Science Forums 2

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by questor

Quote:'' Tiktaalik is a transitional fossil; it is to tetrapods what Archaeopteryx is to birds. While neither may be ancestor to any living animal, they serve as proof that intermediates between very different types of vertebrates did once exist. '' This indicates that out of the thousands of fossils, two transitional were found? Is there any line of succession we can follow either backward or forward? The Project Steve proves nothing to me. You could have a million signatures on a subject and still be wrong. If evolution to you is variation in a species due to environmental factors, I say yes, they are readily observable. If evolution means all life descended from a primordial soup, I say give some hard evidence. Several of the quotes were from Darwin himself.

Questor, the fossils shown are hard evidence, how much harder do you need? Living specimens? It has already been explained that very few animals are ever fossilized, we have a great many transitional fossils considering how few animals are actually fossilized. The one mentioned just happens to be a obvious one. Actually almost all animals are transitional in some way as are all fossils. Just because a fossil isn't obviously half fish and half reptile doesn't mean it's not transitional in some way. If you are expecting to see an animal that has a front half of a lizard and a back half of a fish then you are wasting all of our times. Even a transitional animal will not be something that crazy. Such an animal would have problems surviving to start with and that not the way it works. Steps from fish to amphibians to reptiles to mammals or to dinosaurs were not clean clear steps, there were thousands of transitional steps most too small to see individually from species to species but the over all trend was from the water to the land. Lot of tiny baby steps not huge half one or the other steps.