Transitional Fossils Show Evolution in Process

It is also worth mentioning that one can determine the transitional nature of a fossil without assuming evolution. As RAZD explains so well a transitional fossil is a fossil with a mixture of characteristics. Even if evolution is false these are still transitional fossils.So why do transitional fossils matter in this debate? Because these fossils are a TEST of the theory. How? The theory of evolution predicts which transitionals you should see AND which transitional fossils one should NOT see if the theory is true. This is what is important, how the fossils TEST the theory. The theory predicts that fossils, like modern life, should fall into a nested hierarchy. For example, one should not find a transitional fossil with a mixture of derived mammalian and avian features. Specifically, one should not see a fossil with feathers and three middle ear bones. There are thousands of these types of predictions.Gaps are a very distant, secondary concern. The main point is that each fossil is a new data point that tests the theory of evolution. Nowhere in the theory does it predict that a fossil from every generation of every species that has ever lived will have been found by the year 2010. However, the theory does predict what mixtures of features these fossils will have when they are found.

It's usually not left at one discovery. There is the first report of a finding, and then there is the mad rush to verify and expand on that finding.As it pertains to fossils, there is the signal to noise ratio. Finding a single rabbit fossil in the Cambrian will not rock the establishment being that thousands upon thousands of mammal fossils are found well after the Cambrian (including, I would assume, rabbit fossils). There is a strong signal and very, very little noise. I would hazard a guess that a single discovery of a Cambrian rabbit would be explained as a redeposition, that the fossil was moved after formation. Now a thousand Cambrian rabbits would be a different thing altogether.Think of it this way. As you move around in your day to day life you will come upon many clocks and watches. From experience you know that the vast, vast majority of these clocks and watches give the correct time to within a few minutes. Then one day you come upon a clock that is 3.5 hours different than every other clock. Do you a) declare that all time pieces don't work, b) this one clock is broken in a way that does not invalidate all clocks.

You need to look at this like a scientist. The genetic evidence that humans and chimps share a recent common ancestor (ca. 5-7 million years ago) is rock solid. The genetic evidence is so overwhelming that common ancestry is considered a fact. That is where the palaeontologists are starting from.What the fossil record affords us is an idea of what happened between that common ancestor and modern humans. Each fossil gives us a clue, even if that clue is small. Lucy, Dakika child, and Ardipithecus ramidus (aka Ardy) tell us one very important thing. The evolution of humans started with bipedalism. It was walk first, big brain second. Jaw and tooth fragments let us know what was going on with the cranium between ealiear species and H. erectus. Smaller teeth and smaller jaws correlates with a larger brain case. That is what these teeth and jaw fragments tell us, that brains were getting bigger between pre-H. erectus and H. erectus. This is important information.

How does one determine what a fossil means without interpretation? What you need to show is that the interpretation is unscientific or wrong.

Why would you question it? Do you have evidence that scientists are not aware of? If not, then the conclusion stands. That is not the assumption. It is the pattern of similarity which evidences common ancestry and evolution. That pattern is a nested hierarchy. It is the pattern of similarity we should is if evolution is true, and it is the pattern we observe in both the genomes of living organisms and in the fossil record. Since genetics is a bit off topic here I will only breifly mention this paper which states:

quote:

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Given the size of vertebrate genomes (>1 109 bp) and the random nature of retroviral integration (22, 23), multiple integrations (and subsequent fixation) of ERV loci at precisely the same location are highly unlikely (24). Therefore, an ERV locus shared by two or more species is descended from a single integration event and is proof that the species share a common ancestor into whose germ line the original integration took place (14). . .

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Third, sequence divergence between the LTRs at the ends of a given provirus provides an important and unique source of phylogenetic information. The LTRs are created during reverse transcription to regenerate cis-acting elements required for integration and transcription. Because of the mechanism of reverse transcription, the two LTRs must be identical at the time of integration, even if they differed in the precursor provirus (Fig. ​(Fig.11A). Over time, they will diverge in sequence because of substitutions, insertions, and deletions acquired during cellular DNA replication.

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What we see in ERV's is more than just similarity. What we see is a pattern of similarity that we know evolution produces, and only that pattern.As for fossils, this nested hierarchy is seen again. We do see fossils with a mixture of modern human features and basal ape features just as we should see if evolution is true. We do not see mixtures of features which would violate this nested hierarchy pattern, such as fossils with a mixture of cat and basal ape features. If the "common creator" idea were true there is no reason that we should see this nested pattern of similarity. We should just as likely see a fossil with a mixture of cat and ape features as we do a mixture of human and ape features. As we should, being that we share a common ancestor with dogs and mice. False. It is possible to both share DNA with other species and falsify common descent. Again, it is the pattern of similarity that matters here.Also, are you trying to say that if humans shared a common ancestor with other species that they should not share DNA in common? What I can say as a scientist is that the theory of evolution makes very specific and risky predictions. Those predictions can be tested by both the fossil record and the genomes of living species. The theory of evolution has passed these tests for 150 years now. It has passed literally millions of experiments where it could have failed. It didn't. I will never claim that the theory of evolution is 100% true. I will never claim that anything is 100% true. However, I will say that a theory that has passed 150 years of testing and millions of tries at falsifying it can be considered a fact for all intents and purposes. Yes, there are still some fine details to work out, but if the theory were generally not true it would have been discovered already. Look no further than the genomes of living species. They differ can differ by quite a bit without adversely affecting the species. Humans and chimps differ by 2% or 5%, depending on whether or not you include indels. Are you saying that humans do not benefit from those differences? Please show that the only result of reusing and rewriting programs would be a nested hierarchy. For example, please show that a programmer would not or could not copy a program block from one lineage and drop it into another. From my knowledge, programmers do this all of the time without any though to preserving a nested hierarchy. Therefore, if design were true then we would not expect to see a nested hierarchy. If evolution were true then we would expect to see nested hierarchy. We observe a nested hierarchy.

And I can vouch for the fact that designed organisms do not fall into a nested hierarchy. With the revolutionary techniques in the field of molecular biology it is now possible to create chimeric organisms that express traits from many other species, clearly violating the nested hierarchy. I have personally designed E. coli that express human proteins, and it is quite common to create "humanised" mice that express human proteins of interest. The infamous green glowing mice are an example of a mouse expressing a jellyfish green fluorescent protein. Many expression systems in eukaryotic systems use the E. coli lacZ reporter system. As soon as humans were capable of designing organisms themselves they threw out the idea of a nested hierarchy.Staying with fossils here, we must then ask why we don't see clear violations of a nested hierarchy. Why do we only see mixtures of characteristics that evolution predicts we should see. Why don't we see bats with feathers, birds with three middle ear bones, or a crocoduck? Why do we only see mammal-like reptiles, dinosaur-like birds, human-like apes, and fish-like amphibians? Why not bird-like mammals or crocodilian-like ducks?What creationists consistently miss is that it is not the transitionals we do see that supports the theory of evolution. It is also the transitionals we don't see.

Precisely. This throws a big wrench in the workings of the modern ID movement. One of the overarching themes is that we can compare biology to human made things and find similarities, hence evidencing design. For example, Behe compares the bacterial flagellum to an outboard motor. The Grandfather of ID William Paley compared the movement of the heavens to a pocket watch. Time and again we see comparisons of DNA to computer language, as seen above. However, the second we hit something that is different from human design the designer becomes a mysterious force that acts different than us, designs different than us, and is incomprehensible on most matters. IOW, it's like nailing jello to a wall.If ID is ever going to be part of science it must rectify these types of inconsistencies.