"you will I am sure be presupposing that the geologic column is deposited from deep time ,rather than by flood ,though I feel sure local floods will be granted if needs be."

Speaking for the localities I'm working on at present, there is no evidence that these sediments were laid down in a single flood event. There are (as you suggest) local flood events but these occur as subordinate beds and are locally confined (seasonal floods in a semi-arid environment). One thing worth noting is that when working with sedimentology the rule of thumb is 'question everything', so pretty much every time a facies analysis is done the question of it's origin is revisited.


"OTOH for all the evolutionists out there looking for transitional forms, there seems to be a large lack"

They're palaeontologists and biologists, not evolutionists. There are plenty of transitional forms (in a sense every form is transitional), but I get your gist. In fact, you need to look at the literature more. We have plenty of forms that show the evolution of certain traits within clades (they're way to numerous for one person to know) and are transitional in the sense you mean, but the tree of life is a complex and wonderful construct (and it is a human construct, devised to help understand a number of natural processes) and there are thousands of years worth of work left to unravel it's intricacies.

For example, we now have pretty much identified the morphotype (body plan of a living organism) that gave rise to avians. We might (or might not) have the actual taxa but we need more data to tell, but we can say that a) flight did not evolve in avians, but in other dinosaurs before avians evolved b) These were small gliding and flying animals that had four wings and c) the two-winged condition of birds is probably derived. How brilliant is that?

Get down and dirty with the literature on any fossil lineage and you'll find discussions on how they evolved. It is complex subject area to be sure, but a fascinating all the same.