[LogicaLunatic]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (jpapadpapa,)
Can you give me an example of a fossil of a "missing link?" With the thousands of fossils that have been found and the millions of changes that would need to occur within species to evolve, we should have thousands of fossils that clearly show evolution. Are there any?<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>

Quick Answer: Archeopteryx

Long Answer:

I've found that there are two main reasons why a person (religious or not) has trouble seeing evolution in the fossil record. One has to do with how we see the world today and the different species that exist in it. The other has to do with the process of fossilization itself.

First, the species that we see today are highly varied. There are some that appear closely related (Horse/Donkey, Mouse/Rat etc.) and others that are, sometimes literally, a world apart. If we ONLY look at the species that exist today (looking horizontally) it is very hard to see that we're all related. But, when we start looking at the species that USED to exist (looking vertically) we can start to see a pattern. And now for an analogy.

Take the wild world of computer software for instance. If we take a look at what is being sold on the shelves today (looking horizonally) we see a very wide variety of applications for every available operating system. We see products for Graphic Design, Web Development, Web Servers, FTP Servers, Time Tracking Utilities, Email Clients, Email Servers, Calendar and Contact management software, War Games, Space Games, Fantasy Games, Single Player games, Online Multiplayer games, Word Processors, Databases (I think the plural of database should be databi but thats just me.), Data Management Tools, Software for Macs, Software for Windows, Software for Unix and Linux, I could go on and on and on. You could even classify all of this using a method VERY similar to how a biologist classifies living organisms. It could all be broken down by Operating System (Mac, Win, Unix, Linux), Function(Data creation, Data manipulation, Data storage, Data services), Programming Language(C, C+, C#, VB, VBScript, PHP, Perl, Python), etc.

Now when we take a look horizontally it is hard to see that each piece of software is related to every other piece of software. But, that IS the case. All of the software we have available today can be traced back to one or a few common ancestors. There HAD to have been "The First Piece of Software" and it was probably inseparable from the computer it was designed on. But, as the environment changed (different/better computers and changes in users' needs), software evolved. As the software evolved different kinds of software popped up to fill different needs (similar to ecological niches) until we have the huge selection that we see today.

This isn't a perfect analogy. Computers and Software actually are intelligently designed. Well, some software is. Take a good look at IIS and you might disagree with me. But all in all, software is created by intelligent (but fallible) beings. Fortunately, this is only an analogy for the fossil record, not evolution or the processes of it.

How this relates to the fossil record is very simple. With software, when a better version comes out, the older versions of it are used less and less until they finally disappear. This is why you don't see Office 97 on the shelves with Office XP. The same holds for species. When a new version of an organism evolves it could be only slightly different from its parents. Perhaps even so slight that you can't tell the difference between them. But, it is still slightly better, say a slightly longer neck so it can get a little more food out of tall trees. No matter how small the change is the organism has a statistical advantage over its predecessors. After many small changes like this the new version may still look only slightly different than its parents but it will surely look different than its great-great-great-great-great grand parents. Perhaps even so different that they wouldn't be able to produce fertile offspring if they were to mate.

The point is that too often people are looking for changes horizontally and not vertically. Too often people who misunderstand evolution expect to see one viable species give birth to different viable species which is something that even I don't believe will happen.

Now that we have that out of the way your next question is likely to be... "But if organisms DID change gradually over long periods of time why can't we see this continuum in all of the fossils that we've collected?"

Great question. And the answer is that fossilization is rare. Less than a single percent of organisms that have ever lived have been fossilized. This isn't just a convenience for proponents of evolution, it is a fact. Conditions have to be JUST RIGHT for an organism to fossilize. Given this, instead of looking for a continuum in the fossil record we really should be looking for a trend. And the trend we need to look for is a gradual increase in general complexity which there SURELY is. If that didn't exist, neither would the theory of evolution. Also, evolution would fall apart if we found, say a fossil of a half digested human in a T-Rex gut. The theory of evolution predicts that we will NOT find things like that and to this day, we haven't.

The fossil record is like a box of 64 crayons. While it is possible to have a smooth transition between ALL of the colors in the box it just isn't going to happen. Say we find 5 different crayons that appear to change in color gradually from one to another. There will always be a different shade that we could stick between two of them to make it even more gradual. This is what is happening with fossils. As soon as we find a link between reptiles and birds (Archeopteryx - Arch for short) the "nay sayers" ask for a link between Reptiles and Arch, Arch and birds. When one can't yet be found they feel they've proven their point. Most of those who criticize the fossil record won't be happy until we have the equivalent of a box of 5 billion crayons, each transitioning smoothly into the next.

LogicaLunatic