Earth’s surface is the arena for most life and all human activity, yet what lies beneath our feet is as mysterious as it is familiar. Earth scientists or not, we recognize hills, mountains, glaciers, deserts, rivers, wetlands, and shorelines. If a good deal of rain falls, floods may occur; if a storm strikes the coast, the beach may erode; if we are careless with our soil, we may damage or even lose it.
From geologists, Darwin learned that Earth was formed very slowly over a long period of time. Its surface also changed slowly over time through natural processes like sedimentation and erosion. Darwin reasoned that populations of organisms changed slowly as their environment slowly changed.
In the process of natural selection, individuals in a population who are well-adapted to a particular set of environmental conditions have an advantage over those who are not so
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Charles Darwin simply brought something new to the old philosophy a plausible mechanism called natural selection. Natural selection acts to preserve a accumulate minor advantageous genetic mutations. Suppose the member of a species developed a functional advantage. Its offspring would inherit that advantage and pass it onto their offspring. The inferior disadvantaged members of the same species. Natural selection is the preservation of a functional advantage that enables a species to compete better in the wild. Natural selection is the naturalistic equivalent to domestic breeding. Over the centuries human breeders have produced dramatic changes in domestic animal populations by selecting individual to breed. Breeders eliminate undesirable traits gradually over time. Similarity natural selection eliminates inferior species gradually over