Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist and geologist and he is well known for his contribution to the theories of evolution. Darwin proposed that that all life is descended from a common ancestor. While the belief of evolution from animal to man was old and even proposed by ancient Greek philosophers, Darwin proposed a process by which this evolution occurred. Charles Darwin studied specimens and questioned the origin of species for many years. Darwin noticed competition between organisms - competition for food, mates, shelter, etc. and saw that some organisms would outcompete others due to the presence of a favourable trait which gives …show more content…
While some birds may have small, weak beaks, others have strong, long beaks and are able to obtain food easier, outcompeting the small-beaked birds.
The Darwin-Wallace theory of natural selection can account for divergent and convergent evolution examples that have been recorded. Divergent evolution is when closely related species moved into different environments and evolved to become different, where convergent evolution is where two different species (who share a common ancestor further back) move into similar environments and evolve to become similar. Eg. an example of convergent evolution is the wolf and Tasmanian tiger.
Thomas Henry Huxley, often referred to as “Darwin’s Bulldog”, was an English biologist who advocated Darwin’s theory of evolution. His most well-known moment was the famous Huxley-Wilberforce debate in 1860, where he debated about evolution with an English bishop, Samuel Wilberforce (commonly called “Soapy Sam”). This debate took place at the Oxford University Museum. Thomas Huxley was interested in religion and science from a young age, and he won awards in the 1840s for physiology and organic chemistry. Huxley wished to explain functions of living tissue by physicochemical laws, and he discovered a new membrane, now called ‘Huxley’s layer’, in human hair. Given this background, we see that he is a very capable and intelligent man and made a noticeable impact on the theories of