G'day all,
I gotta ask this. What's a transitional fossil?
If we start with a horse like creature with a longer than normal neck but in order to compete those in that species with longer than normal necks have a significant advantage and you end up with a giraffe, isn't every animal in that sequence just a representation of a species that existed at a particular point in time? My vague memory of evolutionary biology is of a tiny little creature that over about 40 million years ended up the modern horse. Where's the transition? Are not every single creature in that progression just an animal that either fitted its environment and was fairly successful or had to adapt and change. But all of those creatures survived and slowly changed otherwise we wouldn't have the hores. And back to the giraffe and those with short necks. What happens to them? Perhaps they ended up with their own specialisation or the long necked versions may have removed sufficient numbers to allow the short neck ones to continue on their merry way.
Or is the argument that evolution happens in spurts and the change from the longer horse like creature to a giraffe took not that many generations? In that case the chances of a fossil existing of any animal that was not either the earlier creature or the giraffe would be very small indeed.
To me I thought the theory of evolution includes that every creature on earth is evolving in some way. Some types of sharks may not have changed much in 100 million years or so but they still have made some changes and what is to say that many other types of species have not evolved from the basic species during that period, eventually being different enough so that they no longer could mate with the original species and continued off on their own, changing out of all recognition to the original shark, which because it wasn't a bad fit for its environment in the first place also managed to remain in existence during all that time.
This is not an area that I have much knowledge except the Science channels, the occasional article and what I learned at school so my musings may not be all that perfect but this idea of a "transitional fossil" seems a bit strange to me.
Richard
