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... just as I have never seen a fossil that was clearly a bridge between species.

Archaeopteryx. Definitely has the characteristics of both therapod dinosaurs and birds.

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He's got you there, Junior. Archaeopteryx was a species, so you can't call it a bridge between species.

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Better find a better resource than your public school science text. Archaeopteryx is considered by many sources as a sophiticated fraud. X-ray resonance spectrograph tests performed on the British Museum specimen in 1986 showed the material containing the feathers was different from that containing the rest of the fossil. Add to this that fossils of real birds have been found that are much older than this hoax and it is obvious it is not a link.

Archaeopteryx. Definitely has the characteristics of both therapod dinosaurs and birds.

Two points. One, My reading shows that archaeopteryx is at best an unsubstantiated wish. There is still debate over whether it is a fraud or not. Two, if it is a species, it is not a common link - a common link would be a demonstrable series of this birdlike lizard showing different stages of mutation from no wings to wings. This is something that is completely non-existant - and not just in regard to archae. Not one single instance can be shown in the fossil record of actual change taking place over long durations which end up in an added set of wings, a change from gills to lungs, fins to legs, etc.

In trying to propound the preposterous, evolutionists ignore the stark obvious. Organs and limbs are not mere things, they are complex systems that must be worked into other complex systems. Absence of single components in the system can cause death. And because these are complex systems, they require genetic change on a large scale all happening at random yet cooperatively - which doesn't happen in practice. The odds of even a single change are astronomical and there is nothing saying a single change wouldn't be a fatal one. Grouping enough changes to keep the process going or to do it all in one shot is so astronomical even for one creature that it is beyond belief that scientists can stand straight faced and say it has happened millions of times.

Archaeopteryx is either a fraud as it has been shown to be in the past, or it is just another of a diverse group of animals that have existed; but, it lends no support to the notion of evolution. It demonstrates a species, not a step in evolution.