Sir, - How positive scientists sound when they make statements about evolution. Dr. Reville (June 11th) says: "Whales are descended from a four legged animal. The earliest known whale fossils are 52 million years old and the early whales swam by undulating their spinal column, thereby forcing their feet up and down".
One could be forgiven for inferring from this that early whale fossils exist with four little feet. As far as I am aware there is no, such specimen, nor have more than a few intermediate fossils been found between the millions of species that have evolved on the earth. The extinct Zeuglodon, related to the Creodant carnivores, is a possible ancestor and has a similar scapula to whales, but the dorsal vertebra are very different. Indeed as far as direct evidence is concerned the whale's ancestor could have been an ungulant.
The absence of intermediate fossils is only one of many arguments that can be made that natural selection is good for explaining variations in species but does not explain the evolution of species. Is it beresy to say that another mechanism should be sought for this, much as Newton's Laws had to give way to Einstein's and Quantum Physics? - Yours, etc.,
Ormeau Drive,
Dalkey,
Co. Dublin.