Where are all the missing links?

Might want to correct your post Rahvin. I think you meant to say 'the appendix'. Your pancreas is vital to your life!

This comment about sums up the evo argument. If there is no data, evolution is true. If there is some data, evolution is true, and if there is conflicting data, ToE is still true.ToE looks like faith-based scientism to me.

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Or what about the transitions from simple invertebrates to the first vertebrates say the fishes ,,, tell me where do I go to see the transitional forms leading up to fish...

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Hello, Evopeach. If you don't mind, I'm going to pretend that you are interested in having a discussion on this topic and give you an answer to your question.As it happens, last night I was reading up on this very topic on the Palaeos website.Palaeos has a couple of nice short essays on the evolution of the first vertebrates going through more advanced vertebrates and up to the first fish. Note that the entire discussion is based on actual fossil transitionals.Actually this wasn't what I was really reading. What I was actually reading was the evolution from the lung fish ancestors to the tetrapods. Again, the discussion at Palaeos is based on actually transitional fossils.

Yes I looked and so far,The problem here is that although choanoflagellates seem clearly related to sponges, it is not clear how closely related sponges are to the rest of the Metazoa. It is also difficult to see how such a poorly organized organism as a sponge (essentially nothing but a glorified colonial protozoan) can develop into organisms with a proper body structure and internal organs. The most widely held theory seems to be that a colonial choanoflagellate evolved into a hollow spherical ball of cells, the blastula, which constitutes the earliest embryonic stage of development, and even occurs in sponges. The 'blastula model' of metazoan evolution goes all the way back to the famous 19th century German Darwinist Ernst Haskell.In fact it is now known that Haekel faked a number of his images, chopping up the embryos so they would more closely resemble his theoretical predictions. (blastula "model" developer...hmmm)All we can say for certain is that, some time during the Late Proterozoic era, an unknown protozoan (or protistan) organism developed into a tiny colonial form, which eventually became the common ancestor of the Metazoa. The actual nature of this organism is not known, as it was soft-bodied and left no trace. It used to be thought that sponges evolved from a different single celled organism to higher animals (in which case the Metazoa are a polyphyletic taxon), but recent molecular phylogenetic evidence indicates this is not the case.There are no fossils of choanoflagellates; drawings are not fossils.See all those dashed lines (95%) of the drawings mean there is no fossil evidence... its conjecture, period.PLease tell me this is not where hats are being hung on paragraphs with more qualifying words like many be could be must have supposed theoretically ... thats prose not science

Totally, 100% incorrect.All we are saying is that the fossil record is not required to provide evidence for evolution. We have plenty of transitional species living right now that provide plenty of evidence. The fossil record just shows more evidence.So - without the fossil record, or if you dispute it, we still have creatures living today matching exactly what the theory of evolution predicts.We are not saying "if there is no evidence, you are wrong. If there is some evidence, you are wrong."What we are saying is that we have lots of evidence from various places, and the loss (as in, you dispute it and we don't want to bother arguing becuase it could get off-topic) of one source of evidence does not in any way cause the rest to magically go away.Why don't you try saying something meaningful and attacking an argument? You still have not responded to my earlier points.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

Um, are you replying to my post? None of your post has anything to do with invertbrate to vertebrate evolution, nor to anything in any of the links I supplied.

What are you blathering about? What "belief" colors my ability to look at the fossil record? I'm talking about evidence, and trying to draw your attenton to my actual point, which is that every feature of every organism is a slightly altered version of the same feature found in other species. In other words, ever species is transitional. This means that debating the validity of the fossil record and what individual fossils represent is not only off-topic for this thread, but is also unnecessary as we have plenty of transitionals living right now!We can talk about the fossil record if you like, randman, but you'll actually have to TALK ABOUT iT instead of making ad hominem attacks about my ability to draw conclusions from the fossil record. Sorry, that came across as "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" There is data, there is evidence! I provided quite a bit of it in this thread, as have others. Why don't you prove that it's not evidence of what we say it is?!Of COURSE there is data that could disprove evolution. Evolution predicts very simple things, like: eveery feature of every organism should be a slightly altered version of the same feature in another species either before or after it in the evolutionary tree. No feature should be totally unique.If you can provide evidence of a creature that spontaneously formed a feature, or a species that appears to have been created with no ancestors of another species, that will disprove evolution.Why don't you try to actually DO so instead of making useless statemens of opinion?

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

You aren't reading, or you aren't thinking.EVERY species is transitional. It is partway between its ancestors and its descendants. Every feature of every organism is a slightly altered version of the same feature in another species close to it on the evolutionary tree. THere are not "only a dozen" transitionals. ALL of them are transitionals. There are simply a few really good ones that clearly show a wildly new branch being created - like the feathered wings on the reptilian Archeopteryx. I believe Chiroptera has done an excellent job of that already. See his post on the subject. Again, see CHiroptera's post on the evolution of vertibrates and fish. How about this? THis page seems to have quite a bit of information about the evolution of flowering plants.Besides, fossils are just additional evidence. We see that across every species of flowering plant, every feature is a slightly altered version of the same feature on another species. This is evidence of common ancestry. You don't seem to get it yet, so I'll say it again. Every. Species. Is. Transitional. Every species is partway between its ancestors and its descendants. Every feature of every species is a slightly altered version of the same feature in another species close to it on the evolutionary tree. Tell me - what is the purpose of the appendix? Why is there literally no change in body function when it is removed? Stop arguing from incredulity and give me some evidence. PROVE me wrong.I'm giving you dozens of examples. You're ignoring them. Prove me wrong or conceed.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

Thus, although scientists have long discounted the human appendix as a vestigial organ, there is a growing body of evidence indicating that the appendix does in fact have a significant function as a part of the body’s immune system. The appendix may be particularly important early in life because it achieves its greatest development shortly after birth and then regresses with age, eventually coming to resemble such other regions of GALT as the Peyer’s patches in the small intestine. The immune response mediated by the appendix may also relate to such inflammatory conditions as ulcerative colitis. In adults, the appendix is best known for its tendency to become inflamed, necessitating surgical removal.... Scientific American and documented references theretohttp://www.annalsnyas.org/cgi/content/abstract/1029/1/337 first weeks of life bacterial uptake etc. performed by the appendix.Another plastic all encompassing meaningless assertion all species are transtional forms between their ancestors and decendents ... wow what a singular statement. Thsi statement has no reference in evolutionary thought from Darwin to Dawkins its a preposterousnothing statement without meaning. Laughable

See? Providing evidence isn't so hard! You've successfully shown that the human appendix may no tbe so vestigial after all!You havn't shown, however, that it is a unique feature that did not come from an evolutionary ancestor. It is a feature that is a slightly altered version of the same feature (the cecum of the alimentary canal)in most other mammals. No, it's a statement of what the theory of evolution predicts. Every species is transitional between the species of its ancestors and the species of its descendants.How does this have no basis in darwinian thought? How is it a preposterous statement without meaning? You seem ot be the one making the laughably unsupported statements.The real point, which you have still not addressed, is that every feature of every species is a slightly altered version of the same feature in another species close to it on the evolutionary tree.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

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there is a growing body of evidence indicating that the appendix does in fact have a significant function as a part of the body’s immune system.

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I don't believe that any definite evidence for this has ever been provided; however, even if this is true it doesn't really address the main point. Why does this "immune function" require the appendix to be blind sac attached to the intestine? A blind sac that bears a remarkable resemblence, especially in its placement, to a functioning caecum in closely related primates? The appendix is a vestigial organ -- it clearly once had a function in the digestive process which it no longer has.Edited to add:Oops. I just realized that vestigial organs is off-topic here. I won't bother to reply to any responses to this post. Sorry.This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 15-Aug-2005 08:10 PM

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"The cradle of every science is surrounded by dead theologians as that of Hercules was with strangled serpents" -- T. H. Huxley

As I keep saying in the Land Mammal to Whale transition: fossils Part II thread, this fossilization issue needs to be settled before we can productively discuss much else. You're applying false logic to conclude that finding thousands of fossils of some species means that fossilization is not rare. In order to conclude that you would have to know how many individuals of the species lived over geological time.It works like this. Say you find 1,000 fossilized individuals of species X. Is fossilization of species X common? Well, you would have to know how many individuals of species X ever lived. If only 1,000 individuals ever lived, then fossilization was very common, since 100% of the species was fossilized.But what if the number of individuals that ever lived was 10 billion? That would yield a fossilization rate of .00001%, which isn't very common at all.It also works like this. Again lets say you've found just 1 fossilized individual of a species. Does this mean fossilization is rare? It depends. If only 1 individual of this species ever lived, then fossilization is common. But if 10 billion lived, then fossilization is rare.If you're going to make your determination of the likelihood of fossilization based solely upon the number of fossils found, then you also have to know the number of individuals of each species that ever lived.Complicating such determinations are the precise same issues I've mentioned several times already:

• Fossils can be preserved in layers that subsequently erode away and disappear forever.
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• Fossils can be preserved in layers that are not accessible, being buried under layers of geological strata.
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• Fossils preserved in sea floor can subduct under continents.
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• On land, fossils are usually only preserved in lowland regions subject to net deposition, such as shore regions and swamps.
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• Evolutionary change is more likely in small populations than large, and naturally the probability of fossilization is smaller with smaller populations.

You might remember that some time ago there was a crisis in Yellowstone, perhaps it was a hard winter, that caused the starvation death of thousands of Elk, and since the herd is too large some die every winter anyway, yet you can't visit Yellowstone today and find a single Elk skeleton. How many times have you walked through the woods and found animal skeletons? On the savannah in Africa you can watch those documentaries showing predation of elk or zebra, but the remains disappear in very short order. As the Bible says, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and the ultimate fate of almost all creatures is dust, not fossilization.--Percy

Wow, beaten to the punch! Thanks!

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

So if every species now extant and all those in the past and assuming these slight differences were the product of mutation and natural selection for the main then there should be millions of transitional forms between the first time a species became reproductively isolated from the species that gave rise to it in direct decent. I mean unless you're a proponent of Goldschmitt and such there would be millions of point mutations some leading off to never never land and some accumulating in the intermediates that are successful. They too in time accumulate enough changge as to become reproductively isolated from their parent species ad finitum.SO where are the fossil millions of identifiable transitional intermediates ,, more than say a dozen in the world.I see lots of pretty diagrams in your references, no fossils and plenty of maybees, perhaps, it is believed, we conclud , it must have been... my oh my science at its best.. Still from the single celled ancestor to the sponge not one fossil presented over millions of years to show these changes.Nice of you to note that science does pretty routinely discredit evolutionary conclusions.

This isn't that hard of concept. It baffles me why you guys don't follow the reasoning.Fossilization is rare for individual members of species, but if "rare" is somewhat meaningless. Something can be "rare" and "common." Diamonds are a rare gem, but it is common to see this gem on the hands of married women.Obviously, in context, whatever labels you want to use, rare, common, etc...we see thousands of fossils of some forms of aquatic mammals, of whales and Basilaurus.I'd like to see the evos here dismiss with the terminology, totally undefined of "rare", and actually explain how "rare" something is if the process can produce thousands of such species.Moreover, you are claiming continuous evolution, right?So if a species is massive enough to fossilize even if fossilization is very, very rare, and so massive in number as to yield thousands of species, would not the next slow, gradual changes within that massive numbers of species be seen as well, considering continuous, gradual evolution? If evolution is continuous, then we know the numbers. They are the same roughly as the species that evolved into it, right? Which are exactly the habitats envisioned for land mammal to whale evolution.As far as your other points, sure with each transition or segment, there is the likelihood of gaps due to the issues you are talking about, but it is unlikely for the entire process to contain all of these problems, and with such a large, truly massive, morphological and behavioural transition, we should still see plenty of places with the transitions preserved, not just a paltry handful, and even reduced to calling a creature with not one single, definitive, fully whale trait a whale.