No Witnesses

Hi Chuck, By "some", you seem to mean 99.99% of professional biologists. That is hardly equivalent to the weight that one gives to the opinions of 99.99% of the world's biologists. Besides, the evidence does not fit a designer, unless your designer is a liar who goes around making things look as though they evolved when in fact they did not. You are moving the goalposts. What was being discussed was the transition from land to water for various species of mammal.Macro-evolution can be and has been observed.A specific event that took place thirty million years ago cannot be observed by a living human witness.If you are asking for human witnesses to an event that took place before there were any humans, you are being unreasonable. What on earth made you think that we can't produce evidence of micro-evolution? We can. In fact, any reasonably well equipped high school biology lab could provide this. This kind of evidence is so ubiquitous that very few creationists dare dispute micro-evolution. Chuck, cats don't write books either. To compare the interrelatedness of humans and chimps with that of cats you need a system that can be applied to both the "chimps and humans" clade and the cat clade. Then you could make a fair comparison. In the way that they actually are classified together; using a mixture of morphology, ethology and genetics. And they are; at the species level. No-one is claiming that chimps and humans aren't different. They are. But they are also very similar. Morphology. Can you name any creature that is more morphologically similar to humans than a chimp or bonobo is?Mutate and Survive

You do realise that if a person did see a cow turning into a whale within the course of a human lifetime, it would falsify the ToE, right? You understand that don't you?Mutate and Survive

He's already explained what he means. Read back over the thread between Rrhain and Modulous. Rrhain is using the standard scientific definition of macro-evolution, namely "change above species level". He is not using your definition, because your definition is wrong.To summarise;Can we show you eyewitness evidence of macro-evolution (where "macro-evolution is taken to mean change above species level)? Yes we can, if you are interested.Can we show you eyewitness evidence of macro-evolution (where macro-evolution is taken to mean a sequence of events equivalent to a land-based mammal evolving into a highly adapted aquatic mammal)? No, we can't, nor would we expect to be able to show you eyewitness evidence of that since the ToE predicts that it would take place over a period of time greater than any human lifespan. We can however, show you other forms of evidence that such a thing has taken place.Can we show you eyewitness evidence of macro-evolution (where macro-evolution is taken to mean any damn thing that the creationist in question wants it to mean, whilst never providing any specific definitions, but instead chopping and changing between various competing definitions as convenient)? Well now... not really a fair question is it?Mutate and Survive

Okay, if you're interested, here are some examples of plant speciation. they're from Observed Instances of Speciation at TalkOrigins, a link that has already been cited on this thread.

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5.0 Observed Instances of Speciation

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The following are several examples of observations of speciation.
5.1 Speciations Involving Polyploidy, Hybridization or Hybridization Followed by Polyploidization.

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5.1.1 Plants

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5.1.1.1 Evening Primrose (Oenothera gigas)

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While studying the genetics of the evening primrose, Oenothera lamarckiana, de Vries (1905) found an unusual variant among his plants. O. lamarckiana has a chromosome number of 2N = 14. The variant had a chromosome number of 2N = 28. He found that he was unable to breed this variant with O. lamarckiana. He named this new species O. gigas.

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5.1.1.2 Kew Primrose (Primula kewensis)

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Digby (1912) crossed the primrose species Primula verticillata and P. floribunda to produce a sterile hybrid. Polyploidization occurred in a few of these plants to produce fertile offspring. The new species was named P. kewensis. Newton and Pellew (1929) note that spontaneous hybrids of P. verticillata and P. floribunda set tetraploid seed on at least three occasions. These happened in 1905, 1923 and 1926.

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5.1.1.3 Tragopogon

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Owenby (1950) demonstrated that two species in this genus were produced by polyploidization from hybrids. He showed that Tragopogon miscellus found in a colony in Moscow, Idaho was produced by hybridization of T. dubius and T. pratensis. He also showed that T. mirus found in a colony near Pullman, Washington was produced by hybridization of T. dubius and T. porrifolius. Evidence from chloroplast DNA suggests that T. mirus has originated independently by hybridization in eastern Washington and western Idaho at least three times (Soltis and Soltis 1989). The same study also shows multiple origins for T. micellus.

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5.1.1.4 Raphanobrassica

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The Russian cytologist Karpchenko (1927, 1928) crossed the radish, Raphanus sativus, with the cabbage, Brassica oleracea. Despite the fact that the plants were in different genera, he got a sterile hybrid. Some unreduced gametes were formed in the hybrids. This allowed for the production of seed. Plants grown from the seeds were interfertile with each other. They were not interfertile with either parental species. Unfortunately the new plant (genus Raphanobrassica) had the foliage of a radish and the root of a cabbage.

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5.1.1.5 Hemp Nettle (Galeopsis tetrahit)

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A species of hemp nettle, Galeopsis tetrahit, was hypothesized to be the result of a natural hybridization of two other species, G. pubescens and G. speciosa (Muntzing 1932). The two species were crossed. The hybrids matched G. tetrahit in both visible features and chromosome morphology.

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5.1.1.6 Madia citrigracilis

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Along similar lines, Clausen et al. (1945) hypothesized that Madia citrigracilis was a hexaploid hybrid of M. gracilis and M. citriodora As evidence they noted that the species have gametic chromosome numbers of n = 24, 16 and 8 respectively. Crossing M. gracilis and M. citriodora resulted in a highly sterile triploid with n = 24. The chromosomes formed almost no bivalents during meiosis. Artificially doubling the chromosome number using colchecine produced a hexaploid hybrid which closely resembled M. citrigracilis and was fertile.

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5.2 Speciations in Plant Species not Involving Hybridization or Polyploidy

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5.2.1 Stephanomeira malheurensis

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Gottlieb (1973) documented the speciation of Stephanomeira malheurensis. He found a single small population (< 250 plants) among a much larger population (> 25,000 plants) of S. exigua in Harney Co., Oregon. Both species are diploid and have the same number of chromosomes (N = 8). S. exigua is an obligate outcrosser exhibiting sporophytic self-incompatibility. S. malheurensis exhibits no self-incompatibility and self-pollinates. Though the two species look very similar, Gottlieb was able to document morphological differences in five characters plus chromosomal differences. F1 hybrids between the species produces only 50% of the seeds and 24% of the pollen that conspecific crosses produced. F2 hybrids showed various developmental abnormalities.

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5.2.2 Maize (Zea mays)

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Pasterniani (1969) produced almost complete reproductive isolation between two varieties of maize. The varieties were distinguishable by seed color, white versus yellow. Other genetic markers allowed him to identify hybrids. The two varieties were planted in a common field. Any plant's nearest neighbors were always plants of the other strain. Selection was applied against hybridization by using only those ears of corn that showed a low degree of hybridization as the source of the next years seed. Only parental type kernels from these ears were planted. The strength of selection was increased each year. In the first year, only ears with less than 30% intercrossed seed were used. In the fifth year, only ears with less than 1% intercrossed seed were used. After five years the average percentage of intercrossed matings dropped from 35.8% to 4.9% in the white strain and from 46.7% to 3.4% in the yellow strain.

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5.2.3 Speciation as a Result of Selection for Tolerance to a Toxin: Yellow Monkey Flower (Mimulus guttatus)

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At reasonably low concentrations, copper is toxic to many plant species. Several plants have been seen to develop a tolerance to this metal (Macnair 1981). Macnair and Christie (1983) used this to examine the genetic basis of a postmating isolating mechanism in yellow monkey flower. When they crossed plants from the copper tolerant "Copperopolis" population with plants from the nontolerant "Cerig" population, they found that many of the hybrids were inviable. During early growth, just after the four leaf stage, the leaves of many of the hybrids turned yellow and became necrotic. Death followed this. This was seen only in hybrids between the two populations. Through mapping studies, the authors were able to show that the copper tolerance gene and the gene responsible for hybrid inviability were either the same gene or were very tightly linked. These results suggest that reproductive isolation may require changes in only a small number of genes.

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There are many more such examples on the source page.Or alternatively, how about an example of speciation in bacteria?

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Recent work by Richard Lenski has even shown new bacterial species evolving in the laboratory. Lenski and his student Zachary Blount note that "E. coli cells cannot grow on citrate under oxic conditions, and that inability has long been viewed as a defining characteristic of this important, diverse, and widespread species." They then exposed several identical populations of E. coli to an environment high in citrate and low in other energy sources. "For more than 30,000 generations, none of them evolved the capacity to use the citrate. [O]ne population eventually evolved the Cit+ function [a gene that could metabolize citrate], whereas all of the others remain Cit− [unable to metabolize citrate] after more than 40,000 generations." Given that the Cit- trait is a defining feature of E. coli, the population that gained Cit+ could be considered a new species.

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SourcePrefer an animal example? Well for that you will have to wait a few million years to see it from start to finish (about three million years is believed to be typical for speciation in macro-orgnisms). But we can show you the process in action;The salamanders in the video are well on their way to speciation, but since the change is gradual, it will take time. Lots of time. Come back in about three million years and they'll have completely diverged. For now, we see more or less what we might expect to see over the pitifully brief time that we have been studying evolution (only about 150 years, a blink of the eye in evolutionary terms). All the available evidence suggests that it does. By observing morphological, genetic and behavioural changes. By looking at reproductive isolation. By observation of the fossil record, biogeography and so on. Genetic, fossil and biogeographic evidence are the important things when considering changes that occur over millions of years. According to the ToE change in an organism is typically very gradual. Mutation typically produces very tiny changes. They take a long time to stack up. Gradual change (which we can observe) suggests slow and gradual speciation over time-spans that seem vast in comparison with a human life.If we saw change on the scale of "cow to whale" in the course of a human lifetime, it would not be compatible with the gradual change that we observe and would thus falsify the ToE. I think you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick here. The ToE does not predict that mammals should take to the water. That was just the example you happened to choose. You might just as well have chosen the evolution of hoofed horses from critters that looked more like a dog, or any other example of long-term large-scale change. The ToE does not attempt to predict which direction evolution will take. It only seeks to explain how those changes take place.What the ToE predicts (and what I was driving at) is that change will be gradual, being based on a succession of tiny incremental changes. For this reason, you're not going to see evolution of the kind you're talking about over the course of a human lifespan. If you did see that, it would be a problem for the ToE, not a proof.Basically, we know that seals and whales and so on evolved from land-based mammals by studying their morphology, their genes and their fossil records.The Theory of evolution seeks to explain that fact and the process by which it came to be.Any clearer?Mutate and SurviveEdited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.