Whale transitional forms . . .
Guess I had more time today than I thought. The record really needs to be put straight here.
If you are interested in whale transitional forms and why there is good evidence for such a complete spectrum, there are many websites to look at. A particularly good one is here
http://www.fsteiger.com/whales.html It seems to me that whoever's comments you posted about whale forms, Bex, are trying to say that the earlier forms are walking animals not whales, and the later forms are whales -- nothing in between. They carp on missing bones because none of the skeletons is complete. They are not looking at the whole picture and comparing the skeletons to each other, and to those of modern whales, as this website explains. What's more, the information they give is questionable and I can show you some of it which is wrong.
For example, the most complete ambulocetus skeleton in 1994 consisted of parts of the skull and jaw, a number of vertebrae, some ribs and nearly complete front and hind limbs. The large limb bones were fully capable of supporting the animal's weight on land, and were also capable of paddling it through the water using an up-and-down motion of the spine. Annalisa Bert has said (you can see here
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n3_v145/ai_14769408) that ambulocetus is "a very significant discovery. It shows us for the first time a whale that had well developed hind limbs. It's very clear this animal was using its hind limbs in locomotion."
Let's look at the quotation you gave from her in its proper context: "…Thewissen et al. [i.e. the paper announcing Amulocetus] provide some solid comparative data to support their conclusions regarding the evolution of locomotion in whales; however, a well-corroborated phylogenetic context with which to interpret these character transformations would greatly enhance its utility. For example, since the pelvic girdle is not preserved, there is no direct evidence in Ambulocetus for a connection between the hind limbs and the axial skeleton. This hinders interpretations of locomotion in this animal, since many of the muscles that support and move the hindlimb originate on the pelvis."
You can find this here
http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/lie030.html along with information about the real ambulocetus skeletons. More of the skeleton with the "missing pelvic girdle" was later found, as this web page explains:
There is quite a bit more to that skeleton than what Sarfati would have us believe. What Sarfati did not mention or did not know (probably the later) is that the original specimen’s locality was not completely excavated due to safety concerns when the original paper of Ambulocetus by “Hans” Thewissen et. al. was published in 1994. In 1996 a great deal more of the skeleton was found. The bones found in 1996 include much of the spine and the pelvis. The web site for an exhibit of a reconstructed skeleton of this fossil notes that it is “missing only the tip of the snout, scapula, humerus, distal part of the tibia and some ankle bones.” In other words it is remarkably complete. (Keep in mind if one has the limb bone from left side, one knows what the equivalent limb bone on the right side looks like.) A technical description of these are in press as I write this sentence.
Sarfati is presumably the author of the piece you were quoting from.
This is just one example from the fossil list. I can exhaustively go through them all if you want. Like I said, though, the thing to keep in mind is that you need to look at the whole transition spectrum. What we see is a gradual transition from living life on land to being fully aquatic, with the limbs atrophying accordingly -- and limbs were not the only aspect that changed. No one "believes this on faith." The evidence is there.
