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Mar 17, 2020 · Date: March 17, 2020. Source: St John's College, University of Cambridge. Summary: Scientists have proved one of Charles Darwin's theories of evolution for the first time -- nearly 140 years after ...
- Overview
- Correct: How natural selection works within species
- Correct: How natural selection creates new species, generally speaking
- Correct: Darwin’s lines of evidence to support the theory
- Incorrect: Earth’s age
- Incorrect: The mechanisms of variation among individuals
(Read T. H. Huxley’s 1875 Britannica essay on evolution & biology.)
Anagenesis is the technical term for an evolutionary change in a group in which one species replaces another but branching into separate species does not take place. It can be argued that as a species travels through time, it continually adapts to its environment. The traits of individuals that do not survive long enough to reproduce fade from the ...
Speciation, the creation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution, is simply an extension of anagenesis, but with branching allowed. Speciation also involves natural selection, but it is most easily seen in populations. If one or more populations are isolated from the rest of a species over many generations (and members of each isolat...
One of the hallmarks of good theory construction is the use of separate lines of evidence as proof. To lend support to his theory of natural selection, Darwin took examples from biogeography, paleontology, embryology, and morphology. He noted several examples of “closely-allied species” (that is, closely related species that likely descended or branched off from a common parent species) inhabiting the same territory or adjacent territories. He noted that different zebra species were found together on the plains of East Africa and, in perhaps his most famous example, that several living species of Galapagos finches co-occurred in the Galapagos Islands—a cluster of isolated islands in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The pattern of such closely related species in space supported the idea that these species had a similar origin. Darwin also noticed patterns of closely related species clustering in time. The fossil record showed several examples of similar-looking species occurring next to one another in the same layer or in successive layers of rock. Evidence of the influence of natural selection also appeared in developing embryos, where structures observed during the early stages of development of the higher vertebrates (fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) resembled the structures of more-primitive animals.
Darwin also leveraged morphology (that is, the general aspects of biological form and arrangement of the parts of a plant or an animal) to support his theory. Taxonomy, the classification of different forms of life, is rooted in the observable traits that group individual living things into species, genus, family, and so on. Generally speaking, the more traits different forms of life share, the closer their evolutionary relationship is. Through the process of taxonomy (which involves comparing the observable traits of living forms with the same kinds of traits in fossils), one can develop a decent understanding of the ways different lines of plants, animals, and other forms of life emerged across time.
During the 19th century the Bible (not the fossil record) was widely considered the primary authority on Earth’s age. It held that Earth was only about 6,000 years old. Most scientists of the time, however, acknowledged that Earth was certainly older. By the early 1860s, just a few years after On the Origin of Species was published, Scottish engine...
Although Darwin’s theory of natural selection was basically correct, in the late 1860s he proposed a theory that was very wrong. That theory—”pangenesis”—was an attempt to explain variation among individuals in a species. Offspring in sexual species display a mix of traits from both of their parents. Siblings look different from one another, but th...
- John P. Rafferty
Mar 22, 2021 · Source: Wikimedia. In fact, not only did Darwin never propose that humans are descended from monkeys, but the very idea is erroneous. For some reason, 150 years later, the work of the father of the theory of evolution has remained one of the most misunderstood in the history of science. It suffices to mention other ideas that are popularly ...
Mar 17, 2020 · Credit: Nordin Catic. Scientists have proved one of Charles Darwin's theories of evolution for the first time—nearly 140 years after his death. Laura van Holstein, a Ph.D. student in Biological ...
- Science X
May 7, 2018 · Adrian Lister, Natural History Museum, London. May 7, 2018. Charles Darwin was an avid fossil collector and during his expedition on the HMS Beagle, he was one of the first to collect remains of ...
Sep 1, 2020 · Evolution. In 1859, 14 years after the founding of this magazine, Charles Darwin published the most important scientific book ever written. On the Origin of Species revolutionized society's ...
The theory of gravity and quantum mechanics are not proven but but you do not question them being taught. Evolution is a scientific theory and has a bunch of supporting verifiable evidence. It is a theory that accurately describes observations and has made predictions that we have been verified. Gaps in the fossil record do not disprove evolution.
