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Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution Essay

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Before the theory of evolution was a widespread theory in the world of science, Greek and Roman philosophers had their own theories about how life came to its present state and where it was going from there. One theory at the time was that all organisms are reflections of a “perfect” form and were coming closer to it all the time, although this was the less accepted theory even though it was closer to the truth proven hundreds of years after, while another was that all things were simply places on Earth in their present form, common to modern day Creationism. Even after this, Darwin was not the first to try explain evolution, he just provided convincing proof and published his ideas. The publishing of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was …show more content…

While on the Galápagos Islands, Darwin kept notebooks about all the species there, and he noticed the variety of tortoises on the island who were essential in explaining his theory of evolution. There are several species of tortoise present on the Galápagos Islands that are all very closely related, but slightly different. There are eleven presently surviving subspecies of Galápagos tortoises; furthermore, six of the eleven are found on different islands in the archipelago, and the other five are all found on a single island on five separate volcanoes with their own mini-ecosystems (PNAS). Although all of the species of Galápagos tortoise is different, they each have small differences that can include maximum adult size, shell shape, and the length of the neck and limbs. The tortoises of the islands are most closely related to the Chaco tortoises along the western coast of South America, and they most likely came to the Galápagos by “rafting” across the water (PNAS). Similar to the tortoises, Darwin observed that the Finches on the islands also had changed to match the environment. Spread among the islands were fourteen subspecies of finch whose

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