Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury, England. Darwin was the British naturalist who became famous for his theories of evolution and natural selection.
Darwin was a respectable man with a dangerous theory the contradicted what people were born up to believe. For a while Darwin kept his theories and thoughts about how we all got here to himself.
In South America Darwin found fossils of extinct animals that were similar to modern species. On the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean he noticed many variations among plants and animals of the same general type as those in South America
Out of this study grew several related theories: one, evolution did occur; two, evolutionary change was gradual, requiring thousands to millions of years; three, the primary mechanism for evolution was a process called natural selection; and four, the millions of species alive today arose from a single original life form through a branching process called "specialization."
The modern theory of natural selection derives fro...
Charles Darwin, photographed by Julia Margaret Cam...
Charles Darwin as a young man, probably subsequent...People said that animal changes were the acts of God, not of evolution. Darwin thought that if mountains and rivers could move, then why couldn't animals change. He believed there was a tree of life every organism shoots off from its original parents and that everything is related in some way. Darwin believed that all forms of life on earth have evolved in some way. He also believed that adaptations to the environment could lead to a new species. I believe that all living things adapt to different environmental circumstances but, theses adaptation do not lead to new species.
Darwin's theory of evolutionary selection holds that variation within species occurs randomly and that the survival or extinction of each organism is determined by that organism's ability to adapt to its environment.
Even today's viruses adapt. The HIV evolves...