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610 BCE
Anaximander of Miletus
He proposed that one type of animal (or human) could descend from another type of animal. This was one of early evolutionary theories. -
369 BCE
Ancient Chinese Theorists
Taoist philosophers came up with the idea that biological species were always changing and they did not stay the same. They thought that species had different attributes because of their different environments. -
George Buffon
He theorizes that constantly changing, and so are species. He does not think that this change can lead to new species. -
James Burnett, Lord Moboddo
He theorized that humans descended from primates. -
Erasmus Darwin
He that all warm-blooded animals descended and differentiated from a common ancestor. He thinks that natural selection could be a possible process in evolution, but does not publish any work on it. -
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
He came up with the first evolutionary theory that was published. He said that evolution happened through the inheritance of acquired traits. -
Alexander von Humboldt
He was one of the driving forces in ecology and he started to focus on the interactions between species and their environment. -
Alfred Wallace
He came up with the theory of evolution by natural selection. He co-published with Darwin on this subject. Even though Darwin gets most of the credit, Wallace played a big part. -
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
This book was written 23 years after his voyage on the HMS Beagle. He explained in depth the theory of evolution by natural selection that he and Alfred Wallace came up with. -
Ernst Haeckel
He applies embryology and evolution together and his work becomes a foundation for the field of evolutionary developmental biology. -
Mendel's Pea Plant Theory and Evolution
Mendel's pea plant theory is printed, which makes the background for natural selection theories. -
Conrad Hal Waddington
He proposed the idea of genetic assimilation as an evolutionary process in many books that he wrote. -
William Hamilton
He published papers on the inclusive fitness theory in which an organism's genetic success comes from cooperation and altruistic behavior (helping someone at your own expense). -
Allan Wilson and Marie-Claire King
They provide evidence that humans share about 99% of their DNa with chimpanzees, backing up James Burnett's theory. -
Mary Jane West-Eberhard
She publishes a book, Developmental Plasticity and Evolution, which tells about the role of environmentally generated variation in evolution and speciation.
