Monster whale teeth found, as reported in BBC News and Nature News 30 June 2010, and ABC News in Science, 1 July 2010. A team of palaeontologists has found a fossil sperm whale skull, including its jaws and teeth, in the Pisco-Ica Desert on the southern coast of Peru. The skull is about 3m (10 ft) long with enormous teeth, some as long as 36cm (14in). The researchers estimate the whale was 13.5 – 17.5 metres (44 – 57 ft) long and was a ferocious predator that preyed on other whales. Christian de Muizon, director of the Natural History Museum in Paris, one of the research team, commented: “It was a kind of a sea monster and it’s interesting to note that at the same time in the same waters was another monster, which was a giant shark about 15m long. It’s possible that they might have fought each other.” The whale has been named Leviathan melvillei in honour of Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick, and has been dated as 12 to 13 million years old.
There are giant sperm whales alive today but they only have tiny teeth along their lower jaws, and none in their upper jaws. They feed on soft bodied squids and octopuses by sucking them into their mouths. According to vertebrate palaeontologist Lawrence Barnes at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, this discovery demonstrates that sperm whale-like cetaceans were much more diverse in the past and that the modern sperm whale and pygmy sperm whales are the “only surviving vestiges of a larger evolutionary radiation of related whales in the past”.
Editorial Comment:Let’s analyse the data – there once were lots of sperm whales, now there are only “surviving vestiges”. Sperm whales used to have big teeth in both jaws, now they only have little teeth in one jaw. This is change, but unless you are seeing things only through Darwin’s Glasses, it is not evolution. Both these changes involve loss of species and loss of structure. It is exactly what you would expect from the Biblical history of the world. Genesis tells us God created the great sea monsters according to their kinds to live in a world that was very good, i.e. no killers and predators. However, after man disobeyed God, death and degeneration came into the world and many living creatures died out or degenerated. (Ref. Darwin’s Glasses, cetaceans, vertebrates, diet)
Evidence News 28 July 2010