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John Ray
Referred to as the father of natural history in Britain John Ray was an English naturalist who developed a classification system for plants and animals based on anatomy and physiology. Ray published organized works on plants and animals in which he brought order over the lawless load of names used by naturalists at the time. His plant classification system was based on overall morphology and was the first to divide flowering plants into dicots and monocots which produced a more natural system. -
Carl Linnaeus
Linnaeus, the swedish naturalist and the father of taxonomy was mainly known for his system for naming, ranking, and classifying organisms which is still widely used.Like Ray, Linnaeus searched for a "natural system" of classification that would reflect divine order of creation. Unlike Ray, his plant classification was based on floral reproductive organs, resulting in unnatural groupings.He gave each species two names, genus and specific name. -
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Buffon was a French naturalist and among the first people to challenge the idea of life forms being unchangeable. His 44-volume histoire naturelle discussed everything known of the natural world in which he noted similarities between humans and apes. He hypothesized that they had common ancestors suggesting species changed over time. In his Les Epoques de la Nature he suggests that Earth is over 6000 years old and discuses concepts like Charles Lyell's "uniformitarianism" defined 40 years later. -
James Hutton
Hutton was a scientist and the author of Theory of the Earth. He proposed that erosion, deposition and other geological processes did not change over time. He originated the theory of uniformitarianism, the theory that geological processes operated at the same rates in the past as they do today. His theories sparked a scientific debate by suggesting Earth was much older than thought. -
Erasmus Darwin
Charles Darwin's grandfather, who was a "physician, a well known poet, philosopher, botanist, and naturalist". He formulated one of the first formal theories on evolution in Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life. He didn't discuss natural selections but his grandson elaborated on his thought 60 years later such as the idea that "life evolved from a single common ancestor, forming "one living filament". He attempted the idea of evolution in species and some of his ideas are close to Lamarck's -
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
The french naturalist defined his idea of changing species overtime in his book Philosophie zoologique by comparing fossils to present species. He hypothesized organisms would slowly become better and adapt to their environments which went with the idea that body parts mainly used would become larger/stronger. He created the idea that characteristics acquired during an organisms lifetime can be passed onto offspring,"inheritance of acquired characteristics",giraffe necks were used for describing -
Thomas Malthus
Malthus was an economist who wrote an essay called Essay on the Principles of population in 1798.This essay was credited for giving Wallace and Darwin a key idea on how populations changed which lead to their natural selection theory. Malthus thought that populations maybe produced more offspring than their environment could support them in terms of the food chain being uneven according to him this would lead to starvation and diseases for eventually all species. -
Georges Cuvier
Cuvier was a French naturalist who founded paleontology, the study of ancient life using fossils. He discovered each layer of rock is characterized by a unique group of fossil species and the deeper the layer the more different the species from today. He proved species appeared and disappeared over the course of time leading to the discovery of species extinction. He posed Earth had many destructive natural events known as revolutions which killed numerous species known as catastrophism. -
Charles Lyell
Lyell was the scottish geologist who rejected catastrophism and instead proposed theory of uniformitarianism based on Hutton's theory. His reason was that if geological changes are slow and continuous as opposed to catastrophic then Earth could be over 6000 years old, "He theorized that slow subtle processes could happen over a long period of time and could result in subtle changes" (textbook 327). -
Mary Anninig
"the greatest fossilist the world ever knew" was Mary Anning, a british fossil collector from a young age. Helping to discover the first specimen of Ichthyosaurus at about 11 years old and credited with the first discovery of ichthyosaur fossils Anning made amny great discoveries.The most important find was her discovery of thefirst plesiosaur. Curvier examined her drawings of plesiosaur for authenticity and his acknowledgement led to her respected name in the male dominated scientific world. -
Charles Darwin
known for his discovery of birds having different beaks based on geographical location Darwin was an English explorer. He travelled to the coast of South America which gave him the opportunity to explore. He didn't always understand the importance of his observations but they became important to his theory of evolution by natural selection. -
Alfred Russel Wallace
According to Darwin and Wallace individuals with traits that benefitted them in terms of survival in their local environment were most likely to pass down those traits to offspring. This idea was introduced as survival of the fittest in terms that those organism won the struggle for survival and were the fittest for their particular environment allowing them to pass on their genes unlike other organisms which did not survive resulting in their genes not being able to be passed down. -
Charles Darwin
The Origin of Species was a book written by Darwin publishing his theory of survival of the fittest which he called natural selection. He proposed that life descended form an unknown organism and as these descendents spread over habitats they developed adaptations which aided them in their environment. Darwin didn't use the word evolution in his original book as it implies progress, instead he used descent with modification, the theory that natural selection doesn't show progress, just change -
Philip J Currie
Dr. Phil Currie is a Canadian paleontologist mainly focused on dinosaur problems with growth and variation, the anatomy and relationships of carnivorous dinosaurs, and the origin of birds. He also helped confirm the theory that birds are descended from dinosaurs by helping to describe the Protarchaeopteryx and Caudipteryx, the first dinosaur specimens from the lagerstätten of the Liaoning province in China that clearly showed the impression of feathers. -
