where was the transition within fossil record?? [Stalled: randman]

I don't intend to play devil's advocate here, however I have been trying to follow this debate and think that I have a handle on a particular misunderstanding here. I think that what randman is trying to explain is that where it is considered that a species is transitional in form then this transitional form should increase in population size sufficiently to leave abundant fossils. However others are saying that the transitional forms stay in small population size. What has failed to be communicated, or what randman has failed to understand, is that these small populations of transitional forms continue to evolve and do increase in population size if successfull, but in evolving are no longer that specific transitional form that randman is looking for.
In bringing up Punctuated Equilibrium it is clear that randman believes that all new species appear in the fossil record "fully formed" therefore none of these "fully formed" species can be considered transitional. I do not know if it helps to consider that even what the rest of you see as transitional species will appear to be "fully formed" from this perspective. If I am correct in my assumptions of randman's way of thinking (it is difficult to get inside a creationist's head), then, to this way of thinking, there are just no such things as transitional fossils.

So you do actualy understand Punctuated Equilibrium then? Species 2-999 (small populations, yes, in time) appearing in rapid succession. Rapid (geologically speaking) periods of evolution with long periods of stasis in between. No wonder we don't see the transitional species 2-999 in the fossil record.

OK randman I will help your argument along a bit - first you stated that Then you stated that (incorrectly I might add as DrJones said , not between species 1 and species 1000 as you stated)
But let's run with the figures anyway.Let's assume that you are talking about a gap in time between species A and species E in Percy's graph. This gap in time is finite because, from the fossil record we have species A appearing no later than a particular time and species E appearing no sooner than a particular time. Then as the graph shows we have species B to D in this gap. Now the hypothetical species B, D, and E have a limited range in time, as we do not see them in the fossil record along with species A and E. What you also state in a later post is that However what we are talking about is the species in the gap being in a direct lineage from A to E therefore none of these species exists, for very long geologically speaking, alongside each other, each species supplants, or out competes it's ancestor (if this did not happen, then in the present day we would see rather a large number of virtually indistinguishable species). You do seem to be confirming that you understand this by stating Rightly so, each of these stages is more successful than it's immediate ancestor, so the line does not die out, it's just that this new species that starts to spread also gets supplanted by its more successful descendant.One point is that each species by necessity must start out as a small population size, as you say yourself just keep those few speciation events coming in those small populations and one of those species being more successful and there you have it.Right - so you say that there are now 999 species filling this finite gap in time, not just 3, then, logically each of these species will exist for a shorter period of time, not being able to grow large in population size before being out competed by it's descendent. Then you say that, no there should be more like 100k, or maybe 1 million, (I'm not quite sure how to fit this many species into that finite timescale, maybe you mean 1million generations, no that does not work either unless these whale ancestors have very short lifespans, but let's run with it). Since you seem to want to predict fossilisation rates, does this make each individual stage more, or less likely to fossilise?You go on to say Of course it's not, not over the timescales that we see in nature, I presume you mean "at the present time". My point is that if it had been that way over geological periods of time what would you expect to see in the fossil record? ( hint - since you brought it up, PE)

Using species and dates that I am sure have been presented to you by many others, Pakicetus 52Ma, Ambulocetus 50Ma, Rodhocetus 46- 47Ma, Dorudon 40Ma, Basilosaurus 35-45 Mawe can see somewhere between 52 Ma and 40Ma we have the gap, approx.12Ma, that you are looking for, for how many species there should be between a land mammal and an aquatic mammal. We do have species within this time that show there were animals showing intermediate features that did exist around that time period.
One thing that I would like to know is where is the original "kind" in this sequence, or do you suppose that each of these creatures came from different original "kinds"? If you agree that all present day species come from original "kind" species then how long did it take for that original "kind" species to adapt into the present day species. To make it easy let's just say pick a "kind" ancestor from any one of the above, or give us a date for that unknown "kind" ancestor. I don't think that you are a YEC so I don't think that you will say 6000y, as that would be very problematic for your calculations. Then tell us, by your reckoning how many of your "steps" it would take for that original "kind" ancestor to "adapt" into all the whale like species we see today, presuming that you accept that all present day cetaceans are of a "kind". I am being generous in allowing you a head start of 38Ma. Don't forget, if you reduce your figures from your previous post you are going to have to concede that there could be less steps for that land mammal to aquatic mammal transition. Please also note that there may be less "steps" involved in geting from something like Pakicetus to something like Ambulocetus or Rodhocetus than there are from something like Dorudon or Basilosaurus to a modern day Blue Whale or Amazon Dolphin (thinking of 2 quite different forms of what I presume you think of as a having a "kind" ancestor).Also, using your astronomical number of changes (whether you actually mean millions of species or millions of steps it's still not quite clear to me) is it clear to you that you are proposing numbers of changes that could replace an entire genome? we just do not require that many. How about cutting it down to the number of changes that would be required to the few genes in the genome that would actually require changing, we know all organisms share a high proportion of genes anyway. Oh yes and reduce that number by the number of changes that would be taking place at the same time while you are about it (by 80 whale species do you mean currently existing species that were changing at the same time, or 80 species steps? still not clear to me either). Also, if you are estimating the number of distinguishable species, then reduce that number by the number of changes seen in each species.If you are still talking about the number of fossils then reduce the number of changes by the number of things that require changing that would not be able to be seen in fossils, leaving mainly those changes that affect bone structure only.
Also are you still talking about the number of fossils that we might find of them, then reduce that number by er... lots and lots more to somewhere between 0 and a few. Then we might be getting somewhere near a guesstimate.

Uh oh - there's that old Creo misconception again, I thought rand was confused - now what is it that Creos say that we should see in the fossil record, partially formed species, fully formed features or what?Would that not mean that it had partially formed whale features, so therefore can be thought of as a transitional?

OK, [Devil's advocate mode on]
according to sources on this very discussion forum there are approx. 35 mutations for each human individual.Lets say that whale's ancestors are similar in that respect to humans,
then for each generation there are 35 mutations,
Let's say there are 10 years per whale ancestor generation,
then for 12MA (that evos propose for land mammal to aquatic mammal evolution) there are 35x12,000000/10 = 42,000000 mutations
mutations = steps so that means there have been 42,000000 steps from land mammal to aquatic mammal - where are all these transitionals.
[/da]Anyone see the fallacy in this argument (anyone meaning you randman).
Don't you know that 87.5% of all statistics are made up?I considered making the same calculation over the last 5 million or so years of hominid evolution, or over the last 2 million or so years of Homo sp. evolution, or even last 100,000 years or so of Homo Sapiens evolution, but then thought why bother?, we can all pull figures like these out of our arses.Numbers of mutations obviously don't equate to "steps", numbers of steps don't equate to species, numbers of species don't equate to transitionals and numbers of transitionals don't equate to what we should or should not find in the fossil record.

However I would like to add one more (if not implied in the second one):-What is the time duration of that population ?
as a smaller less stable populations of species that are "in the process of" evolving are less likely to get fossilised just because of their fewer numbers over time. As opposed to the large stable long lasting populations that are rather common in the fossil record.

Quite simply because biologically there is no such distinction.
Logically if there was a distinction it could be shown biologically as a different mechanism or something, and biologists would be agreeing with you. It is just unnecessary for TOE.
Let's coin a few more terms, let's say if study micro-evolution I am studying subspecies differences, nano-evolution if I am studying molecular differences between close relatives, kilo-evolution if I am studying differences in genera, Mega.... Giga..... etc. You would not need a different mechanism for each to validate TOE. Get it?

Don't know how I missed that, I even quoted it???????

Nope - a domestic dog and a wolf are different species, within the same genus, and they can mate. A domestic dog and a Jackal, different species within the same genus probably could not mate. A dog and a fox are very unlikely to be able to mate as they are separated by genus, but are within the same subfamily.A dog and a cat can't mate because they are so far apart genetically speaking that they are put in different families.There's more to this classification lark than just species you know.I know they are just labels, but people like labeling things even when there is a bit of a blurry line between things.

Sorry, but it's the reality that's blurry, we use labels and language to try and make sense of it. This is just dependant on how you define that group. I would define that such group to be somewhere between species and subfamily for some organisms, but it need not correspond exactly to either, if you want to define your own grouping based on this criteria go ahead, it's just another label, trying to define that elusive blurry reality. maybe we do but I doubt that the experiment will be conducted. But you do have overlap, that's the problem with trying to classify something that does involve a spectrum.

Closest species, in time, that would be the last Homo sp. I bet we could.