Living fossils expose evolution

Old world fruit bats cannot echolocate, and athough bats do not usually have claws on all five fingers, they usually have claws on 2 or 3.Also, it had fully developped wings and could clearly fly.Just to clarify some facts that I felt weren't toallyl accurate/transparent in your post, might want to check your sources on all this. (I'm not an expert on bats, mine was the wikipedia page on Onychonycteris)With all this in perspective, I don't get the feeling it is a very good example of a transitional fossil, since it has no transitional characteristics outisde of the five-to-two clawe fingers, which a creationist would argue is a 'downhill' transition.Although I could be wrong, I would pretty much bet that Onychonycteris would be the ancestor of old world fruit bats.EDIT: I'm not jumping into this conversation, but I just felt that I could do my part to help the poor fellow who doesn't seem to know in what an endless and long conversation he is entering. I figure that if his rebutters would at least use accurate info, it would help also.Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.

Interesting, and so they have a different limb ratio then modern bats.So they have different limb ratios and five clawed fingers instead of 2-3 which are the only difference with modern bats ? You also have to determine if the difference in ratios are not due to age development of the species in question. Because if bats pass through these ratios while growing up, I would pretty much bet that it is a distinct possibility that these two bat fossils of Onychonycteris could be youngsters who became fossils during there 'crazy teen years'. I mean, we gotta be careful with fossils like these. I could very well bury caterpillar 'fossils' at different growth stages and say that one staged gradually evolved into another.

I agree that finding a juvenile bat would be a rare finding. But it doesn't mean, and I think you will agree with me, that it cannot happen. And in fact, I would expect that we do find juvenile bat fossils amongst the hundreds (thousands?) of bat fossils we have.Of course, I am not implying that this is the case with these particular fossils. I just found that some, claiming to be ''Skeptics'' were jumping rather quickly on 'transitional fossil!' claiming, when in fact other possibilities had not been adressed.And of course, as I said in my first message, the fact that it has 5 clawed fingers only 'proves' evolution if I already presuppose evolution took place. I can easily imagine an initial population of bats with five claws becoming 'three-clawed' with time. But this is not the kind of examples needed to prove ToE.

See previous post. I wasn't trying to imply anything, just thinking that conclusions were being drawn rather quicklySomething like: abnormal limb ratio+5claws instead of 2 = Transitional fossil = Evolution is true.

This isn't what I was trying to say, of course, if we were to have to examine all the facts of evolution one by one, we would pretty much have to look at thousands of fossils, and research papers, etc. etc.What I was saying was that people were jumping very quickly to conclusion on THIS particular piece of evidence, and were rather quickly putting it into the 'this evidence proves evolution'.as your signature says, facts don't lie or have an agenda, facts are facts. And saying a particular fact isn't supportive of the ToE does not 'defeat' ToE in any ways, it simply means that the said fact does nothing to prove it. That's all.