Perhaps the best example of a complete transitional sequence is the Fish to Tetrapod series.

You can read about it here:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/v16470436056263j/


There are photos and descriptions of the fossils (and yes, there are names).

I am curious to see whether you will actually read this, and come back with a substantive question or critique.

Actually, I know that you won't (read it that is), which is proof that you really are not interested in truth. I am not saying that this article IS truth, but if you really are seeking truth, you would read it and try to understand it.


You KNOW? how can you KNOW anything? {grin} Haven't I already touched on that?
Anyway, the fact that I shan't read it isn't because I'm not interested to, because I *would* like to read it. I just don't have the money to buy it. (it's over 30 dollars). But I plan on getting Darwin's Origins from the library as soon as I finish the book I'm reading at the moment.


But anyway, even though I can't read the article you linked to, I did see a few names of fossils that I recognized and I know the evolutionary arguments over. Tiktaalik, for instance. You all know about Tiktaalik, the 'walking fish', or 'missing link'. It hit the news a few years ago when they discovered it in the extreme North of the planet in a place called Ellesmere Island.
Tiktaalik is claimed to be a long-looked-for missing link. Finally! 'Bout time.

Tetrapods
A tetrapod is an animal that has a backbone and four limbs, specifically amphibians similar to the salamander. Evolutionists say that tetrapods were the earliest limbed animals.
Tiktaalik was found in rock from the 'Devonian period' supposedly making it about 375 million years old. (How they got that date, I don't know, but let's just ignore that for the moment.) Tiktaalik has characteristics of two different types of animals; fish and tetrapods. The characteristics that Tiktaalik possesses that are fish-like include gills, scales and fins. Its tetrapod characteristics include lungs, ribs, neck, flat skull and a rotating wrist joint.
First of all, Tiktaalik is unmistakably a fish. So the next question is what type of a fish is it? Is it really an example of evolution?

Classification of fish
A little needs to be known about the classification of fish before we proceed in our analysis, so here goes: There are two major groups of fish. Namely, jawless fish(like lampreys and hagfish), and then jawed fish (every other type of fish). Since the jawed fish group is so large, it gets broken down again into two groups: fish with bones and then fish with simply cartilage (the latter being rays and sharks). The fish with bones category is also large, and gets broken down into two final categories: ray finned fish and lobe finned fish. Ray finned fish are typical 'tank' fish where you can see their little 'fans' of fins with the bones-- you know what I mean. And then lobe finned fish have stumpy stalks of flesh supported by bone segments. Tiktaalik is of the lobe-finned group.

Evolutionists look at this 'diagram' or classification chart as a sign that all fish came from the same ancestor. Creationists say that many fish are similar, but not all fish have a common ancestor. Instead, there may have been one or more original created kinds of bony fish that have adapted into all the variations that we see today. There also may have been an original created kind of cartilaginous fish that has given rise to all of the other cartilaginous types we see today. But just like the fact that some of us have friends that look like us enough to be mistaken for brothers or sisters when they're not really related,Creationists believe that just because some animals have the same characteristics, does not mean that they are related. A bat and a bird both have wings in order to fly, but a bat is a mammal and a bird is a bird (go figure). They are not related even though they both need wings in order to fill their created purpose. In other words, wings do not point to a common ancestral link, but rather to an important design to their separate habitats.

Creationists assume that animals are designed with traits which help them live in their individual locations/habitats. Each Biblical 'kind' would have been created by God and then adapted to its special habitat through the generations. It's not evolution--we believe that God pre-programmed into the genes into the original creatures this ability--from the very beginning.

Mosaic Creatures
Then we have mosaic creatures-- a mosaic creature is an animal that has characteristics that match one or more difference animals, such as the Platypus. The Platypus is a mammal that lays eggs like a reptile, has a bill and webbed feet like a duck, a tail like a beaver, and spurs on its hind feet like a spiny anteater--with venom! Fit that into a category, I dare ya! Where in the world did this creature supposedly evolve from?

"Convergent evolution!" says the evolutionary scientist, waving away the questions. "sometimes we see the same traits in animals that are obviously not related-- that's just a 'convergent trait'. Similar traits that evolved two different times"*

The platypus is a mosaic animal--could it be that Tiktaalik is a mosaic fish? It has tetrapod qualities (flattened skull, no bony gill coverings, stronger ribs, fins with wrist-like bones), but scientists aren't sure what exactly it used the fins for. It's a fossil fish. We don't know how it behaved in its habitat. We aren't sure if it 'walked' or supported itself with its fins, as scientists speculate. They assumed the same thing about the coelacanth, but when a few live specimens of this 'missing link' (bar the question: if it's a link, why is it still alive intact?) were found, it was discovered that it did not use its lobed fins to 'walk' or prop itself up in the shallow bottom of a river as they had thought!

"Feets?!"
There are a number of types of fish that can do something similar to walking--namely, the snakehead fish, the walking catfish, the mudskipper, and the climbing perch. Evolutionists don't put *these* fish in the evolutionary line of tetrapods because they have no other common traits. These fish fish are strong evidence for the creationist belief that each kind of animal is made with characteristics that enable it to survive in the habitat that God designed it for. Tiktaalik is also evidence in the support of design. The special shape of its head, bones in its arm, strong ribs, and no gill cover seem to make the fish well suited for its special environment. And I wouldn't be shocked if we found a live one today..........

The Problem of Time
According to evolution, there is a span of twenty million years between the fossil layers of Tiktaalik and the first tetrapod that walked on land. For evolutionists, twenty million years is nothin'. In that amount of time the fish had to become a land-walking, air-breathing animal! The large gap between fish and tetrapod is large. Even if mutations--mistakes in the genetic code-- could turn one animal into another, it would take far too much new information in the genes to change the fish into an amphibian. Mutations could never do this--even in the 20 million year time span.

The first tetrapod fossils look a lot like modern day salamanders. Salamanders that are alive today have changed very, very little from their fossil counterparts/relatives. If the changes from fish to salamander did happen in 20 million years, then why have there been no changes in salamanders since that time? How could they suddenly evolve and then stop evolving for over 60 million years of evolutionary time?
Mutations over millions of years would only serve to distroy a creature--not make it 'new and improved'!



*Convergent evolution will be further addressed in a future post. ~Iona