Are there no "transitional" species present today, as Creationists claim?

Question

What do you think a transitional species between, say, a bird and a sea creature would look like? You know, a species of bird "on its way" to becoming an ocean-dwelling creature, like whales?

Do you think it would look anything like a penguin?

callie: Try telling that to the Creationists! ;)

Hm...I'm sort of disappointed by the lack of Creationist responses--is there some special Saturday Night church service that I'm not aware of?

jweston2: Actually, I could look at a piece of granite and say it's a transitional rock, on its way to becoming sandstone or shale...

And I think all that it really proves is my bias against stupidity...

halloweenie: Thanks for the link! I'd not heard of that one; the only quasi-proto-land-dwelling fish I knew of was the mudskipper.

It's That Guy: Actually I've been to a Cambrian sandstone quarry here in Wisconsin were fossilized jellyfish were found. It's a pretty rare thing, but every once in a while boneless critters can get fossilized too...or at least impressions of them.

jweston2, again: Well, you're right. I wasn't really that serious; I thought it was pretty obvious that rocks don't undergo biological evolution.

Answer 1

Researchers say the Mangrove Rivulus can live out of water for up to 66 days.

By Rob Adams
Published: Nov 14, 2007, 8:08 PM EST

Scientists have discovered a completely new trait in a small Western Atlantic fish known as Mangrove Rivulus. This fish, also known as the mangrove killifish, is native to the Americas and is about two inches long.

According to a team of scientists on an excursion trip to Belize and Florida, the fish lives in logs and breathes fresh air for months at a time. The experienced team has named this particular aspect of the fish as "logpacking".

The team speculates that the

logs might serve an additional purpose, that of acting as cheap transport when storms send the wood drifting. However, proving this will require additional research.

Though the researchers had seen the fish under logs, damp leaves, inside coconuts and even beer cans, they were extremely surprised to find it jammed together in tree remains, which quickly get hollowed out by termites or burrowing beetles in mangrove forests.

The fish has long been studied for its many unique features. For example, it's the only vertebrate known to naturally self-fertilize. In some populations, it can become a hermaphrodite, developing both male and female parts simultaneously, to produce clones of itself.

Scientists also found surprising changes in how the fish deals with waste. Normally, a fish will excrete waste products such as nitrogen through their gills, but experiments show that the Rivulus uses its skin for this also.

Answer 2

The process of fossilization is very unlikely. Over the eras only very few individual animals have been fossilized, and it's amazing that any at all were. Of course animals without bones couldn't be fossilized so we don't have much of an idea of them. Also there is a theory ('punctuated equilibrium') that says that actual evolution took place quickly during brief periods between long periods of no change, and this could help explain why there is such a dearth of 'transitional' specimens.

But creationists don't really believe in science anyway, except where they can use facts (sometimes taken out of context) to prove their point. So the 'no transitional species' argument is not really fair. If a new fossil turns up of an animal halfway through some gap, creationists just see it now as -two- gaps.

Answer 3

How would we know it is a transitional species until we see the end result?
Many species have mutations, just most of the mutations are not beneficial and do not continue as I am sure was the case millions of years ago. Evolution is an ongoing and and chancy process. For every hundreds of mutations, one is good enough to carry on.

Answer 4

RE: The Talk Orgins FAQ:

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms is the trade secret of paleontology ... The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed.’” [S.J. Gould (evolutionist); Natural History 86:14 (1977)]

Hunt’s publication may seem overwhelmingly persuasive and encouraging. But an objective, critical look at the contents reveals that Hunt really does little more than perpetuate the myth of fossil transitions plainly denied by the evolutionist authorities such as Gould quoted above. She seeks to accomplish this with a combination of many assertively-made statements and (wherever possible) references to specific physiological similarities between certain species or genera, as suggested over the years by various phylogenic theorists.

What is missing from Hunt’s document is any honest acknowledgment that among the phylogenies she describes, few—if any—are universally accepted among paleontological authorities, and many remain tentative and subject to change, if not hotly disputed among authorities with differing viewpoints.

One of the outstanding characteristics of the entire fossil record, is the systematic presence of non-transitioned gaps throughout. Just trees that remain trees, roses remain roses, corn remains corn, and human beings remain human beings. Micro-evolution has not been shown to add up to macro-evolution, no matter in which way or over how long a period the evidence is observed! In fact, in the fossil record, most, if not all of the major animal phyla appear fully formed and raring to go at the beginning of the geological period known as the Cambrian, with no fossil evidence that they branched off from a common ancestor.

Answer 5

you appear to be claiming that the chromosomal differences have been suggested in action and that the ensuing (or concomitant) breeding became additionally documented. the article would not help that. In each between the examples that I skimmed by, the recent species have been (or would have been) created by hybridization. that would not help evolution to any extent further effective than it helps clever layout. I, for one, do no longer make that declare. even nevertheless, the opportunities are very plenty against the variety of life having happened by random strategies.

Answer 6

Transitionals exist in the imaginations of those who hate God. You could probably look at a stone and argue that it's a transitional. It really proves nothing except your own bias towards evolution when viewing nature.

Reply: Even if all granite resulted in sandstone, it would not prove that all sandstone resulted from granite. Also, how would that be an example of evolution, and not just simply a change of state? I could likewise say that the granite came from lava which was melted sandstone, so it proves nothing about which came first.

Answer 7

All species are "Transitional Species."
However, I think you are thinking along the right lines. I think that penguins are a long way towards becoming sea dwelling birds. I guess that they are the bird equivalent of a seal.

Answer 8

I suppose, if I'm around in a million years or so, I'll be able to tell you if penguins should evolve into ocean dwelling critters....

Till then, we can only guess....

Answer 9

Off the top of my head, I can think of Archaeopteryx, Ambulocetus, Tiktaalik, and Australopithecus afarensis.

Answer 10

There are many transitional fossils. The only way that the claim of their absence may be remotely justified, aside from ignoring the evidence completely, is to redefine "transitional" as referring to a fossil that is a direct ancestor of one organism and a direct descendant of another. However, direct lineages are not required; they could not be verified even if found. What a transitional fossil is, in keeping with what the theory of evolution predicts, is a fossil that shows a mosaic of features from an older and more recent organism.

Transitional fossils may coexist with gaps. We do not expect to find finely detailed sequences of fossils lasting for millions of years. Nevertheless, we do find several fine gradations of fossils between species and genera, and we find many other sequences between higher taxa that are still very well filled out.

The following are examples of some of the many fossil transitions between species and genera:

-Human ancestry. There are many fossils of human ancestors, and the differences between species are so gradual that it is not always clear where to draw the lines between them.

-The horns of titanotheres (extinct Cenozoic mammals) appear in progressively larger sizes, from nothing to prominence. Other head and neck features also evolved. These features are adaptations for head-on ramming analogous to sheep behavior.

-Planktonic forminifera. This is an example of punctuated gradualism. A ten-million-year foraminifera fossil record shows long periods of stasis and other periods of relatively rapid but still gradual morphologic change.

-Scallops of the genus Chesapecten show gradual change in one "ear" of their hinge over about 13 million years. The ribs also change

The following are fossil transitionals between families, orders, and classes:

-Human ancestry. Australopithecus, though its leg and pelvis bones show it walked upright, had a bony ridge on the forearm, probably vestigial, indicative of knuckle walking

-The jaws of mososaurs are also intermediate between snakes and lizards. Like the snake's stretchable jaws, they have highly flexible lower jaws, but unlike snakes, they do not have highly flexible upper jaws. Some other skull features of mososaurs are intermediate between snakes and primitive lizards

The following are fossil transitionals between kingdoms and phyla:

-The Cambrian fossils Halkiera and Wiwaxia have features that connect them with each other and with the modern phyla of Mollusca, Brachiopoda, and Annelida. In particular, one species of halkieriid has brachiopod-like shells on the dorsal side at each end. This is seen also in an immature stage of the living brachiopod species Neocrania. It has setae identical in structure to polychaetes, a group of annelids. Wiwaxia and Halkiera have the same basic arrangement of hollow sclerites, an arrangement that is similar to the chaetae arrangement of polychaetes. The undersurface of Wiwaxia has a soft sole like a mollusk's foot, and its jaw looks like a mollusk's mouth. Aplacophorans, which are a group of primitive mollusks, have a soft body covered with spicules similar to the sclerites of Wiwaxia