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The book presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had collected on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation. [5]
Evidence from animal coloration was gathered by some of Darwin's contemporaries; camouflage, mimicry, and warning coloration are all readily explained by natural selection. Special cases like the seasonal changes in the plumage of the ptarmigan , camouflaging it against snow in winter and against brown moorland in summer provide compelling ...
Charles Darwin in 1868. Darwinism is a term used to describe a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others. The theory states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.
In his campaign for public and scientific acceptance of Darwin's theory, Huxley made extensive use of new evidence for evolution from paleontology. This included evidence that birds had evolved from reptiles, including the discovery of Archaeopteryx in Europe, and a number of fossils of primitive birds with teeth found in North America.
Objections to evolution have been raised since evolutionary ideas came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution (the idea that species arose through descent with modification from a single common ancestor in a process driven by natural selection) initially met opposition from scientists with different ...
Professor of biology Jerry Coyne sums up biological evolution succinctly: [3]. Life on Earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection.
Coyne examines the evidence for evolution, some of which was known to Darwin (biogeography) and some of which has emerged in recent years (molecular biology). The book was a New York Times bestseller, and reviewers praised the logic of Coyne's arguments and the clarity of his prose. It was reprinted as part of the Oxford Landmark Science series.
He thought that 2009, the bicentennial of Darwin's birth and 150th anniversary of his book On the Origin of Species, was the perfect time for such a work. [7] [8] Other authors have written similar books recently, such as Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True which Dawkins highly recommends. [9]