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Charles Darwin lived to be 73 years old.
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During the voyage, which lasted from 27 December 1831 to 2 October 1836, Darwin spent most of his time (around 1200 days) on land studying plants, animals, fossils and geological formations. He made several important finds during the voyage including that of gigantic fossils of extinct mammals, then known only from a very few specimens. Darwin’s observations and work during the voyage established him as an eminent geologist.
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In September 1838, Darwin realized that population explosions would lead to a struggle for resources and that the ensuing competition would eliminate the unfit. He applied the idea to nature and called his modified Malthusian mechanism “natural selection”, a process by which species select beneficial traits in their struggle for existence.
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On 24 November 1859, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection was published. In it Darwin theorized how populations evolve over the course of generations through natural selection and presented evidence he had gathered during the years that indicated diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution.
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In 1871, Darwin’s book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex was published. The book extended the theory of natural selection to human evolution and suggested that humans and apes share a common ancestor. It also introduced the concept of sexual selection to explain conspicuous physical traits (such as pronounced coloration, increased size, or striking adornments) in animals.
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