Originally posted by StSanta
Hortlund, there's no way out of it for you. Refusing to accept my references is just not good enough. You asked for them, I provided. Now you gotta accept the facts.
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What facts? You still havent replied to my question as to what in those references you feel is evidence of transitional fossils. I can give you this quote from your reference though:
Note that fossils separated by more than about a hundred thousand years *cannot* show anything about how a species arose. Think about it: there could have been a smooth transition, or the species could have appeared suddenly, but either way, if there aren't enough fossils, we can't tell which way it happened.
What exactly is the "fact" you are trying to point me to with those 1000 books?
If you cannot accept why fossilization is sort of tricky even when I have explained it to you, am I to think that you know more of the subject than me? Rather, you disregarded everything I wrote because it didn't fit with your views.
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I have no problem whatsoever accepting the fact that "fossilization is sort of tricky". That does not change the fact that no transitional fossil have been found. But that is probably because it is so tricky to find them...not because they're not there...GREAT use of the scientific method santa...
Explaining punctuated equilibrium and why it really is a 'gradual' process and not saltation will require a lengthy post on my behalf.
I'm looking forward to that reply since there are some interesting quotes from Darwin and Gould on this issue.
Darwin:
Nothing can be effected, unless favourable variations occur, and variation itself is apparently always a very slow process. The process will often be greatly retarded by free intercrossing. Many will exclaim that these several causes are amply sufficient wholly to stop the action of natural selection. I do not believe so. On the other hand, I do believe that natural selection will always act very slowly, often only at long intervals of time, and generally on only a very few of the inhabitants of the same region at the same time. I further believe, that this very slow, intermittent action of natural selection accords perfectly well with what geology tells us of the rate and manner at which the inhabitants of this world have changed. [Charles Darwin, Origin of Species 1st Edition 1859, p.153]
Gould:
The essential features that make up Punctuated Equilibria are as follows:
1. Paleontology should be informed by neontology.
2. Most speciation is cladogenesis rather than anagenesis.
3. Most speciation occurs via peripatric speciation.
4. Large, widespread species usually change slowly, if at all, during their time of residence.
5. Daughter species usually develop in a geographically limited region.
6. Daughter species usually develop in a stratigraphically limited extent, which is small in relation to total residence time of the species.
7. Sampling of the fossil record will reveal a pattern of most species in stasis, with abrupt appearance of newly derived species being a consequence of ecological succession and dispersion.
8. Adaptive change in lineages occurs mostly during periods of speciation.
9. Trends in adaptation occur mostly through the mechanism of species selection. Eldredge, N., & Gould, S. J. 1972. Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism. In: Models In Paleobiology (Ed. by T. J. M. Schopf).
Or in english:
The theory of Punctuated Equilibria provides paleontologists with an explanation for the patterns which they find in the fossil record. This pattern includes the characteristically abrupt appearance of new species, the relative stability of morphology in widespread species, the distribution of transitional fossils when those are found, the apparent differences in morphology between ancestral and daughter species, and the pattern of extinction of species.
OR even more plainly, there are two alternatives here:
1) Darwin was wrong, and the punctuated equilibrium theory is correct
2) The punctuated equilibrium theory is wrong and Darwin was correct.
