Just a couple of quick observations. Many transitional fossils do not show huge leaps and certainly do not prove that fish became land amphibians or that mammals became whales. There are known issues with the timelines such as evidence that there were already creatures crawling around on the land when tiktaalik and other fishopods were around. Even in the mammal to whale transitional fossils, there are huge problems. Have you ever watched Dr Marc Surtees critique of this? Sorry for the rushed reply, I have some classes to attend.
I'm going to ask you to put some numbers in your head and mull them around until you can grasp their importance.
The first number are: over the past ~150 years many billions of individual fossils representing hundreds of thousands of species have been discovered & classified.
Clear lines of descent with dozens of "transitional fossils" have been found in many cases.
But more important, every fossil, if identified in time and biological category, can be shown to be transitional between its ancestors and descendants, if any.
The second number is my guess that so far fewer than 1% of all species which ever lived on earth have been found in fossil form, and because of the rarity of fossilization, it's unlikely most of those ever will be found.
So, my point is there's an awful lot we do know, but still vastly more which we don't.
winslow: "There are known issues with the timelines such as evidence that there were already creatures crawling around on the land when tiktaalik and other fishopods were around."
Tiktaalik is a representative of transitional forms between fish and early land-dwelling tetrapods.
No claim and no "law" says Tiktaalik was the first or only fish transitioning to part-time land-dweller.
winslow: "Even in the mammal to whale transitional fossils, there are huge problems."
Recent decades have seen fossils of many new species of ancient whales or pre-whales discovered, giving us a more complete picture of transitional forms.
don’t believe the nonsense about the Tiktaalik being transitional- Even evolutionists have had to admit that was a dead end
“Tiktaalik, the transitional star, faces an evolutionary dead-end”
A total upset
This is not some small correction or a minor detail. It has turned the paleontological world upside down. Something of the magnitude of the upset can be gleaned from statements made about the find.
They force a radical reassessment of the timing, ecology and environmental setting of the fish-tetrapod transition, as well as the completeness of the body fossil record.7
[It] will cause a significant reappraisal of our understanding of tetrapod origins.8
[They] could lead to significant shifts in our knowledge of the timing and ecological setting of early tetrapod evolution.9
We thought wed pinned down the origin of limbed tetrapods. We have to rethink the whole thing.10
Thats surprising, but this is what the fossil evidence tells us.11
These results force us to reconsider our whole picture of the transition from fish to land animals.12
https://creation.com/tiktaalik-finished
“Indeed, Tiktaaliks fin was not connected to the main skeleton, so could not have supported its weight on land.
Transitional limb?
Cladogram of the pectoral fins on the tetrapod stem
Fig. 2: Cladogram of the pectoral fins on the tetrapod stem, from Ref. 3. Click to see larger image
Quite aside from the huge problems explaining the origin of locomotion, there are other problems. The series of corresponding limbs (Fig. 2, right) does not appear to show the clear progression. Even from looking at it, it is not obvious that the Panderichthys limb belongs in between the adjacent ones in the series. It has fewer small bones. The authors themselves appear to recognize this:
In some features, Tiktaalik is similar to rhizodontids such as Sauripterus. These similarities, which are probably homoplastic, include the shape and number of radial articulations on the ulnare, the presence of extensive and branched endochondral radials, and the retention of unjointed lepidotrichia.
Fossil order
Alleged lineage including Tiktaalik
Fig. 3: Alleged lineage including Tiktaalik, from ref. 1. Click to see larger image.
Fig. 3 (right) does much to popularize evolution, but there are a number of problems.
The caption admits, These drawings are not to scale, but all animals are between 75 cm and 1.5 m in length. If size were taken into account, would there be such a clear progression? Compare a far more extreme example, the supposed land-mammaltowhale sequence. This was also illustrated as equally sized, but Basilosaurus was 10 times longer than Ambulocetus.
Another admission is, The vertebral column of Panderichthys is poorly known and not shown. We should remember the Pakicetus fiasco: when a few bones were known, evolutionists drew it like a half-way land-water form. But when more bones were found, it was realized that it was a fast-running land mammal.
All the fossils of this entire series are assigned to middle-upper Devonian, or 385365 Ma. Naturally, there are many problems with dating , but even under the evolutionists own scenario, there are problems. E.g. the entire fish-to-tetrapod transition is supposed to have occurred in 20 Ma, but other salamanders, according to Shubin himself, have remained unchanged for far longer :
Despite its Bathonian age, the new cryptobranchid [salamander] shows extraordinary morphological similarity to its living relatives. This similarity underscores the stasis [no change] within salamander anatomical evolution. Indeed, extant cryptobranchid salamanders can be regarded as living fossils whose structures have remained little changed for over 160 million years.8
and so on and so on:
https://creation.com/tiktaalik-roseae-a-fishy-missing-link