Was Darwin Wrong?
{draw:g} {draw:g} {draw:g} Table of Contents Introduction Who was Charles Darwin? Charles Darwin was born in 1809 in Shrewsbury, England. Originally, Darwin did not believe in the idea of evolution and trained to be a priest before studying geology and biology. In 1831, when Darwin was 22, he set sail around the world on HMS Beagle, a naval survey ship. The trip lasted for 5 years during which time the ship stopped at many places including the Galápagos Islands, just off the west coast of South America. Darwin examined animals and plants from everywhere he visited, taking specimens back to England and recording his observations in a diary. However he was most intrigued by the finches on the Galápagos Islands... What was Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection? {draw:frame} Darwin noticed that there were wide variations in the finches’ size, beaks and claws. He decided the beaks were designed for eating different things and concluded that the finches must have evolved from just one species which had changed over time. They had adapted to their surroundings. In order to begin to understand natural selection, it is important recognise how the many hundreds of thousands of living organisms are classified. The diagram on the next page shows an example of how we determine a species. {draw:frame} {draw:rect} A species can be defined as a group of organisms so similar they can breed together to form fertile offspring. For example, a horse and a donkey can breed to produce a mule but the mule, is infertile therefore showing a horse and a donkey are of different species. Within a species there are still differences and this variation is very important in evolution because without them, natural selection could not occur. Variation can be either genetic, environmental or a combination of both. For example: Variation caused by genes includes eye colour , gender Variation caused by the environment includes accent Variation caused
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