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500
Anaximander of Miletus 500 BC
Anaximander proposed that all organisms used to live underwater. -
Thomas Malthus
in Essay on the Principle of Population, Mathlus shares the observation that species produce more offspring than can survive, which contributed to the idea of natural selection -
Lamarckism
Lamarck published Philosophie Zoologique, where he proposed his theory now known as Lamarckism. Lamarckism states that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring (also known as heritability of acquired characteristics or soft inheritance). An example of this would be giraffes gaining long necks by streching their necks to reach the leaves on trees, and passing on their longer necks to their children. -
George Cuvier
in Essay on the Theory of the Earth, Cuvier proposes that new species were created after periodic catastrophic floods -
Lyell
Lyell's Principles of Geology presents the concept of the idea that the earth was shaped by the same processes still in operation today -
Wallace geography
Wallace writes and publishes an essay connecting geographical and geological distribution to evolution -
Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Darwin's On the Origin of Species is published -
Miescher
Meischer is the first to isolate DNA -
Wallace natural selection
Wallace links bird migration to natural selection -
Weisman
Weisman proposes that that hereditary information moves only from genes to body cells, never in reverse, a principle called the Weisman barrier -
Mendel
Mendel's reseach was rediscoved, allowing genetics to be brought into the theory of evolution
