Christian answering questions.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

My thoughts on new species would be something along the lines of a transitional nature that shared many charateristics of two diferent species.  Hence my reference to a fish with legs or a land animal with wings. It just appears to me that evolution best describes a survial and evolving of individuals within a species that have traits or attributes that make them faster or stronger or something of that nature.  Such as a a giraffe with a longer neck or an animal that has adapted to its environment in some other way.  

On a side note I very much enjoy dinosaur exhibits at museums.  I can somewhat understand the attitudes in here with regards to dealing with uneducated or closed minded morons.  I remember my wife years ago in total denial of the existence of dinosaurs and insisting that their existence was a fabrication and a total falsehood.  I still laugh about that.

Well, to be fair, that is what science claims. All of that first paragraph. It's not really about survival, though, but survival-enough-to-reproduce. Those who reproduce more and have more successfully-reproducing offspring will see their particular gene-set become more frequent in the gene pool. Whatever genes were behind that success will determine the gene-percent of the next generation, in other words... so if a giraffe benefits from longer necks, to reach more food, then the next generation of giraffes will contain more of those who got full bellies from that trait than those who could only reach lower branches. 

However, you're talking (I think) about the divergence of species, which is a slightly different proposition, even though the above is what leads to it. Typically, species spread out, and don't all live in the same place, swapping genes among a single pool. When the groups split apart, and no longer are exchanging genes in that pool, a novel trait that emerges in Group A will not likely develop in Group B, and so the two groups have moved one gene apart from the other. As that process continues, you'll eventually see Group A become so different from its origin group that it can be classed as a new species, even if the original group has not changed at all. There may be new pressures from the environment or from competition, in the new group, that alters its evolutionary direction. It may simply be that the mutations happened in A and not in B. And of course, a group need not split, to change... accrued novel mutations that spread through the gene pool change the group. Period.

Land animals with wings and fish with legs is easy. I've already showed you the origin of the five-digit limbs shared by modern land vertebrates, in Pederpes finneyae. (Yes, even things like horses have the same bones; they're just morphed into a single unit during development... if you want to see this process, Google "evolution of the horse".) I find the transition to birds just as fascinating, because of the feathered dinosaurs I mentioned, earlier.

Google "Sinosauropteryx" if you want to see some really neat stuff.