Given time PLUS distance critters that are only species level different become genus level different, then family level different, and so forth. Look up "ring species" to see how different species can arise.

Some species appear quickly and then have long ranges like ammonites where certain species can be documented for a few million years and then they vanish from the record.

Some species have very short ranges like foramnifera and can be used in high resolution chrono-stratigraphy to correlate limestone and shales regionally or even globally.

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Transitional species quickly get supplanted by their newer more adapted descendants which is why there are fewer of them in the fossil record. It's MUCH harder to find something that may have existed a few hundred years than 100 thousand years in any geological layer.

Actually everything is in transition, the only difference is speed of change caused by outside factors.

Only so many variations of the same critter will physically occupy a certain niche and eventually older forms can get pushed out. You simply won't find like 100 species of clams or oysters in the same spot.

Humans used to have much larger heads which is why our modern smaller heads are having problems with too many teeth and why we all need our wisdom teeth pulled.

Me and many friends have actually discovered new species of this and that critter that lived such a short time span we are the ONLY ones that have found them.

If there was no "macro evolution" there should be NO fish-amphibian transition and yet they have been found, right in the geologic layer of the expected time range. Predictability proves theory.