Title : New Ancient Members of Whale Family Found
Author: Mauricio Handler
Publisher: National Geographic

This article is about the recent discovery of four new species that are ancestors to modern baleen whales. As the article explains baleen whales are named for the material that their teeth ware made of. The material is very similar to what human's finger nails are made of. This find represents a large step in the evolution of whales. These new species that were found not only have teeth, they have been dated to a time when toothed baleen whales should have been extinct for about five million years. In fact at the dig site there was a huge diversity of this species of whale. This suggests that not only was the lineage of these teethed baleen whales not extinct it was actually doing well at the time when these specific whales died. There has never been toothed whales from this time period found before so this find is very important in documenting the evolution of whales. It helps us understand the specific transitions that baleen whales went through to get to how we see them today. Scientists haven't yet named the majority of the species that were found in this dig and there is continuing research about these new species of whale and what they mean to the evolution of baleen whales as a whole. I think that this is an important article because it is an example about a key part of science. Science is always changing, theories shift and we accept different ideas over time. It is one of the best things about science because it never stops progressing, but its also one of the most detrimental parts of science. It allows people to second guess scientific based primarily on the fact that because scientific theory can be altered it cannot be trusted as fact.