-
James Ussher, 4004 B.C
A 17th century Anglican archbishop of Armagh in Northern Ireland. He fixed the date of creation at October 23, 4004 B.C.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 recentl -
John Ray
The concept of genus and species was developed in the late 1600's by John Ray who was an English naturalist and ordained minister. -
Period: to
Theories Of Revolution
-
Carolus Linnaeus
believed that he was just revealing the unchanging order of life created by God. The goal was to change in nature would not have made sense to him. Late in his life, however, he was troubled by the fact that plant hybrids could be made by cross pollination. These were varieties that had not existed before. Linnaeus stopped short of concluding that these plants had evolved. Despite his limiting research bias, Linnaeus was a first class scientist. His most important contribution -
Erasmus Darwin
Grandfather of Charles Darwin. Erasmus 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. -
Comte de Buffon
The French mathematician and naturalist, George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon said that living things do change through time. He also believed that the earth must be much older than 6000 years. In 1774, in fact, he thinks that the earth must be at least 75,000 years old. He also thought that humans and apes are related. -
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Lamarck was the first evolutionist who confidently and very publicly stated his ideas about the processes leading to biological change. Lamarck believed that evolution was mostly due to the inheritance of acquired characteristics as creatures adapted to their environments. Evolution occurs when an organism uses any body part in a way that's altered during it's lifetime. For example he thought that giraffes evolved their long necks by each generation stretching further to get leaves in trees. -
George Cuvier
George Cuvierwas the first scientist to document extinctions of ancient animals and was a well internationally respected expert on dinosaurs. He established the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils. He is well known for establishing extinction as a fact, being the most influential proponent of catastrophism in geology -
Charles Lyell
-
-
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. He was best knowm for his co-discovery of natural selection and his work on biogeography and for independently proposing a theory of evolution because of natural selection that prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own theory. -
