Dolphin With “Remains of Back Legs”
Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 4th, 2006
Not cryptozoological, but considering what’s been discussed today, it seemed worth sharing:
Japanese researchers said Sunday [November 4, 2006] a bottlenose dolphin captured last month has an extra set of fins that could be the remains of back legs, providing further evidence ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land.
Fishermen captured the four-finned dolphin off the coast of Wakayama prefecture in western Japan on Oct. 28 and alerted the nearby Taiji Whaling Museum, said museum director Katsuki Hayashi.
Fossil remains show dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and share the same common ancestor as hippos and deer. Scientists believe they later transitioned to an aquatic lifestyle and their hind limbs disappeared.
Though odd-shaped protrusions have been found near the tails of dolphins and whales captured in the past, researchers thought it was the first time one had been found with well-developed, symmetrical fins, Hayashi said.
"I believe the fins may be remains from the time when dolphins’ ancient ancestors lived on land…this is an unprecedented discovery," said Seiji Osumi, an adviser at Tokyo’s Institute of Cetacean Research, at a news conference televised Sunday.
The second set of fins – much smaller than the dolphin’s front fins – are about the size of human hands and protrude from near the tail on the dolphin’s underside. The dolphin measures 2.72 metres and is about five years old, the museum said.
A freak mutation may have caused the ancient trait to reassert itself, Osumi said. The dolphin will be kept at the Taiji museum for X-ray and DNA tests, Hayashi said.
Source: The Canadian Press, November 4, 2006.
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Thanks to Cryptomundo reader youcantryreachingme, we now have the following photo of the dolphin.
AP / Taiji Whale Museum via Kyodo News
In this undated photo released by Taiji Whale Museum, divers hold a bottlenose dolphin which has an extra set of human palm-sized fins near its tail in Taiji, Wakayama prefecture (state) in western Japan.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Fascinating. I would love to see pictures.
Hmmm… Unusual, yes, but wouldn’t a more prosaic explanation be that this animal was a one of set of twins, where one of the twins was partially absorbed by the other twin prior to birth? This certainly happens with humankind, but we don’t normally go looking for ‘genetic throwback’ explanations for these unfortunates… Again, twins would be relatively unusual in dolphins, but certainly not out of the question.
Right Johcar. The pro evolution slant is apparent in the headline, but when you read the article and see the pics. all we have is an extra set of fins! like a person being born with extra toes etc. Sorry but they are really reaching here. Desperation is embarrassing sometimes.
Me and this guy (jason, the big foot hunter)were discussing the dolphin they found today and we were thinking that maybe ocean dwelling mammals are not ending there land dwelling days but just beginning. Maybe they are just now growing these “legs” therefore starting the days of land dwelling! Who knows? I thought it was worth discussing.
Let’s remember that the scientists did not say it WAS a vestigial set of limbs. They said in the article it MAY be remains from a time when dolphins lived on land. They are taking the evidence available and making informed theories, not assertations. This is excactly what we do here when we discuss the existence of cryptids, so I do not feel it is just to write off this finding outright as something other than what they are saying it is. I think more research will be needed in this case before anyone can surely say what’s going on here. Interesting article.
Well we dont have all the details but I cannot see why they have singled out a evolution throw back slant.
Like the other people have commented extra limbs have been seeen before.
Sites like Forteantimes have had posts about four legged Chickens and two headed Snakes. So should we assume in the past Chickens had Four legs and snakes two heads! I think not.
Before anything they need to rule out other possible causes like , birth defect , pollution or maybe Nature just thinks that Dolphins look better with more Fins so built a proto type to test the design? ( laught ) or maybe they are the Dolphin latest must have accessorie..
I always thought the rear legs on the ancestors of dolphins fused to form the tail fin. Sort of like how the tail ends of seals and sea lions are formed.
Evolutionary throwbacks occur much more frequently than many people realize. For instance, people are sometimes born with webbed feet or vestigal tails.
And even if it is a set of limbs, it is not necessarily a throwback. It could be a partial twin.
Also, nobody is saying that dolphins and other ocean-dwelling animals once lived on land and just suddenly jumped into the sea. That the remote ancestors of such animals lived on land, however, is really beyond dispute. Many fossils of transitionary forms have already been identified, and more will come to light as more of the Earth is explored.
There is a big difference in congenital abnormalities such as conjoined or partial twins, and evolutionary throwbacks.
Well said, Kittenz. Another example is found in some snakes, boas and pythons to be exact. Some of them have tiny claws near their tails (yes, snakes have a tail!), and these are vestigial limbs that are not quite gone yet.
Yes, mystery_man, both boas and pythons have vestigal legs. They also also have recognizable, though vestigal, pelvises. Unlike more evolved snakes, boas and pythons have two functional lungs, too. (More derived species such as pit vipers, elapids, and colubrid snakes only have one functional lung.)
I kept pet snakes for many years. My favorites are pythons. They exhibit many physical and behavioral features that are unusual in reptiles. For instance, they are able to regulate their body temperature to an extent, by means of a sort of shivering. They also show parental care (on a limited basis). From my personal experience with boas and pythons, they even come to recognize their handler, and they react differently to a known person than to a stranger. I won’t go so far as to say that snakes are capable of love in the way that dogs and cats are, but pythons that I had for a long time did behave toward me in a way that could be considered affectionate.
I believe that boas and pythons followed a different evolutionary path than other types of snakes, and that they may be descended from reptiles which were closer to the line of descent that led to mammals.
As a gaijin living in Japan, I can say that dolphin’s extra fins have saved its life. The fisherman in Wakayama catch dolphins and pilot whales for one reason and one reason alone: to massacre them. The implications wrt natural selection are immense, here.
Elsanto is right. I live in Japan too, and in some prefectures they perform huge dolphin massacres. They heard them into a cordoned off area, then leave them alone until morning to let the stress levels go down, which they feel disrupts the taste of the meat. The next morning, they massacre them and take a couple to sell off to marine parks. They often just go about randomly stabbing these majestic and intelligent creatures. There was a full newspaper spread on this barbaric practice here just last week. People in Wakayama prize them as a food source even though the meat is dangerously high in mercury.
Maybe the dolfins are developing legs for the future, so they can crawl up on land and beat the fishermen who are recklessly and remorselessly wreaking havoc in the seas.
It is especially sad considering dolphins are ranked up in the “cognitive elite” so to speak. They are one of the only animals besides chimps and elephants, (and humans, of course), that can recognize themselves in a mirror. This shows extraordinary cognitive ability and a type of self awareness that is exceptional in the animal world. To think that these animals have such a stunning intelligence and sense of self makes it all the more tragic that they are being slaughtered like cattle.
“Tails” in humans are nothing of the sort. A tail bone looks like a tail but it is actually a leverage device that enables us to sit. If people are born with extra bones in it, it is a mutation, not a throwback. The more we learn about human anatomy the less “vestigal” organs remain because we find their functions. Some functions the body can compensate for if they are lost but if too many in the line go down then their is trouble.
Since this is true in humans I suspect the same in animals. However if you look at Geneisis and read it for what it says, the Serpents punishment for deception was to crawl in the dust; so maybe they DID use to have legs!
I guess it depends on which of the translations of Genesis that you read.
The more we learn about genetics, about how the ‘junk’ DNA is viable unused code that can be turned on or off by the process of hormone-induced methylation, and the instructions for doing so, the more appeals to “throwbacks” makes less sense and appears more and more 19th century (along with Freud, phrenology and phlogiston).
I don’t know what the story is with this dolphin. We don’t know all of the species of dolphins there are, not by a long shot, it would seem. It could be the remnants of a twin, it could be an improper activation of a gene – though how they would then be so suitably placed would be mysterious, in both of those cases. They aren’t legs, they appear to be nicely formed and proportional flippers that would be a survival advantage, rather than hindrance, so throwback seems very likely out as an explanation. There is so very much we don’t know.
God point Mememe, I was thinking the same thing when I read your post. I think there was P.T. Barnum guy who had three-legs and played soccer. This dolphin is different but nothing more than a benign mutation. It seems like since DNA research didn’t pan out the way evolutionists expected they’ve been grasping at everything they can to bolster their theory. Can’t blame them I guess. If the source of my academic reputation and life-work was in jeopardy of being proved groundless I suppose I’d try to salvage it, too. I just hope I would say, “Well, lets try thinking this through again.” I’m just saying let’s start making the theories fit the data and not the other way around.
The problem here is that we do not have all the data. How is insisting that it is not an evolutionary throwback any better than insisting it is? There are examples of vestigal organs and body parts in some animals, so their theory is not totally ungrounded. On the other hand, some of the other ideas posted here are valid as well. I feel that we should be careful not to adhere to one theory or the other until more data is made available. We cannot accuse these scientists of taking a strict evolutionary slant, and then go and take a strict “freak mutation” slant or “congenital twin” stance. Dismissing other theories outright without further data is not in the best interest of finding out what is really going on here.
mystery_man and kittenz- talking refreshing sense as usual.
There is really no mystery here, cetaceans with external hind limbs are well documented in the literature, and were known to whalers. Most cetaceans have a vestigal pelvis and femurs, which are not connected to the spine. Usually they are buried in the soft tissue but once in a while can project externally.
DNA research has done nothing but provide thousands of examples of solid, unquestionable support for evolution, a theory I might add that has far more positive evidence than any working theories of gravity or electromagnetism. Yet strangely, I don’t hear anybody denying those, even though evolution is just as obvious. And I’m sure plenty of these deniers are willing to stand in line to get their flu shots, blissfully ignorant of the fact that such a shot would be completely unnecessary if the flu virus didn’t evolve through thousands of generations from year to year. Evolution is real. We’ve seen it, in bacteria, viruses, fruit flies, heck even selective breeding of livestock is just humans taking control of an existing evolutionary process. It has left its mark in every animal’s DNA, as well as their morphology, anatomy, even behaviour. Coupled with equally well-known and undisputed geological processes, it is proof that the Earth is very old, and life has existed on it, living, adapting, evolving, for a very long time.
Very well put, Mnynames. One of the problems the public has with evolution is that an average person can grasp what it’s about at a rudimentary level, unlike theories of gravity or electromagnetism. The public doesn’t think anything of, say, quantum mechanics – they can’t understand it.
I understand it, and don’t buy it. I do believe in mutations within “kinds’ and variations within “kinds” but I don’t think cattle turned into whales. I also don’t believe time kissing a frog can turn him into a prince much less a Princess doing the same.
I must agree. The flu virus has changed and mutated and micro-evolved…but in the end what is it? A flu virus. Now if it turned into a chicken, I would be impressed.
kittenz, it is highly unprobable that pythons are closer related to mammals than other snakes. Only because they show some high developed features like the ability to increase their body temperature or care for their young, they don’t have to do anything with mammals. Many non-mammals evolved the ability to increase their body temperature independently, among them many fish like marlins, swordfish, several sharks and tunas. There are also many other vertebrates which take care on their young, although most of their closer relatives don’t do this. This can be seen for example in frogs.
But to keep on the main topic. When I read the other comments, I saw that there is a lot of misunderstanding of biology and related terms. For example that tails in humans are no atavisms but mutations. In fact they are mutations which leads to an atavism. A single mutation in the DNA can not cause that a complete tail grows (what would be in a creationistic world, where humans had never ancestors with tails), because such a thing would need thousands of other mutations at the same time. But a single mutation can cause that something that was existent in the anatomy of the ancestors can come on the surface. This is not the same thing as polydactily, what is really a mutation which causes a different number of fingers which are already there, but a completely other organ.
By the way, the tail of whales is made only from more or less normal tail-bones and muscles which form the fluke.