ARMOUR-CLAD WHALES 
Amone 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 (Veophocaena phocaenotdes), 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 
308 
