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Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish scientist, published Systema Naturae, which includes the common modern naming system of binomial nomenclature, or the naming of species with two names (i.e. Homo sapiens, for humans).
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Georges Cuvier, a highly respected French scientist, was born, He is known as the father of Paleontology. Also well known for his denial of any sort of evolutionary theory, by his study of the fossil record.
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Charles Darwin, then very young and still a student, joins the voyage of the HMS Beagle as a naturalist.
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Darwin noted that the unique creatures were similar from island to island, but perfectly adapted to their environments which led him to ponder the origin of the islands' inhabitants.
In the Galapagos he found a remarkable population of plants, birds and reptiles that had developed in isolation from the mainland, but often differed on almost identical islands next door to one another, and whose characteristics he could only explain by a gradual transformation of the various species. -
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Alfred Russel Wallace publishes a paper coming to some of the same conclusions as Darwin, including natural selection. Darwin's friends present both Wallace's and Darwin's theories at the Linnean Society.
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Mendel's works with pea plants published, setting the background for the basis of natural selection.
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August Weismann publishes findings detailing how important DNA is to heredity, along with germ cell theory - the theory that inheritance only takes place by means of germ cells such as egg and sperm, and that other cells do not pass on their genes.
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Walter Sutton proposed that chromosomes were the basis for Mendelian inheritance of characteristics.
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DNA is proven to be the genetic material by which inheritance passes from one generation to the next, and thus is the blueprint for evolution.
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Francis Crick and James Watson discover the double-helix structure of DNA, unlocking heredity's "memory storage" mechanism. This allowed people to start studying the molecular biology of evolution.
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Sources: -Campbell, Neil A., and Jane B. Reece. Biology. San Francisco: Benjamin Cummings, 2002. Print. -"Understanding Evolution." Understanding Evolution. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2013. -PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2013. -"Evolution Theory Timeline." Evolution Theory Timeline. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2013. -"Evolution - New Scientist." Evolution - New Scientist. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2013.
