> Ehawk wrote:
> @ zarf,
response to #1:
it is my understanding that just as the birds may have had to slowly develop intermediate traits, they had land speed to help their genetics survive long enough through those phase.
But that land speed is not unique to birds. A creature could just as easily develop the trait of land speed, yet avoid those whole useless flapping appendages. In that case, the resulting trait would surely be that the flapping idiot would die while the fast, non-flying creature would survive due to that weakness of useless flapping.
>also a bird-like creature with useless flaps may not survive now, but remember when this happend the predators had equally useless traits.
No, it occurred while SOME of the creatures were undergoing those transitions. If that was the case, then every fossil we see would include a bunch of dinosaurs with third eyes, semi-growing wings, and appendages we couldn't even identify today. The fact that there is even one fossil in the universe, even assuming every other argument you have written, proves this false.
> response to #2:
the skeletal system has evolved and gotten stronger over time. it is my belief that during this"intermediate phase", the skeletal system was either too weak to retain enough calcium deposits for fossilization, or the bones could have been gobbled up by scavengers and dismembered, which can also ruin a fossil. keep in mind small animals, to this day, do not have the bone mass to generate fossils to stand the test of time. what makes you think an animal the size of a small rodent would have fossil remains 200k years after its death?
1: Your scavenger argument is a huge leap of faith. It assumes that 100% of a particular species is eaten by scavengers. It assumes millions of creatures of multiple species die in the exact same way throughout an entire planet and through over a billion years of history. In contrast, there are dozens of different ways creatures can die prematurely in ways that both prevent scavengers and preserve the skeletal system, including methods that fossilize eggs. The odds of this are infinitely small.
2: The "intermediate phase" isn't one step in the evolutionary cycle, like the pre-cambrian era or something. Evolution is an ongoing process. As such, it would require these intermediary species to perpetually exist, and to derive from species that did have those strong skeletal structures, such as trilobites, Triassic-era dinosaurs, etc.
3: Many evolutionary processes, such as flight, require strong bone structures as a prerequisite.
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