Well, since 99% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct, demanding a reason for all of them is kind of... yeah.
All living things can be considered "transitional species". Some of us will live on and pass on our genes, while others won't. There are innumerable examples of so-called transitional species in the fossil record. Have you read about the E. coli experiment yet?
most species that exist now are fairly similar to their ancestors. one can argue that 99% of all species that have ever lived now are NOT extinct, only in a more modern evolutionary form. However, it does to say that the TRANSITION species which will offer EVIDENCE FOR the theory of evolution has NOT existed aside for a few fossil findings. The categories of the animal kingdom known to man has EXISTED albeit in a sequential manner if you believe in radioactive dating, but assuming this is true, it still does not explain the disappearance of ALL TRANSITIONAL SPECIES.
good to see you lack critical thinking skills when it goes directly against what you believe in. lets say you have fishA, fishA lives where no predators live. suddenly fishA is split into two groups one group of fishA continues to live in the predator-less zone, the other group migrates and eventually runs into a predator. over billions of years it is safe to say that due to the predator fishA has evolved into fishC who is better equipped to handle the predator. now what happen to fishB? fishB is extinct due to the predator, since there are less and less of fishA to eat and fishC has already evolved to handle the predator fishB becomes the best choice to eat. very simple example, the predator can be substituted by changing environment/cimate ect..
Modern day fish are products of evolution just like humans. You seem to be saying that humans evolved from the same creatures we see today swimming in the ocean. No one says humans evolved from goldfish or salmon or whatever. Again, humans did not evolve from chimps. There are no surviving "transition species" between chimps and humans, because chimps are not the ancestors of humans. They are cousins. As to the fossil evidence for their common ancestors, I don't have much knowledge of it, but if you are interested you can start from Wikipedia and go from there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution#Before_Homo Alright, but it is a fact that there are other species that are sociable animals and have cognitive (albeit, less advanced) capabilities. Anyways, I don't think this is an important point to this argument. No other species closely related to our own (i.e. genus Homo) exhibited traits of language, sociability, cognition? I'll let other people comment on this, but I don't think that people who study this topic believe that. If you are talking about common ancestors between ourselves and other modern Great Apes, again I see no reason to expect those species to be more advanced intelligence-wise than chimps, gorillas, orangutans, etc. I wouldn't expect them to have human-like language or sociability traits.
again, the above example goes under the category I talked about of how distinct species have evolved from their ancestral forms due to mutations and natural selection. A transitional species would be a horse that could lay eggs. The jump from egg laying reptiles and live birth mammals has not found a "transitional species" and I argue this jump to be too big to be explained by evolution.
yes but fishA fishB and fishC are still fish. it doesn't matter which fish survives until today. it is the jump from fish to reptiles that you are not explaning.
What would such a "transitional species", if it existed, look like? What sort of traits would you expect it to have?
So you acknowledge that mammals can evolve from other mammals, but not from reptiles? And your justification for this distinction is that the latter seems "too big" of a change for you to understand?
How about marsupials? Anyone else know about this? http://books.google.com/books?id=Kq...ook_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CDQQ6AEwCA You also have the platypus, an egg-laying mammal. That could be viewed as a sort of transitional species.
Huh? There's fish. Then there's fish with little stubs for legs which we've found fossils of. Then there's reptiles. If you're asking why the second generally don't survive, I think they do, just in niche places as they don't specialize as well as fish or reptiles. Of course, this is coming from an IR/history major who has always been utterly awful at understanding science stuff, but I think that sums it up.
Humans did not evolve from modern-day fish. Humans did not evolve from modern-day chimps. Evolution is not gradual, it is also not outright linear.
A long long time ago some fish decided it would be a good idea to try to live outside of water. Their peers thought they were crazy, but they survived, and became something completely different. There is no "jump" from fish to reptile. There was something like lungfish, that could briefly live out of water so that they could jump from one lake to another. Then came amphibians, then reptiles. The fact that you could choke to death today is a testament of this evolutionary process. Why would you want to have your respiratory system share a portion of paths with your digestive system so that you can accidentally choke yourself? Because a fish only has a digestive track, and when they temporarily came out of the water it was only logical to use that track for a few breaths. Then as time goes on more dedicated respiratory systems evolved, but they were never completely separated from the digestive system.
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I seriously hope you're here to find answers to questions and not just validate your own beliefs... like so many on DD. Evolution derived from a scientific model. It may be dis-spelled in the future, in which case, scientist will adjust the theory. It may of not even happened... perhaps some aliens from 10,000 years ago invented all the species and placed it on earth in some elaborate plan. But the evolution model still comes closest to what we understand of the natural world. I don't know if there is or isn't a god, but the two are different things. One is based on non-changing everlasting faith handed down by tradition and the latter is ever changing based on observations, proof and dis-proof constantly changing derived from a specific method. i.e. The idea Abraham Lincoln could've just been planted into our brains yesterday, but we hold it as believable because there there are archeological evidence... which is based on a a verification method which is also based on another verification method...and so on. Maybe there is a god, but if there were... He made science a universal law and perhaps created humans guiding science through a path of science.
