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Bats have always been bats, but if they did not exist today, you would surely be offering them as a transition to birds, flying squirrels, or maybe F-16's.

Why would someone be offerring them as transitions to birds? Just because they have wings. Maybe in your strawman version of what passes for evolutionary science that would be the case. The bird wing and the wing wing are totally analogous. They have the same function and they're derived from tetrapod forelimbs, but that's it. The structures of the two wing types are totally different.

If there were no actual platypuses and you found one in the fossil record, you know you would herald it as a transition and evidence for evolution.

Let me guess. Transition between a duck and an otter or a beaver. More strawmanning. Even without living specimens, the platypus would be classified as a mammal based on its skeletal features.

Snakes have scales, fish have scales. Is one evolving into the other?

Octopi have eight legs, spiders have eight legs. Will we see an octupus spinning a web in a few kazillion years?

Horses have manes, lions have manes. Is it moving up the neck or down?

So if some dinos have feathers, then some dinos have feathers. Some mammals have wings, that doesn't make them transitional.

All strawman examples. Biologists do not take species and class them as related or transitional due to one character without taking into account everything else about them. Creationists might do that when they insist that the platypus "bill" is actually a duck-beak that has been stuck onto a mammal body just because it is superficially similar, but biologists judge transitional species by taking into account their combinations of derived and ancestral characters. The platypus "bill" is totally mammalian in structure. The lower jaw is made up of the same dentary-squamosal system possessed by all other mammals. If those feathered dinosaur species were actually feathered mammals, they wouldn't be classified as transitional between dinos and birds because the rest of the skeletons wouldn't support such a hypothesis. The confusion over which pigeonhole in which to place Archaeopteryx shows that your analogies are totally false.

<< Why would someone be offerring them as transitions to birds? Just because they have wings? >>

Why would someone offer the commie Chinese creature as a transition? Just because it has feathers? (That's *assuming* it's real, which has been a bad assumption to have about the Chinese fossils in the past).

<< the platypus would be classified as a mammal based on its skeletal features. >>

Feathered dinos would be classified as lizards based on skeletal features. If platypus isn't transitional, then the commie Chinese creature shouldn't be claimed as such.

<< The platypus "bill" is totally mammalian in structure. >>

How come it's the only mammal with a bill? Do other mammals lack teats and lay eggs? How many other furry mammals have venemous spikes?

<< If those feathered dinosaur species were actually feathered mammals, they wouldn't be classified as transitional between dinos and birds because the rest of the skeletons wouldn't support such a hypothesis. >>

Hey - that's what I've been saying. Glad you agree.

<< The confusion over which pigeonhole in which to place Archaeopteryx shows that your analogies are totally false. >>

Pigeonhole - that's an appropriate word to use for a bird (provided archy isn't another fraud).