johnmuise said:
1. Transitional fossils are lacking, there should be billions of transitional fossils.
2. We should see smooth change through the fossil record, not gaps.
Specific examples of non-transition:
1. There are gaps between invertebrates and vertebrates.
2. There are gaps between fish and amphibians.
3. There are gaps between amphibians and reptiles.
4. There are gaps between reptiles and birds - was probably not an ancestor of modern birds. - Archaeopteryx is fully bird, Duck-billed dinosaur find disproves its bird ancestry.
5. There are gaps between reptiles and mammals
6. There are gaps between land mammals and whales.
7. Horse fossils don't show evolution.
8. Arthropods arose suddenly, There are no fossil ancestors of insects.
9. There are no fossil ancestors of plants, Progymnosperms are imaginary evolutionary ancestors.
This is ridiculous. First of all, there are lots of transitional fossils. just do a web search. creationists like to claim that there are no transitional fossils. This is a claim made by many creationists seeking to distort or flat-out ignore the evidence that exists.
Secondly, "gaps" in the fossil record are not evidence against the ToE, only evidence that fossilization is delicate business, requiring specific conditions for fossilization to occur, instead of allowing the animal to decay and disintegrate. we find new fossils all the time. Archaeopteryx is the most cited transitional form, so I'll use that example. We can see that Archeopterix had a breast bone, but paleontologists can't be sure if the muscle attachments were large enough to support powered flight, and Archeopterix bones aren't hollow like modern birds, so If it did fly it was more like the flight of a road runner than the flight of an eagle. Archeopterix does have feathers, their impressions are clearly visible on most of the fossil specimens. Archeopterix also has a wish bone. It also may have an opposable big toe (it's hard to tell on the fossils) which would be another Avian feature. Finally the Archeopterix has an elongated and backward facing pubic bone, another characteristic of birds.
but don't birds have bills? Does Archeopterix have a bill? No, it has very dinosaurian jaws. Bird's trunk vertebrae are always fused but Archeopterix trunk vertebrae are not. Birds do not have bony tails, Archeopterix does, as do dinosaurs and reptiles. Apart from the pubic bone pointing backwards, the entire structure of the Archeopterix pelvis is mostly dinosaurian, including the pelvic "peduncle" (I had to look that word up.) which is a very prominent feature in such dinosaurs as the Tyrannosaurus. There are more reptilian/dinosaurian features on Archeopterix than there are Avian features, and to me the most interesting fact is that the Archeopterix had teeth. When was the last time you saw a bird with teeth? But then, when was the last time you saw a reptile with feathers? It is clearly a transitional.
Another common argument is that no fossils are found with partially functional features, This is also used by people trying to prove irreducable complexity. It is true, however, that a complex feature with one function can adapt a wholly different function through evolution. The precursor to a wing, for example, might originally have only been used for gliding, trapping flying prey, and/or mating display. Nowadays, wings often still retain all of these functions, while also being used for active flight.
While Archeopterix is the most cited transitional form, it is not the only one. An extremely interesting set of fossils links the modern whale with a land-dwelling ancestor. Finding the land-going ancestors of the whale was anticipated by scientists using the precepts of ToE, which shows that the theory has predictive value. The same is true with horses and the Hyracotherium. It was predicted in the 1800's that a small ancestor to the horse would be discovered in the early Eocene Epoch. It was named Eohippus, or " Dawn Horse" This is something that "Creation Science" could never do. Since it is not a valid scientific theory no predictions could be made from it.
As I pointed out in my above post, all living organisms are in fact to be regarded as intermediate, transitional forms when they are compared to some other related life-form. there are many species alive today that can be considered to be transitional between two or more groups. We have found fossils showing the transition from fish to amphibian. The time when this transition should have occurred is known, so finding these fossils was only a matter of looking for the right kind of rock formation (i.e. a sedimentary rock formation from the right time period) and start looking for fossils. They found fossils that shared traits of both fish and amphibians. Evolution has predictive value as any rigorous explanation of natural phenomenon should.
the platypus is an intermediate form between reptiles and mammals because it retains certain reptilian traits no longer found in modern mammals and also possesses traits of a highly specialized aquatic animal, and it is alive today.
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