Most people who don't accept evolution don't know jack about taxonomy. Taxonomy is a means of ****fying all living things by their common characters: features shared by that collective and only by them. It is based on as much on an organism's physiognamy, reporoduction, and development as it is on the form itself.

Because of this, we can show that the simplest organisms in the fossil record, when compiling it's common characters, would also show those same charaters with anything that came durectly after it. For example, all metozoas (animals) are always opisthokonts (produces gammete cells having a single posterior flagellum[sperm]) and eukaryotic (nucleic cells)--No matter what; however not the other way around, i.e not all eukaryotes are opisthokonts. Why is that? If there was a god and evolution weren't true, don't you think there would have been one such animal anytime--present or past--that wasn't either an opistokont or eukaryotic? The only way to explain it is with evolution. Bats, birds, and dolphins all evolved from eurkaryotes because it is a fact that all their cells are initially nucleic.

Also I would like to explain why humans are both animals and primates and that we're not separate from the rest of the animal kingdom. The problem here with people that disagree that we are animals or primate is because they don't know the definition of either one. Animals are collectively known as any eukaryotic opisthokont that depends on ingesting and digesting living cells in some sort of digestive tract in order to survive. Therefore any ponifer (sponges,etc) and any other 'higher' life form above that is an animal because of those characters.

Likewise humans are as much of a primate as are monkeys, gorillas, orangutan, or chimp because we are all "gill-less, organic RNA/DNA protein-based, metabolic, metazoic, nucleic, diploid, bilaterally-symmetrical, endothermic, digestive, trypoblast, opisthokont, deuterostome, coelemate, with a spinal chord and 12 cranial nerves connecting to a limbic system in an enlarged cerebal cortex with a reduced olfactory region inside a jawed-skull with specialized teeth including canines and premolars, forward-oriented fully-enclosed optical orbits, and a single temporal fenestra, -attached to a vertebrate hind-leg dominant tetrapoidal skeleton with a sacral pelvis, clavical, and wrist & ankle bones; and having lungs, tear ducts, body-wide hair follicles, lactal mammaries, opposable thumbs, and keratinized dermis with chitinous nails on all five digits on all four extremities, in addition to an embryonic development in amniotic fluid, leading to a placental birth and highly social lifestyl"

Basically, primates are a collective group of multiple species of organisms that share those characters, and humans are included. Because of this, it is a varifiable fact that humans evolved from primates because we're still primates! It's the same as saying mallards are a type of duck which is a bird which is a type of dinosaur. Yes, not only did birds evolve from dinosaurs; they're still dinosaurs as we speak.

Thanks to AronRa for the primate common character quote.

Okay so a while back, more than a month ago, I was starting a series to provide irrefutable evidence for evolution. Well, this will probably be the last one because this is the nail in the coffin for creationists.

I present to you, Endogenous Retroviruses (ERVs). A retrovirus stores its information in RNA, not DNA and when infecting a cell they convert their RNA genome into DNA, a process known as reverse transcription. That DNA randomly inserts itself into one of the host's chromosomes. If it happens to affect one of the host's germ cells (those that make sperm or eggs) will get passed on to future generations in the exact same location in the genome.

When comparing the human and chimp genomes, there are multiple places where ERVs are found in the exact same locations in each species. The chances of a pair of viruses being in the same exact location in the human and chimp genome is 1 in 3,000,000,000 (yes 3 billion). There's not just one match. There are 16 intances of humans and chimps sharing ERVs in the exact same locations of their respective genomes. If evolution were not true, the chances of them randomly appearing in the exact same locations is 1 in 2x10^138 (for those that suck at math, that's 2 x 1 followed by 138 zeroes) Mind boggling.

That's is so unlikely so let's look at the probability that humans and chimps share a common ancestor. We already know ERVs are passed down from generation to generation. If we do share a common ancestor, the probability that we have ERVs in the same location of both human and chimp genomes is 1 or 100%.

So what is more reasonable. ERVs randomly appear in the same location or that humans share a common ancestor with chimpanzees?

Here is a video that explains ERVs better and puts the probability of sharing ERVs in perspective.

And some refernces:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001026

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus

Sorry creationists

Decided to post this in my blog as well...

Claim:

Whales and other cetaceans descended from land mammals.

Evidences:

Pekicetus is believed to be an ancestor to modern cetaceans. If true, we should be able to find a transitional fossil. We do:

This supports evolution, but we need more evidence to support this. Everyone knows that our hearing is well on land, but our hearing sucks under water. Whales and other cetaceans, on the other hand, hear exceptionally well underwater due to their inner ear. If evolution does happen, then we should see the inner ear evolve as time goes along much like the nostrils did. But if we don't see changes to the inner ear, then evolution will dissolve right in front of our eyes.

Well we do see changes in the inner ear from hear that sucked under water, to hearing that was ok under water, to hearing that was exceptional under water. And that's exactly what we found.

Modern Cetacean's middle ear is rotated for improved hearing. Pakicetus' middle ear is in the middle of today's land mammals and cetaceans. So we should be able to find a transitional fossil with its middle ear between Pakicetus and today's cetaceans. This is where Remingtoncetidae, another transitional form, has an inner ear that is more evolved than Pakicetus.

http://www.thewildcl-assoom.com/cetaceans/evolution.htm

*take out the hyphen*

That website also has information on the evolution of hind legs and such.

So there you go, creationists. Two evidences that supports evolution from land mammals to modern cetateans. How are you going to counter that?