[bobdsmith]

Hardly. That is a copout. I want to see the half-bird, half-reptile and I want to see it now. I also want to see the half-amphibian and half-mammal. Or fish-reptile-mammal-bird whatever. If it is true these forms should still be everywhere and in obvious transition.

You are asking for the join between various tips of the evolutionary tree. Well the join occurs further down the tree - ie in the past. The link between the reptiles and bird lineages was long ago for example, and while there are fossils of such bird-reptile forms long ago, there are no living bird-reptile creatures that have survived to this day. There is no reason they should still exist, and certainly no reason at all that modern reptiles would be turning into mammals, or birds.

[metmom]

You are asking for the join between various tips of the evolutionary tree. Well the join occurs further down the tree - ie in the past. The link between the reptiles and bird lineages was long ago for example, and while there are fossils of such bird-reptile forms long ago, there are no living bird-reptile creatures that have survived to this day. There is no reason they should still exist, and certainly no reason at all that modern reptiles would be turning into mammals, or birds.

There are still creatures that exist as they were in pre-historic times, are there not? Why should have the bird-reptile have necessarily gone extinct? Is it because ther was no use for it anymore? That's weird. So, it seems that what you are saying is that modern repitiles would not be evolving anymore. But why not? If they evolved millions of years ago, why did the process stop? If evolution is a continuous process then we should still see transitional forms today as lower forms are evolving into higher ones.