Wallace natural selection12/11/2023 Beagle, including stops in South America, Australia, and the southern tip of Africa. From 1831 to 1836, Darwin traveled around the world on H.M.S. Importantly, each naturalist spent time exploring the natural world on expeditions to the tropics. In the mid-nineteenth century, two naturalists, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, independently conceived and described the actual mechanism for evolution. While many discredited this mechanism for evolutionary change, Lamarck’s ideas were an important influence on evolutionary thought. We now refer to this mechanism as an inheritance of acquired characteristics by which the environment causes modifications in an individual, or offspring could use or disuse of a structure during its lifetime, and thus bring about change in a species. In the early nineteenth century, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck published a book that detailed a mechanism for evolutionary change. Lyell’s ideas were influential on Darwin’s thinking: Lyell’s notion of the greater age of Earth gave more time for gradual change in species, and the process of change provided an analogy for this change. Nineteenth century geologist Charles Lyell popularized Hutton's view. This contrasted with the predominant view that the planet's geology was a consequence of catastrophic events occurring during a relatively brief past. Some at this time also accepted that there were extinct species.Īlso during the eighteenth century, James Hutton, a Scottish geologist and naturalist, proposed that geological change occurred gradually by accumulating small changes from processes operating like they are today over long periods of time. ![]() ![]() In the eighteenth century, naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon reintroduced ideas about the evolution of animals and observed that various geographic regions have different plant and animal populations, even when the environments are similar. Classical Greek philosopher Plato emphasized in his writings that species were static and unchanging, yet there were also ancient Greeks who expressed evolutionary ideas. ![]() Scientists, philosophers, researchers, and others had made suggestions and debated this topic well before Darwin began to explore this idea. Discuss misconceptions about the theory of evolutionĮvolution by natural selection describes a mechanism for how species change over time.Describe homologous and vestigial structures.Explain convergent and divergent evolution.Describe how scientists developed the present-day theory of evolution.By the end of this section, you will be able to do the following:
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