Why is there not a single series of transitional fossils between 2 species in a single museum in the world?

Question

A museum holds what the majority of us calls scientific proof

i could deny a dinosaur all day, but after seeing the bones etc it's pretty hard to say they dont exist

and whats more the bones and fossils are in museums.

So, why is there not a single museum in the world which shows a nice series of fossils or even an incomplete series of fossils that occur between 2 species

such as dinos and birds

rodents and bats

land animals and whales etc

a museum is considered the ultimate test of the scientific roof you have

evolutionists always insist these transitional animals exist and so do their fossils, but why are they always kept under lock and key?

if these things exist why not put them in museums, that will shut u those creationists once and for all, you dont hear them denying dinosaurs or t-rex's do you thats because their bones are on dislay

so why is there not a single series of trnasitional fossils in any museum??

Answer 1

Because no such series exists!

The ignorance of people claiming that there are 'thousands' is frankly astonishing. What do they teach people these days?

Such transition exists only in the minds of evolutionists. There are just a handful of debatable transitional fossils. (Darwin predicted there would be millions found in the fossil record.)

Some people still try to claim that there is an evolutionary sequence of horses, but this has long been discredited.

http://creationontheweb.com/content/view...

Some evolutionists are honest to let slip the secret - transitional fossils do nto exist.

Dr Patterson [a senior palaeontologist and editor of a prestigious journal at the British Museum of Natural History] spoke most freely about the absence of transitional forms.

Before interviewing Dr Patterson, the author read his book, Evolution, which he had written for the British Museum of Natural History. In it he had solicited comments from readers about the book’s contents. One reader wrote a letter to Dr Patterson asking why he did not put a single photograph of a transitional fossil in his book. On April 10, 1979, he replied to the author in a most candid letter as follows:

‘… I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?

’I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin’s authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least “show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.”? I will lay it on the line- there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test. ‘So, much as I should like to oblige you by jumping to the defence of gradualism, and fleshing out the transitions between the major types of animals and plants, I find myself a bit short of the intellectual justification necessary for the job …’

[Ref: Patterson, personal communication. Documented in Darwin’s Enigma, Luther Sunderland, Master Books, El Cajon, CA, 1988, pp. 88–90.]

http://creationontheweb.com/content/view...

Answer 2

<<such as dinos and birds>>

Transitional specimens are available at the Natural History Museum in London, the Humboldt Museum in Berlin, the Paleontological Collection in Munich, Eichstätt's Jura Museum, Solnhofen's Bürgermeister-Müller Museum, the natural history museum in Leyden, a collection in Wyoming, the Vertebrate Paleontology museum in Beijing and various other places.

No single collection has room for all the known relevant fossils, and they happen to belong to different owners in various places.

<<rodents and bats>>

Bats aren't descended from rodents.

<<land animals and whales etc>>

Try the Field Museum of Chicago or, if you'll settle for a leggy aquatic whale, the Senckenberg in Frankfurt.

<<evolutionists always insist these transitional animals exist and so do their fossils, but why are they always kept under lock and key?>>

To stop theft.  They're on display, but that doesn't mean visitors are allowed to walk off with them.

<<if these things exist why not put them in museums...>>

Many are in museums.

<<so why is there not a single series of trnasitional fossils in any museum??>>

As said, no collection has room for all the specimens relevant to this or that transtionary series.

Update

<<all we are asking for is a nice or incomlete row of fossils occuring between 2 species>>

Oh, if that's all then try museums in South Africa with specimens of /Trirachodon/ from the Lower to Middle Triassic.  The earlier ones have largely sectorial, meat-slicing, postcanine teeth, the middling ones have a mixture of sectorial and grinding postcanines, the later ones -excepting for juveniles- have only grinding postcanines.  You'll have to ask around for which collections are involved, but I'm sure the Bernard Price Institute in Johannesburg are in a position to help out with honest enquiries from the interested.

<<fossilised feasthers are roof of fossilised birds, where is the fossilised reptile attached to the fossilsed feathers>>

At least three specimens of the feathery non-bird /Microraptor gui/ are at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, if I remember correctly.  Enjoy your visit.

Answer 3

There are in fact, plenty of fossils on display in museums all over the world - for a long time the term 'transitional' was avoided as it implied a sense of being half one thing and half another - whereas every organism that lived was fully functional and adapted to its environment.

How museums choose to display fossils is a matter for themselves - most have a selection in major displays and then the rest are found in the more academic sections of museums and you have to hunt them out for yourself.

Single specimens may be kept locked away for security reasons but if they are considered a major find then a replica is often shown somewhere.

If you look at the website below it includes a list of 'transitional' fossils in their geological context - if you want to see them then you'll have to check to see which museums hold samples of them.

You will see that actual species-species links are the hardest to find, gaps in the fossil record and no DNA to test relatedness are both problems, but deeper level relationships are easier to reconstruct.

By the way - bats are not descended from rodents and there is no such thing as an evolutionist - there are people who study evolution - usually biologists, but scientists from all backgrounds have an interest in evolution. There are also lots of good books on fossils with many examples shown - however it takes some effort to understand the full picture.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-tran...

Answer 4

The archaeopteryx has skeletal features of both theropod dinosaurs and birds therefore it is a transitional species, it is half dinosaur - half bird.  How many birds do you know of today that have teeth and a long bony tail.

There is no clearer evidence than this of a transitional species, anyone that does not accept it as such is simply displaying wilful ignorance.

Answer 5

There are thousands upon thousands of transitional fossils, and more are being discovered all the time. They are described in scientific papers and displayed in museums for anyone to read about and see. The creationists continue to insist there aren't any, but they are either burying their head in the sand and pretending they don't exist (or even suggest they are fake), or else they don't even understand what is meant by a "transitional form" and demand "chimeras" that would be impossible and, if found, would actually contradict evolutionary theory (like Kirk Cameron's idiotic "crocoduck" argument).

Take a walk around any major natural history museum and you'll see these things. Take a look at this video - http://youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU - which displays many transitional fossils. The fossils are certainly not "under lock and key", but their existence, and the free availability of information about them, certainly hasn't shut the creationists up.

Answer 6

You can't shut creationists up with logical arguments, since their objections are not based on logic.

However, if you want a nice series of transitional fossils, take a look at the evolution of the horse. Not every natural history museum has all the stages between Hyracotherium and Equus but the missing ones are filled in with casts of skeletons from other museums. Any good natural history museum of any size should have the display.

BTW, only a very small part of a museum's collection is on display. There is no room to display all of it and a display would bore people to death anyway. Most specimens are stored compactly and safely and pulled out only when needed for study.

Answer 7

Are you kidding? There are literally thousands of transitional fossils out there! You need only Google it to see for yourself. You're right about there being no transitional fossils between rodents and bats, but that's because they have nothing to do with each other. They are totally different animals in different orders - one did not evolve from the other. As for dinosaurs and birds, and land animals and whales, there are many transitional fossils between these animals.

Answer 8

Every animal is transitional.

You are not operating with a full understanding of evolution. There is no animal that is half one thing and half something else. It wouldn't survive.

Each generation (with a male and female parent) is slightly different from the last due to genetics. That is a verifiable fact.

The environment is constantly changing both locally and globally over time.

Another verifiable fact.

If the generational change fits in with the environmental change the organism survives, if it doesn't, well then it dies.

Add all those small changes together and you get a different species. This is another verifiable fact (look up 'vampire finches of the Galapagos')

Yes, I know this doesn't cover everything. But I don't have all day, and it is sufficient to refute anti-evolutionists.

I am a Christian, but my God is clever enough to invent a machine rather than rely on his constant labour.

Answer 9

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/av...

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl...

birds and dinosaurs

edit - http://notexactlyrocketscience.files.wor...

above shows the actual fossil of the bird dino link, if you read into the subject it explains why scientists believe this to be the missing link