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Bishop Ussher
He thought that the creation of Earth took place at 4004 B.c. -
Sponatneous Generation
Francesco Redi showed why fly maggots crop up putrified meat. They are not the result of "spontaneous generation", but rather born from tiny eggs. In this time, new instruments of magnification are developed. -
Linnaeus's Systema Naturae
Carl Von Linnaeus attempted to classify all life on Earth. His system divides lifes into: kingdoms, classes, genera and species. He influenced Charles Darwin. -
Comte de Buffon
In his Natural History, he sepcualted that living creatures evolve according to natural laws. He suggested that humans and apes are related and that all life descends from a single ancestor. -
Natural Theology
William Paley's Natural Theology holded that not only God's existence but also his attributes are manifest in the intricate forms of nature. Charles Darwin studied Paley's Natural Theology as a student. -
Lamarck
Naturalist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck proposed that living things evolve to become more complex through time. -
Cuvier
George Cuvier attempted to explain fossils of extincted creatures. He sayed that catastrophes wiped out some organisms. -
Lyell
Charles Lyell argued that slow-moving, gradual processes explain Erath's geology. He was a mentor of Darwin. Darwin applyed Lyell's notion of gradual change to his own thoey. -
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Beagle Voyage
At the end of the 2-year trip, Darwin committed his life to science, discovering nature's law. From the voyage he came back with fossils that become the basis of his thory. -
Neanderthal
The founding of a fossil that looked like a skull, was similar to a modern human. Yet it was distinclty different. Neanderthal fossils later fueled the debate over human evolution. -
Wallas
Alfred Russel Wallace writed Darwin seeking for advice. Wallace had a theory of how species might evolve. He strucked upon the thoey of natural selection that Darqin was researching. -
Origin of Species
Darwin's work was the most influencial of all. His books propoused coherent evidence and natural, artificial selection. He didn't deny God. -
Ape Debate
Critics attacked Darwin's thoery for bestializing humankind. Thomas Henry Huxley tried to rally the defense. -
Evolution Accepted
A few years after On the Origin of Species was published, evolution was mainstream science. However Darwin's thoery on natural selection was still doubted. -
Descent of Man
His new book also emphasized on the importance of sexual selection in driving the evolution of life. -
Horse Fossils
Thomas Huxley travelled to the USA. He and Charles Marsh putted together the story of evolution of the modern horse from its ancestor. -
Darwin's Burial
He died. -
Radioactivity
The dicovery of radioactivity by Antoine Henri Becquerel leaded to the stunning calculations of Earth's age. -
Piltdown Man
The fossil skull called Piltdown Man was the missing link between humans and primates. -
Anti-Evolution Bills
Six states considered anti-evolution proposals. Two measures passed. It was improper to learn about Darwinism. -
Man Like Ape
Raymond Dart announced that a prehistoric "man-like ape" had been found in a limestone quarry. He speculated that humans evolved through fierce hunting. -
Textbooks Censored
Fearing loss of sales on the South and West, publishers removed refernces to evolutionfrom biology textbooks. -
Tennessee Law
The Tennessee legislature passed a bill that made it a misdemeanour for public school teachers to teach human evolution. -
Neo Darwinism
The science of genetics had offered profound new insights into evolution. Neo-Darwinsim was an updated theory of evolution combining modern genetics with Darwin's 19th centry theory. -
Evolution Shunned
With textbooks censored and many anti-evolutionsts ruling, the teaching of evolution hitted a low point. -
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Supreme Court
The Supreme Court ruled that neither a state nor the federal government could "pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another." -
Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XII considered evolution as a serious hypothesis. He leaded the way for Catholics to accept even human evolution by emphazising a distinction bwtween body and soul. -
Origins Of Life
Stanley Miller produced amino acids. This indicated that the first life on Earth may have arisen through natural process. -
DNA
People already knew that genes determine traits. But on 1953 the double-helix structure of DNA was discovered. It may have been the most important 20th-century biology. -
Human and Apes
Vincent Sariach and Allen Wilson founded evidence that humans are closely related to African apes. They estimated that we share 98% of the genes. -
Supreme Court on Evolution
Lawsuit began challenging anti-evolutionist legislations in the South. The state teachers' organization launched Epperson v. Arkansas. The case reached the Supreme Court. This effectively puts an end to laws barring the teaching of evolution in public schools. -
DNA Codes
Their new technollogy made DNA sequencing relatively easy and inexpensive, which leaded to a lot of research. Scientists could see how DNA has changed through time as organisms evolve. -
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Textbook Disclaimer
The school board passed a requirment that whenever evolution was taught, students must be informed that the material is "not intended to influence or dissuade the Biblical version of creation". -
Pop John Paul II
By distinguishing between body and spirit, he opened the door for Catholic accpetance of evolution. -
Science Standards
19 US states did a weak-to-reprehensible job of handling evolution in their science standards. Some even avoided topics related to evolution. -
Human Genome
With the first draft of the sequence of the human genome complete, scientists noticed that we have genes in common with fruit flies and yeast. This new tool helped for the understanding of how organims have evolved over billions of years.
