Charles Darwin

In notebooks. Many, many notebooks over twenty rears just on his theory of evolution by natural selection. This does not count the many more notebooks written upon the other subjects that interested Darwin. From coral reefs to earthworms Darwin always filled notebooks with observations, correspondence results and experimental results.

Lamarck's theory of evolution proposed that traits acquired during the lifetime of the parent were genetically passed on to children. Some animal might, according to Lamarck's theory, learn a novel way of obtaining food, and then its children would be born with this novel mechanism already in place.

Darwin, contrarily, proposed that lineages evolved new traits though natural selection: by the elimination of lineages that do *not* possess a certain trait.

it helped him share his findings with other naturalists it was a type of code. for ex a name for the group of animals, which would classify them, but if you say the individual name it will mix you up. so it is also easier to just classify Darwin's findings

wacko

Charles Darwin was a brilliant scientist whose ideas have been tremendously valuable to science. As a result, he is OK by me.

Darwin's theory made it clear that ancestral relationships existed between species, and the use of these relationships became the overarching consideration of classification schemes. It wasn't until the "modern synthesis" of molecular biology that we were able to resolve some conflicts inherent in classification schemes based solely on interpreted physiological relationships.

Linnaeus had made great strides in the design of the hierarchical taxonomy, and that taxonomy compellingly demonstrated the existence of evolutionary change.

Charles Darwin observed that the embryos of different species exhibit striking similarities during early development, which suggested a common ancestry among various organisms. This observation supported his theory of evolution by showing that diverse species share a developmental blueprint, highlighting evolutionary relationships. These embryonic similarities are often seen in the early stages of development, underscoring the concept of descent with modification. Darwin's insights laid the groundwork for the field of embryology and furthered the understanding of evolutionary biology.

Every theory in science is provisional. We don't believe in theories, we merely accept them as the best explanations available, subject to refutation in light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The evidence supporting Darwin's theory of evolution is enormous, and we have added substantially to the collection over the past 150 years since Darwin's publication of "On the Origin of Species." The fossil record details changes undergone by species since amphibians first crawled out of Devonian seas. These amphibians bore uncanny resemblance to sarcopterygian lungfish of the same era.

Archeopteryx is a Jurassic fossil of a creature very much like a dinosaur, with numerous features of dinosaurs, but one key diagnostic feature of birds--it had feathered wings. We now know of dinosaurs that possessed feathers, which eliminated feathers as the primary diagnostic feature of birds.

Taxonomy is another over arching principle highlighting evolutionary relationships between species. The fact we can create a nested hierarchy of life forms strongly suggests ancestral relationships between species. If we could NOT construct such a tree of life, this would be evidence species had been created independent of one another.

In our own species, we have a variety of earlier ancestors and extinct "cousins." Peering more closely into our genome, we see enormous evidence of relationships, including shared broken gene sequences and endogenous retroviral insertions. These things should only hold true if common ancestry was the correct explanation.

Too many time man it was horrible

The influence of providing an explanatory mechanism for what was obvious to Darwin; species arose and species went extinct.

He worked pretty much until his death; his final book - about earthworms - was published the year before he died.

Morphological evidence.
Genetic and genomic evidence.
Geographical evidence.

Charles Darwin

Actually, it was Lamarck who earlier introduced the giraffe as an example for evolution - Lamarckian evolution, to be sure. Lamarck proposed that there was some mechanism by which the short-necked ancestors of giraffes could acquire a change such that their offspring would have necks better suited to their needs. Darwin applied natural selection to the same example mainly because it had already been discussed in such detail.

Cuvier was a proponent of catastrophism. Not so much a theory of evolution as an " explanation " of where all the fossil evidence that was being found then came from. Curvier posited that a series of catastrophes to the whole earth happened and every time they happened god repopulated the world with newer type organisms. Totally baseless and refuted by the evidence.

Charles Darwin did not disprove the theory of evolution; rather, he developed and provided substantial evidence for it through his theory of natural selection. His work demonstrated how species adapt and evolve over time through variations that enhance survival and reproduction. Darwin's findings challenged the static view of species and offered a scientific explanation for biodiversity, fundamentally changing our understanding of biology and the development of life on Earth.

Charles Darwin started thinking about the variety of life and how it had come about when he was 22, and invited to join a voyage round the world on the H.M.S. Beagle, a ship responsible for travelling the globe and making maps of coastlines. The ship's captain, Robert FitzRoy, was a lonely man and wanted a friend for the trip to keep him company. The Beagle was to go all the way across the Atlantic to South America to draw maps of the coastline. They returned home via the Galapagos, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. It was when he was in the Galapagos islands, and he observed the variations of finches on the different islands, that he started to think about the variety of life.

24 November 1859

On The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection Or The Preservation Of Favored Races In The Struggle For Life

Races means species.

Charles Darwin was influenced by his trip to the Galapagos islands.

Because there is variation within a species, it is therefore possible for the law of natural selection to operate, by selecting those variations which best enhance survival and reproduction.

One of the strongest reasons he had for thinking natural selection was the driving force of evolution in fact he started his book with this concept, was artificial selection. Breeders had long know that traits were heritable and they could select for the traits they wanted by just mating the favored organisms. From this example Darwin knew that acquired traits were neither heritable or selectable.