Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1902-01-02
ANCESTOR OF THE WHALE.
The Amphibian's PrOgenitor Was q
Terrestrial Monster lad
with Armor.

Among the many wonderful palae.
theological discoveries that have star
tied the scientific world during the
last few years, non has caused more
establishment than the revelation that
the ancestral whales were protected
from attack by a bony armor analo-
gous to that with which the ~armadillos
of South Africa are covered.
Vestiges of this ancient coat of mail
are still borne by such familiar ceta-
ceans as the porpoise and its n~earrela-
tive, the japanese porpoise, the latter
species being distinguished by it's alb
sence of a back-fin. That creatures
hike the modern peIagic whales and
porpOises, or even the river dolphins,
could ever have been invested with a
complete bony armor is, of course, an
absolute impossibility. says a scien-
tifc journal. The rigidity of such a
panoply would have interfered far too
much with the mobility of their sup
pie bodies, while its weight would have
impaired their buoyancy. Consequent
", it is necessary to assume that even
in the earlier representatives of these
types the armor must have been in a
condition of degradation and elimina-
ton, so that we must go back to still
earlier forms to find it in it's full de-
velopment.
As every one knows nowadays,
whales and dolphins trace their ances-
try to land animals, and it appears
highly likely that when such ancestral
creatures began to take to an amphib-
ious life on the seashore, or at the
mouth Of a large river, they may have
developed a dermal armor which
would serve to protect them alike
from the breakers and from the at
tacks of sharks and other marine mon
sters.
The majority of the living toothed
whales are finished with a dorsal fin.
The function of the dorsal fin is to act
as a kind of keel in maintaining the
balance of the body, this ~appendage
being most developed in purely pelagic'
cetaceans like the killer, while in lit
toral or f~uviatile forms, such as the
narwhal, the white whale and the Jap
anese porpoise. In the whalebone
bones, among which the dorsal fin is
either small or wanting, its function
may be discharged by the keel, or,
owing to corporeal bulk, no such
function is required at all.
In their earliest stage of develop
ment the toothed whales were fully
armored. The object of the armor
was a defense against enemies, such as
sharks, such an mt being also very
valuable to animals exposed to the
force of a strong surf on rocky shores.
AS the creatures took more and more
to an aquatic life, the acquisition of
greater speed would be of greater
value to them, and this would be &C
complished by diminishing the specific
gravity and friction of the body, and
shortening of the extremities and the
development of a caudal fin to serve as
the instrument of locomotion.
Accordingly the arm would very
soon be lost by the pelagic cetaceans
in order to diminish friction and light
en- the specific gravity. Only among
certain types, which diverged at an
early epoch from the ancestral stock
and took to a fiuviatile or estuarine
life, did vestiges of the armor persist,
while the dorsal fin remained undevel-
oped. That in this form as well as in
the closely allied true porpoises we
have the most primitive type of living
toothed whales, is confirmed by the
nature of their dentition, as well as by
the circumstance that in this group
alone the p%remaxilla is toothed.