Alfred Wallace And Charles Darwin's Theory Of Natural Selection

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In the 1850s, Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolution by observing different species behaviors, characteristics and mutations in their natural habitat and documented their discoveries. This theory states that; “All living things evolve by adapting to their environment.”

On the supercontinent of Gondwana, the species roamed free, all individuals of the species were alike. When continental drift separated the landmass into two the species were divided between them. Each subgroup of individuals adapted so differently to each other due to their different environment that eventually they would become to subspecies of what they once were. Examples of this are everywhere including the marsupial lion’s who don’t possess retractable claws anymore, or the koalas that have developed fingerprints which are indistinguishable from humans and platypus have beaks but they are mammals.

The Wallace line runs through Indonesia and between Borneo and Sulawesi and continues through the Lombok Strait between Lombok and Bali. Which just happens to be where the Laurasian and Gondwana tectonic plates touch. The Wallace is an imaginary boundary which marks where the two sub-groups of species have been separated. Flora and fauna species from the Asian and …show more content…

Natural selection is the process where individuals of a species who carry favorable traits are more likely to reproduce and because of this, that particular becomes more predominant in the following generation. Over time, this process enables a species to adapt to its environment. A term that is often used to describe this is “Survival of the fittest”. This is why anteaters, armadillos, pangolin, echidna, African aardvark, aardwolf, numbats and sloth bears have all slowly developed strong foreclaws and sticky tongues to allow them easier access to small insects, even though none of these species are