When anthropology Prof. Philip Gingerich came back home to Ann Arbor last winter, he had a whale of a story to tell.
After two months excavating in Pakistan, Gingerich found that early whales looked nothing like Moby Dick. An expert on whale evolution, Gingerich's work will be displayed at the University's Exhibit Museum of Natural History until Oct. 18.
The exhibit, titled "Back to Sea: The Evolution of Whales," features the most complete display of ancient whale specimens in the world.
"This is clearly the largest project the museum has undertaken," said Amy Harris, development officer of the Exhibit Museum of Natural History. "We have spent two years getting ready for this. It is the most comprehensive exhibit of its type in the world, even bigger than New York's Natural History Museum."
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| KEVIN KRUPITZER/Daily Amy Harris, development officer of exhibits at the Museum of Natural History, stands beside a piece of the museum's exhibit, titled "Back to Sea: The Evolution of Whales." |
"To me, the importance of this is the steps," said Gingerich, director of the Museum of Paleontology. "It is important that we study and understand the steps in the evolution of this creature, a transition that occupied a great amount of time."
Gingerich has spent 20 years travelling to research sites in Pakistan and Egypt, where he has witnessed the political upheavals of two wars.
In 1979, Gingerich left Pakistan when its western neighbor Afghanistan was invaded by the Soviet Union. Eleven years later, the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan advised him to leave the country because of the Gulf War.
Despite the obstacles, Gingerich has made 14 research expeditions to the deserts and foothills of the two countries and collected fossils that show the development of whales from hooved land creatures to fully aquatic mammals.
Usually, land vertebrates evolve from a fish to an amphibian or reptile before becoming a fully developed mammal. Gingerich said the process for whales is the opposite.
"Despite this seemingly backward direction of whale evolution, whales have proven to be a very successful group," Gingerich said. This is certainly proven by the fact that more than 80 species exist today, all of them evolved from a single type of whale.
Ancient whales once looked like hyenas and in later stages began to resemble dolphins, sea lions and even crocodiles, he said.
Harris said the exhibit will put the University on the map for pioneering evolutionary studies. "It will definitely be a boost to our profile. After all, whales are an academic field, aren't they?"
What changes present-day whales face in the future is hard to predict, Gingerich said.
"Since it is difficult to predict chance events in the future, we simply cannot predict what the future holds for whales," Gingerich said. "Evolution on this broad scale is not predictable because it is never simple. There are always a great number of factors, and hence too many possibilities."
Other parts of the exhibit feature the ancestral whale Dorudon atrox, a carnivorous sea-going creature armed with ferocious teeth and hind limbs, evidence of a distant past when its ancestors could crawl on land.
Three whale species on show indicate the development of the mammal from a meat-eating, wolf-like land animal to a fully aquatic whale, a transition that took millions of years.
Pakicetus was an amphibious animal found in the near shore marine sediments, Ambulocetus was an amphibious, large-flippered animal that had characteristics of a seal, a hippopatomus and a crocodile, and Rodhocetus was an aquatic animal that resembled a hairy crocodile.
09-26-97
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