Up until the 19th century humans believed that all of life was created by god. The theory of natural selection came in 1859 which would change the previous belief of how life was created for good! I will explain the theory of natural selection more in depth with examples later in this brief paper. This theory was created by the famous English naturalist, Charles Darwin. Darwin’s journey to discovery the theory of natural selection was no small feat. He traveled over the course of 20 years and conducted 100s of experiments. From 1831 to 1836 Darwin set sail on a boat and traveled to several different continents where he gathered a variety of life specimens, and fossils. This is when he started to put together that there were small differences in animals of the same species based on their environments. For example, he noticed this with tortoises which had noticeable differences between them depending on which island they were living on. On the islands that were more humid in which vegetation was plentiful, the tortoise had a short neck and a dome shaped shell. However, on the island with a drier environment where vegetation was not plentiful, those tortoises had a saddle like shell with a longer neck allowing them to reach higher to get food. Charles Darwin even bred his own pigeons to try to find subtle differences within the same type of animal. His flock of birds grew to be quite large. It was documented that at one point Darwin owned 90 birds. He spent so much time observing various animals, dissecting orchids (a worldwide plant with complex flowers) and studying barnacles (sticky little crustaceans related to crabs, lobsters, and shrimps). There is a funny story that reported Darwin spent so much time studying barnacles that his son thought it was what all dads did. Darwin’s son supposedly asked a friend of his “Where does your dad do his barnacles?” With the help from British intellectual, Thomas Robert Malthus, Darwin got some key information to help him draw more conclusions toward his theory of natural selection. Malthus’ research showed that populations of a species will continue to grow until they inevitably run out of their food source due to overpopulation. This leads to a fight for survival. War, famines, and/or disease arise and reverse the issue of overpopulation. This fight for survival would make you think the physically strongest would survive but that’s not really the case. The ones who are able to adapt the best to their environment in which they live have the best chance. These small, inherited changes over time increase the individual's ability to survive, fight, and reproduce! Therefore, evolution was produced by natural selection. Since Darwin’s 20 years of research, scientific advances have proven his theory to be true. Life as we know it is continuing to evolve and adapt to new environmental changes as they arise. I think this is so neat that we are able to reassess and rise above changes in our environment thanks to evolution. It’s like a superpower and we wouldn’t have made it this long without it!
Challenge: If Darwin is correct, could Miller-Urey be incorrect?
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Nick Lane
Just me, myself and I, exploring the universe of unknownment. I have a heart of love and an interest of lorem ipsum and mauris neque quam blog. I want to share my world with you. Praesent tincidunt sed tellus ut rutrum. Sed vitae justo condimentum, porta lectus vitae, ultricies congue gravida diam non fringilla. Praesent tincidunt sed tellus ut rutrum. Sed vitae justo condimentum, porta lectus vitae, ultricies congue gravida diam non fringilla.