Where are all the fossils?

Question

....Have you ever wondered what the creature, (that was in the
'in-between' stages, when it was neither a complete land-mammal or a complete marine mammal,) did for breathing apparatus, when it was going through the few million years transitional stage from breathing through it's nose to a full-on blow-hole type apparatus behind its skull?

There should be countless billion fossils of these creatures, yet not one convincing one has been located to date.

It simply won't do to trash this question with the
'typical' or 'classic case of' type start to responses generally associated with this kind of question.

Even Darwin towards the end of his life felt that a great many of his own theories were outdated.
Einstein called them 'hopelessly outdated.'

Answer 1

Seals breath through there mouths don't they and they have lungs. Maybe the forerunners of land animals didn't have blow holes but breathed through their mouths. You could probably find the answer to this fairly easy on some website.

Answer 2

(-: I'm afraid you're going to get a lot of angry responses, Mr. J, because this isn't a simple question, but can be looked at as a symbol in a huge fight between "superstition" and "godless science."

When something dies, most of the time it simply goes back into the earth. The bones last the longest, but eventually, even those get crushed, wear down, are eaten, or otherwise dissolve.

Science sometimes hits the jackpot when something dies in a particular circumstance. Like something dies in an avalanche, is buried and preserved frozen for thousands of years. Or, in the case of fossils, dies in a particular circumstance where it is encased in rock, or minerals leach through the body and preserve the exact shape of what used to be.

I think perhaps it's true that Darwin didn't get everything right, but it was a pretty darn good start.

If you want to find evolution in action, look to your garden patch. God did not create the strawberries you are eating today in the Garden of Eden. The big, huge, juicy (disease-prone) strawberries of today are the work of Humans who are following evolutionary principals to pick and choose.

If you want to put God into the equation, well, maybe he is behind all the thousands of little genetic mutations that give strawberry engineers something to choose from.

If you are really interested in this idea of human-directed evolution, a great book to read is by Michael Pollan, called "The Botany of Desire" which traces the history of tulips, apples, marijuana and potatoes. Fun to read, absolutely fascinating, and full of history.

In answer to the second question, there are some animals still living today with somewhat in-between breathing apparatus -- and others that have survived with different adaptations. I think someone mentioned seals "sealing" their noses.

If you think to some of the birth defects that happen in people, I think it's possible for some animal to be born with a nose on the top of it's head spontaneously. And since it happened to be useful, that animal was able to survive and mate, and so on.

(-: I often wonder if people with fat thumbs are going to lose out in the gene pool. I have a fat thumb, and find it very hard to text message -- I keep hitting the wrong buttons. So, people with fat thumbs hit the wrong number, aren't able to call their date in time to say they'll be late, and lose their boyfriend/girlfriend and the chance to marry and reproduce. Or any number of other dating disasters involving a cell phone.

Thank goodness, I've already reproduced, but what about my poor kids???? (-: Just an idle thought.

Answer 3

So, at last someone believing in ID (Ignorance and Denial) has come to question us.

If you kept up to date with what is going on, you would find that many intermediate stages have already been found. Try looking up the evolution of the eye for example. Not all evolutionary phases take millions of years. Sometimes a simple mutation becomes more developed in successive generations.

Before you become too upset, I was born and raised in a Christian family and am now a Buddhist, so belief has always figured in my mind but not to the point of denying what has been scientifically proved.
Also remember that he word "Theory" in science means that it has been arrived at by empirical experiments and the results obtained, not that it was a rough guess that got written up.

Answer 4

who said they would have blowholes? maybe they will breathe through their mouthes. There are plenty of animals currently in existence which live in the sea and land and breathe through their mouthes.

Problem with fossils is that they will only survive in specific locations and under specific conditions so there aren't actually that many places in the world where you are likely to come across such a fossil. It would have to be completely by accident that any such animal is found

Answer 5

Fossilisation is a very unlikely occurrence, so getting a fossil at the evolutionary stage you want to see has a massively decreased likelihood. We may never find out everything we want from fossils. This doesn't mean that the stupidity of creationism is right.

I can't believe that Bush said "we need to consider both sides of the argument" When he was defending the teaching of creationism in schools. What argument? A credible scientific theory versus a fairy tale? The fool.

Rant over.

Answer 6

the dogs were really good at burying and keeping it a secret as to the location!~♥~