Land Mammal to Whale transition: fossils

that first picture is great - I must steal that!

Its a meaningless question. Why does the amount matter?

Answer: There may be, and probably are, more transitional fossils that have not been discovered. It's not like they are just lying about in plain sight.Here's another point: Its' hard to know waht you mean by a "speciation event" and it's hard to know what you mean by immediately before and after. There are transitions that are so tiny as to be undetectable through fossil examination. So if somebody was to find a transition in between the fossils we now have of the whale, then you would just say, where is the transition between those two transitions? There is no end to that.

Do you have studies or analysis to back this up? For example, if the vast majority of fossilized species had not been found, we would expect the rate of new finds to continue on a par with the rate of finds of fossils, but although we are finding more and more fossils, we are finding less and less species, which is strong scientific evidence that the fossil record is fairly complete, and that we are not going to find these theorized transitionals.Why is that? No it's not. Species evolve. That's the theory on how they get here. So show one speciation event where a species emerged from a prior species, or just even try. You have no data to even come close so quit pretending it is due to the difficulty of assessing "species."No, you have nothing even close, nada. So the real picture is we have a few species you guys claim are transitional but the thousands of transitionals that should be found are not being found, and yet you guys won't accept this as strong evidence against ToE, and refuse to even debate the data.Moreover, among the transitional forms you claim to have, you cannot document the speciation event that led to the rise of these species. Nope. Once again, just come clean and admit you have no fossils of the immediate or even close to immediate ancestors of these so-called transitional forms. You've got nada, nothing, no data to show even a possibility of an immediate species. So quit pretending it's too hard a question.

It matters because the ToE predicts these transitional forms. If they don't exist, then that is a major failure of ToE, and imo, shows that ToE is likely wrong.

Based on numbers you just made up?TTFN,WK

Pakicetidae is a transitional form. Several specimines of different families of Pakicetidae have been found. These are transitional.You don't like the ear? What the hell do you want a Pakicetid with a fin on it's back!Seriously, that ear is a dead givaway, ITS A SPECIFIC CETACEAN ADAPTATION!Your argument is now moving the goalposts. It's essentially an argument from your own incredulity:"I don't belive the ear is enugh, so I'm not gonna!"

An historian makes a prediction that in the 17th century a sailing ship carrying thousands of Spanish gold coins sank within a particular bay. The water of this bay has some ingredients in it that make certain substances, such as gold and wood, dissolve fairly rapidly though it is quite possible that some of the gold coins are still at the bottom of the bay. Some divers go out and search and search and they find 6 gold coins dated in the 17th century, in fact just a few years before the ship was theorized to have sunk.Is this solid evidence that there was such a ship and that it sank in that bay about the time theorized? Yes, I would say so.There is other evidence of such a ship sinking, but we are just basing our conclusion on the 6 gold coins they found.Is this a good analogy as regards the fossil evidence for the evolution of the whale?

Yaro, please answer the question. Where are the thousands of transitional forms?If there were thousands of available forms, I might agree with classifying this is as transitional, but since there are not thousands of different forms, it seems that the fossil record indicates this proposed concept of ToE did not happen.One or 2, or even 30 or so, candidates are so far from the thousands of transitional forms, that we should see that to claim the fossil record as evidence for ToE is farcical.

No, you guys are acting like a 3 yard run from your own 10 is a touch-down. It's stupid.The goal-posts have remained the same.Either show the thousands, and I mean thousands of transitionals, that should be there, or provide some credible number that we should discover.Where are they?

I am getting tired of analogies from you guys, and am not going to keep entertaining such diversions from the data.The data is clear. There are suppossed to have been thousands of transitionals, but there are not in the fossil record. There are not even hundreds, not dozens. There, at best, maybe a handful of candidates.Now, why is that?I have repeatedly shown some valid ways to estimate the rarity of fossilization.For example, how many species of current whales have fossilized remains that we have discovered.Whatever the percentage of available fossils of species to the total current whale species, we should see an equal percentage of these transitionals?Right?Is that not a reasonable assumption?But we don't see that. The conclusion seems to be they never existed in the first place.

Your demands are a: You don't need thousands upon thousands to prove a transition. You are willfully ignoring the evidence we do have. You are arguing from ignorance and incredullty.Can you show why "thousands upon thousands" of transitional fossils are necissary to establish a case for transition?I gave you a question earlier:If thousands of years in the future archeologists unearth a wolf in europe and a dog in america (they have never seen such things before), can they establish the relatedness of the two?The obvious answer is yes, but by your logic it would have to be no.This message has been edited by Yaro, 08-05-2005 01:07 PM

WK, you are welcome to offer up another hypothesis to dispute my numbers. In fact, please do so.

Perhaps you don't understand the value of an analogy, if it's a good one, in clarifying a point, with the understanding of course that it is only an analogy.I was really more interested in other people's responses.

*lurk mode off*Why don't you explain the frequency of fossilization, if the people responding are so incapable, do some research, find out the odds, form a hypothesis of how often we should find transitional fossils between certain species. Then form a hypothesis about how many transitionals you think there should be, and present it based on what you have learned. Because right now all you are doing is saying "tell me how many there should be." You are told, then you say "nope, that's not enough, there should be thousands." Then you ask again "How many do you think there should be?" Obviously you are just fishing for the answer from every evo here "omg, evolution is a lie, a blad faced lie, even. I need to accept jesus because there are only a handful of fossils that show a transition between whale forms. Nevermind that is well within what could be expected."My observation of what has been said so far.*lurk mode back on, at least until I can sum things up again.*AbE:
What you are asking for is like me asking you for fossils of Adam and Eve, and telling you that because you don't have them that Genesis is a lie.This message has been edited by Brad, 08-05-2005 01:11 PM