Challenge.

[Rejected]

I just want to see how many "transitional species" everybody can come up with. Can you name an animal, living or extinct, that bridges a gap between higher and lower orders in the animal kingdom, or shows how one animal might have evolved into another? No peppered moths please.

 

[egroen]

Archaeopteryx was amongst the first fossils discovered bridging the gap between reptiles and birds:

-Erin

 

[Rejected]

No one else?
Just the Archaeopteryx huh?
Can anyone come up with any modern species?

 

[Smoke]

Can you name an animal, living or extinct, that bridges a gap between higher and lower orders in the animal kingdom

Which orders are "higher" and which are "lower"?

No one else?
Just the Archaeopteryx huh?
Can anyone come up with any modern species?

Are you asking for a modern species that (a) evolved from another living species and (b) gave rise to yet another living species? That's a pretty tall order, since everything keeps evolving.

The chimpanzee and the human are more closely related to each other than either is to the gorilla, but there's no surviving ancestral species from which both humans and chimpanzees descend, much less an even older surviving species from which all three descend.

 

[Rejected]

I’m talking about animals like the Archaeopteryx which show traits found in two separate groups of animals which may hint at a link between the two.

One modern example I can think of is the mudskipper: Able to breathe through their skin similar to an amphibian, is capable of locomotion across land via adapted pectoral fins, etc.

 

[egroen]

Duck-billed platypus

-Erin

 

[mr.guy]

I'm told atheists can be considered sub-human. Does that count?