wombatty:
On species, you strike out again.
I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other …. it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluxtuating forms. The term variety, again in comparison with mere individual difference, is also applied arbitrarily, and for mere convenience sake.
That’s Darwin.
Wikipedia, in the entry “Species” gives:
It is surprisingly difficult to define the word “species” in a way that applies to all naturally occurring organisms, and the debate among biologists about how to define “species” and how to identify actual species is called the species problem…
one species may gradually evolve into one or more others after a few million years; the original type of organism and the final one are so different that one could not regard the ancestors and the descendants as members of the same species if they existed at the same time; but the intermediate types are so similar to the next and previous types that one cannot say exactly where species A changed into species B. Paleontologists devised the concept of chronospecies to describe the simplest case, where at the end of the process there is only one descendant type of organism and there are no longer any individuals of the ancestral type. But even this refinement does not work in cases where several descendant types are alive at the same time or where the ancestral type and at least one descendant type are alive at the same time – and both of these situations are common in the evolution of life on Earth…
The rise of a new species from a parental line is called speciation. There is no clear line demarcating the ancestral species from the descendant species.
Leaving you to contemplate the First Law of Holes, let’s get back to the real point.
Does Archaeopteryx satisfy you as a transitional form? What about Ambulocetus? Maybe Tiktaalik?
Why am I sure in advance that your answer for these, or any others, will be no?
Do please give your reasoning.
