Turkish Temple Complex

Evolution is real and observable. It isn't the only force in play, necessarily, but we can see it in action today.

The fossil record is by nature incomplete, because fossils are hard to create; there will always be gaps. However, what we do have gives us a pretty clear picture of how species evolve and change over time. You just have to connect the dots. Good sequences have been established for horses and humans, among others.

Want to study missing links in the human family? Look up an old friend of mine ... her name is "Lucy."

What people often miss is that, in the long term, things that are statistically improbable will happen. The Earth is several billion years old. It has been teeming with life for a long time. That's a LOT of dice to roll -- and it doesn't matter if most of them don't come up right.

However, you raise an interesting point: whether it's possible to demonstrate species divergence. A point of proof would be breeding animals or plants so far apart that they could no longer interbreed with their ancestors. (We branched off dogs from wolves, but they're still cross-fertile.) That would be worth exploring.

We have seen examples of new traits appearing, though. There are several unrelated Rex breeds of cat with curly coats; that's a known change. There have been flowers that abruptly added a new color. Humans like novelty; we've done a lot with our domestics in terms of sustaining unusual traits added by random mutation.