there are no true transitional forms yet I think there is evolution

Ok I would like to address the most common argument that creationists give "there is no evolution because have not found transitional forms" but in my Opinion this is a false statement and yes indeed we have found them. now if indeed Evolution does take place(which I believe it does) creatures are evolving everyday.
but I think it would be much to slow to be able to find a transitional form or be able to distinguish one anyway. I don't know what you expect to find in one but I don't think your going to have an animal 1/2 this and 1/2 that. it just wouldn't work that way at all. all the "transitional forms" are different creatures completely and there would be no final product. with this idea I say its impossible to distinguish "transitional forms" the other factor is fossils are a rare thing! they aren't as common as people tend to think. take all the animals in the world and randomly pick a few here and there to be a fossils and there you have thats a fossil.THIS is separate and off topic
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Now don't get me wrong by no means am I downing the idea of creation because I also believe in God but I just Believe god left life to grow and change anyway it needed to as a defense to survive.

In evolution transitional fossils are just fossils that link the evolution of one species to another. A very broad example would be say fish to reptile to mamamal. The reptile is a transitional fossil. But ofcoarse it is not one that proves evolution because there is to much space inbetween. When creationist ask to see transitional fossils, they want these gaps to be filled. Ok i can understand how you would say we wont have so many transitional fossils that we could make a cartoon morphing of the animal(hope u understand that). But there has to be certain lineage of species between fish and reptiles. Ex. Fish, Fish with lungs, fish with legs, fish without gills and finns, etc.(u can blend those together if u like also.) So really all we want to see is something in the middle. If you are saying there is nothing in the middle then you are saying that evolution takes place in jumps, and that does not seem to be what you are saying.

Well, there are transitional forms.In fact, every single organism is a transitional form. I am slightly different from my parents. My children will be slightly different from me. It will take extremely fine observations in order to detect those differences (possibly requiring genetic sequencing), but they do exist.We have seen speciation take place right before our eyes and can look at all of the generations between the originating members and the descendant members, and all of the ones in between are transitional.As we go into the fossil record, we find that it is replete with transitionals higher up the taxonomic tree. As Stephen Jay Gould wrote in Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, "Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups." I'm sure this has been mentioned before here, but this is a good resource on transitional fossils and just how numerous they are: Transitional Vertebrate Fossils------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

no not at all what I am not saying it happens in jumps but a fish to amphibian is a simple one there are fossils that indicate the walking fish(much like the ones today) and there are also one of amphibians that must have had to stay in the water most of the time and resemble fish alot. I mean truly there can't be a in between it is either a fish or it is a amphibian so the thing I ask is what exactly is needed as proof? as I said fossils are extremely rare. but this here pretty much explains how it happened... its here and it very well seems to make sense what makes this so hard to believe?Edit in reply to the last post yes that is exactly what I mean evolution happens like that. ok Example something as simple as wisdom teeth some are born without them now and a one point they where needed to me this is proof humans are evolving still there are other examples but I think you get it when something isn't needed life slowly gets rid of it and it would work the other way when something is need life gets it[This message has been edited by DC85, 05-06-2003]

I think this has been mentioned before but the problem with this is one of language. If we only have taxonomic names for two groups; fish and amphibians then, of course, everything is one or the other. If had every individual between fish and amphibian alive in front of us we might well choose to create one or more additional higher taxonomic names.Fishians, amphish and so on. Then we would use those names for "transitionals". Of course, then we'd have a problem with the transitionals between fish and fishians.Why is a lung fish or a mud skipper still a fish? Because we like to keep the taxonomy a bit tidy.

DC85,The problem, as Nosyned points out, that the Linnaen classification system is made of discrete boxes, but evolution is a continuum of forms. Take the fish to amphibian scenario you mention. Currently best supported with the Dipnoi (lungfish) being most closely related to tetrapods. Imagine a graduation of hundreds of thousands + generations, each changing gradually from lungfish to basal tetrapod. If we actually had all of these fossils to study, we, at some point, if we are going to use the Linnaen system are going to have to place an arbitrary line down & say, everything beyond this point is a tetrapod, & everything before a fish. We have to shoehorn forms into boxes. It is the limitation of this classification system. A newer, more sensible system is growing in popularity; the cladistic classification system, where only the binomial (genus & species) names are preserved. There ias no direct correlation to families, orders, classes etc (although it can be estimated for comparison).The Linnean classification system is arbitrary.http://www.wku.edu/~appleda/paleoanthro/lab1.htmlThe cladistic system is mased on morphology (molecular data?) as well, but defines a geneology of organismal groups. You are familiar with evolutionary trees, yes? Imagine the branch point, called the node, this is the point where groups, or clades are named. Every organism that appears at the top of the tree bears all of the node names beneath it. For example, we are sarcopterygians (which actually means fleshy lobe/limb) under this system, we are also tetrapods, amniotes, mammals, primates, anthropoids, catarrhines, hominoids, homininae (in ascending order) etc. You will notice that this broadly matches the Linnaen system, but not quite.Hope this was clear....Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

yes so a new system may be well needed but continuing what I was say(thought some more :?) anway another reason why there would be no 100% transitional forms is because when animal evolves it isn't setting out to Become a certain thing (the anscester of a lion didn't set out to become that way) it simply was looking to survive so a good reason for inconsistencies would be that evolved something that in no longer has etc.... as was mentioned with this idea its impossible for us to make a "cartoon" of evolution. so as I said there can not be 1/2 this and 1/2 that at anytime........ if that clears what I am trying to say here all and all. they way I see we have more then enough proof to say evolution happens. its just we need to know more what we are looking for..........

Yea, I think you've got it there. I think you're saying, in a different way, the same thing as Mark did.

so what I am saying makes sense to you?

Just barely makes sense.I like Mark24's experession better, living things are a continuum. But I would rephrase what you are saying as:As living things evolve they are not heading in any specified direction. The whole population of a species is varying from each other in many, many ways. At any given moment in time the variations are small and not shaply defined. We could not, looking at them predict what will come next or where they are "going". (There isn't anything going to be a lion).However, when we come back many generations later (depending on enviromental changes very, very many). We find a number of new forms. So some of those individuals we looked at were in fact "heading" somewhere. But the whole thing is too tangled to see when you are up close.Whether we would reclassify the new forms under any given taxonomic heading would be yet another area for the taxonomists to argue over. And argue they do!

DC85,

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.....anway another reason why there would be no 100% transitional forms is because when animal evolves it isn't setting out to Become a certain thing (the anscester of a lion didn't set out to become that way)......

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I disagree. If we are going to accept that a given form had an ancestor that was very different to the extant form, then we have two ends of a continuum. We can therefore predict that intermediate forms must have existed, & if we're lucky enough will find something that meets that prediction in the fossil record. Whether the form knew where it was headed morphology wise is irrelevant, it is the fact that it did change that is important.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

Double post......[This message has been edited by mark24, 05-07-2003]

true but one anscestor can become many many different animals.
like a tiger and a lion the differences are minimal so are they the same creature? evolution takes it course and splits into whatever that life form saw fit to survive climates change, areas change
for example Dinosaurs I think are the best example Ceolophysis (a small trassic dinosaur) is thought to be the ansester of all theropod dinosaurs(including birds)after it this creature lived on the super contenant pangea when it broke up it just kept evolving it didn't set out to become the Tyrannosaurus 140 million years later. it changed from creature to creature along the way it broke off into many creatures like allosuarus (which is as much related to T-rex as a dog is to a cat) , small dinosaurs which one day became birds, etc..... there is no set evolution. as I said it may have evolved something then lost it later there can be no direct link from creature to creature.... therefore there can be no true transitional forms![This message has been edited by DC85, 05-07-2003]

Well, you've certainly hit one one thing - there's no transitional forms in the sense that creationists use the term: animals with characteristics in-between two contermporary taxa - like, between modern cats and dogs, etc.Evolutionists use the term "transitional form" in a different way. What we're referring to is the phenomenon where the common ancestor of two modern taxa tends to have characteristics that are similar to its eventual decendants. We do see this in the fossil record. Also we see species in various stages of adapting to new environments. This is also a kind of transitional form.To say that there are no transitional forms, period, is inaccurate. There are transitional forms. There aren't, however, transitional forms in the sense that creationists use the term. That's because when they use the term they're essentially setting up a straw-man argument and then knocking it down.

DC85,

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true but one anscestor can become many many different animals.
like a tiger and a lion the differences are minimal so are they the same creature?

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Irrelevant. The common ancestor of the lion & tiger is unknown & we can therefore not know what a transitional form is in this case, because one end of the continuum is unknown.There is a difference between common ancestor & transitional form![Added by edit] It occurred to me when reading crashfrogs reply above, that you think the tiger evolved from the lion, or vice versa, rather than confusing "transitional form" with "last common ancestor". Lions didn't evolve from tigers, or vice versa, they share an ancestor, you will never find a transitional form between the two, in the same way you will never find a transitional form between cats & dogs, but they share a common ancestor. It's a bit like trying to find a transitional between you & your cousin, it doesn't exist, you didn't evolve into them, & they didn't evolve into you, you do share an ancestor, however.

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evolution takes it course and splits into whatever that life form saw fit to survive climates change, areas change
for example Dinosaurs I think are the best example Ceolophysis (a small trassic dinosaur) is thought to be the ansester of all theropod dinosaurs(including birds)after it this creature lived on the super contenant pangea when it broke up it just kept evolving it didn't set out to become the Tyrannosaurus 140 million years later.

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You really think there isn't a transitional between Ceolophysis & T Rex? What about Allosaurs?I think the problem is that, if I can use Archaeopteryx lithographica as an example, is that we often are claiming that either Archaeopteryx, or other closely related organisms as yet unseen are intermediate forms between reptiles & birds. As I stated in a previous post, whether we classify Archaeopteryx as a bird or reptile is arbitrary, it contains traits unique to both extant birds and reptiles. But did Archaeopteryx actually evolve into anything, or did it become extinct leaving no daughter species? The answer is, I think you will agree, that we don't know. It may be a closely related species that diverged before the Archaeopteryx fossils were preserved, that actually went on to evolve into modern birds. Archaeopteryx lithographica may well have been a dead end. So in that sense you are right, there are no absolutely definate intermediate fossils, just intermediate representative taxa (for high leval taxa transitions, at least). The same goes for the fish to tetrapod transition, the more forms that become available that belong to the same general classification, the more we are able to "close down" which family, genera etc. are actually in the direct lineage of fish to tetrapods. That fish evolved into tetrapods is not in question, however, we cannot truly know exactly which species of lungfish crawled out of the water first, all we can say is that the Dipnoia are representative forms of something that did.Am I correct in describing your objection to transitionals?As an aside, there are transitional series that almost certainly do represent the exact species, but these transitional forms are species transitions, or genera transitions at best. The higher the taxonomic rank you go, the lower the certainty of being able to pinpoint the exact species to species to species (*1,000 or more) transitions that go into the transition. The exact species may not have been discovered.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.[This message has been edited by mark24, 05-07-2003]