Mathematics and much more

I think you're overlooking the fact that scientists study anatomy and consequently know quite a lot about it.No-one could identify a penguin as a bird-seal intermediate, 'cos of seals being mammals; we know what clade they're in. For them to evolve from birds would be beyond the mere superficial resemblances produced by convergent evolution.In order for fossils to be identified as transitional, they have to actually be transitional. All frako has shown is that there are possible lifestyles for animals in transition; and you have not been able to dispute this point.

Your point is somewhat obscure, but you seem to be falling back on that old creationist standby, the non-quantitative quantitative argument. If you really think that taphonomy and the theory of evolution imply that we should have found fewer intermediate forms than we actually have, then could we see some working? No: its anatomy does.

Hi Chuck, Yes. Obviously. Yes and no. Yes, it is a nice bit of luck for those of us who are actually interested in biology to have these sequences in such wonderful detail. Of course it would be even nicer if we had even more fossils, showing us more about the exact process of cetacean evolution, or more fossils to flesh out the lineages that are not so well represented but what we have is still pretty impressive I think. Certainly, it is sufficient to make the case for whale evolution.Yet at the same time, it's not just luck. Palaeontologists are not idiots. They don't just wander around randomly, turning over random rocks in the hope of a fossil popping up. Even I, as an amateur fossil hunter , don't take so sloppy an approach. No, what actual fossil experts do is to do everything they can to pinpoint exactly where the fossils they are looking for will be found. So, for example, if one is looking for whale fossils, it's no use looking in terrestrial formations, which were above sea level when they formed. It would be of little use to search in Cretaceous formations when we know that whales emerged much later than that. It does makes sense though to search in the geographical region where previous whale fossils have been found, or to search for intermediates in strata that are slightly older or slightly younger than those strata that previously yielded whale fossils.I hope you can see from this that the process of finding fossils is far less random than you might think. Ultimately we can only work with what is found but as it happens, what is found is a rather complete evolutionary sequence for the evolution of cetaceans. What I find amusing is your seeming contention that the existence of a highly detailed evolutionary fossil record for a major group of mammals is somehow evidence against evolution.Do you seriously imagine that all orders of living things would fossilise and be found at the same rate? Now that is a funny notion. The flipside of this trite observation is that genuine intermediate forms do not cease to be intermediate just because you can summon up the dazzling wit to write "LOL" on a web page.Mutate and Survive

Did you hear about how they found Tiktaalik?They knew about the fish-like animals and they knew about the land-like animals that were similiar and seemed to be decendents, but they didn't have the intermediate. They figured on about when it would have existed and what kind of environment it would have been in. So they determine the best location today to find this intermediate and after, like, 5 years of searching they did find it, right where they were betting that they would.Now, there's some luck involved, but they knew what they were doing.