[VadeRetro]

Well, gomaa fell into a lawyerly trap. Bad gomaa! Darwin Central will hear about this!

OK, maybe the cladogram is bad and I missed it. But when I look at the same figure:

I see specific species "diverging" from an inferred "true" line of descent. That is, the lines with the species names come out of group names along the "descent" line. Thus, the cladogram pays tribute to the uncertainty of saying that fossil species Y is the for-sure descendant of fossil species X. A line of descent is depicted, but it does not marry itself to fossil species. An order of appearance is depicted, but it also does not marry itself to fossil species.

Which is to say, you have simply looped back to further thump the drum of "The presumed dromaeosaurid common ancestor of Archaeopteryx and Sinornithosaurus is unknown." I would assume that, if you look at cladograms all over the tree of life, there are many, many such cases where a cladogram presents a presumed order of development of features which "violates" the known fossil record for particular species and their ranges. It's presenting a historical scenario, not charting the fossil record.

That the scenario is a historical narrative and not a fossil chart is exactly why there are often competing cladograms whose differences cannot be resolved without more fossil data. (But what creationists ignore is that time passes, more data does come in, and the ambiguous areas shrink.)

[gomaaa]

Well, gomaa fell into a lawyerly trap. Bad gomaa! Darwin Central will hear about this!

Oops! Well, I guess I've doomed the Theory of Evolution.

This is a perfect example of what happens when you don't look too closely at what is being presented to you. You might accidentally dismiss it because you misinterpret it when in fact it's a perfectly good theory! ;)

[AndrewC]

I see specific species "diverging" from an inferred "true" line of descent.

Gee, I see Sinosauropteryx which has feathers coming from the same point as Compsognathus which does not have feathers. This coupled with the following description from the origin of that cladogram tells me that Jello™ should be suing the Darwininians.

Cladograms depend on two main scientific ideas. The first is that time flows in one direction only. The cladogram represents this by moving strictly from left to right. Thus, common ancestors of related groups must arise prior to these descendants in time, just as in genealogy parents arise before their children. Just as parents cannot inherit characteristics from their children, an hypothesis of ancestry requires that the “ancestor”; occurred earlier in time than its first “descendants.”

If time was not relevant why mention it? Order is sufficient.