I have some honest questions on evolution (to understand it better)?

Question

Is there proof that a family of animal evolved into another family? What's with the missing links and empty strata? Will we ever find the common ancestors of every species?

Answer 1

Finally an intelligent question posed in a polite manner. Yes, there is MUCH proof that animals have evolved. Yes, there ARE many transitional fossils that have been found, including some that beautifully show the transition of jaw bones of early fish into the ear bones of modern land animals.

Will we ever find the common ancestors to every species? It's a good question, but extremely unlikely that we ever will since those ancestors would be extremely far back in the fossil record and a good number of such might well have existed before there was much hard material in the animal to have fossilized.

Your question as it's stated is somewhat disjointed, and a bit "non-biological" in tone - but that's simply because you honestly appear to be trying to gather information on a subject that you're not fully acquainted with. I find that admirable. Here is one place you can find a heck of a lot of information on exactly what some of those transitional species were. There's enough here to keep you reading a few days at least. I seriously suggest that you read it.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

I also just as seriously suggest that you read some of the material here.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html#observe

You continue to ask your honest questions - believe what you will, but also continue to look at the factual evidence that exists, that's been documented, and that fills a lot of space in a lot of places around the world.

There are lots of "missing links" that are no longer "missing." Some of the latest finds include those of the whale sequence. Also "missing links" really don't exist except in our own minds. Every organism exists in its own time and space - just as we do today. It is only humans, with their penchant of categorizing everything who look at a sequence and fight over where the line deviding "this" from "that" is. At each particular moment in history and time, you can't tell because for all you know, the species will be extinct in say 100 years or a 1000 years and won't ever have the chance to become something else. On the other hand, if we could jump forward some half million years, we could easily then go back and say - oh, look. Here's something we could call the "missing link" between such and such in the 21st century and such and such here in the 4005th century.

Will we find everything? Not likely, since time is a great leveler of things. And we're talking about time that most have no real comprehension for.

The earth is about 4.5 billion years old. That's easy to say, but here's a slight comparison to give you just a taste of the time we're talking about. Let's say you had a million dollars and that you spent one dollar every second of every day for the full 24 hours of the day. It would take you 11.5 days to spend that whole million. So there are a million seconds in about 11.5 days. Now what if you had a billion dollars and you wanted to do the same thing - give away one dollar per second every second of every day. How long would you have to stand there to give it all away? It would take you 11,574 days or about 31.7 YEARS!

A billion years is a HECK of a long time. Long enough for lots of stuff to happen, For continents to move all over the place. For organisms to evolve; go extinct, etc.

So continue to ask your questions. Look at what's been found to have actually happened, and enjoy the variety of life that's come, gone, and is still here and, yes, still evolving.

Answer 2

I just checked an old E.O. Wilson biology textbook and, although I didn't find your exact question, I did come away with the impression that families of animals don't independently evolve. Remember, "Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species"? These are part of an arbitrary classification system designed by humans to group organisms in a meaningful way. Thus, it's not possible for the family of finches to evolve independently. Nevertheless, individuals of a particular species of finches are subject to natural selection and may slowly evolve over many, many generations. The human definition of what makes a particular bird a member of the finch family remains unchanged.

"Missing link," is an old term invented by religious people to discredit Darwin's theory. The idea was that if evolution is a slow and gradual process, where are the fossils of all the intervening steps (links)? The anti-evolutionists pretty much shot themselves down with this arguement because, as time passes more and more of the so-called missing links keep turning up. It is unfortunately true that the first missing link, the Piltown Man, was a total hoax. This considerably prolonged the debate.

Empty strata are geological deposits where the expected fossils are simply not found. Only speculation can explain why.

Because the total number of species is astronomically large, the is no chance that every common ancestor will ever be found. Nevertheless, scientists are getting much better evidence now that DNA analysis is a standard laboratory procedure. The evidence that all life on Earth sprang from a common origin is overwhelming and continues to become ever more convincing.

Answer 3

Your question is poorly formed and ill-defined. You are non-technical, so family could mean anything. Proof could constitute anything. Even the statement "a family of animal evolved into another family" is improper. Two families would diverge from a common ancestor. We won't find every common ancestor; fossilization is a rare event. As for empty strata, there have been periods when biomass was low and cataclysms such as volcanic eruptions and landslides can produce strata as thick as many thousands of years' accumulation.

Answer 4

This is better asked in the Biology section but as I am a Biologist who happens to be here, let me help.
It is incredibly rare for a fossil to form, nearly impossible. The fossil record has shown us that all animals are a "transitional form" a "link" if you will. The idea of evolution as a linear chain with links in it is erroneous. We are all a little different from our parents and even more different than our grandparents. Evolution can be more accurately visualized as several immense trees with millions of branches each. The branches twist, turn, curve and are sometimes cut short.
There is no missing link or empty strata. We have found millions of species of animals and plants and fungi etc. We continue to find more everyday and have been able to predict some species that we later find. We will probably never find a fossil or evidence of every animal that has ever existed. The fossil record and the molecular chemistry of life have given us more than we will ever need to see and understand the mechanism of change and adaptation of life. That is about as much as I can give you in such limited space. Please email me if you have other questions or head to the Biology section.

Answer 5

There is a lot of DNA evidence showing mutations that eventually evolve into other species, however the observational data is more compelling. Missing links do not really exist per se, evolution is a continuum, so species that lie in between will be categorized as one or the other. Missing strata are easily explained...the earth is such a dynamic place, volcanoes, earthequakes, ice ages, erosion, deposition....we should be happy to have the fossils we do have and no, I doubt we will ever have the time or the resources to find common encestors for the millions of living species on earth

Answer 6

Go to Biology, hun.

What do you mean by animal family.

There are many observed cases of speciation, if thats what you mean.

There are very few missing links, and I'm not sure what you mean by empty strata.

Most of the common ancestors of all species are extinct....most species that have ever lived are extinct, too...however, based on current organisms that branched off before us, we can make good conclusions about what the common ancestors looked like.

Answer 7

As pronounced formerly, evolution is a scientific concept per and changed via scientific learn. it incredibly is considered a concept because of fact it remains being changed and studied, and as we learn greater we modify how we predict of roughly evolution. that's not a theory gadget that's out to tutor that there is not any god or something. the clarification that we've overwelming evidence of micro-evolution is because of fact microscopic organism have an quite short lifespan, and mutation - that's what evolution is in essence - takes GENERATIONS. the concept of evolution has basically been with us for in simple terms over a century, and has basically been heavily studied for a pair of generations (human generations that's) and so in that short ammount of time, it incredibly is close to impossible to work out human evolution in progression, and notwithstanding if we did be conscious it, it might seem greater like a maximum cancers, mutation, or disease, and greater suitable than in all probability we'd "treatment" it with gene theapy. the final info and info we've for Human evolution are all the various fossils and remains of our ancestors and evolution kinfolk interior the human tree - or bush. those incorporate all of the different hominids, primates and all the gaps and questions alongside the way. it incredibly is nice which you're asking this as a trustworthy question and optimistically drawing near this with an open ideas. inspite of what a religous chief says, bear in ideas that the christian god is declared to offer unfastened will, and this implies the skill to think of, decide, and maximum of all reason.

Answer 8

Evolution is a fact. There are no competing scientific theories. Only religious fanatics do not accept it.

Every animal that reproduces is a link; not every animal is nice enough to get itself fossilized for us. Those that don't are missing.

The common ancestor of all species is bacteria. May I recommend Richard Dawkins' book "The ancestor's tale"?

Answer 9

There are many books that can help you understand evolution and how it works. Try "Evolution: the triumph of an idea" by Carl Zimmer. It goes into all aspects of evolution and is a very easy read as well.

Answer 10

Yes, depending on what you consider constitutes proof.

If you mean was there someone there that took a picture of it, no. Do you mean if there is sufficient evidence to consider it a virtual certainty, yes. The amounts of evidence they have for dozens and dozens of species is overwhelming. From genetic, to anthropological, to those based on fossel records. The amounts of evidence, interlinking from multiple disparate branches of science is overwhelming.