The Walking Whales Read online

  The Walking Whales

  From Land to Water in Eight

  Million Years

  J. G. M. “Hans” Thewissen

  with illustrations by Jacqueline Dillard

  university of california press

  The Walking Whales

  The Walking Whales

  From Land to Water in Eight

  Million Years

  J. G. M. “Hans” Thewissen

  with illustrations by Jacqueline Dillard

  university of california press

  University of California Press, one of the most

  distinguished university presses in the United States,

  enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship

  in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its

  activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and

  by philanthropic contributions from individuals and

  institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

  University of California Press

  Oakland, California

  © 2014 by The Regents of the University of California

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Thewissen, J. G. M., author.

  The walking whales : from land to water in eight

  million years / J.G.M. Thewissen ; with illustrations by

  Jacqueline Dillard.

  pages

  cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  isbn 978-0-520-27706-9 (cloth : alk. paper)—

  isbn 978-0-520-95941-5 (e-book)

  1.

  Whales,

  Fossil—Pakistan. 2.

  Whales,

  Fossil—India.

  3. Whales—Evolution. 4. Paleontology—Pakistan.

  5. Paleontology—India. I. Title.

  QE882.C5T484

  2015

  569′.5—dc23

  2014003531

  Printed in China

  23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum

  requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r 2002)

  ( Permanence of Paper).

  Cover illustration (clockwise from top right):

  Basilosaurus, Ambulocetus, Indohyus, Pakicetus, and

  Kutchicetus. These are the animals that show that whales

  once had land-living ancestors. The background of this

  painting is a composite: these animals did not live in the

  same habitat or the at the same time.

  This book is dedicated to all the students, postdocs,

  fossil preparators, and technicians who worked in my

  lab and made this journey scientifi cally exciting as

  well as fun, in chronological order: Sandy, Ellen, Tony,

  Mary, Lauren, Mary Elizabeth, Amy, Lisa, Brooke,

  Sirpa, Rick, Bobbi Jo, Meghan, Sharon, Jenny, Denise,

  Summer, and Ashley. And it is dedicated to Elizabeth,

  for her encouragement. And it is dedicated to my

  mother, who supported everything I did

  enthusiastically.

  Contents

  1. A Wasted Dig

  1

  Fossils

  and

  War

  1

  A

  Whale

  Ear

  4

  2. Fish, Mammal, or Dinosaur?

  9

  The King Lizard of Cape Cod

  9

  Basilosaurid

  Whales* 17

  Basilosaurids and Evolution

  33

  3. A Whale with Legs 35

  The Black and White Hills

  35

  A Walking Whale

  41

  4. Learning to Swim 51

  Meeting the Killer Whale

  51

  From Dog-Paddle to Torpedo

  52

  Ambulocetid

  Whales* 58

  Ambulocetus and Evolution

  65

  5. When the Mountains Grew 67

  The High Himalayas

  67

  Kidnapping in the Hills

  75

  Indian

  Whales

  78

  viii | Contents

  6. Passage to India 79

  Stranded in Delhi

  79

  Whales in the Desert

  85

  A 150-Pound Skull

  87

  7. A Trip to the Beach 93

  The Outer Banks

  93

  A Fossilized Coast

  96

  8. The Otter Whale 99

  The Whale with No Hands

  99

  Remingtonocetid

  Whales* 109

  Building a Beast out of Bones

  116

  9. The Ocean Is a Desert 117

  Forensic

  Paleontology

  117

  Drinking and Peeing

  120

  Fossilized Drinking Behavior

  121

  Walking

  with

  Ambulocetus

  124

  10. The Skeleton Puzzle 127

  If Looks Could Kill

  127

  How Many Bones Make a Skeleton?

  129

  Finding

  Whales’

  Sisters

  132

  11. The River Whales 137

  Hearing

  in

  Whales

  137

  Pakicetid

  Whales* 144

  September 11, 2001

  154

  12. Whales Conquer the World 157

  A Molecular SINE

  157

  The

  Black

  Whale

  160

  Protocetid

  Whales* 163

  Protocetids and History

  171

  13. From Embryos to Evolution 173

  A Dolphin with Legs

  173

  The Marine Park at Taiji

  175

  Contents | ix

  Shedding

  Limbs

  177

  Whaling

  in

  Taiji

  187

  14. Before Whales 191

  The

  Widow’s

  Fossils

  191

  The Ancestors of Whales

  198

  Indohyus* 199

  A Trust for Fossils

  206

  15. The Way Forward 207

  The Big Question

  207

  Tooth

  Development

  209

  Baleen

  as

  Teeth

  211

  Notes 213

  Index 233

  *These six headings summarize the biology of the six fossil groups that form the tran-

  sition between whales and their terrestrial ancestors. Their relationships to each other and

  to the living families of cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) are given in fi gure 66.

  Chapter 1

  A Wasted Dig

  fossils and war

  Punjab, Pakistan, January 1991. I am excited beyond belief! The

  National Geographic Society is giving me money to collect fossils in

  Pakistan: my very own field project, the first time ever. For years, it has

  been great to collect fossils in exotic places—Wyoming, Sardinia, and

  Colombia. But this is different. Now I can run my own program, decide

  where to
collect, and study what is found. It’s exciting but also daunt-

  ing. My friend Andres Aslan will come with me. We’re perfect comple-

  ments: he loves geology and I love fossils. We’re both just out of school,

  freshly minted PhDs, and together we’re ready and able to set the world

  on fire, or at least vacuum up any fossil between Attock and Islamabad.

  It is Andres’s first trip to Pakistan. I first went there as a paleontology

  student in 1985, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when the

  CIA channeled much of its support against the Soviets through Paki-

  stan. Trucks full of equipment would travel the highway, the Grand

  Trunk Road, from Islamabad to the Afghan border at night—the very

  same road we took to our field area. The Soviet-backed Afghan govern-

  ment retaliated by trying to disturb the stability of Pakistan. Car bombs

  were the weapon of choice, and my hotel room in Islamabad offered an

  excellent view into the courtyard of the police station next door, where

  a line of charred, exploded mini-busses were evidence of their success.

  With mirrors tied to long poles, the police stopped every vehicle enter-

  ing the city and checked the underside for bombs. This didn’t bother me,

  1

  2    |    Chapter 1

  figure 1. Map of northern Pakistan and India, with places mentioned in this book.

  Fossil localities are indicated by bones (see also figure 22).

  as long as I could collect fossils, studying life from a very exciting period

  in earth’s history, fifty million years ago.

  Now, six years later, Andres and I arrive in Pakistan just before the

  New Year and receive our permits to work in the Kala Chitta Hills, west

  toward the Afghan border (figure 1). The television in our Islamabad

  hotel is showing CNN stories about the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait last

  year,  but  that  conflict  seems  distant.  I  am  here  to  immerse  us  in  the

  greatest excitement paleontology has to offer: collecting fossils, being

  the first to see and figure out each one I pick up.

  We check in at a hotel in the town of Attock, and fieldwork starts on

  January  1.  We  travel  to  remote  sites  that  I  chose  from  decades-old

  reports from other paleontologists. The rocks here in the shadows of the

  Himalayas have their own distinctive charms. They are gnarled, bent,

  twisted, and overturned, all the result of the mountain-building to the

  north.  They  are  silent  witnesses  to  the  incredibly  violent  forces  that

  raised the Himalayas to be the world’s highest mountains. With a sense

  of poetry, my Pakistani colleague, Mr. Arif, calls the limestone that has

  been tossed into tight bends “the dancing limestone.”

  A Wasted Dig | 3

  We search the dry scrublands every day, but fossils are rare; things

  take time. In my fieldbook I have logged fifty-one fossils. None seem

  exciting—small pieces of fishbone, crocodile armor, fish teeth, and a

  piece of the casing of the ear of a whale, the tympanic bone. It is not the

  first whale bone I ever found. Growing up, in Holland, I lived close to a

  fossil locality where my father used to take me. A river had dropped

  rocks there that it collected as it cut through mountains upstream, in

  Belgium, France, and beyond. There was everything from sea lilies hun-

  dreds of millions of years old, to plant fossils from coal swamps, and

  large fossil whale bones from when that area was covered by ocean, just

  a few million years ago. It cemented my interest in fossils, and for my

  twelfth birthday I got a rock hammer, which is still the hammer I use

  now.

  I have never studied whales before, and now too, whale bones are no

  good for me. The money from the National Geographic Society is for

  studying how land mammals migrated between Indo-Pakistan and Asia

  across the Tethys Sea some fifty million years ago. Whales are of no use

  for studying migrations on land. I need land-dwelling mammals, and

  many more fossils, if this grant is to be successful. I am very aware that

  failing to deliver on a first grant can sink a career.

  On day five the dream collapses. The United States is threatening to

  invade Kuwait, and the U.S. government is worried about the safety of

  its citizens. Mr. Arif is told by his superiors at the Geological Survey of

  Pakistan to escort us back to Islamabad, the capital. All my plans are

  crumbling before my eyes. The reason for going back to Islamabad

  seems ridiculous—the conflict is in the Gulf, not Pakistan. The physical

  dangers seem much smaller than when I first visited. Why should poli-

  tics end the field season?

  Reluctantly, Andres and I return to Islamabad and check into a hotel.

  The hotel is in the Blue Area, Islamabad’s broad central avenue with

  shopping areas, as well as the buildings of the president, prime minister,

  and congress. It’s a mile or so from the American embassy.

  We hang around our hotel room, waiting for news. On TV, the for-

  eign minister of Iraq, Tariq Aziz, and the U.S. secretary of state, James

  Baker, are sparring. Mr. Arif tells us that we will be kicked out of Paki-

  stan if war breaks out, and we will not be allowed to go back to the

  field. We visit the American consulate, pleading, hoping they will sup-

  port our cause. The consulate is a fortress, with a concrete moat around

  it, double gates with Pakistani guards, and a second gate with U.S.

  marines and watch towers.

  4    |    Chapter 1

  Inside,  the  mood  is  tense. “Too  dangerous  for  foreigners,”  says  a

  trembling  scientific  attaché  who  seems  younger  than  we  are.  “Who

  knows what might happen? They burned down the American embassy

  here in 1979.”

  I am Dutch by birth, so I also visit the Dutch consul, who works in a

  small office suite in the middle of the bustling Blue Area. Here the mood

  is different. He laughs at such comments. “There might be demonstra-

  tions, but it is unlikely that the Pakistanis will turn against foreigners if

  the United States attacks Iraq in Kuwait. Just keep a low profile and stay

  away from cities. In the countryside you will be fine.”

  Ironically, our Pakistani colleagues have moved us from the country-

  side into the city. I am so frustrated. I feel like an irrelevant extra in some-

  one’s movie script. In the hotel room we watch CNN nervously. The talks

  between Aziz  and  Baker  collapse  on  January  9. We  are  told  we  must

  leave. Dejected, we wait as my Pakistani friends find a flight for us. It goes

  through Moscow. As�
��the plane takes off from Islamabad International

  Airport, it flies right over our field area in the Kala Chitta Hills. I don’t

  look out the window. On our second stop-over, in Amsterdam, I hear that

  Operation Desert Storm has started: the United States is invading Kuwait.

  a whale ear

  Our meager fossil finds travel back to the United States with us. Back at

  Duke University in North Carolina, where I am a postdoctoral associate,

  I slowly expose the fossils, carefully scraping the rock around them with

  dental tools and applying glue to cracks. None of them seem very excit-

  ing, but they are all we have, and it is good practice to take care of all

  fossils collected. The whale tympanic bone is a lot of trouble. For starters,

  this bone is already known to science from this region. In 1980, American

  paleontologist Robert West1 was the first to recognize, based on the teeth,

  that whales once lived in Pakistan. A year later, Philip Gingerich2 of the

  University  of  Michigan  described  a  whale’s  braincase  from  a  locality

  across the Indus River from West’s. That fossil also had a tympanic bone,

  and Gingerich named it  Pakicetus,  Latin for “Pakistan’s whale.”

  Although scientists agree that these finds are whales, and very prim-

  itive  whales  at  that,  little  is  known  about  them.  For  the  most  part,

  these fossils did not impress the general public or the scientific com-

  munity. Creationists in those days used whales as a prime example of

  why the fossil record does not support evolution. “There are simply no

  transitional forms in the fossil record between marine mammals and

  A Wasted Dig | 5

  figure 2. What is a whale? Whales, dolphins, and porpoises make up the cetaceans,