"First of all, you need to understand the process of fossilization and understand the extreme conditions it takes to fossilize an animal. If a carcass isn't fully eaten and scattered across a large area it then has to be in the right place at the right time for fossilization to take place. I'm sure there are an untold number of species we'll never know about."
Perhaps, but we are talking "billions" of years and thousands upon thousands of "random" mutations to arrive at where things are today, if they evolved that way. For the preserved record to show so few if any examples of evolution, I find very suspect. Maybe examples are waiting to be discovered, I don't know. I agree above that it would not be realistic to have an example of every single thing preserved in the fossil record.
Nah, that was Gould's reason for proposing Puntuated Equilibrium.
He recognized that the fossil 'record' wasn't.
We’ve been seeing tyrannosaur fossils for many years but have only recently found examples in fine shale deposits of China showing feathered examples. Again, conditions were right to show such an adaptation.
And, on TODAY's critters (you too!) there ought to be all KINDS of things that haven't got all their parts yet to be effective.
The alternative is Hopeful Monsters: creatures born that have ALL their functioning parts intact at once.