How Did Millions of Life Forms Evolve With Absolutely No Evidence of Major Change?

(A few anecdotal examples of mutations do not explain the missing transitional forms in millions of generations of thousands of creatures.)





Please, If you have nothing better to do but leave silly, non-sense, unintelligent, and rude comments , please skip this question! Thanks!How Did Millions of Life Forms Evolve With Absolutely No Evidence of Major Change?
evolution is the biggest hoax and unfortunatley wat too many otherwise intelligent people have fallen for it. I looked up the ';transitional forms'; list as someone suggested- I see lots of assumptions, losts of imagination and very little fact. I even had to laugh as some of the artists for some of these supposed life forms could take a lesson from my 4th-5th grade art class!


One of my favorite eries as of lte, is the ';Creatures that Defy Evolution'; there are 3 on DVD - check them out if you have not already- very cool!How Did Millions of Life Forms Evolve With Absolutely No Evidence of Major Change?
With no evidence? It'd be absolutely impossible.





That's how we know evolution is factual, we have millions of fossils that show the change. We have a fairly complete evolutionary tree based on the genetics of living creatures.
WOW that makes so much sense, gee your smart evolution must be wrong
Because the fossil record isn't perfect. If all human history were to be fossilised, the future paleontologists would probably get half a skeleton, one fossilised sock from the 20s, one Roman sword and one concrete coffin full of nuclear waste.





And that's humans. There were probably millions of prehistoric creatures we've found absolutely no trace of. However, we do have enough transitional forms (Archeopteryx, for example) to support evolution. It's not anectdotal, it's solid evidence.
Lots of evidence. You guys complained for 13 decades that there was no whale evolutionary evidence... 'til we found several transitionals from '78 onwards in Pakistan (Pakicetids - ~52 mya; Protocetids - ~45 mya; Dorudon - 38 mya) and Afghanistan (Remingtonocetids - ~48 mya).





Why don't try Google to find more... pick a subject and search.
So you're saying the working theory of evolution isn't good enough because... you think... what, that what they have DOESN'T actually work?





*sigh* Yeah, complain about the gaps. And then when something is found to sit in the middle of the gap, you'll just say ';now there are two gaps!';
i believe this kinda stuff...


personally i believe we've also mutated in our own ways...





it could be through genes changing over time...


i dont know im 16 just intrested and thinking of possiblities
Well, that seems to be a bit of a problem. And, there is a logical reason too. You see, there really aren't any transitional forms.
I am sure they have left plenty of evidence. Perhaps you fail to view it properly.
well i'm not a scientists but this is my analysis:





There would be recorded documents of evolution, if we were that smart.








Now our bodies aren't eveloving but our brains are,


slowly with each generation we are using more and more of our brians, and thta evolution is being recorded and documented.
They didn't evolve---they were all created by God just as the Bible says.
Fossilization preserves less than 1% of any given organic matter that has died. Seeing this, is it any wonder why exact transitional species may not be known in every instance? Don't forget the fact that many families/species branched off each other and later died out.





Yes, I am a Christian who believes in Evolution, including that you, yes YOU, evolved from hominids, which in turn many eons ago, evolved from single celled organisms. Ain't life grand?
Their form was successful. There are modern sharks that resemble sharks of 100,000,000 years ago, but not 450,000,000 years ago.





There thousands of non-anecdotal transitional forms.
DRINK!





There are so few fossils to begin with (it is really, really hard to make a fossil) it is amazing how complete the record is... the fact that the samples line up as amazingly well as they do in line with evolutionary theory is overwhelming proof, statistically. But you would never let the facts get in the way of your silly beleiefs anyway.
You should study evolution. I took college courses in it and you obviously don't understand the evidence. Evolution is a proven fact, today and in the past. that is not to say that it doesnt require God as the intelligent designer. i am a Christian and I find no conflict with this and evolution. The Bible say ';God said let the earth bring forth the creatures of the sea'; That is evolution.





By the way evolution is NOT about mutation. It is about the survival of the children of successful parents. No child is exactly the same as it's parents and the ones that are better than their parents survive.
The purported lack of ';intermediate forms'; shows nothing except ignorance of the way that evolution works. Genetic information is stored in digital, not analog, form, so a one-bit change in a genetic code will have at least a miniumum effect on the descendants, but there is NO maximum: a one-bit change can activate all or part of an intron, or de-activate all or part of an exon, resulting in a change that is arbitrarily large. And this does not even count transposition or recombination errors (one of which is responsible for Down's syndrome). Evolution has been established science for a hundred years because it makes correct predictions, and it is now a proven fact (details on request).
Evolution did take place. Creation is a myth.
well, and I'm saying this with sincerity, if you truly wish to understand where the evidence came from, study it, study the evidence, then and only then will you come to an informed decision as opposed to a biased uninformed opinion
Study unbiased science and you'll get your answers. You'll find that you're presently incorrect and evolution is.





_()_
I don't believe in the god creation or evolution, but I take the approach that other life forms do exist and can we see all of them, so how would one know that an invisible life does not live in you, that brings about your self awareness. Surely neither can be proofed or dis proved at the current time, its only what we accept to believe.
Go to Google and type in ';list of transitional fossils.';





Have fun, and good luck learning.
did you ever notice the earliest animal supposedly is the trilobite... with VERY advanced eyes... I supposed evolved to elude PREDATORS... um... but there were no predators to elude...?????? perhaps the trilobites just got buried first in the flood





the reason you dont see revolutionary changes is because different animal types give rise to slight variations in its own type... not revolutionary changes ..each change requires its own advantage... this is flatly insufficient to explain the complexities and revolutionary changes we see





fossilization is indeed rare, none of the bones from the titanic just 70 years ago are left... it takes rapid burial and lots of water... lots of water.. lots of mud... a flood on a worldwide scale would leave lots and lots of fossils
I'm not being silly and I'm not being rude, but read your question. what evidence do you have? you said millions of life forms EVOLVE.... evolveing is not changing? you can't rely on the National Enquirer for facts. read a history book (or don't you believe what it says?) Scopes Monkey trial? Charles Darwin? ringing any bells? you do know that Creationism and Evolutionism are still being debated? you don't want rude or silly comments, but your asking a question which you've already decided the answer.
Your education in biology and paleontology needs to be updated. We now have a wealth of transitional fossils that show step by step changes in every stage between Paleozoic amniotes and modern species, including such interesting transitions as fish to tetrapod, dinosaur to bird, synapsid reptile to mammal, etc.





For example, here is a nice transitional sequence of fish to tetrapod with a few notes on the adaptative nature of each transitional form (note mya= millions of years ago). All of these forms lived in the shallow seas and inlets formed by the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea:





Eusthenopteron 385mya


Had strong bones in the upper fins; adaptive for locomotion in shallow water.





Gogonasus 380mya


Same skeleton as Eusthenopteron, but fin bones are stronger, denser, a little lower into the fin.





Elpistostege, Livonia, Panderichthys 378 mya


Fin bones are now very low into fin. Still a useful adaptation for manuevering in a shallow sea.





Tiktaalik 375 mya


Now has tiny beginnings of fingers at the end of the fins, and the beginning of a crude joint in the fin. Would have been adaptive for clawing its way through an inlet choked with vegetation.





Elginerpeton, Obruchevichthys 370 mya


Proto-fingers are now a little longer





Sinostega, Metaxygnathus, Ventastega.Tulerpeton, Jakubsonia, Hynerpeton, Densignathus, etc. 365 mya


Finger bones even longer, some species have as many as 8 proto fingers; still not sturdy enough to come onto land, but very useful in manuevering through water choked with vegetation.





Acanthostega 360mya


Same as before but stronger bones yet, with longer ribs; would have been capable of moving on land like a mud-skipper, going from tidal pool to tidal pool.





Icthyostega 358mya


2 of the 8 fingers fusing into one finger, which will give its descendants 5 fingers, stronger forelims and enclosed ribs. This is the first fish that would have been capable of spending some time on land and feeding on land.





Pederpes 355 mya


Very similar to above, but with enough small modifications that it may be called either proto amphibian or perhaps first true amphibian





Casineria, Lethicus 350 mya


Silvanerpeton 340 mya


Definitely amphibians that can easily walk on land. Still has a very fish-like body shape, but with many skeletal features of modern amphibians





But really the indisputable forensic proof of evolution comes from the burgeoning research in the field of molecular genetics. We are now determining exactly which nucleotide transcription error at what age resulted in which phenotypic variation in evolutionary history.
Whale evolution?


Whale evolution is a topic that deserves special attention. Scientific American claims:





Pakicetus: 鈥榚vidence鈥?for whale evolution?








Left: Gingerich鈥檚 Pakicetus reconstruction. [J. Gingerich, Geol. Educ. 31:140鈥?44, 1983]





Right: Actual bones found (stippled). Note nothing below skull. [Gingerich et al., Science 220:403鈥?, 1983]








Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition [see 鈥楾he Mammals That Conquered the Seas,鈥?by Kate Wong, Scientific American, May]. [SA 83]





Here is an especially serious example of 鈥榟urling elephants鈥?by completely ignoring the fragmentary nature of the evidence.





This was a tricky problem for Darwin, but nevertheless he still had faith that whales evolved from land mammals. The paleontologist Phil Gingerich of the University of Michigan has publicly said, 鈥業t鈥檚 a real puzzle how whales originally evolved.鈥?But on the PBS Evolution series, he gives the impression that his fossil finds have gone a long way toward solving this puzzle.





Gingerich discovered in Pakistan a few skull fragments of a wolf-like creature that allegedly had an inner ear like a whale鈥檚. But this is far from conclusive. There wasn鈥檛 any post-cranial skeleton found, so we haven鈥檛 the faintest idea how it moved. However, this didn鈥檛 stop Gingerich from writing an article for schoolteachers with an illustration of an animal that had splashed into the sea and was swimming and catching fish, and looking convincingly like an intermediate between land animals and whales. He also claimed, 鈥業n time and in its morphology, Pakicetus is perfectly intermediate, a missing link between earlier land mammals and later, full-fledged whales.鈥?4 The diagram right shows the glaring contrast between reconstruction and reality.





New research since the PBS series was produced has blown away this reconstruction. This demonstrates an oft-repeated phenomenon in evolutionary paleontology. Many of the alleged transitional forms are based on fragmentary remains, which are therefore open to several interpretations, based on one鈥檚 axioms. Evolutionary bias means that such remains are often likely to be interpreted as transitional, as with Gingerich, and is also prevalent in ape-man claims. But when more bones are discovered, then the fossils nearly always fit one type or another, and are no longer plausible as transitional. It鈥檚 also notable that alleged intermediate forms are often trumpeted in the media, while retractions are usually muted or unpublicized.











Pakicetus [Illustration: Carl Buell, %26lt;www.neoucom.edu/Depts/Anat/Pakicetid.ht鈥?





A prominent whale expert, Thewissen, and colleagues unearthed some more bones of Pakicetus, and published their work in the journal Nature.15 The commentary on this paper in the same issue says, 鈥楢ll the postcranial bones indicate that pakicetids were land mammals, and 鈥?indicate that the animals were runners, with only their feet touching the ground鈥?(see illustration left).16 This is very different from Gingerich鈥檚 picture of an aquatic animal! But the evolutionary bias is still clear, describing Pakicetus as a 鈥榯errestrial cetacean鈥?and saying, 鈥楾he first whales were fully terrestrial, and were even efficient runners.鈥?But the term 鈥榳hale鈥?becomes meaningless if it can describe land mammals, and it provides no insight into how true marine whales supposedly evolved.





Also, 鈥榮olid anatomical data鈥?contradict previous theories of whale ancestry. A Reuters news article reported in September 2001:





Until now paleontologists thought whales had evolved from mesonychians, an extinct group of land-dwelling carnivores, while molecular scientists studying DNA were convinced they descended from artiodactyls [even-toed ungulates].17





鈥楾he paleontologists, and I am one of them, were wrong,鈥?Gingerich said.





Ambulocetus: missing link?








Top: Ambulocetus skeleton, as drawn in Miller鈥檚 book.





Middle: Ambulocetus reconstruction, as drawn in Miller鈥檚 book.





Bottom: Actual bones found (shaded). Note missing pelvic girdle.








Such candor is commendable, and it shows the fallacy of trusting alleged 鈥榩roofs鈥?of evolution. Pity that Gingerich is still committed to materialistic evolutionism.





Ambulocetus


Ambulocetus is another popular example of a 鈥榤issing link,鈥?featured prominently in anti-creationist propaganda, such as the book Finding Darwin鈥檚 God, by Kenneth Miller鈥攖he 鈥楥hristian evolutionist鈥?who starred in PBS 1. In his book, Miller claimed, 鈥榯he animal could move easily both on land and in water,鈥?and presented a drawing of a complete skeleton and a reconstructed animal.18 But this is misleading, bordering on deceitful, and indicative of Miller鈥檚 unreliability, because there was no indication of the fact that far fewer bones were actually found than appear in his diagram. Crucially, the all-important pelvic girdle was not found (see diagram at right). Without this, it鈥檚 presumptuous for Miller to make that proclamation. His fellow evolutionist, Annalisa Berta, pointed out:








鈥?since the pelvic girdle is not preserved, there is no direct evidence in Ambulocetus for a connection between the hind limbs and the axial skeleton. This hinders interpretations of locomotion in this animal, since many of the muscles that support and move the hindlimb originate on the pelvis.19





Basilosaurus


This serpentine and fully aquatic mammal has been known since the 19th century, but Gingerich discovered something new in some specimens in the Sahara. The PBS narrator pointed out that this desert area was under water once, and he described a 100-mile stretch of layered sandstone called the 鈥榲alley of the whales鈥?allegedly 40 million years old. The narrator theorizes that this valley was once a protected bay where whales came to give birth and to die. Here Gingerich discovered what he alleged were a pelvis, leg bones, and a knee cap, so he said they were evidence of 鈥榝unctioning legs鈥?and 鈥榙ramatic proof that whales were once fully four-legged mammals.鈥?br>




But this contradicts other evolutionists, including Gingerich himself! For example, the National Academy of Science鈥檚 Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science claimed, 鈥榯hey were thought to be non-functional鈥?(p. 18), and Gingerich himself said elsewhere 鈥榠t seems to me that they could only have been some kind of sexual and reproductive clasper.鈥?0 So these bones can be explained as a design feature, while the interpretation as 鈥榣egs鈥?reflects evolutionary wishful thinking.21





Whale evolutionary sequence?








Alleged sequence of land mammal to whale transition


From Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science.








The PBS program claims that there is a series including Ambulocetus, Rhodocetus, etc., where the nostrils supposedly migrate to the back of the head. Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science contains a diagram (see right) on page 18. But when the mammal-to-whale series is examined, the sequence is not as smooth as they imply. For instance, this diagram failed to indicate that Basilosaurus is actually about ten times longer than Ambulocetus (and the fragmentary nature of the remains has been discussed already).





Another problem is that Basilosaurus has a number of features that mean it could not possibly have been ancestral to modern whales, e.g., body shape, skull structure, and tooth shape.





There is certainly no support for the program鈥檚 claim, 鈥榝ront legs became fins, rear legs disappeared, bodies lost fur and took on their familiar streamlined shape.鈥?Waving the magic wand of mutation/selection is hardly sufficient without an observable mechanism that would effect these changes.





Recently, John Woodmorappe analyzed the alleged transitions and found that their various characteristics did not change in a consistent direction. Rather, they are chimeras鈥攏on-whales with a few minor cetacean 鈥榤odules,鈥?inconsistent with the evolutionary prediction of a nested hierarchy but consistent with a common Designer.22





Locomotion


PBS 2 also claims support for a transition from the way the mammal-to-whale fossil links moved. Marine mammals move through the water with vertical undulating movements of the spine, just as many fast-running mammals do on land. Fish move with sideways undulations instead. But this could be another common design feature of mammals, like milk or hair. It鈥檚 also doubtful whether this is a unique prediction of evolution; if whales used side-to-side movements, evolutionists could presumably have 鈥榩redicted鈥?this because the tails of land animals also swish sideways.





My book, Refuting Evolution, written to rebut Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science, has a chapter on alleged whale evolution that covers all this section in more detail, with full documentation. It is also available on the Creation CD-ROM produced by Answers in Genesis in answer to the PBS series.
Simply put evolution has never claimed there was ';major change.'; A series of very minor changes over a very long period of time results in radically different species.





There were never any half or transitional lifeforms - if you want to believe there are then every lifeform on the planet is a transitional lifeform: including us! We are still evolving slowly, in the last thousand years we've grown significantly taller and our jaws have been shrinking. Obviously there was no major or sudden change/shift, just slow incremental steps.





There were no sudden major leaps or mutations - any mutation that significant would kill the creature or prevent breeding. There are of course minor mutations in every genetic strand, both you and I are mutants to some degree. I'm taller than the rest of my family, and my sister is a faster sprinter than the rest of the family - those are mutations. Everything came about through very slow, gradual, incremental steps.
Okay. For years there was a so called missing Link in the human transition from ape to human. Then they found the skeleton named ';Lucy'; in Africa. She filled the transnational link from ape to mankind. Mystery solved. Like it or not the human race is decedent from apes.
Yes, another nail in the so called theory of evolution.