can you give us some examples of modern day transitional species? eg half ape half humans walking around?

Question

time to throw one back at the evolutionists, i've been all over the religionists lately

but this one's been bugging me a bit. here:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_noway.htm#10

- there is a rebuttal against the complaint that transitional species are missing from the fossil record.

- however, we have an even more compelling domain in which to investigate the phenomenon of transitional species, and that is organisms currently living, now.

- can anyone give me an example of a half ape, half human transitional species alive now?

- please list off current transitional species

so glad to hear someone say 'i welcome this challenge'!!!

no one in all the times i've challenged their religion has said this!

wow cool answers pple thanks!

oi stop copying each other haha jk

Answer 1

*All* species (alive and extinct) are transitional. That's important. Modern humans are a transitional species between early humans and future humans (however they may evolve). The same with any species alive today ... we cannot say it is a "transitional species between A and B" because we don't know what B is ... as it is some future species. That's why we can only talk about 'transitional species' in retrospect.

There are no half-ape, half-man because, trivially, they are genetically isolated. They cannot interbreed. (That is the definition of "different species.")

And of course, it's necessary to point out that humans did not evolve from what we now call apes (chimps, gorillas, etc.) ... both evolved from some common ancestor that, if alive today, would neither be classified as any of these ape species, or as human. That ancestor went extinct, as did many intermediate (transitional) species.

Every species eventually does one of three things:
1) It simply goes extinct because its environment changes faster than it can adapt;
2) It changes (evolves) over time into a new form (in which case *all* members change similar ways);
3) It branches because two sub-populations get genetically isolated for long enough that they change (evolve) in different directions ... if isolated long enough they become incapable of interbreeding ... creating two separate (permanently genetically isolated) species that then will *always* evolve separately.

So with a slow-reproducing superfamily like the apes, any "intermediate" members either are absorbed into the current species, or have long gone exinct. There are just a handful of ape species ... but they are genetically isolated.

There are a few branches off the spur (the genus Homo) that became H. sapiens ... such as H. neanderthalensis ... and for a while the two did live at the same time. But H. neanderthalensis went extinct ... weakened in numbers by environment and competition with H. sapiens, and possibly eventually finished off by H. sapiens about 350,000 years ago. But primate speciation is relatively rare.

By the way, a new subspecies of ape (the Bili Ape), that has characteristics of both chimps and gorillas was discovered in the congo in 2002. This seems to be the type of answer you are looking for ... but it would be wrong to call this a 'transitional species' between chimps and gorillas, because chimps did not evolve from gorillas. Instead, all three species (chimp, gorilla, and Billi ape) are just separate branches on the same genus.

Answer 2

If you mean to be specific to human evolution, then there are no known transitional pre-human species alive today. All known species that are direct human ancestors are extinct. If you want examples from the fossil record there are plenty:

Autralopithecus afarensis is a transitional species that has both apelike and human features. Ardipithecus ramidus is an ancestor of Australopithecus and is even more ape-like. The fossil record clearly shows a progression of apes to humans. We do not have records of EVERY species in this progression, but we have enough to see clearl the overall pattern.

The problem with finding extant transitional species is that generally, the reason the species evolved into something else is because the transitional forms all became extinct. Evolutionary pressures of survival and reproduction usually force one group into extinction and leave another, slightly changed group of the same species. Repeating this process over many generations ultimately results in an entirely new species at the cost of extinction of the original species. Transitional species do not survive BECAUSE of the process of evolution.

Answer 3

there is no half man half ape. millions of years ago maybe, but not now. and if you mean a creature half way between modern human and halfway between tree dwellers, maybe homo erectus or something like that. also, people didn't come from apes. we're different branches of the same family tree. we have a common origin, but are not the same. people did not evolve from any species alive today. the species we evolved from doesn't exist anymore, it evolved into our species.

All species are transitional species, that is they all have the capability to evolve. some species haven't for millions of years (crocodiles for example) because of a lack of need.
evolution works on adaptation. If the animals niche is significantly altered, the animal must adapt or die out. Like if an animals main source of food disapears, and the next most abundant food source is in a tree the animals might start climbing the tree to get the food. So the animal that is better at tree climbing would live. Maybe that animal had physical attributes that allowed for easier tree climbing, like longer limbs/sharper claws. That would be in the genetic make up of the animal. Since it can climb the trees it will eat and it will live to reproduce, most likely with another good tree climber of the species. So then the offspring would more than likely posess attributes favourable to tree climbing. Given enough time you would have a species of tree climbers different from the ground dwellers.
Now not all animals would be able to climb trees, like a moose for example. However, what the moose may do is start standing on its hind legs to reach the lower branches of the trees. The moose with the longer legs and the longer necks would be the ones that got the food because they could get the food on higher branches than the shorter moose. So you'd get moose with longer necks and more powerful hind quarters, as well as a spine that is more accustomed to that type of bending. In a few million years you'd have some sort of girrafe/moose creature.

The lack of "transitional" species is because evolution is a gradual process, the summation of many minute changes in the animal. The end difference in species 10 million years apart would be enough to notice, but a 10 000 year difference wouldn't really show all that much. Also, for transitional species alive today, there really is no way to determine the direction of evolution. Some species don't evolve at all because of a lack of stimuli, like the crocodile. It is very efficient at what it does. Its food supply isn't going anywhere because animals need to go to the water to drink. The only thing that would make crocodiles evolve would be non detremental mutation, and that generally tends to be bred out because mutation is random, and the chance of passing on the mutation is not 100% sure thing.


EDIT: with regards to australopithicus, wasn't it determined through genetic testing that we aren't related?

EDIT AGAIN: nevermind i think it was ramapithicus (sp) (french ramapitheque)

Answer 4

I'm no expert but I was thinking "dogs". Could you describe all the different breeds of dog between say a wolf and a chihuahua as transitional species?

As far as human transitional species; we know that the neanderthal lost the race for survival because of the better adapted cro-magnons. Are these both examples of past transitional species of man?

We didnt evolve from apes as we know them today. Apes as we know them today, and that includes man, both evolved from some common ancestor. All animals, all apes are continually evolving, this being the case: every species on earth is an example of a transitional species alive today.

Answer 5

No, you're talking about the Creationists, some of whom are, (sigh), yes Christian. The Creationist Movement is a rather recent development, before then nobody argued so much against evolution, it was just a "really, how interesting" thing, until the late 1800s came and Fundamentalism reared in its ugly head, and it just kept snowballing to this day. Most Christians are fortunately rational, the fundie Creationists make up but a minority. Now Genesis with its giants, talking serpents, so forth (which are mostly in chapters 1-11) are not to be understood as literal, that isn't the point. Talking donkey, well that was just a one time miracle. As for these "many other mythical creatures," maybe you heard of the unicorn in the Bible, which is a rhinoceros, Behemoth which is a hippopotamus, Leviathan which (most likely) is a crocodile, but Creationists really need Behemoth and Leviathan to be dinosaurs that lived with man. Catholic here, accept and am quite fond of evolution, still believe the Bible, just not that every verse is absolutely 100% without any reserve literal.

Answer 6

I think "transsitional species" is a nonsense concept. Some species evolve faster than others but it makes no sense to declare certain species "transsitional" and others "finite", or whatever the alternative to "transitional" might be.

There are probably a lot of microorganisms about to aquire resistence against antibiotics and a lot of birds about to become used to humans. And fish get smaller to reduce the risk of being caught and in order to procreate before they get caught. You might say they are in transsition now. Humans are in a transsition towards a species with taller men and dummer women because dum women get more children than smart ones and because tall men are more likely to father out-of-wetlock children.

As for the fosil record, the missing link between land mamals and whales was recently found. There are no missing links between apes and humans anymore. There have been found plenty of in-betweens between dinosaurs and birds. Etc etc etc. Of course some links are still missing, after all most dead animals don't fosilize and not all fosils have been found.

Answer 7

George Bush
Dick Cheney
Donald Rumsfeld
Karl Rove

Answer 8

Every species alive is a transitional species between its ancestors and it descendants. Which one of those ten million do you want?

Answer 9

all species are transitional, everything is always evolving, right now were half ape half something else

Answer 10

Just open your eyes and look around. They're all over the place, most of them behind the wheel with a cell phone glued to their ear.