Topic: Evolution
Quote: I have not seen this posted, so I am wondering...\nCan anyone give me an example of a transitional fossil that shows proof of one species changing into another?
Response: Besides asking what you mean by "proof" and what "proof" will be acceptable, I would also like to know what you mean by transitional.\nI can actually do better than show you a transitional fossil. I\'ll show you a living transitional between two species. Go to almost any body of water in northern North America in the summer, or along the coasts of southern North America in the winter and look for birds like this.\nhttp://www.martinreid.com/Image%20files/HEGU18B.jpg\nThere you go. The American herring gull (Larus argentatus smithsonianus) A transitional between two species. These birds range to the east across Greenland, Iceland, and into northern Europe.\nIt looks about the same in Europe.\nhttp://www.birdguides.com/html/vidli...015a001_j2.jpg\nThey also range to the west from Alaska into Siberia, across Siberia and Russia all the way to northern Europe. But as you go further and further west their appearance begins to change. But there is never a place where neighboring populations cannot and do not interbreed. But in northern Europe the populations from the west look a bit different.\nhttp://www.birdguides.com/html/vidli...018a001_j2.jpg\nThat\'s the Lesser black-backed gull (L. fuscus). Even though it shares the same range as the herring gull it does not interbreed with herring gulls. So here is one large population that has become two different species at the extremes of its range, and those extremes overlap. So the American herring gull is a transitional between the Herring gull and the Lesser black-backed gull. It is even thought that the original population from which all of these birds descended lived in North America.
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