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To: js1138
For the record, all living things that we are aware of are related by descent.

Which cannot be demonstrated by the fossil record.

499 posted on 09/23/2006 9:43:00 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: Tribune7
Which cannot be demonstrated by the fossil record.

It can for some groups, but not for others. This is largely due to different environments; eg, there are very few fossils of jungle animals compared to plain/savannah dwellers. Classical examples of the latter are eohippus - modeern horses, and australopithecines - modern people.

Also, in cases of "rapid" evolution, Gould's hypothesis is that the speciation (ie the intermediate forms) are in a small population in a geographically-restricted area. So we should expect few transitionals in this case. However, I have read that there have been a few lucky finds of exactly this scenario, but I forget just what species were involved (IIRC it was Gould's specialty, snails).

Something that is often forgotten by anti-evos is the abundant fossil record for many higher-level transitions, such as dino-bird and reptile-mammal. Recent reseach in Precambrian and Cambrian fossils is uncovering phylum-level transitionals. The link is to an essay by Glenn Morton that shows worm-arthropod, halkeriid-brachiopod, and annelid-halkeriid-mollusc. It has some great pictures.

502 posted on 09/23/2006 10:34:41 PM PDT by Virginia-American (What do you call an honest creationist? An evolutionist.)
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