DutchAtheist

Then, what is this : <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/news/794961.asp?pne=msn" target="_blank">Giant Goose</a> I'm no expert on this topic, and maybe this isn't a transitional form, but it did look like it.

Camaban

now THERE'S something whihc would look good on the table.

tgamble

It's a Goose. It's not half dog half goose! It's a 100% goose!

Non-praying Mantis

Except for dead-end species that become extinct, EVERY fossil is a "transitional" fossil - transitional from one species to the next


NPM

Viti

Yeah it's just a goose...gawd just created 'em alot bigger and they have shrunk due to...um...the fall, thats it, the fall.

Valentine Pontifex

The subject of this thread is, as a reminder:
No transitional fossils linking birds to dinosaurs?

What the article was about was an 8 million year old goose though a really big one.

This emphatically is not a transitional from between birds and dinosaurs. Indeed if it is, then evolution is in big trouble.
This creature is no more related to the dinos then Canadian Geese are (well other than the fact that the fossil creature was a trival 8 million years closer to the common ancestor).

I don't think this fossil is any more like a dinosaur than any other bird today other than maybe size which is really more a popular image of dinosaurs than a fundamental characteristic of them: many dinos were the monsters but many were small creatures. I am sure one of the fossil people will correct me if I am wrong on that detail.

If you want transitional fossils, you will be better served going to:
<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-index.html#transitional" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-index.html#transitional</a>

Valentine Pontifex

But only in the trivial sense that it had ancestors and descendents. I would be really careful about saying this sort of thing since it really gives out the false impression of just assuming evolution to be true.

The term "transitional" should be reserved for those forms which we can show to transitional between two known taxa. Otherwise you are just encouraging dogmatic and/or circular thinking.

Doubting Didymus

Now hold your horses, lordy.

I cannot agree. Organisms never move from one taxa to another. Once an organism is in a taxa, it's stuck there forever.

The forms you refer to are extinct organisms that appear to be 'halfway' between two taxa. These organisms are not really 'transitional' between those taxa, but ancestral (or closely related to the ancestor) of both of the modern taxa we see today. I find it misleading in the extreme to refer to these ancestral forms as being 'transitional' between two taxa. They should be 'ancestral' to the two taxa.

Vegetarian Mantis is actually completely correct. A transitional form would be a form that is between a more ancient form and a more modern form, not between two taxa. In this sense it is true that all organisms are transitional, but the term should really be limited, for practical puroposes, to organisms that clearly demonstrate the transition.

Non-praying Mantis

Actually, that should be Atheist Mantis - remember that it's:

Non-PRAYing Mantis, not Non-PREYing Mantis!


NPM

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: Non-praying Mantis ]</p>

Doubting Didymus

Would that make you a transitional form?