NPR

[Glenn]

"Scientists Discover Fossil Of A 4-Legged Whale With A Raptor-Like Eating Style"

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/27/1031659020/four-legged-whale-legs-discovered-43-million-years

A team led by Egyptian scientists have dug up a 43 million-year-old fossil in the Sahara Desert in Egypt of a now-extinct amphibious four-legged whale.

"That's right, folks — a whale with legs.

The authors of the study say that this creature had "unique features of the skull" and that its "mandible suggest a capacity for more efficient oral mechanical processing."
Scientists Are 'Spying On Whales' To Learn How They Eat, Talk And ... Walked?
Animals
Scientists Are 'Spying On Whales' To Learn How They Eat, Talk And ... Walked?

In other words, these walking whales had a "strong raptorial feeding style.""

Really? They found a fossil with legs and could determine they had such a "raptorial" feeding style?

"The problem with these claims? That’s right, folks — they didn’t find any of the fossil’s legs. Everything you just read about this fossil is the product of imagination."

https://evolutionnews.org/2021/09/evolutionary-imagination-and-belief-drive-false-claims-of-a-four-legged-whale/

The provided link to the paper:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/cms/asset/ff9c7f3a-6963-48d4-a55a-0f3aa0c7c22f/rspb20211368f01.gif

Martin recently ignored my comment "It appears that you would have others believe that other "News" outlets only state "data" and "facts" and never "bloviate".

Yet he claims Trump is a liar and a cheat. News much, Martin?

[RonO]

You should worry about your creationist news site. Science news sites
often overstate things just to sell copy. They have to make things
interesting enough for readers or listeners. It happens all the time.
You have to go to the original science article to figure out what was
actually found at times. Compared to the lies about ID science you
should have no complaints.

This is the paper:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2021.1368

The study places the fossil firmly within the cetacean lineage (Figure
2). It is a four legged proto whale. The parts of the skull were
described and the feeding behavior was classed as raptorial. This is a
biting snapping type of feeding behavior. It sounds like it treated
larger prey just like a croc would. The snap feeding of crocs is called
raptorial. They depict the animal with four legs because it is most
closely related with other protocetaceans with four legs. The closest
relatives was Qaisracetus. These have 4 legs so they depicted the
animal to have 4 legs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaisracetus

QUOTE from the paper:
A relatively large temporal fossa in Phiomicetus would have been
occupied by relatively large muscles of mastication with larger
cross-sectional areas and increased capacity for powerful bite force,
presumably representing an adaptation for raptorial feeding on larger
prey [31-33].
END QUOTE:

This description is from another paper:
QUOTE:
Pakicetus could probably shear and grind its prey as well as snap the
jaw shut during capture (also known as raptorial snap-feeding)
(Gingerich and Russell, 1990; Clementz et al. 2014).
END QUOTE:

This just means that they used the skull parts and mandibles to
determine the raptorial feeding behavior.

The legs were inferred by where it exists in the phylogeny. Is there an
IDiot inference that would be as good as the one that the authors made
in terms of how they depicted the animal?

What is not as good as your own level of not good enough? Doesn't that
mean that what you believe isn't good enough by your own standards?

Really, Glenn, put up an IDiot inference as good as the one that the
authors made about whether their fossil animal had legs or not.

Ron Okimoto

[Pro Plyd]

Glenn's apparent lack of understanding of the kind of forensics involved
here show well why
ID is on a par with astrology...

"If we came from monkeys, where are there still monkeys?" heh heh

[Glenn]

Yea, you are funny, in a curious way.

[Zen Cycle]

The fact that he equates a logical inference from a forensic analysis on same level as bloviating tells us quite a bit.

[Glenn]

Well, Ron did a pretty good job at "bloviating", so you may be right. No facts, no data, no legs. And you'll presuppose I'm not talking about the news article.

"A team led by Egyptian scientists have dug up a 43 million-year-old fossil in the Sahara Desert in Egypt of a now-extinct amphibious four-legged whale. That's right, folks — a whale with legs."

..."The discovery of the four-legged creature is part of that evolution."

[Pro Plyd]

Lead. Horse. Water. Drink.

[Glenn]

Lead. Horse. BS. Drink.