Summations Only

I'm not talking about their implications, I'm talking about their observations of the fossil record.Those observations show us that the fossil record does not show any evolution, but rather the opposite; sudden appearance of new species without any link to supposed predecessors, and then STASIS during their whole stay in the fossil record.

But doesn't the existence of YECism in our population disprove evolution as a general principal moving the population toward improvement?

Bs'dI got them from here and there and everywhere. Some I checked in the original publications, I think I checked all of 'm in the Talk Origins Archive, and they are all totally correct.

Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils as they pursued them up through the rock record. ... That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, ... prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search ... One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserly fossil record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong.The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way."

The main impetus for expanding the view that species are discrete at any one point in time, to embrace their entire history, comes from the fossil record. Paleontologists just were not seeing the expected changes in their fossils as they pursued them up through the rock record. Instead, collections of nearly identical specimens, separated in some cases by 5 million years, suggested that the overwhelming majority of animal and plant species were tremendously conservative throughout their histories.That individual kinds of fossils remain recognizably the same throughout the length of their occurrence in the fossil record had been known to paleontologists long before Darwin published his Origin. Darwin himself, troubled by the stubbornness of the fossil record in refusing to yield abundant examples of gradual change, devoted two chapters to the fossil record. To preserve his argument he was forced to assert that the fossil record was too incomplete, to full of gaps, to produce the expected patterns of change. He prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search and then his major thesis - that evolutionary change is gradual and progressive - would be vindicated. One hundred and twenty years of paleontological research later, it has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction is wrong.The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way. Rather than challenge well-entrenched evolutionary theory, paleontologists tacitly agreed with their zoological colleagues that the fossil record was too poor to do much beyond supporting, in a general sort of way, the basic thesis that life had evolved.

Now please be kind enough to explain to me which part of my quote is wrong.

That is not basically true, that's a lie. The fossil record shows that new species pop up suddenly, without any connection to supposed ancestors.

that the fossil record ..... beyond supporting, in a general sort of way, the basic thesis that life had evolved.

Or so you think.

What is generally called "micro-evolution" is in fact recombination of existing genetic material. There is a limit to the amount of genetic material, therefore there is a limit to how much a certain species can change.

They will stop to do so, as was found out during the research into mutation breeding:http://www.weloennig.de/...of-Law-of-Recurrent-Variation.pdf
"In accord with the law of recurrent variation, mutants in every species thoroughly examined (from pea to man) − whether naturally occurring, experimentally induced, or accidentally brought about − happen in a large, but nevertheless limited spectrum of phenotypes with either losses of functions or neutral deviations. Yet, in the absence of the generation of new genes and novel gene reaction chains with entirely new functions, mutations cannot transform an original species into an entirely new one. This conclusion agrees with all the experiences and results of mutation research of the 20th century taken together as well as with the laws of probability. Thus, the law of recurrent variation implies that genetically properly defined species have real boundaries that cannot be abolished or transgressed by accidental mutations."

.... we have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not. And part of the fault for such a bizarre situation must come from a naive understanding of just what adaptation is all about.

"And one might ask why such a distortion of the grosser patterns of the history of life has come about. For it truly seems to me that F. J. Taggart was right all along. The approach to the larger themes in the history of life taken by the modern synthesis continues the theme already painfully apparent to Taggart in 1925: a theory of gradual, progressive, adaptive change so thoroughly rules our minds and imaginations that we have somehow, collectively, turned away from some of the most basic patterns permeating the history of life. We have a theory that -- as punctuated equilibria tells us -- is out of phase with the actual patterns of events that typically occur as species' histories unfold. And that discrepancy seems enlarged by a considerable order of magnitude when we compare what we think the larger-scale events ought to look like with what we actually find. And it has been paleontologists -- my own breed -- who have been most responsible for letting ideas dominate reality: geneticists and population biologists, to whom we owe the modern version of natural selection, can only rely on what paleontologists and systematic biologists tell them about the comings and goings of entire species, and what the large-scale evolutionary patterns really look like."Yet on the other hand, the certainty so characteristic of evolutionary ranks since the late 1940s, the utter assurance not only that natural selection works in nature, but that we know precisely how it works, has led paleontologists to keep their own counsel. Ever since Darwin, as philosopher Michael Ruse (1982) has recently said, paleontology has occasionally played the role of the difficult child. But our usual mien has been bland, and we have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not. And part of the fault for such a bizarre situation must come from a naive understanding of just what adaptation is all about. We'll look at some of the larger patterns in the history of life in the next chapter -- along with the hypotheses currently offered as explanations. Throughout it all, adaptation shines through as an important theme; there is every reason to hang on to that baby as we toss out the bathwater. But before turning in depth to these themes, we need to take just one more, somewhat closer, look at the actual phenomenon of adaptation itself: what it is and how it occurs."

It is as though they [fossils] were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. .... Both schools of thought (Punctuationists and Gradualists) despise so-called scientific creationists equally, and both agree that the major gaps are real, that they are true imperfections in the fossil record. The only alternative explanation of the sudden appearance of so many complex animal types in the Cambrian era is divine creation and (we) both reject this alternative.

"Evolutionists of all stripes believe, however, that this really does represent a very large gap in the fossil record, a gap that is simply due to the fact that, for some reason, very few fossils have lasted from periods before about 600 million years ago. One good reason might be that many of these animals had only soft parts to their bodies: no shells or bones to fossilize. If you are a creationist you may think that this is special pleading. My point here is that, when we are talking about gaps of this magnitude, there is no difference whatever in the interpretations of 'punctuationists' and 'gradualists'."

No there is not. The people telling you that are the same type of people who lied to you for more than hundred years about the fossil record supporting evolution.

Bs'dWhat part of the following is it that you don't understand?"we have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not."

Bs'd
What is a POE?

"The paleontological data is consistent with the view that all of the currently recognized phyla had evolved by about 525 Ma. Despite half a billion years of evolutionary exploration generated in Cambrian time, no new phylum level designs have appeared since then.""Developmental Evolution of Metazoan Body plans: The Fossil Evidence," Valentine, Erwin, and Jablonski, Developmental Biology 173, Article No. 0033, 1996, p. 376

Those who are have an interest in the phylogeny of misquotes might note an error in the citation: "Body plans" should be "Bodyplans." Also in the quoted text: "phylum level" should be "phylum-level." Of course if these minor errors can be found in common with other creationist quote-mining lists, then we can conclude that the poster simply copied them from quote mines.

After 525 Ma there should be a paragraph break followed by the section title "The Post-Explosion Record." The rest of the quote is the first sentence of the next paragraph. Quotes from different sections really should not be presented as being from the same paragraph though that really did not this time add any extra distortion per se. Of course quote mine did not bother to quote potential explanations. The authors mentioned two later on in the same paragraph. Both make a great deal of sense. And though some may argue for one or the other, both can be true:

...Two long-debated explanations for this trend are that (a) developmental mechanisms became canalized or at least constrained so as to preclude the specification of great novelty and (b) the filling of the environment by early Phanerozoic diversifications preempted the ecological opportunities that were once available to organisms with distinctive bodyplans [refs]. The relative significance of these respectively internal and external controls is difficult to determine at present; new paleontological and developmental evidence will be required to assess their relative strengths [refs].

Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould proposed punctuated equilibria in 1972. Punctuated equilibrium is a refinement to evolutionary theory. It describes patterns of descent taking place in "fits and starts" separated by long periods of stability.Eldredge went on to develop a hierarchical vision of evolutionary and ecological systems. Around this time, he became focused on the rapid destruction of many of the world's habitats and species.Throughout his career, he has used repeated patterns in the history of life to refine ideas on how the evolutionary process actually works. Eldredge is proponent of the importance of environment in explaining the patterns in evolution.Eldredge is a critic of the gene-centric view of evolution. His most recent venture is the development of an alternative account to the gene-based notions of evolutionary psychology to explain human behavior.He has published more than 160 scientific articles, books, and reviews, including Reinventing Darwin, an examination of current controversies in evolutionary biology, and Dominion, a consideration of the ecological and evolutionary past, present, and future of Homo sapiens.

"Paleontologists are traditionally famous (or infamous) for reconstructing whole animals from the debris of death. Mostly they cheat. ...If any event in life's history resembles man's creation myths, it is this sudden diversification of marine life when multicellular organisms took over as the dominant actors in ecology and evolution. Baffling (and embarrassing) to Darwin, this event still dazzles us and stands as a major biological revolution on a par with the invention of self-replication and the origin of the eukaryotic cell. The animal phyla emerged out of the Precambrian mists with most of the attributes of their modern descendants." (Bengtson, Stefan, "The Solution to a Jigsaw Puzzle," Nature, vol. 345 (June 28, 1990), pp. 765-766)This is from an article that summarizes the finding of a peer-reviewed paper elsewhere in the issue, which reports on the discovery of complete specimens of halkieriids, a now extinct taxon from the Early Cambrian period:Palaeontologists are traditionally famous (or infamous) for reconstructing whole animals from the debris of death. Mostly they cheat. Even extinct beasts such as dinosaur have scores of living relatives (birds, mammals, reptiles) that make reconstructions 'simply' a matter of competent comparative anatomy. But how do you go about the job when there seem to be no close living relatives on which to base the model? This is a problem particularly when dealing with organisms that derive from the 'Cambrian explosion'.If any event in life's history resembles man's creation myths, it is this sudden diversification of marine life when multi-cellular organisms took over as the dominant actors in ecology and evolution. Baffling (and embarrassing) to Darwin, this event still dazzles us and stands as a major biological revolution on a par with the invention of self-replication and the origin of the eukaryotic cell. The animal phyla emerged out of the Precambrian mists with most of the attributes of their modern descendants. But nature is wasteful. Most species never give rise to anything, and present-day phyla derive from a lucky minority. Many of the not-so-lucky fossil species may also be comfortably classified in these same living phyla, but it is a feature of many Cambrian assemblages that they contain a large proportion of forms that cannot be so treated.We can see from the context that "cheating" is just a case of making use of comparative anatomy. Since in most cases soft tissue isn't preserved, it's not unreasonable to make informed assumptions about the placement and size muscles and such. But how does one reconstruct a creature that has no living relatives?It should also be emphasized that the writer states that "If any event in life's history resembles man's creation myths" (emphasis added). And obviously it's not that much of a resemblance. These new "organisms took over as the dominant actors in ecology and evolution" (emphasis added). This wasn't creation from nothing, otherwise there would be no organisms to take over from.