ARMOUR-CLAD WHALES 



AMONG the many wonderful palaeontological discoveries that 

 have startled the scientific world during the last few years, 

 none, perhaps, is more unexpected than the assertion that 

 the ancestral whales were protected from attack by a bony 

 armour analogous to that with which the armadillos of South 

 America are covered. Scarcely less marvellous is the fact 

 that vestiges of this ancient coat of mail are still borne by 

 such familiar cetaceans as the porpoise and its near relative, 

 the Japanese porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides), the latter 

 species being distinguished by the absence of a back-fin. 

 That creatures like the modern pelagic whales and porpoises, 

 or even the river dolphins, could ever have been invested 

 with a complete bony armour, is, of course, an absolute 

 impossibility. The rigidity of such a panoply would have 

 interfered far too much with the mobility of their supple 

 bodies, while its weight would have impaired their buoyancy. 

 Consequently it is necessary to assume that in even the 

 earlier representatives of these types the armour must 

 have been in a condition of degradation and elimination, 

 so that we must go back to more primitive forms to find it 

 in its full development. As every one knows nowadays, 

 whales and dolphins trace their ancestry to land animals, 

 and nothing is more likely than that when such ancestral 

 creatures began to take to an amphibious life on the 

 seashore, or at the mouth of a large river, they should 



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