Claythrow

Boy don't creationists ever get hung up on transitional forms. You guys would prevent us from making important discoveries. Instead of looking for transitional forms or examining other hypotheses that might explain why there are some gaps in the fossil record, you would ignore all this because in your books it's all a big lie anyway.

As time goes on and more fossils are discovered, the gaps start to get filled in. All of your sources here are rather old. Let me give you an update on more recent studies and discoveries.

The transitional sequence from a land mammal to whales is now quite detailed. See Babinski (2003) or Zimmer (1998) for pictures of some of these.

a. Pakicetus inachus: latest Early Eocene (Gingerich et al. 1983; Thewissen and Hussain 1993).

b. Ambulocetus natans: Early to Middle Eocene, above Pakicetus. It had short front limbs and hind legs adapted for swimming; undulating its spine up and down helped its swimming. It apparently could walk on land as well as swim (Thewissen et al. 1994).

c. Indocetus ramani: earliest Middle Eocene (Gingerich et al. 1993).

d. Dorudon: the dominant cetacean of the late Eocene. Their tiny hind limbs were not involved in locomotion.

e. Basilosaurus: middle Eocene and younger. A fully aquatic whale with structurally complete legs (Gingerich et al. 1990).

f. an early baleen whale with its blowhole far forward and some structural features found in land animals but not later whales (Stricherz 1998).

The whale's closest living relative is the hippopotamus. A fossil group known as anthracotheres links hippos with whales (Boisserie et al. 2005). The common ancestor of whales and hippos likely was a primitive artiodactyl (cloven-hoofed mammal); ankle bones from the primitive whales Artiocetus and Rodhocetus show distinctive artiodactyl traits (Gingerich et al. 2001).

I'm happy to discuss any of these examples in more detail if you like.

About the feather. Where are you getting your "facts" here, e.g. your claim that it "never evolved," and that feathers for flight appeared ahead of dinosaurs? Which species please? The first feathers are believed to have served the purpose of insulation. What's more, feathers are not necessary for flight. Plenty of other non-feathered flying creatures existed before birds. I'm not sure what your point here is.