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James Ussher
This belief that the earth and life on it are only about 6000 years old fit neatly with the then prevalent theory of the "Great Chain of Being." This held that God created an infinite and continuous series of life forms, each one grading into the next, from simplest to most complex, and that all organisms, including humans, were created in their present form relatively recently and that they have remained unchanged since then. -
Carolus Linnaeus
He believed that new species within genera came into being through hybridization, but only under the controlling hand of god. He also thought there was a divine order to all organisms and developed his classification system to reveal this order. -
Comte de Buffon
Comte de Buffon thought that all organisms were created by god and arranged in a hierarchy with mankind at the top of creation. Buffon did believe in evolution, but thought that the environment was the direct agent of change, rather than competition between species. -
Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis believed that evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with natural laws.He thought that speciation took place by chance events in nature, rather than by spontaneous generation as was believed at the time. -
Erasmus Darwin
He believed that evolution has occurred in living things, including humans, but he only had rather fuzzy ideas about what might be responsible for this change. In this latter work, he also suggested that the earth and life on it must have been evolving for "millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind." -
Thomas Mathus
Thomas Malthus's theory was that populations can produce many more offspring than can possibly survive on the limited resources generally available. According to Malthus, poverty and disease were natural outcomes that resulted from overpopulation. Malthus also believed that divine forces were ultimately responsible for such outcomes, which, though natural, were designed by God -
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Lamarck believed that microscopic organisms appear spontaneously from inanimate materials and then evolve, gradually and progressively into more complex forms through a constant striving for perfection. The ultimate product of this goal-oriented evolution was thought by Lamarck to be humans. -
Charles Lyell
He believed that there primarily have been slower, progressive changes. In his three volume Principles of Geology. Lyell documented the fact that the earth must be very old and that it has been subject to the same sort of natural processes in the past that operate today in shaping the land. These forces include erosion, earthquakes, glacial movements, volcanoes, and even the decomposition of plants and animals. -
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin's theory of evolution was that all life has descended from ancestors. This means that more complex creatures had developed from more simple ancestor's, naturally, overtime. This means the more aided creatures in survival survive to then pass on their better characteristics to the next generation. This then means that the human race and over life on the planet has improved over time. -
Russell Wallace
Wallace’s intelligent evolution limits the power of natural selection to effect biological change. It suggests that in those areas of the biological world beyond the scope of natural selection’s operations, some purposive intelligence must be called upon to explain their existence. -
Lynn Margulis
Margulis proposed that some of the organelles of eukaryotic cells were actually at one time their own prokaryotic cells that were engulfed by a bigger prokaryotic cell in a mutualistic relationship. -
Marlene Zuk
Her research centers on sexual selection and the effects of parasites on mate choice and the evolution of secondary sex characters. I am also interested in the influence of parasites on host ecology and behavior.
