Charles Darwin's Discovery Of Natural Selection

At the age of 22, Charles Darwin set out on a voyage around the coast of South America for twenty-nine months. During this voyage, Darwin explored the Galapagos islands, where he kept a detailed journal of the multiple species of plants and animals that was living there. The most known study of his is the theory of natural selection, which was developed by his study of the multitude of species of finches, who lived in the Galapagos. From Darwin’s study he noticed that these finches had some features in common, but for the most part had different parts that helped them accommodate to their habitat. Darwin noticed that this theory applied to all species even humans. Darwin’s discovery of natural selection changed people’s view of science, opened a gateway for future scientist to build off of his idea, and because of data collected by current scientist, people know that natural selection still occurs in humans and other different species.

Before Darwin’s discovery of Natural Selection, Scientist like Lamarck had created their own hypotheses about evolution. “His famous giraffe example illustrates the Lamarckian view: Individual giraffes acquire longer necks as a result of for leaves high on trees, then pass the modified characteristics to their offsprings.”( McElroy, Fairbanks, & Ness, 2014, p.2) This quote shows that Lamarck’s view on evolution was somewhat simpler compared to Darwin’s theory of natural selection. In Lamarck’s theory, individuals obtained favorable traits that were needed and then passed them on to their offspring, Darwin’s theory, however, showed that a certain species will adapt over generations to achieve their favorable traits. Eventually Lamarck’s ideas became outdated and overlooked by Darwin’s