The Origin and Extinction of Species

A transition? If so then with all these transitions extinct they must have been unsuitable for life whereas what they were transitioning from was more suitable and with us today.

In short these supposed transitions would be a dead end with all those human characteristics not an improvement but a disadvantage to survival. Jungles, trees and savannas, chimps, o’rangs, apes, humans, etc. all here today but not one “transition”.

I see your problem!

You have an incorrect view of "transitional." As an analogy, you can look at your great, great grandparents as transitionals. They were not dead ends, nor failures, just farther back in the line leading to you.

Same with Lucy and the other transitionals in our hominid ancestry. Those species were well adapted to their conditions, but as conditions changed so did they. The new species were also well adapted to their new conditions. Neither was a dead end nor a failure; each was well adapted to the conditions in which they lived.

Hope this helps.

To use your example my grandparents had parents and children so, yes, they could be called “transitional” to me.
But my cousin is not transitional to me and “Lucy”, whose parents and children we know nothing of, cannot even be demonstrated to be a relative let alone a cousin. It's all fine and well to draw lines of descent and connection between apes, transitions, and humans and it looks good on paper but that's all it is.

It's all fine and well to draw lines of descent and connection between apes, transitions, and humans and it looks good on paper but that's all it is.

Correct; its a theory. And it looks good on paper only in relation to the evidence supporting it.

But hominid evolution is well supported by the evidence.

Well, you are free to assert what you wish and I’ll not endlessly go back and forth with you. I don’t see the point in that unless one is trying to “win” somehow and I don’t think either of us is interested in such silliness.
But I’ll be back when I think it warranted. And I did enjoy our discussion.

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