evolutionary chain

There's not really such a taxon as "reptile", you should know. What you think of as "reptiles" is actually three different groups of living and extinct organisms, one of which includes dinosaurs, modern birds, and snakes, lizards, and other scaly ectotherms; one that includes mammals and some extinct fin-backed creatures; and one that's basically turtles. (Animal Diversity, 2nd Ed, Hickman, Roberts, and Larson, 2000.)Evolution gives rise to trees, not chains. Thinking of organisms in terms of chains of development is of fairly limited use. You wouldn't bother to think of your own ancestry in terms of a "family chain" leading from some arbitrary great-great-grandparent down to you; it's much more useful to consider your family as a tree, because it connects you to your cousins and uncles, as well as your direct ancestors.

But that's not how descendance works. Families expand, not descend. Just like evolution, pretty much. 1) The Bible geneologies are fictitious.
2) The Bible geneologies are strictly paternal and primogenitural; they're not true geneologies because they leave out almost all of the family. Why? What use would you get that you wouldn't get from the whole picture? Why hobble yourself? Only by working backwards. If you want to work forwards, you need to be thinking in trees.

No, it doesn't. If you go back in a chain, you don't see all his direct ancestors. Everybody has two parents, not just one; both of those parents are his direct ancestors; all four of his great-grandparents are his direct ancestors; all eight of his great-great-grandparents are his direct ancestors, etc. See the pattern? It's a tree, not a chain. Excuse me? The geneologies in the Bible weren't written down until centuries after the events they detail. There would have been nobody at the time of writing who would have been able to verify or corroborate or challenge the geneologies.They're fictional. But you don't see all the ancestors. That's the point. There's hundreds of individuals who would be direct ancestors who are left out of those geneologies. That's not even how species evolve, though. You're asking to see something that isn't possible, based on the reality of heredity and speciation. You've misunderstood me. Not forwards from you to your decendants; forwards from your ancestors to you.

What are you talking about? The topic is "evolutionary chains", which is the title of the thread, and that's the subject of my post. I guess I don't understand how you think I'm off-topic.

They're just an illustrative example about how decendance does, or doesn't, work.What, we can't use analogies now?