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As for half-developed nervous systems, what would you consider that to be? Would it be the stimulus-response receptors found on jelly-fish, the non-centralized nervous system of the starfish, the ganglia-controlled stimulus-response system of insects? You need to be a little clearer.

Thank you for an intelligent response. All of the examples that you cite exist in fully functioning, integrated creatures. What I'm looking for is a skunk with gills. Or a mouse with a half-formed wing. Or an Octupus with legs. Fossilized mutational "duds."

For example, some people point to the archaeopteryx as a transitional form, which is certainly a logical possibility. But the reason that I don't find it particularly compelling as evidence of evolution is that it seems to have been a creature that was capable of functioning well "as-is." And, in fact, a bunch of archaeopteryx fossils have been found, seemingly demonstrating that it came into being fully formed and functioning and left the same way, just like most other creatures, if we are to judge by the evidence in the fossil record.

(Or take the platypus. Is it a transitional "dud?" Is it the "missing link" between muskrats and ducks? Or is it a fully-formed, integrated, functional creature?)

At least that's what we should expect from "punk eek." If evolution happened by micro-mutation, then the fossil record for evolution should be even more compelling, absolutely filled with "transitional forms." But the evidence is quite the opposite.

Things like wings don't just crop up over night. They are modifications of existing structures. They start out as something else and gradually change to accommodate new uses. For instance, the wing started out as a therapod foreleg. Recent research shows that early bird-like dinosaurs may not have developed flight or needed a full-fledged wing right off the bat. Flapping the arm/wing assisted the critter in climbing trees to escape predators. There was not need for a full-fledged (no pun intended) wing. Small modifications allowed the animal to launch itself at the tree from a little farther away, and then a little bit farther, and so on. At no point was any new system being introduced -- there were simply modification of existing structures. That is why you'll never see a skunk with gills, or anything like that. You will not see a radical bad mutation in the fossil record for the same reason -- only small changes are made in the organism and if the small changes decrease the organism's chance for survival it will be weeded out long before it gets out of hand.

To Junior: (Or take the platypus. Is it a transitional "dud?" Is it the "missing link" between muskrats and ducks? Or is it a fully-formed, integrated, functional creature?)

Again, your strawman is that anything transitional is not a fully-formed and functional creature. That's just wrong. For all we know, our own species is in transition to the next thing, if we don't go extinct.

As for the platypus, so many of you picked up the same mantra at once. The platypus is having its 15 minutes of fashion right now.

Anyway, it fits nicely on the tree of life. Its ancestors branched off shortly after the transition from reptiles to mammals. It has a number of expected mammalian features, but it still lays eggs. That's a clue to something the fossil record can't provide, the order in which some of the soft-tissue changes arose.

I've been down this path with gore3000 and Southack and they make a point of seeing nothing. For a description of what the fossil record shows of reptile-mammal transtion, try The Fossil Record by Clifford Cuffey. It's a well-documented transition with a number of clinical features changing visibly in the specimens, notably the jaw and ear bones.

Monotremes have the mammal diagnostics, but their line parted company early with the root stock of later marsupials and placentals. They've been on a separate journey ever since.

The Natural History of the Monotremes.

For a direct rebuttal of creationist arguments, Creationism and the Platypus.