Fascinating. Could you point me to a citation for this statistic?
Natural selection by itself makes no new things.
Of course it doesn't. There needs to be a difference in individuals in a species ... through mutation, for example ... for natural selection to have something to "select".
It is actually the permanent loss of information.
Really? I've heard of something called "recessive genes" that are still in the DNA ... not permanently lost ...
It is not the creative, uphill, limitless process imagined by Darwin.
Limitless? Part of the TOE is that there ARE limits ... whatever mutations exist that can be selected for ... a cat's not going to give birth to a kitten with jet engines, for instance, as what mutation would cause that.
Although it would be cool.