Posted by rpcman on August 24, 1999 at 14:05:27:
In Reply to: Yes, and about that link. . . posted by blue on August 24, 1999 at 00:22:03:
: Is there an example, in the fossil record, of two species of mammals, say a giraffe and a zebra, cat and a dog, etc., where we have a reasonably gap-free record tracing a common ancestor and a smooth transition into the two species?
Not only do we have this in the fossil record but we have living records of such occurances. One example are ring species. Mark Ridley writes about, and includes color photographs of, the famous ring species of salamaders in California in his excellent book Evolution. The 'parent' species is still alive on the north end of the mountain range, you can see the species split as you move down either side of the range and two different species which don't interbreed and look quite different co-exist on the south side of the mountain range.