Whale story

Donald R. Prothero's article "The Fossils Say Yes" [11/05] mentions transitional fossils of whales and other creatures as evidence for evolution. Yet the evidence he mentions can all fit within creationist models. As a creationist, I accept that whales were land creatures that went into the sea after the flood. In fact, many of us accept limited speciation on a fast scale.

Robert Byers

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

DONALD R. PROTHERO REPLIES: It is clear that Robert Byers has not actually looked closely at the evidence and fossils supporting evolution. Transitional whale fossils occur in strata spanning thousands of meters, and their locations cannot be explained by a single flood. In fact, most of the deposits are not flood deposits at all, but river sediments or gradually deposited marine beds. The same is true of most of the other transitional fossils mentioned in my article. The land animals would have had to evolve incredibly fast by the creationist flood model to turn into whales in just forty days and forty nights. And if Mr. Byers accepts "limited speciation on a fast scale" for such a major macroevolutionary change as the origin of whales, isn't he conceding virtually all of evolution?

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