[Junior]

What's the alternative explanation? That the younger organism poofed into existence full blown? It did not exist at the time of the older organism, or we would find them mixed together. The Bible says all the critters were made at once, but the fossil record does not support that conclusion. The younger organism had to come from somewhere. Extrapolating from our knowledge that organisms change from generation to generation (fact) we can propose the younger organism evolved (changed) from an earlier organism - either the one mentioned above or a close relative. This is the theory of evolution. What have the creationists got to explain the situation? They'll tell you that spontaneous generation is impossible (they misunderstand Pasteur's work, but that's not important), but all they'be got to fall back on is that the newer organism sprang full blown from nothing at a certain point in history.

Unless you've got something else, maybe?

[HalfFull]

What's the alternative explanation? That the younger organism poofed into existence full blown?

The alternative explanation is the other side of the debate, right? (ID)

BTW, cannot both species have lived at the same time? For example, the two species sharks and men are currently living at the same time. If a billion years from now someone dug both sets of bones up in a different depth of soil would that someone "know" and say "proof" exists that a million years separated the time of the shark and man of today? Probably so, and that future someone would also be making an invalid assumption

An assumption is not proof.

[AndrewC]

It did not exist at the time of the older organism, or we would find them mixed together.

So sinosauropteryx cannot be a predecessor of Archaeopteryx.

[gore3000]

What's the alternative explanation? That the younger organism poofed into existence full blown?

No, and you know better than that. The alternative explanation is that the Creator changed some species for his own reasons and made all the functions work well together. This is basically the claim of intelligent design - that there are too many necessary changes to make a different more complex species viable for such changes to be possible in a gradual, stochastic manner. Evolutionists speak as if all you need to have a new more complex organism is a feather here, an ear bone there, etc. Science teaches us, and has definitely proven what was long suspected, that all organisms are very intricate and very well organized systems not subject to random beneficial change. That is why there are millions of examples of deleterious mutations and no examples of helpful mutations.