The logical counterpart to a theory of survival of the fittest is non-survival of the less fit, otherwise known as extinction or extermination-by-obsolescence. The transitional forms disappear because they are not biologically competitive. That's why they're not there cluttering up the jungle.
Okay, if the transitional forms are dead there should still be evidence of them in the fossils. But they're not there either. Darwin claimed incompleteness in the record--we just haven't dug up enough fossils yet. Surely they are there, for the number of transitional forms necessary to his theory is truly immense, considering that they all have to have occurred by very small accumulating mutations.
In actuality, evolution has triumphed in scientific circles not because of the fossil evidence but despite it. According to Stephen Jay Gould, an honest appraisal of the fossil record shows:
1. Stasis. Species appear and disappear from earth pretty much without change.
2. Sudden appearances. A new species appears all at once and fully formed.
Well, bother. What's a good naturalistic evolutionary biologist to do? Besides dig up more fossils, desperately hoping to find those missing links?
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