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There is no fossils tbat are found intact to demonstrate that one lifeform evolve to another higher ones. No one found a fish-toad, so to speak. " -
@roman2819
I'll just copy some text from my other post:
I'll now provide evidence for evolution as it pertains to the question "Or do you think fossils actually support evolution better than being hard proof of the flood?".
As we all know, tiktaalik is a popular transitional fossil. Its traits are significant as they're some of the earliest of their kind. It has a flat head with eyes on top, much like amphibians of the late devonian. It has wrist bones. It has spiracles for breathing air. It has robust pectoral girdles and a robust rib cage for lifting itself against the forces of gravity above water, much like amphibians of the late devonian. It also has an infused skull and a neck for turning it's it's while it's body remains stationary, which is something found in amphibians but not fish.
It is very much a tetrapodomorph with many traits of amphibians.
But it also has fins,gills and scales like a fish.
Which means that it was basically a hybrid between fish and tetrapods.
All the above aside, what makes tiktaalik more significant isn't simply its traits, but how, where and even "when" it was found.
In the fossil record, no land animals are found anywhere in precambrian, Cambrian, ordovician or silurian rock, nor anywhere in between. By the mid to late devonian, we find tetrapods/amphibians like salamander like species that walked on land.
So if evolution were true, of tetrapods evolved from fish, a species like tiktaalik ought to exist between the earliest formations of the devonian or by the end of the silurian at the latest, and the late devonian.
Before tiktaalik was found, Neil Shubin and his team knew this. So the scoured geologic maps for rocks of roughly the mid devonian to find rocks between fish and tetrapods where tiktaalik might hypothetically be found.
So they rented a helicopter trip to the Canadian Arctic where these middle aged rocks could be examined.
They originally started out searching marine devonian strata and realized that they needed to move inland (prehistoric inland) to the west, and they had to make their way to geology of a river bed/lacustrine origin. And it was there that some 10-15 tiktaalik specimen were found.
The reason that this serves as evidence for evolution is that it confirms the succession of fossils in accordance with genetic analyses of modern day life. Fish are genetically more similar to tetrapods than to any other animal of higher derivation, which means that it ought to follow, based on genetics, that tiktaalik ought to be present in the location in which it was later found. This is a prediction made with the understanding of descent with modification and common descent, and tiktaalik holds the feature that we might expect to be found in a particular place at a given time.
with the above said, see the following:
Google Image Result for http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/images/retrovirus.gif
Google Image Result for https://cdn.britannica.com/03/403-050-F1B9349F/Phylogeny-differences-cytochrome-c-protein-sequence-organisms.jpg
Google Image Result for http://www.sbs.utexas.edu/levin/bio213/evolution/cytochrome.2.gif
Google Image Result for https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/5/eaau7459/F1.large.jpg
Google Image Result for https://slideplayer.com/slide/4852752/15/images/3/Pituitary+Gland+Figure+Phylogeny+of+the+vertebrate+pituitary..jpg
Google Image Result for https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/figure/image?download&size=large&id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000436.g002
above, we have evolutionary relationships based on what species have certain endogenous retroviruses, based on genetic changes of cytochrome C, based on fossil morphology, based on comparative anatomy of living species, and even based on biogeographic distributions, (you can see fossils change not only vertically through the fossil record, but also horizontally), respectively.
Independent studies in each of these fields yield their own cladistic relationships/phylogenetic trees, and while theyre all derived independently, they all match one another.
Which is to say that you can make predictions about genetics, based on the order in which fossils are found in the earth, and the reverse is true as well, in that we can use studies of proteins and DNA in modern day species, to predict the depth, geospatial location and temporal locations of fossils. And these predictions can be made, even to the extent that biologists can predict where fossils will be found in the earth, sometimes with more precision than even paleontologists can.
As the commom statement goes, this is something that really only makes sense in light of evolution.
To go back to my prior post, Neil Shubin is a professor of anatomy. He understood or rather, understands anatomical relationships between fish and tetrapods, and it is with this understanding that the locality of tiktaalik was predicted (Along with assistance from geologists and paleontologists).
