To me those represent a number of extinct animals.
You're right so far. Why don't you quit while you're ahead?
If you have many animals, then a great extinction, then a few modern animals, it is easy to find a range of extinct species for every range of modern species because not many survived the extinctions. To prove a phylogenetic tree, you would have to sequence them according to subtle changes leading up to modern species, and to have the sequence radiometrically dated to reveal relative ageing of the fossils.
But they
are datable. Paleontologists dated them. This is not the first time I've pointed this out, so would you please stop ignoring this fact.
We have whales with legs, then whales with hind legs that they couldn't actually walk on, then whales with no hind legs. This is all datable.
Meanwhile, you can't find an entire missing sea where they all lived together in perfect harmony but couldn't get out of until there were fish and shrimp for them to eat, something which datably happened long before there were any whales.
You can't come to terms with the facts that I've pointed out to you, you can't even put up an desperate argument that they
aren't facts. You just carry on talking as though I hadn't even pointed out the facts to you. This is a forum for debate; what you are producing is merely a monologue. If you don't want to interact with people, get a blog. If you want to participate on a forum, then my facts trump the things that you imagine in your head.
Its that detailed and dated sequencing of fossils that is missing, where it is biologically obvious that there was an ancestor similar to the sperm whale recently, and then its predecessor is biologically obvious too, leading backwards in time, all dated properly. Without that, its guesswork based on a biased view of extinct fauna.
We have a datable series of intermediate forms.
Where is your imaginary sea?
Until and unless you can find it, we've got more than you. We have the fossils. We win.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.