Yes they do. Always. Every time. And yes it does falsify your position, because your position does not forbid violation of a nested hierarchy. If your theory doesn't forbid something, then it must happen sometime. Since it never happens, and you have no explanation for why it doesn't happen, you're wrong. Absolutely and completely.
Taxonomy nowadays puts a strong emphasis on monophyly. The term reptile has an unfortunate history that makes little sense in the era of cladistics. The old classification of reptile would be paraphyletic as it would remove birds from this classification. I'm not sure if reptile is even an official taxon anymore. If so, it would have to include dinosaurs and birds to remain monophyletic
Well, it's the only hope that there really is. Consider that the scientific consensus became such through logic and evidence, but the religious worldviews became such through sort of a darwinian selection between competing religious ideas: those ideas which were most able to hang onto current members, and gether new followers, are the ones that came to dominate.
While I doubt your data, there are possible explanations. We have what is quite possibly the most diverse population of any single nation, and have had rather poor education compared to other developed nations for some years now. So a diverse population makes it easy for the "crazies" to find an audience, and lack of education doesn't arm people with the logic necessary to combat it.
First, I'd like to thank you for the response. Many people on the internet (not naming any specific examples) dismiss posts with a one-liner. Second, upon rereading my post it was a bit more hostile than I intended it. The vast majority of exposure to the english language that I've had has been on the internet, and the internet is often a nasty place; I don't know many forms of saying things politely (ahum.. or im just a bit of an a-hole
)
Dinosaurs are earlier land animals.
I searched around on the internet before my previous post, and found to my surprise that there is indeed a debate on where birds come from...
http://www.animalplanet.com.au/birds/origins/index.shtml
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v279/n5710/abs/279234a0.html
(the nature abstract 27 years old, but was the only "semi-official" thing I could find)
The thing is though: people are debating where the bird "branched off" from dinos, or dino ancestors.
Taking a simplified dino-family tree:
http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/dino/graphics/familytree_small.gif
The discussion focusses on the place of the 'bird family line' in a family tree like this (some people place the branching-off-point before the beginning of this tree).
Everything I've read though, places the branching off point firmly in the territory of land animals. One theory seems to be that birds came from crocodiles, and you could argue that crocodiles are marine animals, but in that theory, you would still have "true" land animals before you would have "true" birds.
Still, you're right that there is still a lot of fossil evidence to uncover, so the theories could still change around...
...but I don't know of any paleontologist who is searching for a fish-bird transitional.
Well of course! How can A evolve from B if all of B are dead?! There must have been early birds living with late dinosaurs.
We shouldn't think of it as an altogether linear process leading from A to B, either. First off, we're not dealing with hard-edged, immutable categories, but with gradual changes.
