A Whale of a Tale: How Evolutionists Turn Global Flood Evidence into Arguments for Evolution

Evolutionists pull a red
herring fallacy to distract
from flood evidence in the
Saharan whale graveyard

by Dr. Sarah Buckland-Reynolds

In a captivating headline published in Live Science on 4 July 2025, evolutionists take flood evidence and transform the narrative into supposed ‘evidence’ for evolution. The article by Sascha Pare, entitled: ‘Whale Valley: The whale graveyard in the Sahara desert that shows they once had feet and toes’ bypasses the obvious question about how a well-preserved fossil graveyard formed in the world’s largest hot desert, to instead attempting to make the case that homologous structures in the whale pelvic region demonstrate a history of evolution. But what do the whale graveyards really show?

Well-Preserved Fossils Suggest Rapid Burial

Referencing a feature on the website of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the authors state that:

“These skeletons and other marine fossils date to the late Eocene epoch (55.8 million to 33.9 million years ago), when present-day Egypt was submerged beneath the Tethys Ocean and whales had just evolved into sea creatures, according to UNESCO.”

According to palaeoclimate reconstruction based on evolutionary interpretations, the Tethys Ocean began to shrink between 7-11 million years ago, during the Tortonian stage of the Late Miocene. This was supposedly triggered from the gradual collision between the African and Eurasian plates resulting in the closure of the West Tethys Seaway. These changes in land-ocean coverage supposedly resulted in atmospheric changes connected with the region, resulting in the weakening of the African Summer Monsoon.

As the story goes, this change further reduced rainfall in the region, compounding upon the lost sea, and expanding aridity in the region. Deducing from the estimated time frame, this process would have supposedly taken around 4 million years for the aridification of the region, forming what we know today as the Sahara Desert, estimated to have finally formed between 2-3 million Darwin Years before present—or even as early as 7 million years ago, according to Science (2006).

The world’s biggest desert was once green and filled with life. (Credit: Illustra Media)

Unasked Questions

With such a gradual process of ocean shrinkage and coupled atmospheric feedback taking around 4 million years, just how would 400 whale skeletons become fossilized? With gradual ocean shrinkage, wouldn’t whales have just migrated and for those that did not, wouldn’t their remains have rotted with the ebbs and flows of the slowly retreating sea? This provides strong evidence that these fossils in Whale Valley formed due to catastrophic processes rather than from ocean shrinkage and the slow process of the aridification of the desert.

The environmental conditions associated with the evolutionary story just does not fit with fossil formation we observe in the Sahara.

Further support for a global catastrophe comes from the variety of well-preserved organisms found. Quoting from the Live Science article:

“In 2005, paleontologists uncovered a stunningly preserved, near-complete B. isis skeleton, prompting UNESCO to list Whale Valley as a World Heritage site. Since then, plenty more fossils have emerged, including the remains of ancient Eocene turtles, bony fishes, sharks, rays, crocodiles, sea cows and shellfish, according to the review.”

Could gradual environmental change feasibly result in ‘stunning preservation’ of these organisms?

Pelvic Evolution?

Darwin thought whales evolved from bears. Later Darwinists insist it was a wolf-like animal.

Beyond the evolutionary story of a localized oceanic shrinkage leading to the whale graveyard, the authors zoomed in on a curious structure found in whale skeletons as supposed evidence that they had legs. The evolutionary narrative holds that these bones are vestigial – merely remnants of an evolutionary past, ‘proving’ that whales are evolutionary ancestors. But are these bones really vestigial? Is the evolutionary allegation really a watertight argument?

Despite this claim of vestigiality, other evolutionary literature over the past decade has independently demonstrated that whales’ pelvic structures actually perform useful functions, including but not limited to anchoring reproductive organs and providing structural support for both reproductive and digestive systems. While evolutionists may attempt to justify functionality as a claim of ‘exaptations’ (suggesting changes in function over time), this is a philosophical claim, not a scientific one. As with the overall theory, this narrative once again highlights how evolutionists insist on reading history into the structure without direct evidence of such transitions.

More Buried Confusion in Whale Valley

As Dr. Jerry Bergman pointed out (see 14 July 2025), another tactic used to paint the whale evolution story is to confound evidence of various other species found in ‘Whale Valley’ and argue that these distinct creatures provide evidence of primitive whales or whale ancestors. As Dr. Bergman recently wrote, commenting on the Live Science article:

“…the animal discovered and reported by Pare in Live Science found in Whale Valley was not actually a whale, but rather a dolphin-like creature known as Archaeoceti, which measured about eight meters in length—significantly smaller than the average modern whale, which typically reaches around 27 meters length, making it roughly 3.4 times longer than Archaeoceti.”

By attempting to construct a coherent narrative, evolutionists often make philosophical connections from fragmentary evidence to fit the story they seek to tell. Once again, this is far from being the scientific method, as this would mean any observation would have an a priori interpretation. Each observation would be used to support their favored narrative by default, rather than explore alternative interpretations.

It must also be noted, curiously, that despite the claim that Whale Valley contains ‘primitive’ whales, what we see are sudden appearances of distinct kinds. Evolutionists draw connections between them, but the transitions are merely speculative.

The alleged sequence of creatures in whale evolution is largely artistic license. Illustration courtesy Illustra Media.

A Cautionary Note for Scientists-in-Training in the Educational System

Here’s a Short Reel about this article to share with the young! Click to view.

This review by Live Science presents just another example of the importance of distinguishing facts and observations from interpretations. Many of the claims made in this article were drawn from posts by UNESCO – the global body responsible for overseeing ‘quality’ standards for science and cultural education. When students are taught to conflate observations through a single interpretive lens, their critical thinking skills suffer. The perpetuation of an exclusively evolutionary framework further persuades upcoming scientists that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming – when in fact, creation scientists work with the same data but interpret it differently.

While we encourage qualified scientists to continue highlighting flawed reasoning and other ‘whales’ of tales, we must restore scientific enquiry to its original intent of an open search for truth. It is imperative that Christian parents, pastors and those in positions of influence expose students (especially those wishing to enter scientific careers) to examples of evolutionary reasoning like this, then equip them with critical thinking techniques to identify the biases and fallacies. No one need fear truly honest and open scientific enquiry into fossils, whales and other observational evidence. Because God created all things and is the foundation for Truth, honest science is bound to bring us closer to Him.

Dr. Sarah Buckland-Reynolds is a Christian, Jamaican, Environmental Science researcher, and journal associate editor. She holds the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography from the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona with high commendation, and a postgraduate specialization in Geomatics at the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia. The quality of her research activity in Environmental Science has been recognized by various awards including the 2024 Editor’s Award from the American Meteorological Society for her reviewing service in the Weather, Climate and Society Journal, the 2023 L’Oreal/UNESCO Women in Science Caribbean Award, the 2023 ICETEX International Experts Exchange Award for study in Colombia. and with her PhD research in drought management also being shortlisted in the top 10 globally for the 2023 Allianz Climate Risk Award by Munich Re Insurance, Germany. Motivated by her faith in God and zeal to positively influence society, Dr. Buckland-Reynolds is also the founder and Principal Director of Chosen to G.L.O.W. Ministries, a Jamaican charitable organization which seeks to amplify the Christian voice in the public sphere and equip more youths to know how to defend their faith.