When you speak of the Archaeopteryx being a composite(hoax?), I would like to know where you got your information...I ask because I am now reading some very detailed books, published in 2002, and they hardly make mention of this claim that your are making...please provide some information as to where you got your information, because it certainly does not jive at all with what I have been reading, in very recently published books...and there have been some very, very recent fossil finds in China, which show, as Archaeopteryx, the link that you so easily seem to dismiss...new discoveries are being made all of the time, China is rich in fossils which still are being unearthed and studied...as they find more and more fossils, the picture becomes clearer and clearer...
As regards the Coelacanths, it was thought that they were extinct...when something is declared to be extinct, its usually because its been so very long since its been seen...the species in general is thought to be extinct...but how can anyone know for sure that every single member of a particular species is gone, since we cannot search every single inch of the earth and the ocean and seas and lakes at the same time, to declare that...a species, in general may be thought to be extinct, however its always possible that some few members of a species still survive...when one of the members of a species thought to be extinct, turns up, that does nothing to invalidate evolution, and I cannot imagine why anyone would think that it does...
Google "archaeoraptor"
Hi AAMM. In any case the modern coelacanths are *not* the same species as the extinct fossil ones. This is just the "Why are there still monkeys?" argument transferred to another order.