Show one complete lineage in evolution

Why? To convince you? Most scientists seem quite prepared to take the already existing preponderance of evidence as good enough, and much of it is physical evidence. You are proposing a strawman argument with evolutionist saying 'Evolution is true because we have all the fossils showing how elephants evolved from shrews.' which is not an argument I have ever heard put forward as compelling evidence for accepting evolution.Saying that there is no 1 single 'complete' fossil lineage doesn't mean that there is no physical evidence of evolution and certainly doesn't mean that scientists are lying. At the worst all it means is that we don't have fossils showing every transitional stage in any 1 evolutionary lineage, so what? Such a fossil lineage still wouldn't be 'proof' to those who object to evolution on religious grounds.Why do you assume that we should have such a thing? Do you think we have found all the fossils in the earth? Are you certain that at least enough fossils of every stage in such a lineage will exist allowing us to produce one reasonably complete fossil for morphological comparisons? What criteria would you want to distinguish specific 'transitional' fossils. If the elephant 'ancestor' is very unlike an elephant what will make you believe that it is an elephant ancestor? Look up Moeritherium and tell me if it is alike/unalike enough for you.As an addendum, being a different species can also mean not being able to mate with each other, in as much as producing fertile offspring, even if you wanted to.TTFN,WK(fixed UUB by edit, adminNosy)This message has been edited by AdminNosy, 07-21-2004 09:52 AM

Dear SkepticToAll,Have you decided whether Moeritherium is like an elephant yet?TTFN,WK

This analysis is highly prejudiced, as a for instance.Look at 5.3.1 Drosophila paulistorumThe writer objects that He appears to have entirely missed the key point that " In 1958 this strain produced fertile hybrids when crossed with conspecifics of different strains from Orinocan. From 1963 onward crosses with Orinocan strains produced only sterile males." the emphasis is mine. This is clearly exactly the sort of physiological isolation he has been banging on about and it arose at some point between 1958 and 1963, the fact that it occurs in the offspring of the crosses rather than occuring during the fertilisation/ development of the embryo is irrelevant, it may be long after mating has ocurred but if you can only produce sterile males then you clearly aren't a viable interbreeding population. Being able to produce offspring isn't the vital criteria, its being able to produce offspring which can go on to breed.The article casts no doubt on evolution, all it does is object to the 'weak' definition of species. It gives no evidence that post-mating isolation cannot arise from pre-mating isolation and overlooks examples where post-mating isolation, which would qualify for the strong definition, is clearly in evidence.TTFN,WK

I think that most of the genetics controlling development of a bats arms will turn out to be very much the same as that of other mammals. The same genes can be seen patterning the Dorso-ventral and proximo-distal axes of limbs throughout the vertebrates and there are a number of highly conserved candidates , both in sequence and function, for the anter-posterior patterning of digit identity.Given how similar the development of avian wings is to that of mouse limbs, or humans as revealed by a number of limb dysmorphologies traced to mutations with homologues in Chick. It is unlikely that the batwing will be all that divergent developmentally. Even something as simple as losing expression of the proteins regulating cell death interdigitally would be a small but clear first step to developing a wing.As is so often the case the question is unlikely to be what genes are controlling it, we probably already know most of the major players, but what are the differences in the regulation/timing/patterning of expression of those genes that produces such a distinct limb form.TTFN,WK