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Combined with the well-established geological theory of plate tectonics, common descent provides a way to combine facts about the current distribution of species with evidence from the fossil record to provide a logically consistent explanation of how the distribution of living organisms has changed over time.
Where the fact of evolutionary change was accepted by biologists but natural selection was denied, including but not limited to the late 19th century eclipse of Darwinism, alternative scientific explanations such as Lamarckism, orthogenesis, structuralism, catastrophism, vitalism and theistic evolution [a] were entertained, not necessarily separately.
Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, [1] arguing that evolution in nature must be driven by natural selection, just as breeds of domestic animals and cultivars of crop plants were driven by artificial selection. [2] [3] Darwin's theory radically altered popular and scientific opinion about the development of life. [4]
Scientists have identified the oldest living species on Earth is a deep sea organism that hasn't evolved in more than two billion years. And, it may prove Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution. A ...
Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations ...
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.
The other is from allele frequency change in standing genetic variation already present in a population of organisms. [2] Other evolutionary forces outside of mutation and natural selection can also play a role or be incorporated into experimental evolution studies, such as genetic drift and gene flow. [3]
Evolution provides the field of biology with a solid scientific base. The significance of evolutionary theory is summarised by Theodosius Dobzhansky as "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." [78] [79] Nevertheless, the theory of evolution is not static. There is much discussion within the scientific community ...