JBeukema
Rookie
- Banned
- #21
1) fossilation only occurs under certain conditionsWell we know that bodies, especially dead ones dont fare well out in the elements. Hot to mention the fact that animals like to tear them up and scatter them.
And there you have your answer- survival of remains is rare even with great care; natural fossilization is even more rare. Combined with tectonic and other destructive forces and the fact that we haven't scoured every cubic inch of the planet, and you end up with the rarity of fossils that you mentioned
The Earth is guesstimated at what four to six billion years old ? In that time span we have sea critters, dinosaurs, mega fauna, cave men, and us. All but us humans are gone, but we still find bones (fossils) so some ware there has to be an in between skeleton some ware. So why wouldn't they be found with the others and what killed off the extinct species above ?
2) even once a fossil is made, millions of years of tectonic forces tends to destroy them
3) each generation is subject to genetic mutation within the germ cell line. While no generation is substantially different than the one prior the the one immediately following, over time the population can come to be more noticeably varied from ancestors from a few million years ago- or less, in some cases
4) some extinction events can be triggered by environmental changes, volcanoes, and comets, for starters
Try getting a middle-school science book if you difficulty grasping the basics