Serious evolution question?

Question

Why AREN'T there more transitional forms? Shouldn't there be as many fossils of half-dinosaur/half-birds as there are of dinosaurs, for example?

If the answer is that the intermediate forms were short-lived, why were the differences beneficial at all?

Answer 1

There is almost no such thing a transition form.  Almost all animals are suited to their particular niche.  It is a rare thing indeed that an "unevolved" animal can occupy a particular niche.  It is mostly people who don't understand evolution that believe there are gaps as if evolution has some sort of goal.  When animals do rarely find themselves not perfectly suited for their niche, they evolve much more quickly in a process known as punctuated equilibrium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_...

Answer 2

On the other hand you could take the view that each individual fossil is a single point on an evolutionary path between some earlier predecessor and a later successor, and each of those in turn are the same.

Every species you see today have come from some predecessor and are continuing to evolve to some successor which will be exemplified at some point in the future.

Answer 3

The act of forming a fossile is one of great chance and environmental conditions.  It could be that at the time the transistional types were prevalent that the conditions were not good.

An example is that many types of mammals and dinos have NO complete skeleton record,all the searching only yielded one or two bones.  Since dinos were around so long you just get more of them

So, I think its mostly a matter of us looking back in time through a rather muddy set of lenses and trying to guess what is behind the drops

I think the best evidence of evolution is the layering of the less complex to more complex animals.....things with simple bodies like trilobites.....to fish....to dinos.....all getting more complex