“The fossil record permits dramatically insufficient time to convert a land-mammal into a whale.”
Consider here a small and simplified view of the “necessary modifications:
- Counter-current heat exchanger for intra-abdominal testes
- Ball vertebra
- Tail flukes and musculature
- Blubber for temperature insulation
- Ability to drink sea water (reorganization of kidney tissues)
- Fetus in breech position (for labor underwater)
- Nurse young underwater (modified mammae)
- Forelimbs transformed into flippers
- Reduction of hindlimbs
- Reduction/loss of pelvis and sacral vertebrae
- Reorganization of the musculature for the reproductive organs
- Hydrodynamic properties of the skin
- Special lung surfactants
- Novel muscle systems for the blowhole
- Modification of the teeth
- Modification of the eye for underwater vision
- Emergence and expansion of the mandibular fat pad with complex lipid distribution
- Reorganization of skull bones and musculature
- Modification of the ear bones
- Decoupling of esophagus and trachea
- Synthesis and metabolism of isovaleric acid (toxic to terrestrial mammals)
- Emergence of blowhole musculature and their neurological control”
See more here: https://evolutionnews.org/2011/10/fact-checking_wikipedia_on_com_1/
See also: https://evolutionnews.org/2007/10/fossils_fossils_fossils_does_k/
