and their aquatic descendants.

The authors write:

[T]his unique four-limbed whale bore caudal vertebrae with bifurcated and anteroposteriorly expanded transverse processes, like those of beavers and otters, suggesting a significant contribution of the tail during swimming.  The fore- and hind-limb proportions roughly similar to geologically older quadrupedal whales from India and Pakistan, the pelvis being firmly attached to the sacrum, an insertion fossa for the round ligament on the femur, and the retention of small hooves with a flat anteroventral tip at fingers and toes indicate that Peregocetus was still capable of standing and even walking on land.  This new record from the southeastern Pacific demonstrates that early quadrupedal whales crossed the South Atlantic and nearly attained a circum-equatorial distribution with a combination of terrestrial and aquatic locomotion abilities less than 10 million years after their origin and probably before a northward dispersal toward higher North American latitudes.

So that's kind of amazing.  It also illustrates why we can't rely on "that sounds reasonable" to determine what's true.  This is just one example of how science has come up with a result that we never would have arrived at using common sense -- as helpful as that is in most ordinary situations.

Reconstruction of ancestral cetacean Pakicetus inachus [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Nobu Tamura (http://spinops.blogspot.com), Pakicetus BW, CC BY 3.0]

Myself, I like the capacity of science to astonish us.  It would be incredibly boring if the universe turned out to work exactly the way we thought, that our minds are perfect little windows through which we perceive everything right the first time.

Much better to be reminded of our limitations -- and to have such a powerful tool to check our guesses, and correct us when we're wrong.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a fun one; Atlas Obscura by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton.  The book is based upon a website of the same name that looks at curious, beautiful, bizarre, frightening, or fascinating places in the world -- the sorts of off-the-beaten-path destinations that you might pass by without ever knowing they exist.  (Recent entries are an astronomical observatory in Zweibrücken, Germany that has been painted to look like R2-D2; the town of Story, Indiana that is for sale for a cool $3.8 million; and the Michelin-rated kitchen run by Lewis Georgiades -- at the British Antarctic Survey’s Rothera Research Station, which only gets a food delivery once a year.)

This book collects the best of the Atlas Obscura sites, organizes them by continent, and tells you about their history.  It's a must-read for anyone who likes to travel -- preferably before you plan your next vacation.

(If you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!)

Easy fiction vs. hard science

One of my most common reactions to woo-woos is, "What, isn't the real world cool enough for you?"

I have a decent background (although definitely in the broad-but-shallow category) in a variety of scientific fields, and I think what impresses me about each of them is how endlessly fascinating it all is.  Take your pick -- chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, geology, climatology... you could choose any one of them, and spend the rest of your life with it, and never run out of new amazing things to discover about the field.

The downside is, it's hard work.  Reality is complex.  Also, virtually any scientific field will require some level of mathematical expertise; even back in the 17th century, Galileo recognized this when he said, "Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe."  And this can certainly be a stumbling block.  (It was for me; my career as a physics student came to a screeching halt when I was a junior in college, largely from difficulties with the math required.  Admittedly, a fondness for partying might also have had something to do with it.)

Woo-woos, on the other hand, want it easy.  What "feels right?"  The philosophy seems to be, "Let your heart guide you.  Rationality just gets in the way."  Understanding should "come naturally" -- i.e., no struggling with textbooks, no sweating over mastering abstruse equations and complicated theories.  Just become One With The Universe, and you'll know all you need to know.

So let's contrast the two views of the world, shall we?

Last weekend I stumbled on the site "Whale/Dolphin Reiki -- Celestial Pyramid Massage," which is about as good an example of the latter viewpoint as I've ever seen.  This website, which is primarily an alt-med site (therapeutic massage, Reiki, chakras, flower essences, "emotion code," etc. -- they've got it all), has a page dedicated to one of the practitioners who claims that his/her skill (the author of the page isn't named, as far as I saw) from channeling "whale and dolphin spirits" who are in touch with, um, the entire galaxy.  Or something.

In late 2010 I started getting information during meditations from Whales and Usui Sensei, the Father of Reiki, that I would be a conduit for a type of Reiki that would be coming from Whales and Dolphins from their Source within this galaxy.  The path this would take was through Sirius.  Nothing was very specific except that each session would be tailored to the individual through a meditation before the client arrived.  I personally had issue with this as I am the type of person that needs to know what specifically is happening and how this is to proceed.  This was a leap of faith on my part to release expectations and the ego part of needing control and complete knowledge.

So, let me get this straight: you "need to know what specifically is happening," and so you decide you're in touch with an alien whale?  The answer, apparently, is "yes:"

After more meditations I was told by Usui Sensei and the Whale Guardian who is an Orca Whale that I needed to start giving free sessions to get clients in and to familiarize myself with the energies coming through and how they, the Whale and Dolphin communities,  would work with me during these sessions.  Now after many clients, meditations and communications with the Whale Guardian and others I realize that many things seem to happen during the sessions and I have to allow the energy to move through me at the direction of the Whale Guardian or the Whale or Dolphin that comes in to assist the clients.  At times I am instructed as to what crystals if any to use and placement on or around the client. 

Okay.  The "Whale Guardian" told you to use crystals, for what, exactly?

Issues that seem to be concentrated on the most are grounding and balancing of the physical body with the earth mostly with the crystalline core of the earth.  I have also been told that neuro pathways within the brain are made that opens communications within the multi-dimensional layers of the body.  In some instances more work seems to concentrate on the pineal and pituitary glands clearing and cleaning debris that has built up around these glands by food additives and pollution.  These changes increase the client’s vibration and frequency which allows acceptance physically as the earth increases in vibration and frequency.

*faceplant*

So, there you have it, then.  A whale that's in contact with the galaxy told these people to use Reiki to clean up the schmutz on your pituitary gland left there by consuming food additives.

Now, let's contrast this to some actual scientific research -- a project in Orca communication done by the Marine Mammal Research Consortium:

Killer whales extensively rely on sound for orientation, prey detection, and communication. Different types of sounds fulfill different functions for killer whales. Echolocation clicks, for example, are used for orientation and prey detection. Whistles are high-frequency sounds typically used by killer whales in social contexts, and pulsed calls are communicative sounds thought to play a role in the coordination of behaviours and maintenance of group cohesion.

Isn't that nice?  No vague, hand-waving "energies" and "vibrations;" just some real information about what whales are really doing:

Pulsed calls can be categorized into highly stereotyped call types. Different social groups within the same population have group-specific repertoires of different call types. As a result, resident killer whales in British Columbia and Alaska exhibit an intricate system of vocal dialects. The structure of these call types evolves slowly over time and is thought to be learned.

And, most importantly, it's all backed up by data -- sonograms, recordings, and behavioral observations collected over years of research.  I encourage you to peruse the site, and then come back and try to tell me that's not more interesting than the Alien Whale Crystal Massage thing.

It's not that I don't understand the temptation of easy answers.  I've found myself frustrated with how hard science can be.  I've struggled with comprehension, misunderstood things, gotten things wrong, had to go back and revise my mental model of how the world works.  More importantly, I've had to get used to admitting, "I don't know the answer to this."

Tolerating uncertainty, however, is uncomfortable for a lot of people.  For some, it's a happier solution just to embrace what "feels nice," to go along with the pleasant fiction of whale spirits communicating with aliens from Sirius, or whatever weird mythological view of the universe suits their fancy.  But I can't escape the conclusion that by doing so, they've cheated themselves of the joy that comes from catching a glimpse of the actual grandeur of what is around us -- that ecstatic moment when you say, "Yes, I understand!"

And there is no amount of comforting fiction that is worth taking in trade for that.