That is like asking why you don't see failed auto designs on the road. For an animal to be fossilized is a one in a million shot. “Failed” body plans don't get to grow into the million population group, they die young if they are even born at all.
So a non streamlined dolphin born with a big obstruction that drags in the water will not live to produce a large number of descendants among whom a fossil will most likely be preserved.
But a more streamlined dolphin will live to reproduce a more streamlined pack of descendants, and among those one might well get fossilized.
The fossil record is a record of animals that were prolific and successful enough to “win the odds” at being fossilized.
And so you admit that the fossil record is not, in principle, complete, "exhaustive?" That what is there is pretty much the result of a crap shoot? That it's sketchy at best?
Well jeepers, that's a fine admission from somebody who's committed to a theory that depends on the fossil record for its justification. Jeepers, even Darwin knew that evolution theory stands or falls on the fossil record!
Are you telling us then that only the successful designs somehow were the only ones to get fossilized by some chance?
“Failed” body plans don't get to grow into the million population group, they die young if they are even born at all.
What ever happened to the changes being gradual? Evos constantly mock non-evos for their comments about one species giving birth to another significantly different progeny, but that is exactly what you are implying needs to happen. The gradual changes didn't make it. They would have had to be more dramatic to survive birth and reach age of reproduction.
Those gradual changes would be considered *failed* if they weren't enough to allow stunning success but not all those *failed* plans need be fatal, as in the case of limbs developing to flippers. A limb going to flipper is not a serious enough failure in change that the individual would not not make it to birth. That is not a fatal birth defect.
But what good would a partially formed limb that is transitioning from leg to flipper be? It would be a liability to a land creature, leaving it more susceptible to injury and death as the land creature could not use a hybrid leg/flipper for locomotion very easily, nor could it use a hybrid arm/flipper to gather food.
The hybrid limb/flipper would not be a great advantage in the water as it would not be as useful as a fully developed flipper to escape being preyed on by those creatures such as sharks which have fully functioning flippers.
An animal in process of going from land to water or water to land is not well suited to survive either on land nor in water in the transition stage.
So how did it manage to do that?