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George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon
- a French naturalist
- rejected that organisms arose separately
- proposed that species shared ancestors based on evidence of past life on Earth
- also rejected that Earth was only 6,000 years old and thought it was much older (agreed with Charles Lyell
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Erasmus Darwin
- Charles Darwin's grandfather and was a doctor and poet
- proposed that all living things were descended from a common ancestor
- also proposed that more-complex forms of life arose from less-complex forms
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Carolus Linnaeus
- a botanist developed a classification system for all types of organisms
- the classification system was used to group organisms by their similarities. it reflects evolutionary relationships and is still used today
- abandoned the common belief that organisms were fixed and did not change
- proposed that some might have arisen through hybridization
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George Cuvier
- French zoologist
- didn't think species could change or become extinct
- observed stratum and held/found fossils
- theory of catastrophism: states that natural disasters such as floods and volcanic eruptions happened often during Earth's long history which shaped landforms and caused species to become extinct in the process
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James Hutton
- Scottish geologist
- proposed gradualism: changes observed in landforms from slow changes over a long period of time
- laying down of soil pr the creation of canyons by river cutting through the rock was not the result of large-scale events
- resulted from slow processes that happened in the past
- the term gradualism is often used to mean the gradual change of a species through evolution
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Thomas Malthus
- published a book called "An Essay on the Principle of Population" -came up with the theory that through preventative checks and positive checks, the population would be controlled to balance the food supply with the population level -noticed humans had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living
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Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
- proposed all organisms evolved toward complexity; didn't think species went extinct/ instead evolved into other organisms
- changes in environment caused organism's behavior to change, leading to greater use/ disuse of structure (inheritance of acquired characteristics)
- knew 2 key things to evolutionary theory: new physical forms/ traits have emerged due to environmental changes; these traits appeared in subsequent generations
- Neo-Lamarckism: IOAC; only occurs through epigenetics
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Charles Lyell
- English Geologist
- published Principles of Geology
- expanded Hutton's theory of gradualism into the theory of uniformitarianism: states that the geologic processes that shape Earth are uniform through time
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Ernest Haeckel
- proposed the idea that all multicellular animals derived from a theoretical two-layered animal called the Gastraea
- was the first to divide the animal kingdom into unicellular and multicellular animals
- best known for inventing many terms that biologists use today such as phylum, phylogeny, and ecology
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Charles Darwin
- observed differences in appearance among island species
- concluded that species may be able to adapt to their surroundings
- also observed fossil and geologic evidence supporting an ancient Earth
- found lots of fossils which gave him evidence that species changed over time
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Alfred Russel Wallace
- best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection
- his work was jointly published along Charle's Darwins in 1858
- came to understand how species evolved- they changed because the fittest individuals survived and reproduced, passing their advantageous characteristics onto their offspring
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E.J. Steele
- hypothesized the RNA/ RT-based mechanism of somatic hypermutation
- this proved the first mechanism to explain neo-Lamarckism
- he also combined Darwin and Lamarck's works in a way to create meta-Lamarckism