The fact that you have to emphasize the extreme nature of these discoveries just strengthens the point.
The birth of one specific animal from another entirely different species wouldn't just falsify evolution. It would also falsify genetics, biology, creationism (as it currently stands), and would bring into question pretty much all of our knowledge. The only way it could happen is by divine intervention or the work of a human who really wanted it to happen.
For completely out of order animals that couldn't be in a certain geological time period (rabbits), really depends upon the time period. For example, I think you mean Precambrian rabbit (a rabbit fossil before verterbrates started appearing). The ancestors of rabbits were from the late Cretaceous (it ended 65 million years ago). We found the "first" rabbits to be around 55 million years, not to far from the Cretaceous. If it wasn't for the extinction event, it wouldn't be that weird if we found an earlier rabbit ancestor.
Scientists are obviously skeptical of claims that try to dismiss of a predictive model of the universe that fits the world. To evolutionary biologists and most scientists (with the exception of a few small creationists), the idea of attacking the credibility of the theory of evolution as a whole is akin to trying to discredit germ theory or the theory of gravity. Sure, there are mysteries we don't yet understand, where our current models can't yet handle things (gravity and various physics theories come to mind). There are debates about the specifics. There are things we'll probably never understand. But no one would give calling a "gravity denialist" crazy a second thought.
If you provided enough evidence to pretty much overturn or falsify evolution, most people would drop it, given enough time. However, at this point, the theory of evolution is considered such a level of truth to be like gravity. The Precambrian rabbit and a species birthing an entirely different organism would be along the same extreme, world-altering lines as your plate.
There is a subtlety going on here that I think you are missing. Part of the reason that evolution is so well accepted is that there is a good deal of evidence for it and that it fits the facts that we have seen. But part of the reason is that evolution can be used to explain a wide variety of events with some plausibility. Or to say things another way: the more that you accept the theory, the more evidence that you can find for the theory.
Let me give an example: someone could claim that human altruism is an argument for evolution. The idea would be that communities of humans which helped each other out had a higher probability of survival, and therefore were more likely to have offspring, so that if there were a genetic component to altruism it would be favored by natural selection. Since we can observe altruism in humans today, and evolution explains such behavior, then evolution is more likely.
We hear such stories all of the time in pop science sources, though I confess that I don't know how much actual biologists use them. But could this be considered as evidence of evolution to anyone who didn't already favor evolution? Surely any number of theories explain human altruism, so the fact that it exists could be evidence for any number of things.
Evolution define success of a species to be its ability to survive and reproduce. Therefore, any species which is alive and reproduces is to some degree successful. Therefore everything currently here can be said to be successful from an evolutionary standpoint. This means that any feature of any creature can plausibly be said to be there because it contributed to evolutionary success. In the rare cases that no purpose can be imagined, it can said to be a vestigial remnant of a previously successful adaptation.
To those on the side of evolution, this is merely speculation from a known result. To those not convinced, it is question begging.
When you get right down to it, the only convincing argument for evolution is that it is the most elegant theory that explains the biological phenomenon that we see. But this is not a simple argument. You need to understand a great deal of biology and understand the discarded models to find this plausible. It is not something that can be expressed in a day, or a week, or a month.
We can appeal to the knowledge of scientists, but this is not an argument that gives the listener any understanding. To some extent, there is nothing wrong with this. I wouldn't attempt to explain to most people why the Poincare conjecture holds, for example, because the machinery needed for the argument requires years of study. If they asked whether it does I would say that mathematicians agree that it does, but to fully explain why would require far too much time. But I would not expect that the listener would understand anything more at that point. Probably he would not care whether or not the Poincare conjecture was true.
And I think realistically that is the right attitude for most people to take towards evolution. Biologists are convinced of it, but to fully understand why they believe it you would have to be a biologist. So they can either choose to accept, without understanding, the word of the biologist, or to remain in an agnostic state about the matter, or perhaps to try to see if there was a counterargument. I think that any of these responses are reasonable.
But instead in this issue, for whatever reason, we must have the assent of every man, even though we cannot have the understanding of every man. The standard technique will be to present evidence in action, but it will be evidence which can only be appreciated as such by a biologist, who would probably be convinced of evolution in any case.
I can even give you an example of one of your arguments that falls into this category:
There is no distinction between "macro" and "micro" evolution. There is only evolution. Evolution is just modification of existing traits and the occasional minor mutation of a preexisting trait (for example, a mutation in humans produced bones that are much harder to break). The only different between "micro" and "macro" is the amount of time.
Can you not see that this is not plausible unless you already accept almost all of the postulates required for evolution?
If not every attribute can be changed through a mutation (or at least every attribute which can differentiate two organisms), only micro evolution would be possible, because there would be a limit to how far an animal could change, so that there would be different kinds which could not become other kinds.
If the mutations could not be directed over long periods of time, only micro evolution would be plausible, because complex multi-stage adaptations would not have the time to form.
If mutations happened at too rare of rate, macro-evolution could occur but may not have had enough time to by this point.
There is no need for any process to continue for an arbitrary length of time, and indeed in the natural world many processes do not last forever (especially with changing environmental conditions).
This means that to argue for macro evolution, you need to establish that all the differences between organisms are encoded in genes which can mutate, that natural selection can be sustained towards an end for ages, and that mutations happen and are sustained in the population quickly enough for macro-evolution to have time to occur.
That is: you need to be explaining the building blocks of the model of evolution. It is no good to take
conclusions of evolution and try to argue from them. They only convince the converted.
I offer all of this as rhetorical advice, not as an attack on the theory of evolution.
