My animation will focus on whale evolution and particularly how modern whales still have vestigial limbs left behind in their evolved bodies. The animation will tell the story in 1 minute of how the most ancient whales (eg Basilosaurus) evolved into modern whales but kept their hind limbs.
I think perhaps i will go into more depth about the evolution and the proof that is out there by looking further into skeletal structure. (5 fingered hands and flippers and paws)
Biologists believe that for 100 million years the only vertebrates on Earth were water-dwelling creatures, with no arms or legs. At some point these ?fish? began to develop hips and legs and eventually were able to walk out of the water, giving the earth its first land lovers. Once the land-dwelling creatures evolved, there were some mammals that moved back into the water. Biologists estimate that this happened about 50 million years ago, and that this mammal was the ancestor of the modern whale. Despite the apparent uselessness, evolution left traces of hind legs behind, and these vestigial limbs can still be seen in the modern whale. There are many cases where whales have been found with rudimentary hind limbs in the wild, and have been found in baleen whales, humpback whales, and in many specimens of sperm whales. Most of these examples are of whales that had only leg bones, but there were some that included feet with complete digits. It was reported recently that whales and hippos were distantly related.
Basilosaurus, made from ink washed soft canvas and stuffed with a skeleton. Slightly smaller than the fin whale and much slimmer. - I think i may add some teeth...
