Theories of Evolution

Charles Darwin

He is considered to be the father of evolution.

Ancient Beliefs

In place of scientific explanations, people used myths and other supernatural stories.

Aristotle

Wrote the Hisoria Animalium classified animals based on structure and functions.

Historia Animalium

Focuses on the history and descriptions of animals

De Generatione Animalium

Describes animal reproduction

De Partibus Animalium

Focuses on animal anatomy, morphology, and physiology

Theophrastus

was one of Aristotle’s successors and did extensive work on plants in his Historia Plantarum.

Pliny the Elder

wrote the work Naturalis Historia which tackled several fields such as biology, astronomy, mathematics, and many other branches of science.

Religious Creationism

Most religions also have their own creation myths.

Al Jahiz

He published the Kitab al-Hayawan, also known as the Book of the Animals

St. Thomas Aquinas

A notable view he held was that natural phenomena do not occur without an ultimate purpose.

Ibn Khaldun

published the Muqaddimah. It described the formation of plants and animals from simple life forms to more complex ones.

Charles Bonnet’s Considérations sur les Corps Organisées (Considerations on Organized Bodies)

used the term evolution to describe his own concept of preformation.

Comte de Buffon, George-Louis Leclerc

His work, Natural History of Animals, put forth ideas in comparative anatomy that are closely related to today’s idea of evolution.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

His theory of use and disuse, though already discredited, was also a major step toward the development of evolutionary theory.

Lamarck’s Use and Disuse

Simpler forms of life are continuously formed through spontaneous generation, which became more complex over time.

Robert Chamber

wrote the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation which claimed that fossils show the progressive changes that happen to organisms.

Charles Robert Darwin

Full name of Charles Darwin

February 12, 1809

When did Charles Darwin born

Fossils

this is Darwin’s Observations on which Darwin noticed similarities between extinct and extant organisms.

Resemblance

this is Darwin’s Observations on which Darwin made observations regarding the resemblance of species in South America.

Distribution

this is Darwin’s Observations on which the location of the Galapagos islands relative to mainland South America;

Galápagos Finches

The most famous observations Darwin has made in the Galapagos are related to the ___________. He noticed great variation.