Date: 25 Jun 2026
Topic: History
Codebreakers are a fun way to build numeracy skills.
Around 50 million years ago, modern-day whales used to be quadrupedal land-dwelling animals. Currently, their closest living land relative is the hippo, which itself loves to spend many an hour bathing in African waters.
The land-dwelling ancestor of the whale was somewhat like a small deer that spent a lot of its life around bodies of water. Over the span of about 10 million years, its legs and hooves morphed into flippers, allowing it to swim more effectively; its hind legs diminished and its hip separated from its spine as it had a reduced need for the ability to walk on land; and its nostrils relocated to the top of its head until what was left was an oxygen-breathing whale that spent its life in the ocean.
It also happened to grow much, much larger. And most interesting of all, roughly 325 million years earlier, Tiktaalik - a distant ancestor for all land lubbers - was among the first to leave the ocean to walk on land using fins that had ankles, allowing it to support itself on hard ground. Whales then decided that land was overrated and returned back into the ocean.