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I watched a show on PBS last night, "When Whales Walked: Journeys in Deep Time."  I just happened to notice it on the guide about 45 minutes before it was on.  It is actually about more than the evolution of whales, the group having four-footed Early Eocene ancestors.  There is a long segment roughly twenty minutes long each on crocodilians, birds, whales, and elephants.  I thought it was a good show overall with interviews of researchers I know from their technical articles ( Hans-Dieter Sues, Philip Gingerich, Emmanel Gheerbrant, Christian de Muizon).  However, each segment was also a little light on content for the topic and one was especially unclear.  The one on birds made it appear that Deinonychus was an ancestor of later birds.  They should have showed a chart showing when it lived in the Cretaceous with Archaeopteryx and the Liaoning birds millions of years before.  There was a quick view of a family tree that seemed to illustrate that but it went by in a second or two.

 

The segment on whales showed a lot of footage of modern whales and some great background on the "first whale," Pakicetus, but it didn't show any of the whales described in the past twenty years.  It just mentioned that there had been recent discoveries.  I thought there should have been at least a quick look at Ambulocetus and a few of the increasingly more marine-adapted forms that lived before Basilosaurus.  They pretty much jumped from Pakicetus to Basilosaurus to the divergence of toothed and baleen whales.  I think they could have spent the two hours just on the whales just as the title of the show led me to believe.

 

I liked the segment on elephants because just as I was expecting the show to skip the earliest known members of the group, they go to Morocco and then talk to Emmanuel Gheerbrant who described Phosphatherium, the first probiscidean, which is known from the same early Eocene phosphate layer as a lot of the shark teeth we see at shows are from.  Other extinct forms were descussed as well.

 

Here's a link that takes to an online notice and website:

 

https://www.pbs.org/show/when-whales-walked-journeys-deep-time/

 

Jess

 

 

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Thanks Jess its on tomorrow 75 minutes and sunday 2 hr, not sure whats the difference but have them set to record on my dvd.

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Liked the first three quarters, but tired of the final part of shows like this that tell me how evil people are.

 

Brent Ashcraft

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ashcraft, brent allen

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I couldn’t watch it last night so I recorded it and just finished watching it.  I thought it was good.  I agree the title was a little misleading but the set of 4 topics worked well.  In roughly a half hour per segment they can only touch on each topic so lots of good stuff was left out.  But I thought they did a good job of explaining questions that were popping through my mind when I watched, like why would a dinosaur develop a wishbone before it could fly or why could they be confident the earliest ancestors to whales were really related.  They never used the word cladistics but it was clear in their descriptions that is what they were doing.  A good intro to the subject for the layman.  And yes, Brent @ashcraft I agree about the last part but that is a subject that seems to get woven into every documentary about anything these days.

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Haven't watched the entire thing, but did get a snippet of the very end. I'll go ahead and ditto that while the "save the earth" message is altruistic, it had "Cliche" written all over it.

Every single fossil you see is a miracle set in stone, and should be treated as such.

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I too watched the program, at least the first 3/4 of it. I kept waiting for the whale segment, thinking the whole thing was a whale segment, but it seemed to never come. Finally, as my eyes were getting heavy, the part on whales showed up. Interesting segments on crocodile evolution, etc., but I really came for the whales. I'll look at the programming to see if I can watch the last section while my eyes are still staying open willingly. 
 

The program that preceded it, on the Nile river, was very interesting as well. It too had elephants and crocodiles in supporting roles. Cheers.

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I also thought I was tuned in to the wrong program and barely stayed awake for the finale. Thoroughly enjoyed every minute though. Agree with Brent and Steve regarding the evils of mankind bit though I guess I was too tired to recall it specifically.

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I hope to find it somewhere online, I read it was narrated by Lee Pace, so one of my favorite actors in combination with a docu about paleontology, have to see that! :) 

Interested in all things paleontology, geology, zoology, evolution, natural history and science!
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On 6/21/2019 at 12:00 AM, Sagebrush Steve said:

I agree about the last part but that is a subject that seems to get woven into every documentary about anything these days.

Probably only because it's true. I'm pretty sure the chimps and bonobos don't crave/carve ivory and aren't responsible for the decline in numbers of elephants.

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Mark.

 

Fossil hunting is easy -- they don't run away when you shoot at them!

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I agree about the lack of whale content but thoroughly enjoyed the program.  One tidbit I found interesting was how elephant poachers have effectively bred out the characteristic of long tusks from the natural population.    

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---Wie Wasser schleift den Stein, wir steigen und fallen---

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On 6/25/2019 at 5:51 PM, Mark Kmiecik said:

Probably only because it's true. I'm pretty sure the chimps and bonobos don't crave/carve ivory and aren't responsible for the decline in numbers of elephants.

I've worked with chimps.  They are violent creatures (infanticide among other things).

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Please remember to remain civil and to not derail the topic from it's original intent.  :) 

 

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    Tim    VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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I watched this show and I enjoyed it. I definitely wish it went into more detail on a lot of parts but overall I liked it. And if it gets new people interested in researching these animals then I can live with a little preaching at the end.

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