RE: Argument #1: Transitional Fossils
April 22, 2014 at 6:50 pm
(This post was last modified: April 22, 2014 at 6:58 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(April 22, 2014 at 6:35 pm)pocaracas Wrote: hmmm... if a chihuahua and a mastiff belong to the same species, imagine just how different their fossils must look like, in the far future...
How many different species are in the fossil record which may belong to the same species, but of different breeds or races?
Lots. Absent soft tissue and/or DNA, it is often hard to tell whether two somewhat different fossil specimens really represent two species, or different sexes within the same species, or normal range of morphological variation within the same sex of the same species. Sometimes it is even hard to tell if two different specimens really represent two individual of same species, but died at different ages, or even different part of the year, resulting in differences in annual growths such as deer antlers.
Also, many species are recognized based on partial remains. If two sets of non-overlapping partial fossil remains are discovered, it is often impossible to tell whether they represent two different species, or are different parts of animals of the same species.
Sometimes mistakes happen in reverse, such as assigning two non-overlapping sets of partial remains to the same species, when in fact they came from different species, resulting in fanciful fossil reconstructions of a single species that really consist of parts of two different species.