I entirely disagree and have to wonder if you are honestly trying to understand me correctly. Your argument is the same as people citing the discovery of the modern coelacanth--a "primitive" lobe-finned fish--as discrediting fossil lobe-fins (Eusthenopteron et. al.) as transitionals toward amphibians. Or, you might as well ask, "If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" Or, you could cite the continued existance of those cyanobacteria, or primitive Amphioxus-type vertebrates. You cannot possibly be familiar with the models of speciation you claim to distrust and make this kind of argument. Period.
Instead it is a lovely example of the persistence of a distinct form for half a billion years-one that clearly was under no environmental pressures that would have given some changed population within its ranks higher survivability.
Your velvet worm is not the same species as Aysheaia. I'm unclear on the exact relationship.
Further I will happily agree with your contention that the article was incorrect in its hypothesis explaining the sudden appearance of many diverse forms in the Cretaceous not proceeded by a fossil record, something I quite frankly was not aware of until you sent me the link.
I'm unaware of being in serious disagreement with Morton. What I'm mostly disagreeing with are your characterizations of my posts.
I am very much trying to understand you. Are you trying to misunderstand me? I asked for a demonstration of transition, you provide a link to a page which does not do that. I do not claim to win a point against transition by this, only that a point for it cannot be based on the information on that page, as the fossils represented there did not show change, only proposed it. There was no earlier form there, although it was discussed. Likewise the later form shown seemed hypothetical as it was an illustration and did not seem to be an identified actual species.
I am not adverse to proof of anything. My initial question which started our discussion still has not been addressed. Where is the record of the evolution of kidneys, gills, and wings.
I am still working my way through your latest offerings, and it is a wonderful thing how different segments in arthropods can have their genes activated or surpressed by UBX to determine its function as a thoracic or abdominal unit. But (I have not finished the site yet) even that site's transitional evidence seems to be a drawing morphing our first lobopod fossil with a fruitfly. I don't see the evidence of how we got from that soft skinned simple thing to an exoskeletal, sophisticated, compound eyed, flying creature. Stating "this scale here next to the leg eventually became a wing" just is not evidence of evolution, particularly Darwin's Natural Selection., it is merely conjecture, an hypothesis.