Transitional Species

[ydoaPs]

creationists often say that evolution is wrong because there are no transitional species. i can immediately see two things wrong with this:

 

1)lack of evidence is not evidence

 

2)all species are transitional species, right?

 

note: this is a scientific thread, not religious.

[Sayonara]

All forms are transitional, just like all rest frames are equally valid.

 

That was a short game but I enjoyed it

[Hellbender]

2)all species are transitional species, right?

All forms are transitional, but not all are considered transitional between major clades. These are the ones creationists assume we haven't found.

[Mokele]

All forms are transitional, just like all rest frames are equally valid.

 

Yes and no. Punctuated equilibrium posits that species as a whole do very little evolving, and rarely become anything but extinct. What happens (in PE) is that some small portion of the species becomes isolated in a new and different environment, and evolves to suit it (since adaptations can spread faster in small populations). When the two meet again, they either co-exist, or one out-competes the other.

 

The logical and paleontological consequences are that 1) not all species truly are transitional, since only small sub-populations found future species and 2) transitional forms will occur over geologically breif time periods, as little as 10,000 generations (which can be damn short in real-time for many species), and in small areas, and thus will be rare.

 

Fossil and modern studies have supported this, and PE is widely accepted (though not perfectly in the original form, as *some* degree of gradualistic evolution does occur).

 

Mokele