Progression: Neanderthal to CroMagnon, etc.

[Job 33:6]

Later species Australopithecus and Homo Habilis were classed as apes and tree climbers so not even more modern human ancestors had the ability to walk.

For the first half of your post, it is irrelevant what is considered a new species or not and/or what is a direct ancestor vs a prior ancestor.

The point is that the gradation is there, and it is clear as day.

For the second half of your post, regarding sahelanthropus,

This just isnt true. Where did you get this idea from? This idea that say...Australopithecus, walked on all 4s? Or didnt have the ablity to walk on 2 feet?

Lucy (Australopithecus) - Wikipedia
"Lucy" Was No Swinger, Walked Like Us, Fossil Suggests
New evidence that Lucy, our most famous ancestor, had superstrong arms

Here are 3 links above recognizing that Lucy walked on 2 feet.

 

[stevevw]

For the first half of your post, it is irrelevant what is considered a new species or not and/or what is a direct ancestor vs a prior ancestor.

The point is that the gradation is there, and it is clear as day.

I think what is considered a species or not is important as it directly affects the amount of graduation that shows the transitions from ape to human. The point is the species used to show graduation or transition may actually be natural variation within the one species. The problem is there are little fossil remains of the foramen magnum for any skulls and what is available is fragmented and incomplete so estimates have to be made as to their position.

That leaves the rest of the skull which is hard to tell what could be a transition and what may be natural variation within a species. The fact that the experts have got it wrong testifies to this. That means that we could take out just about all of the skulls in the transition picture posted and attribute them to natural variation. The difference in slope of face, foreheads and jaw protrusions in some of the skulls are very small and it definitely falls with natural variation. I can go and find modern human shaped skulls now that will cover some of the older features in skulls in living people.

For the second half of your post, regarding sahelanthropus,

This just isn't true. Where did you get this idea from? This idea that says...Australopithecus, walked on all 4s? Or didn't have the ability to walk on 2 feet?

This is the problem with the fossil evidence in that for every link you find that says Lucy walked there is one that says she does not. The point is I believed based on the evidence that it is stronger for her not walking. Wikipedia is not a good source for academic support so I am not sure about that one. National Geographic has been known for its bias in favour of evaluation and has been found to use the support that was false. I could not find a link to any original paper but an interesting statement was made by the article in saying that up until the writing of that article in 2011 there was no evidence that Lucy walked upright. So according to National geographic despite many experts saying Lucy walked there was no evidence to support this. The entire evidence now hinges on one small toe bone.

The third article does have a link to the original paper but it is more about Lucy death in falling out of a tree ironically. Though it makes the statement that Lucy walked it does not offer any support as the article is more about how Lucy fractured certain bones in her fall. The problem is with a lot of the evidence to support walking it is based on a certain angle of a joint, or a single toe or a single vertebrate which is supposed to allow people to know the angle of the entire backbone, or fragmented pieces or the base of a skull that is missing the vital parts.

Here are some papers that dispute that Lucy and Australopithecus walked.

https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v404/n6776/full/404382a0.html#B3

Humans: Fossil puts Lucy's kind up a tree: Contested analysis of shoulder portrays hominid as climber

This next paper is basically casting doubt on Lucy's kind as being a human ancestor at all and being closer in features to a gorilla.
Gorilla-like anatomy on Australopithecus afarensis mandibles suggests Au. afarensis link to robust australopiths

 

[Job 33:6]

For your first statement, what you call a new species or what you call the same species as another, is irrelevant, as the fossils grade from what is clearly not human, to what is clearly human. What you name them or call them is irrelevant to what they are.

For your second position, your articles are a nice read, but they too are articles supporting common ancestry between human and other apes. Yes, they are questioning where specific species reside in our lineage. But the whole reason these discussions arise is due to comparative anatomy that is transitioning through time from non human to human species, with such fine gradations that they need to be very carefully examined, discussed and debated, else species will be confused with one another because they are so similar. The reason these discussions occur is because the gradation is becoming so human like, that it's causing debate over where the very specific and highly derived human ancestry begins.

If you have paint and that paint transitioned in color from blue to green on a piece of paper, there absolutely will be discussion and debate on what is green and what is blue and where each individual smudge resides in the gradation.

The debate arises when the qualities of fossils and bones become so similar that they become difficult to distinguish from one another.

And ultimately, the discussion only exists because of that smooth gradation.

Even if you said Lucy wasn't humanity's direct ancestor, that particular species exists shortly before us in time and contains a vast number of human like traits. And if we go further back in time, species found in the succession contain less similarities. And it doesn't matter what species you want to call them, they are what they are and they grade from non human to human.

 

[Job 33:6]

One last thing worth saying,

Of life on earth, 99.99% of life has gone extinct through time. When we look at fossils, typically we wouldn't consider something like, tiktaalik or archaeopteryx or sahelanthropus to be our absolute direct blood line ancestors. They are representatives that generalize how certain life existed at their respective times. Sahelanthropus is a generalizing species that shares both ape and human traits. Is it our direct ancestor? It's unlikely. Unlikely because more than just our ancestors lived. 99% more, and few fossilized, less than 99% fossilized. Cousins, second cousins, third cousins, other families etc. These are more likely those captured in the fossil succession just due to their sheer number, versus our direct parents.

Sahelanthropus is just a representative, a snapshot generalization of what was going on. Australopithecus was more human like. Was it our direct ancestor? Perhaps a specific species of it was. Was aferensis? Again I wouldn't necessarily say that it was. But it is at least an offshoot of life that is more human like, that existed closer to us in time (a cousin, second cousin, third cousin etc.).

Homo erectus. Are the homo species direct ancestors? Now we are getting close. Related cousins to our ancestors at the least? Absolutely.

But jump back in time. Tiktaalik, a direct parent/ancestor? I doubt it, highly unlikely. A representative depicting when life transitioned to land? A cousin, second cousin, third cousin etc.? Absolutely. Realistically, tiktaalik (or a following generation) likely went extinct and isn't our ancestor. But, nevertheless, tiktaalik has traits that depict that episode of life, at that time, the devonian age of fish, in which they transitioned to land. Just like all the other devonian transitionals.

And that's what the fossil succession is about. Anyone can nitpick at specifics of fine tuning the succession (maybe this species here, maybe that species there). But nobody can challenge clarity in the fact that the succession is there (the commonly stated "bunny in the cambrian" is non existent). Hence why people can deliberate over Lucy's jaw bone (closer to a gorilla or chimpanzee or human?), while still recognizing the clear reality that Lucy wasn't from the Silurian or devonian age of fish, or from cambrian, or any other paleozoic, mesozoic or cenozoic time, aside from a time right before us. Lucy wasn't a gorilla or chimpanzee or human, rather Lucy is a representative of our own lineage, which is shared with other apes, hence the shared traits.

Lucy doesn't have scales or flippers, or wings. Lucy is almost human but not fully. Which is why Lucy is called a transitional and rests in a gradation that spans millions of years. Lucy is just a snapshot of a larger transition, regardless of the fine tuned specific position in the lineage where Lucy is found.

 

[Gottservant]

In my opinion, without knowing specifically which selection pressures were required in which order: it seems perfectly reasonable to suggest that the transition from monkey to cromagnon and more should have taken a trial and error approach.

If the transition was trial and error, you would see many more divergent fossils from one end to the other (not just a transition).

Scientifically, trial and error is the proposed method - is it not?

-

I suppose you could say "it was the hand of Evolution" that delivered man from trial and error, but that would be counter-scientific (and perhaps an odd form of deism).

 

[Job 33:6]

In my opinion, without knowing specifically which selection pressures were required in which order: it seems perfectly reasonable to suggest that the transition from monkey to cromagnon and more should have taken a trial and error approach.

If the transition was trial and error, you would see many more divergent fossils from one end to the other (not just a transition).

Scientifically, trial and error is the proposed method - is it not?

-

I suppose you could say "it was the hand of Evolution" that delivered man from trial and error, but that would be counter-scientific (and perhaps an odd form of deism).

I think, we could look at it as trial and error, but this i think gives an impression that maybe God is indecisive or uncertain of the outcome. Or perhaps God is not sure how to make the perfect creation from the beginning.

Alternatively, the design behind evolution is actually, in my opinion, superior to an instantaneous creation. Because, evolution allows life to survive extraordinarily drastic and destructive events. For example, in todays world, if the planet were completely covered in ice, then later hit by an asteroid the size of texas, mankind would be easily destroyed. We would not be here if we were present earlier in time. But through the flexibility of our genetic makeup and biological evolution, we find ourselves as survivors to these events. When a predator grows large teeth, we grow our own large teeth or shell. If it is dark and we cannot see, pressure results in eyes to see. If it is too cold, we grow a coat. If it is too hot, we loose the coat.

The flexibility in life has given life wings, feet, eyes, ears, a nose. fingers. Every trait, built from pressures throughout life. Molding us to be the perfect creation (or at least as perfect as we could be without being God).

If I were a creator, biological evolution would be, in my opinion, the most brilliant way to create life. Because life that evolves, always outlasts and is superior to life that does not evolve.

 

[stevevw]

I think, we could look at it as trial and error, but this i think gives an impression that maybe God is indecisive or uncertain of the outcome. Or perhaps God is not sure how to make the perfect creation from the beginning.

Alternatively, the design behind evolution is actually, in my opinion, superior to an instantaneous creation. Because, evolution allows life to survive extraordinarily drastic and destructive events. For example, in todays world, if the planet were completely covered in ice, then later hit by an asteroid the size of texas, mankind would be easily destroyed. We would not be here if we were present earlier in time. But through the flexibility of our genetic makeup and biological evolution, we find ourselves as survivors to these events. When a predator grows large teeth, we grow our own large teeth or shell. If it is dark and we cannot see, pressure results in eyes to see. If it is too cold, we grow a coat. If it is too hot, we loose the coat.

The flexibility in life has given life wings, feet, eyes, ears, a nose. fingers. Every trait, built from pressures throughout life. Molding us to be the perfect creation (or at least as perfect as we could be without being God).

If I were a creator, biological evolution would be, in my opinion, the most brilliant way to create life. Because life that evolves, always outlasts and is superior to life that does not evolve.

the Problem is adpative evolution may work when there is something to adpat but when there is not there is a question of how did it happen in the first place. I can just about accept that somehow that feet could evolve out of fins but fins cannot evolve out of something that never was in the first place. This is where we have to consider that there was some preexisting information that life was able to tap into to create those initial body plans. I do not believe that natural selction is that all powerful that it can create large amounts of complex genetic material from virtaul nothing and then keep creating more functional complexity along the way whuich requires coming up with body parts that were never there to begin with out of more simplier life forms.

 

[Speedwell]

the Problem is adpative evolution may work when there is something to adpat but when there is not there is a question of how did it happen in the first place. I can just about accept that somehow that feet could evolve out of fins but fins cannot evolve out of something that never was in the first place. This is where we have to consider that there was some preexisting information that life was able to tap into to create those initial body plans. I do not believe that natural selction is that all powerful that it can create large amounts of complex genetic material from virtaul nothing and then keep creating more functional complexity along the way whuich requires coming up with body parts that were never there to begin with out of more simplier life forms.

Yes, such a scenario would certainly cause difficulties for the theory of evolution. Good thing it didn't happen that way.

 

[stevevw]

In my opinion, without knowing specifically which selection pressures were required in which order: it seems perfectly reasonable to suggest that the transition from monkey to cromagnon and more should have taken a trial and error approach.

If the transition was trial and error, you would see many more divergent fossils from one end to the other (not just a transition).

Scientifically, trial and error is the proposed method - is it not?

-

I suppose you could say "it was the hand of Evolution" that delivered man from trial and error, but that would be counter-scientific (and perhaps an odd form of deism).

The trouble is we do not see divergent fossils especially with errors everywhere. As beneficial mutations are extremely rare for every sucessful tranistion there should be 100s if not 100s of trials that did not suceed. They would be the same basic form of a creature but with some feature that was not beneficial. I think there is too much emphasis placed on adpatations as a way of supporting evolutionary change. There are a host of other mechanisms that allow life to change without having to be trial and error ie,

The story that SET tells is simple: new variation arises through random genetic mutation; inheritance occurs through DNA; and natural selection is the sole cause of adaptation, the process by which organisms become well-suited to their environments. In this view, the complexity of biological development — the changes that occur as an organism grows and ages — are of secondary, even minor, importance.

In our view, this ‘gene-centric’ focus fails to capture the full gamut of processes that direct evolution. Missing pieces include how physical development influences the generation of variation (developmental bias); how the environment directly shapes organisms’ traits (plasticity); how organisms modify environments (niche construction); and how organisms transmit more than genes across generations (extra-genetic inheritance). For SET, these phenomena are just outcomes of evolution. For the EES, they are also causes.
https://www.nature.com/news/does-evolutionary-theory-need-a-rethink-1.16080

Add to this other mechanisms such a HGT, symbiosis, endosymbiosis theory, and epigentics that can also transfer genetic material or how organisms can cohabitate using the enviroment as a conduit to share genetic material. also we are discovering how the genome is a lot more functional than thought and it may be that genes can be turned on when needed to hel life adpat. Life is far more able to live and depend on each other and use their enviromentinstead of it being all about survival of the fittest. Using adaptive evolution always requires an extraordinary explanation which in some ways takes more faith to believe or at least a fair amount of spectualtion as we cannot fill the gaps in to how those adpations happened in detail at the molecular genetic level.

 

[stevevw]

Yes, such a scenario would certainly cause difficulties for the theory of evolution. Good thing it didn't happen that way.

what do you men. How did it happen in the first place.

 

[sfs]

The trouble is we do not see divergent fossils especially with errors everywhere.

Sure we do. Every fossil has errors, just as every living organism has errors. We all carry genetic mutations, many of them deleterious.

As beneficial mutations are extremely rare for every sucessful tranistion there should be 100s if not 100s of trials that did not suceed. They would be the same basic form of a creature but with some feature that was not beneficial.

No, we wouldn't see that. New features don't appear as a result of a single mutation. They appear as modifications to existing features, i.e. as the kind of subtle differences we routinely see in fossils -- and in people, for that matter.

Add to this other mechanisms such a HGT, symbiosis, endosymbiosis theory, and epigentics that can also transfer genetic material or how organisms can cohabitate using the enviroment as a conduit to share genetic material.

Some of this is important, some not so much. None of it has any bearing on the fact that we are related to other species by common ancestry.

 

[Speedwell]

what do you men. How did it happen in the first place.

No heritable trait evolves unless it exhibits reproductive variation. That is, each new generation of a creature presents a range of variants to the environment for selection.
The various body plans evolved way early, when creatures were still boneless and squishy and could reproduce with a varying number of appendages.

 

[Gottservant]

I think the thing is that "death happens more to the species, than it does to the individual".

Trial and error, is usurped by a common bond that is ready (in principle) for any death in particular.

The greater emphasis in this case, is the pre-emptive nature of God's original design.

-

If something evolved and had no idea how to preempt the death of its species, it would never survive - simply by pure association with a given death that it could do next to nothing about.

 

[Job 33:6]

the Problem is adpative evolution may work when there is something to adpat but when there is not there is a question of how did it happen in the first place. I can just about accept that somehow that feet could evolve out of fins but fins cannot evolve out of something that never was in the first place. This is where we have to consider that there was some preexisting information that life was able to tap into to create those initial body plans. I do not believe that natural selction is that all powerful that it can create large amounts of complex genetic material from virtaul nothing and then keep creating more functional complexity along the way whuich requires coming up with body parts that were never there to begin with out of more simplier life forms.

Life did have to tap into a pre existing biological system. A system that already had self replicating genetic material to work with. Like you mentioned, a foot didn't come from nothing, it came from a fin, through an already existent biological system.

It sounds like you are saying though, how could inanimate molecules form something like an eye? It is amazing, and really only through God could such a thing be possible. This is the nature of how we are created. That a human baby could form from an embryo of molecules. Or that we could grow from infants to adults even. But it is only possible through our pre existing biological makeup that this happens. Biological evolution also is only possible through its pre existing biological systems that make it so.

I hear many say that God can do anything, that He is all powerful, and if he wanted to create man from clay, and a woman from man's rib, He could do so. But many seem to doubt God's power, when it comes to using something like genetics, to provide the variation in the complex DNA based body plans that we use to give birth, grow and evolve. I think that it actually glorifies God more, when we come to appreciate the complexity in how God has created. A complexity that many really would not ever have imagined 50-100 or even 200 years ago.

just my opinion though.

 

[Job 33:6]

The trouble is we do not see divergent fossils...everywhere.
.

I struck out the errors part of your statement. Of course we see plenty of divergence in the fossil record. There are countless shapes and sizes to every lineage we find.

 

[stevevw]

No heritable trait evolves unless it exhibits reproductive variation. That is, each new generation of a creature presents a range of variants to the environment for selection.
The various body plans evolved way early, when creatures were still boneless and squishy and could reproduce with a varying number of appendages.

I thought the various body plans came pretty quick in evolutionary time during the Cambrian period which seems to me that there was no time for gradual step by step transitions. I am not sure about every change being the result of adpatations to the enviroment. This forces us to see everything as the results of trial and error and extraordinary circumstances. I think there is much more to how life gains new genetic material and changes other than natural selection alone. I think God may have placed some instructions for how life could adpat very early in the history of things for which living things have been able to draw upon to build complex body parts.

That is why we see that changes follow certain development paths because there is a certain program that is inherent in nature that allows life to adapt. I have read in some ways natural selection can be a deterent for evolving more complex life becuase it is always introducing changes that undermine the precise sstructuresthat are already working just fine. Perhaps there are other mechanisms that work with selection to help life gain exactly what it needs without having to go through a trial and error process. The nature paper I linked seems to mention something like this with developmental bias where creatures will evolve certain forms more readily than others.

Valuable insight into the causes of adaptation and the appearance of new traits comes from the field of evolutionary developmental biology (‘evo-devo’). Some of its experimental findings are proving tricky to assimilate into SET. Particularly thorny is the observation that much variation is not random because developmental processes generate certain forms more readily than others3. For example, among one group of centipedes, each of the more than 1,000 species has an odd number of leg-bearing segments, because of the mechanisms of segment development3.


In our view, this concept — developmental bias — helps to explain how organisms adapt to their environments and diversify into many different species. For example, cichlid fishes in Lake Malawi are more closely related to other cichlids in Lake Malawi than to those in Lake Tanganyika, but species in both lakes have strikingly similar body shapes4. In each case, some fish have large fleshy lips, others protruding foreheads, and still others short, robust lower jaws.


SET explains such parallels as convergent evolution: similar environmental conditions select for random genetic variation with equivalent results. This account requires extraordinary coincidence to explain the multiple parallel forms that evolved independently in each lake. A more succinct hypothesis is that developmental bias and natural selection work together4, 5. Rather than selection being free to traverse across any physical possibility, it is guided along specific routes opened up by the processes of development5, 6.
Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?

Perhaps there is some connection between living things and their enviroment that connects them and switches on the genes needed to change to help them adapt to that enviroment. I know that epigentics can influence the type of genetic expression and HGT and symbiosis can have an influence on certain creatures and their enviroment to share genetic info or maybe even activate the creation of genes needed in those situations.

I would say this sort of thing has been happening from an early point because there is evidence that natural selection alone cannot account for the progression of more complex life. In fact it can be a deterent by introducing possible harmful mutatiuonal changes into what is already a precisley created structure. Its about preserving those structures and then adjusting them accordingly. These papers seems to cover what I am trying to point out.

For me the following papers are saying that natural selection plays a minor role when it comes to evolving complex life and complexity is the result of non-adpative mechansims that are subject to weak purifying selection. So the process is something that is inherent and determined rather than subject to the trial and error process of selection.


Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics
Evolutionary-genomic studies show that natural selection is only one of the forces that shape genome evolution and is not quantitatively dominant, whereas non-adaptive processes are much more prominent than previously suspected. Major contributions of horizontal gene transfer and diverse selfish genetic elements to genome evolution undermine the Tree of Life concept. An adequate depiction of evolution requires the more complex concept of a network or ‘forest’ of life. There is no consistent tendency of evolution towards increased genomic complexity, and when complexity increases, this appears to be a non-adaptive consequence of evolution under weak purifying selection rather than an adaptation.
Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics


The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity
The vast majority of biologists engaged in evolutionary studies interpret virtually every aspect of biodiversity in adaptive terms. This narrow view of evolution has become untenable in light of recent observations from genomic sequencing and population-genetic theory. Numerous aspects of genomic architecture, gene structure, and developmental pathways are difficult to explain without invoking the nonadaptive forces of genetic drift and mutation. In addition, emergent biological features such as complexity, modularity, and evolvability, all of which are current targets of considerable speculation, may be nothing more than indirect by-products of processes operating at lower levels of organization. These issues are examined in the context of the view that the origins of many aspects of biological diversity, from gene-structural embellishments to novelties at the phenotypic level, have roots in nonadaptive processes, with the population-genetic environment imposing strong directionality on the paths that are open to evolutionary exploitation.

Understanding the origins of eukaryotic genome complexity in adaptive terms is rendered difficult by the fact that each embellishment added to a gene magnifies its vulnerability to mutational inactivation, thereby encouraging its elimination from the population (13, 40).


Moreover, as noted above, the additional genomic complexities of multicellular eukaryotes appear not to have arisen by positive selection but instead to have emerged passively in population-genetic environments where the efficiency of selection is relaxed, quite contrary to the view espoused by the evolvability school.
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/suppl_1/8597.full

 

[stevevw]

I struck out the errors part of your statement. Of course we see plenty of divergence in the fossil record. There are countless shapes and sizes to every lineage we find.

To me those variations are the same a dogs evolving from a wolf and cchanging form to what we see today. By the way some of those creatures in the whale evolution have been shown to not be ancestors of whales ie Pakicetus and I think maybe Rodhocetus. Even so considering that Indohyus is the size of a dog and a whale is like 100 tons and 100 fet long I would have thought there were way more stages than 6 to allow even the mother to give birth to the lager sizes. To much of a jump in size and the mother will have no chance of even carrying of birthing her offspring through the opening.

Same as Tiktaalik from memory, I will have to find the info but it is in the wrong sequence or something that makes it impossible to be the first aquatic to land creature like it has been made out. The same with Archaeopteryx who is found to not even be on the bird line and its bone and respiratory sytem make it impoossible to be a transition for a bird. See I find that certain creatures are put forward as the great transitions that prove evolution but then later evidence comes and shows they could not have been.

Now I do not take any position here but am only putting forward situations that have been presented by evidence so in some ways I am not biased towards any position.

 

[stevevw]

Life did have to tap into a pre existing biological system. A system that already had self replicating genetic material to work with. Like you mentioned, a foot didn't come from nothing, it came from a fin, through an already existent biological system.

It sounds like you are saying though, how could inanimate molecules form something like an eye? It is amazing, and really only through God could such a thing be possible. This is the nature of how we are created. That a human baby could form from an embryo of molecules. Or that we could grow from infants to adults even. But it is only possible through our pre existing biological makeup that this happens. Biological evolution also is only possible through its pre existing biological systems that make it so.

I hear many say that God can do anything, that He is all powerful, and if he wanted to create man from clay, and a woman from man's rib, He could do so. But many seem to doubt God's power, when it comes to using something like genetics, to provide the variation in the complex DNA based body plans that we use to give birth, grow and evolve. I think that it actually glorifies God more, when we come to appreciate the complexity in how God has created. A complexity that many really would not ever have imagined 50-100 or even 200 years ago.

just my opinion though.

I am probably saying where did the fin come from in the first place. When there was no instructions in the genetic code to make a fin how did that happen.

 

[stevevw]

Another thing I find hard to understand is evolution describes how say humans evolved from chimps and gradually adapted began walking as this was more beneficial for survival, evolved bigger brains as this helped them survive by becoming smarter to make tools ect, until we have modern humans today. Part of evolutionary theory explains how we learnt to live together and get along as this was better for survival which all supporters of evolution accept as part of the theroy. Then from this came socialisation and then religious thought which all supporters accpt as it goes hand in hand with the physical evolution of the brain for example and is an important part of the theory in supporting why the physical evolution happened.

So according to evolution theory God is just a creation of our thinking processes which is derived from socialisation and giving meaning to life through theories like terror theory which helps humans with self-esteem and face the fear of death to help them maintain stable thinking and survive. So if we accept the theory of evolution as far as why our brains evolved and how experts explain that the first signs of religious thought was seen in neandathals for example in burying their dead and having ceremonies should not we also accpet the explanation for God according to that same theory as well.

 

[Job 33:6]

To me those variations are the same a dogs evolving from a wolf and cchanging form to what we see today. By the way some of those creatures in the whale evolution have been shown to not be ancestors of whales ie Pakicetus and I think maybe Rodhocetus. Even so considering that Indohyus is the size of a dog and a whale is like 100 tons and 100 fet long I would have thought there were way more stages than 6 to allow even the mother to give birth to the lager sizes. To much of a jump in size and the mother will have no chance of even carrying of birthing her offspring through the opening.

Same as Tiktaalik from memory, I will have to find the info but it is in the wrong sequence or something that makes it impossible to be the first aquatic to land creature like it has been made out. The same with Archaeopteryx who is found to not even be on the bird line and its bone and respiratory sytem make it impoossible to be a transition for a bird. See I find that certain creatures are put forward as the great transitions that prove evolution but then later evidence comes and shows they could not have been.

Now I do not take any position here but am only putting forward situations that have been presented by evidence so in some ways I am not biased towards any position.

Take a look at my post above. Post #24.

You miss the point of the fossil succession, when you assume that each individual fossil ought to be the precise and direct, blood line ancestor of each other fossil in a succession.

The point is, you said that you do not see variation, yet there the variation is. What else would a proto whale look like, if not something simular to ambulocetus? What would a fish to amphibian transition look like, if not something like tiktaalik? What would a proto human look like, if not something like australopithecus? And...where would a fish to amphibian ancestor be found, if not in the devonian? Where would a proto human be found, if not, the late cenozoic? etc.

You nit pick, which...there is nothing wrong with critiquing, but the overriding premise behind the fossil succession is as clear as day and is undisputed.

You said you did not see variation, yet there it is, right before your eyes.