Evolution through natural selection

Ediacaran

Occurring after a Snowball Earth thaw, this era produced the first complex life forms (multicellular, complex body plans, etc.), but not much is known about these aquatic, non-moving organisms.

Cambrian explosion

biggest explosion of life on Earth and the origin of the type of life we see on Earth now. Oxygen availability from photosynthesis allowed bigger organisms to survive.

Thomas Malthus

economist who considered populations, not individuals and to realize that people were subject to the same constraints as animals

Erasmus Darwin

wrote poem on evolution, emphasized slow change in species over time

Lamarck

French naturalist – one of the first to emphasize interaction between species and its environment

Alfred Russel Wallace

contemporary of Charles Darwin andbasically co-discoverer of consolidated theory

Charles Darwin

Published “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” in 1859 – brought together various earlier strands and proposed natural selection.

Natural Selection

Potentially beneficial genetic variation, many offspring, the struggle for survival, and those potential survivors define this theory.