Any evolutionary scenario between land and sea mammals has to explain the different ear and nose structures between the two groups. By means of the showy graphics it used, National Geographic has tried to give the impression that the question has been resolved. Yet that impression is a false one.

Let us first consider the ear structure. Like us, land mammals trap sounds in the outside world in the outer ear, amplify them with the bones in the middle ear, and turn them into signals in the inner ear. Marine mammals have no outer ear. They hear sounds by means of vibration-sensitive receptors in their lower jaws.

National Geographic claims that the second system evolved from the first. This is made clear on Page 71 in the diagram headed 'hearing aids.' This diagram has been drawn in such a way as to give the reader the impression that hearing organs evolved in stages. However, there is no evolution by stages here. A look at the text used by National Geographic will suffice to make this clear:

" Pakicetus ... This walking whale lacked the fat pad extending to the middle ear that modern ceteans have, a clue that it had kept terrestrial attributes. In later whales, the jawbone, with the fat pad, adapted to receive sounds."

We have already seen that Pakicetus was a typical land mammal, and that it is ridiculous to call it a 'walking whale.' The logic employed by National Geographic is no less ridiculous: It first describes the land-dwelling Pakicetus as a 'walking whale' and then says that the animal kept terrestrial attributes. That is like calling the cow a 'walking bat' and then saying, 'It has no wings, it keeps its terrestrial attributes.'

That is one aspect of the matter. The aspect that concerns us here is the clear difference between Pakicetus and whale ears. After the National Geographic extract above, we must naturally look to see if there is a transitional form between the two. After Pakicetus in the family tree comes Ambulocetus , which evolutionists call a 'walking-swimming whale' but which was actually a land mammal. National Geographic uses the following words about Ambulocetus : "Though more aquatic than Pakicetus , Ambulocetus still heard directly through its ear."
In other words, there is no evolution towards a whale ear in Ambulocetus .

When we come to the third animal in the National Geographic list, we suddenly meet an enormous change. The above extract continues: Sounds were transmitted to the middle ears of Basilosaurus as vibrations from the lower jaw.
In other words, Basilosaurus possesses a typical whale ear. It was a creature that perceived sounds around it not through an outer ear but by vibrations reaching its jaw. And there is no transitional form between Basilosaurus ' ear and that of Pakicetus and Ambulocetus , which National Geographic put before it in its scheme.

When the subject is examined theoretically, it can be seen that in any case such a transitional form would have no chance of surviving. Any evolution by stages between one perfect aural system to a completely different one is impossible. The transitional phases would not be advantageous. An animal that slowly loses its ability to hear with its ears, but has still not developed the ability to hear through its jaw is at a disadvantage.

The question of how such a 'development' could come about is an insoluble dilemma for evolutionists. The mechanisms evolutionists put forward are mutations and these have never been seen to add unequivocally new and meaningful information to animals' genetic information. It is unreasonable to suggest that the complex hearing system in sea mammals could have emerged as the result of mutations.
A similar situation applies to National Geographic's account of the 'sliding nose.' The magazine set out three skulls from Pakicetus , Rodhocetus and a Grey Whale from our own time above one another and claimed that these represented an evolutionary process. Whereas the three fossils' nasal structures, especially those of Rodhocetus and the Grey Whale are so different that it is impossible to accept them as transitional forms in the same series.
Furthermore, the movement of the nostrils to the forehead would require a 'new design' in the anatomy of the animals in question, and believing that this could happen as the result of mutations is nothing but fantasy.

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