Where are all the missing links?

How likely is that flying (gliding) squirrels could ever develop full fledged flight? Is it possible that many flying animals had transitional gliding forms? Also I would point out that even birds that are fully capable of flight are quite fast at running as well and will actually run rather than fly if the terrain and circumstances allow it. A ring-necked pheasant is one example. So flight developed even as other forms of locomotion remained quite functional.

I would guess that the "arboreal gliding hypothesis" is more relevant to mammal flight than birds but as an "armchair evolutionist" I would not rule it out for birds.

Please - it hurts my ears when the conditional tense (mood) is not used correctly. If I were to say what it is I do not like about it I would say it "just doesn't sound right.""If there WERE no fossil record..."Edit typo....This message has been edited by deerbreh, 08-12-2005 10:42 AM

Ouch! Small pick on the pick of the grammar pick. Technically my mistake was a spelling error, not a grammar error - but I understand that the urge to commit irony might have been too great to pass up.

And there is of course, Mr. Panda's thumb.http://www.athro.com/evo/pthumb.html

Well of course the panda has always had the bone extension. That is part of what makes him a panda. What the argument is about is whether his ancestors also had it and whether his ancestors also used it as a "thumb". Calling it a "thumb" is a convenient way of designating the function - it functions as a thumb (opposable digit useful for grasping against another part of the "hand"). And the point is Mr. Panda's ancestors did not use the bone extension that way nor do his "cousins" - that is what makes Mr. Panda's little adaptation so special. It is an "ad hoc" contrived solution to the need to be able to grasp a piece of bamboo - exactly how evolution predicts adaptations will arise and not at all what one would predict if special creation were involved.

Well I may have mispoken on the "bone extension." I meant to say the ancestors had the bone but it wasn't extended the way it is for pandas. Also, it is not just an enlarged bone but a pad above the bone which opposes another pad on the panda's paw, enabling the panda to grip the bamboo.
Secondly, examination of stomach contents is not the only way that diets can be ascertained - teeth wear for one thing can tell us a lot about diets - plant fibers are really hard on teeth, particularly something like bamboo, compared to say meat or even berries.
Finally, the point is that the cousins (as determined by structural and DNA homology} of the panda - bears, for example - do NOT have this particular morphological feature. And bears are omnivores while pandas eat mostly bamboo. All of this information was in the link I supplied in the first post I made about pandas. Plus the panda's thumb has been written about extensively by evolutionary biologists. Stephen Jay Gould wrote a whole book with that title - though the book was about a lot more than panda thumbs. If you would have done any reading in evolutionary biology at all you would have been familiar with the panda thumb.This message has been edited by deerbreh, 08-15-2005 08:23 PM

Evopeach, there is some confusion here. Evolutionists are not proposing that the human brain is just a "few minor genetic mutations away from an extant species brain". So this is a needless argument on your part. Now as to transitional forms, again, no evolutionist is claiming that there is an extant ape-human transitional form. So just what is it that you are arguing about? If you are arguing about whether non-human primates have consciouness then that argument does not belong here, as this is a missing links thread. Why don't you see if there is a topic on that subject and go there or propose a new topic if there is none?

This is so hopelessly off-topic maybe an administrator should administer a lethal dose of morphine.