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The transition itself can only be illustrated and corroborated by transitional fossils, which never demonstrate an exact half-way point between clearly divergent forms. [ 40 ] The fossil record is very uneven and, with few exceptions, is heavily slanted toward organisms with hard parts, leaving most groups of soft-bodied organisms with little ...
The following species are often understood to be transitional fossils, many of which can be found at List of transitional fossils. Subcategories.
"Missing link" is a recently-discovered transitional fossil. It is often used in popular science and in the media for any new transitional form. The term originated to describe the intermediate form in the evolutionary series of anthropoid ancestors to anatomically modern humans (hominization).
Fossils of organisms' bodies are usually the most informative type of evidence. The most common types are wood, bones, and shells. [57] Fossilisation is a rare event, and most fossils are destroyed by erosion or metamorphism before they can be observed. Hence the fossil record is very incomplete, increasingly so further back in time.
The transition itself can only be illustrated and corroborated by transitional fossils, which will never demonstrate an exact half-way point. [ 65 ] The fossil record is strongly biased toward organisms with hard-parts, leaving most groups of soft-bodied organisms with little to no role. [ 64 ]
Missing link (human evolution), a non-scientific term typically referring to transitional fossils; Piltdown Man, a hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the "missing link" between ape and man
In evolutionary biology, punctuated equilibrium (also called punctuated equilibria) is a theory that proposes that once a species appears in the fossil record, the population will become stable, showing little evolutionary change for most of its geological history. [1] This state of little or no morphological change is called stasis.
Taphonomy is the study of how organisms decay and become fossilized or preserved in the paleontological record. The term taphonomy (from Greek táphos, τάφος 'burial' and nomos, νόμος 'law') was introduced to paleontology in 1940 [1] by Soviet scientist Ivan Efremov to describe the study of the transition of remains, parts, or products of organisms from the biosphere to the lithosphere.