transitional species

[Mystical]

Does anyone know some good places that show transitional fossils other than wikipedia? Is there a well documented start to finish transitional species and if so which one is the best?

First I posted this link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tra...al_fossils

Then I got this response.

We came from apes, yet there is no in between species what so ever?

Everything evolved from something else, yet there is no in between species?
ok then.

[max-greece]

Does anyone know some good places that show transitional fossils other than wikipedia? Is there a well documented start to finish transitional species and if so which one is the best?

First I posted this link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tra...al_fossils

Then I got this response.

We came from apes, yet there is no in between species what so ever?

Everything evolved from something else, yet there is no in between species?
ok then.

This is one of those things that appears to be a reasonable request but actually isn't. The first problem is that we are dealing with tens of thousands of generations, if not hundreds of thousands. Of these the vast majority will show little to no change and a few will show adaptation.

At the same time it is the nature of fossilization that very few individuals from a species get fossilized - if any. Random chance events of fossilization may yield half a dozen individuals in a given species over a 10 million year period if we are lucky.

The probability of finding a link species is incredibly small. That we have any at all is remarkable.

In order to get all the links we would need to find fossils of about 30% of all generations that ever existed. Even with relatively modern species, like us, we have, maybe 0.01%.

At the same time link species may not be ultimately recognisable. Taking our own family tree what do you think a common ancestor would look like?

The apes broke off from monkeys something around 15-20 million years ago. Not long afterwards the apes started to sub-divide. Gibbons are our most distant cousins on this part of the tree. Then Orang-utans, gorillas, and finally chimps and Bonobos.

Genetically we are closer to Chimps and Bonobos than they are to Gorillas.

The earliest known hominids (as in ancestors that had already separated from the Chimp/Bonobo line) are about 7 million years old.

These gave rise to a whole host of hominids including Australopithacus, Homo Erectus, Neandertals and of course Homo Sapiens itself along with various other species (you can see a nice chart that's pretty up-to-date at http://mohamedfariz.blogdrive.com/archive/90.html ).

Of all of the above we have maybe 20 examples. Of these examples most are tiny parts - one or two bones in most cases.

The probability of finding a missing link species is staggeringly small whilst, at the same time it doesn't address that question of missing link from what to what?

Every time I find a missing link species someone can simply move the goalposts and then ask for the next link in the chain, thus making fulfilling the request impossible.