The Problem with Christians

[pocaracas]

The "failed intermediates" never survived enough to breed and pass on their failed genetic makeup. How would you be expecting to spot them?


Also, I think that, in the beginning, there must have been lots of similar self-replicating "organisms" which all self-assembled spontaneously in the same "soup" conditions...

 Failed intermediates may not be the best terminology. I was wondering why we don't see a stack of weird half breeds or transitional species in the fossil record. Given that there are so many thousands of different species that presumably evolved from one life form, why don't we see an abundance of evidence for species transition?

Well, Esq already mentioned it, but I figured you need some extra hand on this.

The fossil record presents us with glimpses of what happened way back when. Of animals that lived long ago.
I'm sure you'd agree that those animals who died in such a way as to become fossils would be rare. Most would get eaten within hours of death, or decomposed by bacteria over a few days or weeks.

Also, fossils appear to us a bit misshapen, due to eons of rock upon rock pressing upon them.
On top of that, archeologists can, and have been known to, mistake individuals of a particular species, but of different age groups, as belonging to different species. This goes to show how difficult it is to identify what we do find.

I do not know what transitional fossils you are looking for, but maybe "half breeds" abound, however you may be looking at them as actual "breeds" and wishing to find yet some other "breed" in between the known "breeds".

Here are a few for elephants, with extra soft tissue added for illustration purposes from the experts' best guesses:


Here's the same for whales:


Here's the same for the wing in birds:


For primates:


But what you want... really... is something like this, with all the pictures in there for you to scrutinize (hiding, because the image is large):

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As you can see, the above is huge... it represents millions of different species of life on this planet.
Some links in there may be wrong... most should be correct.
If you wish to analyze them all, you should become an evolutionary biologist. If you are not one, then I'm not sure you're in a position to defy those who have devoted their lives to built up that tree.