Has there been any discovery of a new species of a wild animal, which is absent from previous fossil records?

Question

If evolution is true then we should be seeing new species developing all the time in the wild.

Answer 1

So, you're question is really, have we observed new species being created?

Defining a species is difficult, since there are no sharp boundaries, however, we have observed speciation by any definition of the term.

Answer 2

well any newly created species wouldn't be in the fossil record... their new.. fossilization takes a few million years

we see new species develop.. as they are related to currently known species, and appear to have descended from them

it's hard to see evolution comming.. seeing as it's almost impossible to see what conditions are going to be like 4 days from now much less over centuries

an average decrease in rainfall of less than 1 inch every few years can turn a rainforest into a savannah in a few decades

newly discovered species that are evolved from present species aren't going to be hailed as proof of evolution but simply as the discovery of a new species..

and yes.. if you've kept up with any zoological or taxinomical journals you'd know they are discovering new species left and right..

Answer 3

of course that happens all the time[2], but it's because the fossil record is not a complete record of all species that have ever existed. the record is intermittent and biased[1]. what we don't see happen is new species appearing with no plausible ancestors at all, as your "theory" would predict (if I have guessed correctly what your alternative explanation[3] is!).

Answer 4

Evolution, by human standards, is a very slow process. New species are evolving as we speak, but the declaration of a new species in a couple of years that was previously absent from fossil record is highly unlikely. Rather, the discovery of a new species that had not been searched for is far more likely; new specie discovery happens everyday! "Watching" a new species develop is unlikely in the wild, but in simulated lab experiments (many generations of a specie are bred over time under certain conditions), significant genetic changes have occured as a result of isolation. Evolution is a tested and true scientific theory (thanks to genetics), you just need to know how to look, not necessarily where.

Answer 5

The short answer is that almost every animal that is alive today is not present in the fossil record.  Instead, the ancestors from which animals that are currently alive evolved are represented in the fossil record.  There are some instances of "living fossils" that are both currently alive and represented in the fossil record.