How Whales Walked into the Sea - Softcover

McNulty, Faith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0590898310 ISBN 13: 9780590898317

Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks, 2000

Synopsis

Explains how the earth's biggest mammal evolved from a land animal into a sea animal

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

The team behind the intimate view of A Snake in the House takes a more objective, long-range look at whales in this clear account of the mammals' complex evolution. Beginning 50 million years ago, when the antecedent "whales" were furry, four-legged land animals wading shallow waters to forage for fish, McNulty touches on evolutionary milestones leading up to the exclusively water creatures we know as whales today. The feet of land-roaming mesonychids become broader, paddlelike; ambulocetus, the "Walking Whale," comes ashore only to rest and give birth; rodhocetus, the "Hardly Walking Whale," takes on a tapered silhouette with a fin-like tail. Despite a few anomalies (e.g., How did the nostrils become a blowhole on top of the head?), McNulty effectively demonstrates that modern whales carry recognizable remnants of their ancestors ("Inside whales' flippers are arm, wrist, and finger bones"). Although unambiguous and forthright, the text is dense and perhaps best approached with a clear understanding of evolutionary principles (a time line, for instance, would have been helpful). McNulty's straightforward prose concludes in searching questions: "We know [whales] think and have feelings.... Does the whale still have some of the feelings of a land animal...? Does the whale still love the sun?" Rand's arresting and expansive watercolors offer additional, subtle physical changes not mentioned in the text, and his dramatic portraits of orca and sperm whales, especially, will please any fan of these giant mammals. Ages 7-10.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 3-5?The ancestors of modern whales were definitely land dwellers, with four sturdy legs, a tail, furry coats, and a set of powerful jaws. Through a long process of evolution, their forelegs became flippers, their tails grew muscular flukes, and their hind legs disappeared from view to become vestigial skeletal remnants. Their nostrils moved to the tops of their heads, and their jaws grew different teeth or transformed them into sheets of filtering baleen. But their blood is still warm, they still nurse their young, and those vestigial hind limbs testify to their four-legged forebears. McNulty recounts this aeons-long conversion in a simply worded, informative text, including data on modern cetaceans and their lifestyles as well, and an added page of further details on six whale species. All of this is flawed by a misstatement on the duration of whale dives: some do make shallow, short-term dives, but sperm whales regularly make deep dives lasting an hour or more. Rand's exuberant paintings rendered in acrylics, watercolors, and chalks are a perfect foil for the readable text, presenting accurate images for readers uncertain of the physical appearance of such unwhalelike beginnings as mesonychids and ambulocetus, and who are appreciative of the awe a pair of gigantic flukes can generate.?Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0590898310
• ISBN 13: 9780590898317
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Lewin Ted, Rand Ted