Say what? Guess they weren't all "missing" if some "continue to live" through these years. And is this saying that some elephant "ancestors" stayed the same, while some were evolving? I'm not current on the latest evolutionary theories, they um, evolve so often...
I did find some links to John Kappelman, and this site he was involved with is very interesting, it has extensive bone comparisons of humans, gorillas, and baboons. Most bones have pretty big differences, but I was shocked at how similar the "proximal pedal phalanx 1" bones of a human and a gorilla were. They are so similar, in fact, that they are photographs of the very same bone, lol! See for yourself (click on "comparitive anatomy" at bottom of the site, then choose "human" and "gorilla" and then the bone):
The site has not been updated in a couple of years, and I guess no one noticed this error.
Say what? Guess they weren't all "missing" if some "continue to live" through these years.
Oh come on, it wasn't *that* hard to understand. "The missing years" refers to the historical time span for which fossils (of any sort) have not been found yet. Those years are so far "missing" any found fossil record. And the researchers have determined that a given species has lived throughout those years by an easy method: They have found fossils of that species from both before and after the years in question.
I'm not current on the latest evolutionary theories, they um, evolve so often...
No, actually, they don't. But creationists so often like to claim that they do in order to give the false impression that evolutionary science is frequently throwing out last years' theory and frantically coming up with fresh ones, which is *NOT* the case.
Even creationists' favorite "example" of a "new" theory in evolution to replace the old (punctuated equilibrium) was, in fact, clearly described by Darwin himself in "The Origin of Species" in 1859. So much for the "latest theories", eh?
And as for your question ("And is this saying that some elephant "ancestors" stayed the same, while some were evolving?"), the answer is, "yes", since in fact most new species are formed by an existing theory "splitting" into two, with a new splinter population evolving in a new direction while the bulk of the original population remains relatively unchanged. I can see how you might not be aware of this, since you're "not current on the latest evolutionary theories", and this particular one was only published a scant HUNDRED AND FORTY YEARS AGO.
"...one species giving rise first to two or three varieties, these being slowly converted into species, which in their turn produce by equally slow steps other species, and so on, like the branching of a great tree from a single stem, till the group becomes large."
Charles Darwin, "On the Origin of Species", 1859.