Transitional fossils not proof of evolution?

If it were really a fact that many evolutionists admit that the fossil record is now nearly complete, then it would also be a fact that many evolutionists would share your viewpoint. But they don't. That's because evolutionists understand that the fossil record is extremely incomplete.Only a tiny, tiny percentage of the members of any species are preserved in the fossil record. Were this not the case we would be awash in fossils today. You might be old enough to recall the Yellowstone elk disaster of a couple decades ago when overpopulation and severe weather killed thousands of elk, and many have died every year since then, yet you'd be hard put to find a single elk skeleton there today.Or walk into any woods and find a squirrel skeleton - squirrels in the wild have an average lifetime of about 3 years, the woods are full of squirrels, so all the squirrel skeletons from squirrels of the past few thousand years should just be littering the forest floor everywhere, and be buried in the forest everywhere. My house is in the woods, so every time I plant a new shrub I should be finding squirrel skeletons in every shovel full of dirt.The reason we don't find skeletons all over the place is that fossilization is rare. It's most common in marine environments, particularly sea floor environments, it's less common in coastal regions, and it almost never happens in upland regions (a significant percentage of ecological environments) because they are areas of net erosion rather than deposition.It *would* be quite convincing that something was wrong with the theory of evolution if the fossil record were nearly complete and still had many gaps, but that's not the case. It's the Cambrian explosion, not Camberian, and most of the rest of what you say is as inaccurate as your spelling. All life everywhere is always "fully formed" - this term is just Creationist nonsense. Because all life is always "fully formed", we only find "fully formed" creatures in the fossil record. You quote Derek Agar out of context. You exaggerate Darwin on the likelihood of finding fossil transitionals. You say all species are independent of each other, despite the relatedness that is so visually obvious that many decades before Darwin, Linnaeus was already making classifications based upon it.Trying to addressing the thread's topic more directly, transitional fossils are not proof of evolution (science is not in the business of proving things, that's mathematics realm), but they are one of the many lines of evidence that support and are consistent with the theory. One prediction of the theory of evolution is that newly discovered fossil species should be consistent with and fit into the current classification system, and that is what we find. It also predicts that as we uncover more and more of the fossil record that more and more intermediate species should come to light, just as Darwin suggested, and that is also what we find.There are legitimate mysteries out there. Though the origin of some phyla have been pushed back well earlier than the Cambrian by subsequent fossil discoveries, many evolutionists believe that the enormous amount of novelty introduced during the Cambrian explosion has yet to be adequately explained.--Percy

The fossil record might possibly present a problem if this were true, but it isn't. For example, there are many places in the world with geological layers of coastal regions showing finely gradated changes in mollusks for millenia after millenia, just the kind of gradual transitions you're referring to.Land fossils are much more rare than marine (as are land geological layers), so layers recording gradual transitions on land are equally rare and the changes between stages are more pronounced, and this can be a source of misunderstanding. For example, the fossil record of horse evolution includes many occurrences of a change in the number of ribs, and creationists are often led to believe that we should find horse fossils with partially formed ribs. But that's not the way the number of ribs changes. A new rib doesn't evolve from scratch but appears suddenly with a small genetic change that says how many times to invoke the rib gene.The kind of argument you're advancing assumes that science has a conception of evolution that isn't supported by the evidence, so I think you're approaching this the right way in trying to identify evidence that isn't consistent with evolution, but in order to be successful in this endeavor you need to make certain you have a correct understanding of the evidence. Arguments based upon false or inaccurate characterizations of the evidence that are easily revealed, such as you do here with the fossil record, won't be successful. This drifts significantly off the topic, but just to briefly comment, evolution is accepted by people of all nations, races and religions. I think you'd be hard put to find some common philosophical underpinning. The philosophical and religious uniformity of the opponents of evolution is rather obvious, however. Species can both gain and lose alleles. They can even gain and lose genes, even entire chromosomes. Your information is incorrect, and it is causing you to reach false conclusions. You're reaching this false conclusion because of your incorrect belief that some leap of logic is involved. Evolution is continuous and represents the accumulation of many small changes over time. Your argument is akin to someone saying, "I know I can walk next door, and I know I can walk to the next town, but in no way should we jump enormous gaps in the deductive process, concluding that I could walk to the next state or the next country." This is the same misrepresentation of the fossil record that you made earlier. I guess I'm seeing enough off-topic discussion that I'm going to have to start drawing the line on what I'll reply to. I'll just say that this is incorrect and refer you to Message 15. If you'd like to discuss information theory it would probably be best to propose a new thread. Evolutionary theory does not propose "large taxonomical jumps" as an explanation of the fossil record. The jumps in the fossil record are due to the rarity and variabilities of fossilization and are not an indicator of sudden significant evolutionary changes. No, it means fruit evolved from us and are the higher evolved form. Seriously, it just means that we share a common ancestor with fruit, probably safe to say more than 500 million years ago at least. "Balance" isn't the term I would prefer here in this context, but I think I understand your meaning. Nature contains many interdependencies amongst organisms, symbiosis being a common example. But when you use your observation of "balance" to conclude design you are ignoring the "imbalances" that have caused most of the species that have ever existed to be extinct.--Percy

It looks like one of the reasons for your incorrect conclusions is that you misunderstand Gould's theory of punctuated equilibria. You wrote this near the end of your message: No, punctuated equilibria does not claim that evolution makes "taxonomical" jumps. Gould attempts to make this clear in the very quote you provided: You've misinterpreted Gould to be saying that speciation arises in a single "taxonomical jump." He isn't. His (and Eldredge's) theory of punctuated equilibria says that the pace of evolution is faster in small populations under significant selection pressures. The theory does not say that evolutionary steps are skipped, only that they occur rapidly enough to decrease the likelihood of being recorded in the fossil record. An aside: While Gould's theory of punctuated equilibria seems to receive a lot of attention in creation/evolution discussions, it hasn't had much influence within scientific evolutionary circles. It's even surprising that Gould received much credit at all for the idea because his ideas were widely anticipated by someone mentioned in your Mayr quote, Gaylord Simpson. He wrote Tempo and Mode in Evolution way back in 1944.I explained this earlier while replying to your "fully formed" comments, but I guess it's worth explaining again. I'll take a different tack this time.It's as if you took a snapshot of trains in the United States and classified them by geographical location. You'd have the New Haven train, the Omaha train, the Dallas train, and so forth. But trains aren't stationary, they keep moving. Take the snapshot a day later and you'd find that the New Haven train had become the Washington DC train, the Omaha train had become the Topeka train, and the Dallas train had become the Orlando train.In other words, species are just an instant in time of a process of continuous evolutionary change. Another way of looking at it is that species is an illusion. There's actually no such thing as species. Species are just convenient labels that we put on a snapshot in time of what is actually continuous evolution. All reproduction is imperfect and evolutionary change is inevitable. Selection pressures govern the pace and degree of evolutionary change. I never said anything about a horse series. This represents another common creationist misunderstanding. When one species diverges into two or more species, there is no law that requires the parent species to go extinct. Parent and child species can be contemporaries. It is likely that this misunderstanding is why you think there is a problem with evolutionary views on Neohipparion and Pliohippus.You provided this quote as if I had implied something about horse evolution being straight line: But I never implied anything along the lines of Marsh's early ideas of horse evolution. I used the changing number of horse ribs as an example while explaining why the creationist term "fully formed" is a misunderstanding of how evolutionary change takes place. New ribs do not evolve from scratch - a new rib arises (or goes away) when the allele that says how many times to invoke the rib gene changes. Good. So far it's going just one way. You've misunderstood the point, and you seem to have ignored what I was replying to from you. You had said this is Message 18: My reply had nothing to do with majority opinion. You accused evolutionists of having some philosophical reason for adhering to evolution, and I pointed out that evolutionists come from all nations, races and religions and so are unlikely to have some common philosophical bond. The opponents of evolution, on the other hand, have a fairly uniform philosophical and religious background. In other words, evolutionists aren't particularly vulnerable to your charge, but creationists are. The basic errors you've made so far, particularly about PE and transitionals, say this isn't so. As Gould himself explained many times after Creationists began claiming he had said such things as you claim here, it wasn't the absence of transitionals in the fossil record that was the inspiration for PE, but the fact that they appear less often than expected. Transitionals are not absent from the fossil record.--Percy

While I'm not yet convinced any moderator intervention is required, I will note that I share your impression that the important points are either ignored or not understood, requiring that explanations be repeated. I feel like I'm still making the same points that I did in my first post to this thread.--Percy

As Belfry noted, just the opposite is true. The concordance between genetic and morphological classifications is one of the strongest evidences *for* evolution.Since Belfry has already addressed this, I'll just say I'm a bit bewildered by the "black is actually white" approach you and nemesis_juggernaut seem to be taking. If evolution is false then it will be shown by evidence and information which happens to actually have a basis in reality.--Percy

You and Belfry are actually talking at cross purposes. You can't see how he could advocate species change when there is no evidence, and he can't see how you can claim that something is impossible because there is no evidence. Neither of you is actually advocating the position the other thinks you are.Here's the actual core of the problem. You want to see finely gradated changes not for transitions between species, which you concede happens, but between higher taxa, such as genus, family and order. Unless we get incredibly lucky, we're simply not going to find this. The vagaries and rarity of fossilization make it extremely unlikely.It isn't just the rarity of fossilization that is responsible for this. Another reason is changing geology and environment. In order for us to find such a long sequence in a single place, not only would conditions have had to favor fossilization for an extremely long period of time, not only would it have to avoided such hazards as inaccessible burial and subduction, but the evolving would all have to have happen in the same place. The evolving creatures couldn't migrate to other regions or follow coastlines as the move back and forth near continental margins, or meander geographically with the changing course of rivers. No, they'd have to stay put in the same place for millions of years while the geography and environment fluctuated. Ain't gonna happen.But extremely long finely gradated fossil series are not necessary for enough evidence to accumulate to conclude that the fossil record is strongly supportive of and consistent with the theory of the evolution. The fact that the very particular and extremely detailed evidence that you want doesn't exist does not mean that no evidence exists, and that's the logical fallacy you're falling into.This is actually the same point that Mark24 has made to you a couple times. If I could paraphrase his example, a prosecuting attorney does not need every piece of possible evidence in order to convict a defendant. No defense attorney is going to argue (not successfully, anyway), "Sure, there's fingerprint evidence, DNA evidence, time and motive evidence, but the surveillance camera wasn't working that night, nothing was recorded, and therefore you must acquit."It would be nice if all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is the fossil record were available for our examination, but they're not. Much has been destroyed through subduction and erosion, much is simply too deeply buried. But the fact that most of it is unavailable to us does not mean that there isn't far more than a sufficient amount to reach some very reliable conclusions.And so Belfry is correct that you're engaging in a fallacy. The lack of evidence of any finely gradated fossil series across higher taxa cannot be construed as evidence that it never happens.Getting back to the thread's topic, transitional fossils are not proof of evolution. There can never be any proof of any scientific theory. Transitional fossils are just one of the many threads of evidence that support evolutionary theory.--Percy

You say this as if phyletic gradualism were somehow foundational to all of evolution. It isn't. Phyletic gradualism isn't "how evolution works". It used to be a tiny part of evolutionary theory dealing with the pace at which evolution took place.Imagine someone arguing that trains can't really travel from city to city, and he cites as evidence that it used to be believed that trains traveled at a constant speed between cities, but that it is now conceded that trains travel at a variety of speeds. He then uses this to conclude that trains can't really travel between cities.You're doing the same silly thing. Before we knew much about mode and pace in evolution (Gaylord Simpson) or punctuated equilibria (Gould and Eldredge, same ideas as Simpson's, but applied to a paleontological context), we assumed that the pace of evolution was relatively constant. This meant we used to believe that as a species changed from one to another that it did so at a relatively constant rate.But we no longer believe the rate is constant. We believe that species can remain unchanged for eons, and then suddenly undergo rapid change. The largest governing factor affecting the pace of evolution is selection pressure.You're arguing that the change in our understanding of the pace of evolution is so revolutionary that it invalidates evolution itself, when it is actually a kind of ho-hum realization: "Oh, evolution can be fast or slow, not just one speed - yeah, makes sense." By its tentative nature and because of ongoing research, an inherent quality of science is constant change and improvement in our understanding. Creationist objections span the entire field of evolution. Saying "It's all wrong" and then taking credit when something inevitably does turn out to be wrong makes no sense. It's like betting on every number on the roulette wheel and then touting your gambling skill when one of your numbers comes up - it's a "so what!" Phyletic gradualism was never considered an unassailable fact. Progess in science is inevitable. You're saying this as if you believe it's a bad thing.You can go to the history of any topic in science and say the same type of things. For example, why aren't you saying, "Now that Newtonianism is so anemic, physicists blithely make the transition over to relativity." And relativity represents a much bigger revolution over Newtonianism than irregularly paced evolution does over constant-rate evolution.And the fact is, phyletic gradualism was never the over-arching consideration that you're making it out to be. If you had asked a biologist back in the 1920's if he believed that populations under selection pressures would change more rapidly than those that weren't, he would have answered yes, the exact same answer a modern evolutionist would give.Every field of science can point to old views that are no longer held, but it is the Creationist speciality to point to such evolutionary progress and conclude that something fishy or invalid is going on. What they should be looking for is discordances between contemporary theory and currently available evidence. What they're actually doing in such cases is criticizing science for doing what it's supposed to do: improve our understanding of the world in which we live.--Percy

Right, and I believe this level of fine gradations that are occasionally found at the inter-species level is what Nemesis_juggernaut is asking for, only at higher taxa levels.We *do* have gradated changes between higher taxa, but Nemesis_juggernaut wants the same fine gradation level as is necessary for showing inter-species evolution.Put another way, he wants to measure the distance between New York and San Francisco using a micrometer. But we don't measure such distances to high degrees of accuracy by starting at the very small - we measure them using macro-methods like bouncing lasers off objects. Finding the gradations between the higher taxa does not require the species-level precision that Nemesis_juggernaut is asking for, but it's evidence that doesn't exist, and that's why he's trying to build it up as something important.In fact, this approach of talking up minor aspects of evidence as if they were theory-breakers is common with Creationists. The most extreme example I've ever seen was Randman's multi-month harangue about Haeckle.--Percy

There is no need to go back and reply to my old messages that you missed earlier. The discussion has moved on, you should have replied instead to my more recent Message 50. You're like a recording that can only repeat, "Transitionals don't exist." It doesn't seem to matter how often it is pointed out that transitionals do exist, you just keep repeating it.These are Gould's own words from an essay he wrote in 1981 titled Evolution as Fact and Theory: It is transitionals at the higher taxa levels that you're interested in. Now that I've quoted one of the originators of the theory of punctuated equilibria saying that such transitionals are "abundant", that will hopefully bring an end to your oft repeated and just as often wrong claim that they don't exist, and that punctuated equilibria was proposed to explain why they don't exist. Your errors convey just the opposite impression. It still seems pretty clear that you've misunderstood why PE was proposed. You still think it was proposed to explain the fact that transitionals at higher taxa levels don't exist. But they do exist. PE was actually proposed to explain why finely gradated transitions at the species level are so rare.Your mistaken understanding of PE even contains an obvious contradiction. First you say: Which is largely correct - the steps are normal evolutionary steps produced by selection amongst variation in a population. Then you say: I presume you mean that you were explaining that PE asserts that steps are being skipped. It doesn't. PE does not propose "taxonomical jumps".Here, you once again repeat the claim about absence of transitionals, this time at the genus level: The claim of the absence of genus transitionals is easily rebutted by providing some examples. Here's a paragraph describing some genus transitionals from Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ: Part 2A, Kathleen Hunts article about transitional fossils over at TalkOrigins: I think you're confused about your own position. You keep claiming an absence of transitionals at low, middle and high taxa levels, but the lowest level is just normal trans-species evolution that creationists already concede. The middle level transitions are copiously represented in the fossil record. It is the highest level taxa transitions where you could probably make the strongest case, which is why the Cambrian explosion often comes up in these discussions.In other words, you would be well advised to stop claiming that there are no genus, family or order transitionals in the fossil record, primarily because it is easily rebutted and obviously wrong. But you reached this conclusion while under the misimpression that transitional fossils don't exist. In other words, you reached your conclusions based on bad data. You need to incorporate the fact that transitional fossils at higher taxa levels exist into your thinking. There are few ideas in science that are accepted 100% by the scientific community, including relativity. In fact, there are probably more secular scientists who question relativity than question evolution. So what?If you'd like to discuss horse evolution at the level of detail that you've already begun, then you really should propose a new thread. My only point was that it is a common misconception of creationists that parent species do not survive speciation events. I won't contribute further to pulling the thread off topic. There's no reference for this, it's just the way evolution works to produce more or less of the same structure. Whether you're talking about centipede segments or insect legs or ribs, the number of segments or legs or ribs changes not because a new one evolves from scratch and or an existing way gradually withers away, but because of a simple change in a gene that specifies how many copies to produce. It's a simple principle applied over and over and over again throughout evolutionary history.This is why you should not expect to see transitional forms with partial segments of legs or ribs. It's why the creationist concept of "fully formed" is so far off target. All species are always fully formed. It's why species are not final products but just way stations on the way to another species. You are again declaring that black is white. The creationist movement is almost exclusively evangelical Christian. This is as expected, since the objections stem from evangelical Christian interpretations of Genesis, which of course Hindus and Buddhists and Jews and Moslems and so forth do not share. And what philosophical suppositions would those be? The common bond among evangelical Christians is obvious, but what common philosophical bond can you find between American Catholic evolutionists, French Protestant evolutionists, Arabian Moslem evolutionists, Pakistani Hindu evolutionists and Indian Buddhist evolutionists? Your charge is absurd. And off-topic.--Percy

You keep claiming there is no evidence, we keep pointing out there is. We have to find a way off this merry-go-round.I'll stick with the thread's topic and only address the evidence for fossil transitionals. Fossil transitional forms exist for the higher taxa, and there are even some fossil series for species/species transitions. Their existence is something you're going to have to deal with. You can't keep saying there is no evidence when there is.If what you actually mean is that you find the evidence unconvincing, then you have to explain why. The gradually changing forms found in the fossil record that lie between taxa fit into the classification scheme for life, and they are largely congruent with the genetic evidence of descent. If you have problems with this evidence then describe those problems to us. A simplistic "There's no evidence" when there obviously is just doesn't suffice.I quoted some text about transitionals from TalkOrigins in my previous message. Here are some photographs of a fossil sequence showing gradual plankton evolution taken from A Smooth Fossil Transition: Orbulina: This is evidence, so clearly evidence exists. But you don't agree with the evolutionary interpretation of the evidence. Okay, that's fine. But this time instead of just repeating the quite obviously wrong "There's no evidence," please explain what it is about this evidence that you find unpersuasive. You've pulled the comment out of context. Belfry isn't claiming existence for things that have no evidence. He's replying to your position that seems to be the same as claiming that the actors in a movie weren't really there between frames. This is another topic, but I just want to note that this is nonsense because there is no definition of 'kind'. Even you put it between quotation marks. 'Kind' is from Genesis. I'm just noting this, not trying to introduce a new topic. If you'd like to discuss the definition of 'kind' please open a new thread. So you concede that there is evidence for the whale sequence, you just disagree as to interpretation. That's good, we're making progress. So in other words, you're not really pretending that all the paleontological museums in the world are really empty or just full of fakes. You're not really claiming fossils don't exist. You're just disagreeing with the interpretation of the fossil evidence. Right? So could we please stop claiming there is no evidence so that we can move on to discuss the interpretation of the evidence? No one advocates "constant speedism" today, not here or anywhere else. Phyletic gradualism was never some overarching fundamental concept in biology anyway. You're making the mistake of assuming that when someone talks about an example of evolution at a consistent pace that they're advocating phyletic gradualism. They're not. I hope I can talk about the millions of years of gradual evolution recorded in some seabeds without being accused of being a gradualist. The theory of punctuated equilibria does not require that all evolution be unevenly paced, only that it can be. And it is often the case when talking about evolution that examples of consistent slow paced evolution are much easier to talk about, as long as the subject isn't PE.So please stop these nebulous accusations that there are people here advocating phyletic gradualism. The very next time you think someone is advocating phyletic gradualism you point it out so that we can get to the bottom of why you keep reaching this silly conclusion. You know, I bet it's a pretty safe bet that if you stop saying "There's no evidence" and such that the accusations about strawmen and fallacies will go away. There's plenty of evidence, but it's difficult to discuss when you keep saying it doesn't exist.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Fix image width.

Your explanation had the ring of truth about it, but I have a question about this: I'm interpreting this as meaning that every individual in a population must possess every allele, which doesn't make sense, so I must be reading this the wrong way.Anyway, I got my definition from Wikipedia. Here's how the Wikipedia article begins. If you're right then someone should correct this: I just finished reading the Wikipedia article on sympatric speciation and I'm pretty sure I didn't understand why its impossible under phyletic gradualism (for which I'm now sure I don't know the proper definition, pending clarification).--Percy

You have different views on so many different things that in the interests of time and of staying on topic, I'm just going to have to let some stand. Maybe this will come up in another thread where it would be on topic. Doesn't this represent a contradiction in your viewpoint? You have no choice but to believe that the pace of evolution is affected by selection pressure, since this is shown experimentally under controlled conditions in the lab, and is consistent with our observations in the wild. And you accept speciation. What you reject is not the variable pace of evolution, but evolution beyond the what you call the 'kind' level for which you have no definition.Supposedly creationists want their ideas taught as science, but since they can't even do something as fundamental as define their terms there really isn't much hope.There is nothing to act as a barrier to evolutionary change. Biological change occurs with almost every reproductive event. In the absence of significant selection pressures these changes constitute drift, which can be thought of on a simplistic level as small and undirected changes, while in the presence of significant selection pressures the change can be rapid and directed, for instance, cold selecting for warmer coats. Uniformitarianism was long gone by the time PE came on the scene. As has been explained to you many times now, PE is an explanation for why we shouldn't expect to see very many *species/species* transitions within the fossil record. Transitionals between higher taxa levels are very well represented in the fossil record.I see a couple of problems that can only be laid at your door. First, despite it being explained to you over and over again, you continue to misunderstand something very simple about PE: it's about species/species transitions, not transitions at higher taxa levels.Second, you keep denying the existence of transitionals. It is silly for us to keep going back and forth with us saying "Transitionals exist" and you saying "No, they don't." I've already posted one set of photographs of a transitional sequence, but apparently that isn't convincing. Is it because you want more photographs? Higher taxa levels? If you explain what evidence it is that you want then we can try to provide it for you. But please, let's stop this silly back and forth about whether transitionals exist or not. The rate is inconsequential to you, but earlier you argued that gradualism is of overarching importance. I'm beginning to get the feeling that your arguments change according to what it is you're trying to rebut at the time. I'm not sure why the fallacy in your argument isn't as obvious to you as it is to everyone else. Prior to World War II you could use the same fallacious logic to argue, "If no one can demonstrate the splitting of the atom, then the theoretical possibility is completely undermined."But this, too, is off-topic. Now you're going way off-topic, but just briefly, this is what I was talking about before when I said that creationists have a fairly uniform philosophical outlook that is religious, not scientific, in nature. The ToE *is* falsifiable. That would explain why you're drowning. I wish you would work harder to stay on topic. My mention of Newtonianism was just an analogy to highlight the fallacy of equating change and progress in science with error and misconduct. You're wrong about relativity, but this isn't the thread to discuss it. You're going to have to explain the apparent contradiction of objecting to "gradualism" but not "pace." There must be a distinction there that I'm not seeing.--Percy

No, the combinations are not limited to the gene pool. Almost every reproductive event is imperfect and has the potential to generate new alleles, new genes, even new chromosomes. Duplications create a fresh slate upon which more genetic changes can be introduced. Generally speaking, these kinds of reproductive errors are referred to as mutations, and they add to the gene pool.About this: And this: These are more in the nature of accusations than debate and shouldn't be part of this thread. If you want to argue, based upon evidence, that evolution is imaginary and made-up, then you should propose a new thread. This thread is about how well transitional forms in the fossil record support the theory of evolution. It is based upon careful observation and measurement. Here's the photograph provided earlier, it's comes from 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Part 1: These are all skulls of hominids. They start with the modern chimp (A, Pan troglodytes), then pick up with the sequence leading to modern humans. B, the oldest, is Australopithecus africanus and N, the youngest, is Homo sapiens sapiens. There is a clear and gradual progression from B to N (though note that three Neanderthals are included, and we're already fairly certain they are only cousins, not ancestors - about the rest there is still debate, to varying degrees, about whether they are cousins or ancestors).The more recent the skull the more closely it resembles modern humans. Looking at this diagram it is obvious that your comment that "they are all skulls of apes" is incorrect. (By the way, the ape designation contains a large degree of ambiguity since in the most widely used classification systems humans are classified as a type of ape, but I think we all understand what you mean, that you are claiming that none of the skulls but N are human or any relation to humans.) You seem to be forgetting that creationists concede that evolution can produce speciation. That's why they define 'kind' as being at a level higher than species, though they never provide any other essential details about the definition of 'kind'. Anyway, it is higher level transitions that creationists reject. The evidence for speciation is undeniable, so creationists have stopped denying it. One doesn't want to get lumped in with the flat-earthers, after all! What you really reject is the possibility that evolution can produce new genuses and families and orders, and that it can produce novelty and innovation. Defy genetics? You must be very confused about genetics. As I've said, almost every reproductive event includes changes. Since there is no known limit to the accumulation of changes, there are no known limits to the changes that evolution can produce. Classification systems tend to assign relatively arbitrary boundaries in many cases, so not only is there no known mechanism for evolution to stop at these boundaries, there is also no way that evolution could somehow "know" where we've drawn our arbitrary boundaries so that creatures could evolve right up to the boundary, but no further. In other words, there is no possible mechanism for what you're claiming to happen.--Percy

Is anyone else having problems seeing the image?--Percy

I think pretty much everyone has taken a turn at explaining to you that you're misunderstanding punctuated equilibria. The key aspects once again are:

1. PE addresses the issue of the dearth of transitional evidence at the species/species level. You seem to be missing this point.
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2. Transitionals for the higher taxa are copiously available.

You've never addressed these points, and repeating things you've already said and reproducing quotes you've already provided won't help. In order to move the discussion forward you're going to have to address the points people are making to you. This is already a thread about transitionals, I don't think we need another one. Why not just address the information about transitionals already provided in this thread?--Percy