Creationists continually say that there are no transitionals and evolutionists say that there are. I finally understand why. Evolutionists define transitionals very carefully, but creationists do not. Creationists have their own idea about what a transitional must be like, but because it does not agree with the evolutionist definition, they deny that the ones that the evolutionists point out exist at all. This is called equivocation. Archaeopteryx is a transitional, but this is denied by creationists. I have asked creationists what they would expect a transitional between a bird and a reptile would look like, hypothetically. They have refused to answer, so, based on their idea that Archeopteryx isn't one because it looks like a bird, I have asked a friend to produce this: here is a picture of what creationists must think a transitional would look like. I think that is the only sort of transitional that would convince a Creationists. Unfortunately, this will never be found.

One way that creationists deny that Archaeopteryx is a transitional is because they say it is a bird. How can a bird also be half-way between bird and reptile? The answer to this lies in how we classify species. Biologists know that species are not fixed entities. There is considerable variation in species, and it is often hard to say where one species ends and a new species starts. A classical example of this are the ring species. The best known example of ring species are the British herring gulls .

"They breed with the herring gulls of eastern America, which are also white. American herring gulls breed with those of Alaska, and Alaskan ones breed with those of Siberia. But as you go to Alaska and Siberia, you find that herring gulls are getting smaller, and picking up some black markings. And when you get all the way back to Britain, they have become Lesser Black-Backed Gulls." ( http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/ring_species.html accessed 7/11/02).

When we look at the American herring gull species, where is the point where it becomes the british herring gull and where is the point where it becomes the Alaskan herring gulls? Humans using their classification system decide when they find a gull what species it is in. Each herring gull is placed in a particular species. This means that if we look at the classification, everything is very neat, but if we look at the living birds, there are transitionals.

Archaeopteryx is a bird. Humans define birds as a group because they have feathers. Archaeopteryx is pushed into the 'bird' classification because it has feathers. The skeleton of Archaeopteryx is a reptiles skeleton. If there were no feathers on Archaeopteryx there is no doubt we would have classified it as a dinosaur. Two of the specimens (out of seven found) were misclassified as Compsagnathus, and one as a pterosaur. It was only when the feather impressions were noticed that they were reclassified as birds.

The theory of evolution places constraints on what is allowable as evidence, and this especially includes transitionals. Many fossils have been found, but only a few have been given the title of being a transitional. They have earned that title because they have had to be put through rigorous scientific tests to ensure that they meet the criteria which they need to.

Another criticism of transitionals is that it "only looks like a transitional." This sounds like an extremely ridiculous statement, it isn't one because it looks like one, but the argument, though still flawed is more subtle than that. The argument is that we are only interested in the appearance, or look of a fossil, which is subjective, so anybody else looking at it could conclude that it is not one. A transitional is not something that just looks like something else. A fish, an ichthyosaur and a whale all 'look the same' but they are not. An ichthyosaur is not the transitional between a fish and a whale.

We know that whales are not directly related to fish. They are mammals. This is known because of a detailed examination of their skeleton and physiology that they are mammals. For example, they have lungs, mammalian skin and a mammalian backbone. Nobody doubts that whales are mammals or that ichthyosaurs are reptiles, despite the fact that superficially they both look like fish. This necessarily means that to discover what group a creature falls into, a detailed examination is necessary. It is not enough that the creature looks like a fish if an examination shows details that are not fish like at all.

A transitional is a creature to which this examination has been done and the features considered fall into two different groups. A skeleton like that is called a transitional. The features that are displayed require an explanation in the same way that the mammalian features of a whale require an explanation. We explain the mammalian features of a mammal by saying that it is a mammal. We explain the transitional features of a transitional by saying that it is related to both groups. If one is going to say that a transitional could have been created with those features like that but it isn't related to one of the groups, then we can also say that the whale could have been created like that, but isn't actually related to mammals.

I know of no transitional where the features fall into three groups apart from Eucritta melanolimnetes (or 'The creature from the black lagoon' which was found in Scotland in 1989). This has features from three different groups but although unusual is not a problem, because the time that this creature was alive the three groups would have been very close anyway. The fact that apart from this one specimen, all creatures called transitionals only have features from two grups, not many also requires an explanation.

A transitional, then must meet the strict criteria of having some features of both group, and no derived traits from any other group. Examination of the proteins of the modern form should show a close relationship with group that it "left". Examination of the embryo of the modern form should also show close affinity with the group it "left."

Now that this is understood, we can once again examine Archaeopteryx. For Archaeopteryx to be a transitional it must meet these criteria, and it does, with the possible exception of the digits used in the feet. This makes Archaeoptery an excellent example of a transitional.