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- Charles Darwin was 22 when he served as tthe naturalist aboard the surveying ship H.M.S. Beagle
- During the voyage Darwin read a book callled Principles of Geology that mentioned Jean Baptiste Lamarck's Theory of Evolution.
- Lamarck believed that physical characteriistic's could be "acquired" by an organism and then passed down to children.
- Among the many different places that the Beagle traveled to, Darwin took a special interest in the life on the Galapagos Islands.
- Darwin noticed, in finches and tortoises,, that the anatomy of the animal had adapted to the environment of each island.
- Darwin concluded that animals that could adapt to a new environment were better suited for survival than those that didn't adapt.
- Darwin called the process by which populaations change in response to their environment, "Natural Selection"
- Artificial Selection results when humans choose individuals whith certain physical traits to reproduce.
- Darwin did not publish his ideas about evvolution until similar ideas were presented to him by Alfred Russel Wallace.
Four points of the Theory of Evolution
- ) Variation exists due to random mutation.
- ) Some individuals are better suited to survive a particular environment than others.
- ) As time continues, less successful species become extinct.
- ) There is evidence in fossil records that some species have evolved while others have become extinct.
- As populations of the same species encounnter different living environments and reproductive isolation, natural selection can occur for different characteristics causing a new species to form.
- Over long periods of time these small chaanges that produce new species (microevolution) can accumulate to create big differences between organisms (macroevolution)
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