READ: Evidence for Evolution
4. Introduction
Introduction
Though the idea of evolution had been proposed prior to Charles Darwin, most people think of Darwin’s name when they think of evolution. Unlike others before him who based their ideas on speculation, opinions, myths, or folklore, Darwin’s theories were based on a tremendous amount of scientific evidence.
In 1859, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace first presented several forms of evidence of evolution. Their evidence included:
- fossils of extinct species from different eras
- similarities between the embryos of different species
- physical traits of different species
- the behavior of different species
- the distributions of different plant and animal species around the world.
Darwin and other 19th century scientists came to the conclusions they did without knowing anything about molecular biology. Today, even more evidence of evolution by natural selection is coming from molecular biology and genetics. Genetics is also helping explain the mechanisms of how evolution occurs.
CK-12 Foundation, Biology. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/