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Evolution

  • Bishop Ussher

    Bishop Ussher

    He thought that the creation of Earth took place at 4004 B.c.
  • Sponatneous Generation

    Sponatneous Generation

    Francesco Redi showed why fly maggots crop up putrified meat. They are not the result of "spontaneous generation", but rather born from tiny eggs. In this time, new instruments of magnification are developed.
  • Linnaeus's Systema Naturae

    Linnaeus's Systema Naturae

    Carl Von Linnaeus attempted to classify all life on Earth. His system divides lifes into: kingdoms, classes, genera and species. He influenced Charles Darwin.
  • Comte de Buffon

    Comte de Buffon

    In his Natural History, he sepcualted that living creatures evolve according to natural laws. He suggested that humans and apes are related and that all life descends from a single ancestor.
  • Natural Theology

    Natural Theology

    William Paley's Natural Theology holded that not only God's existence but also his attributes are manifest in the intricate forms of nature. Charles Darwin studied Paley's Natural Theology as a student.
  • Lamarck

    Lamarck

    Naturalist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck proposed that living things evolve to become more complex through time.
  • Cuvier

    Cuvier

    George Cuvier attempted to explain fossils of extincted creatures. He sayed that catastrophes wiped out some organisms.
  • Lyell

    Lyell

    Charles Lyell argued that slow-moving, gradual processes explain Erath's geology. He was a mentor of Darwin. Darwin applyed Lyell's notion of gradual change to his own thoey.
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    Beagle Voyage

    At the end of the 2-year trip, Darwin committed his life to science, discovering nature's law. From the voyage he came back with fossils that become the basis of his thory.
  • Neanderthal

    Neanderthal

    The founding of a fossil that looked like a skull, was similar to a modern human. Yet it was distinclty different. Neanderthal fossils later fueled the debate over human evolution.
  • Wallas

    Wallas

    Alfred Russel Wallace writed Darwin seeking for advice. Wallace had a theory of how species might evolve. He strucked upon the thoey of natural selection that Darqin was researching.
  • Origin of Species

    Origin of Species

    Darwin's work was the most influencial of all. His books propoused coherent evidence and natural, artificial selection. He didn't deny God.
  • Ape Debate

    Ape Debate

    Critics attacked Darwin's thoery for bestializing humankind. Thomas Henry Huxley tried to rally the defense.
  • Evolution Accepted

    Evolution Accepted

    A few years after On the Origin of Species was published, evolution was mainstream science. However Darwin's thoery on natural selection was still doubted.
  • Descent of Man

    Descent of Man

    His new book also emphasized on the importance of sexual selection in driving the evolution of life.
  • Horse Fossils

    Horse Fossils

    Thomas Huxley travelled to the USA. He and Charles Marsh putted together the story of evolution of the modern horse from its ancestor.
  • Darwin's Burial

    Darwin's Burial

    He died.
  • Radioactivity

    Radioactivity

    The dicovery of radioactivity by Antoine Henri Becquerel leaded to the stunning calculations of Earth's age.
  • Piltdown Man

    Piltdown Man

    The fossil skull called Piltdown Man was the missing link between humans and primates.
  • Anti-Evolution Bills

    Anti-Evolution Bills

    Six states considered anti-evolution proposals. Two measures passed. It was improper to learn about Darwinism.
  • Man Like Ape

    Man Like Ape

    Raymond Dart announced that a prehistoric "man-like ape" had been found in a limestone quarry. He speculated that humans evolved through fierce hunting.
  • Textbooks Censored

    Textbooks Censored

    Fearing loss of sales on the South and West, publishers removed refernces to evolutionfrom biology textbooks.
  • Tennessee Law

    Tennessee Law

    The Tennessee legislature passed a bill that made it a misdemeanour for public school teachers to teach human evolution.
  • Neo Darwinism

    Neo Darwinism

    The science of genetics had offered profound new insights into evolution. Neo-Darwinsim was an updated theory of evolution combining modern genetics with Darwin's 19th centry theory.
  • Evolution Shunned

    Evolution Shunned

    With textbooks censored and many anti-evolutionsts ruling, the teaching of evolution hitted a low point.
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    Supreme Court

    The Supreme Court ruled that neither a state nor the federal government could "pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another."
  • Pope Pius XII

    Pope Pius XII

    Pope Pius XII considered evolution as a serious hypothesis. He leaded the way for Catholics to accept even human evolution by emphazising a distinction bwtween body and soul.
  • Origins Of Life

    Origins Of Life

    Stanley Miller produced amino acids. This indicated that the first life on Earth may have arisen through natural process.
  • DNA

    DNA

    People already knew that genes determine traits. But on 1953 the double-helix structure of DNA was discovered. It may have been the most important 20th-century biology.
  • Human and Apes

    Human and Apes

    Vincent Sariach and Allen Wilson founded evidence that humans are closely related to African apes. They estimated that we share 98% of the genes.
  • Supreme Court on Evolution

    Supreme Court on Evolution

    Lawsuit began challenging anti-evolutionist legislations in the South. The state teachers' organization launched Epperson v. Arkansas. The case reached the Supreme Court. This effectively puts an end to laws barring the teaching of evolution in public schools.
  • DNA Codes

    DNA Codes

    Their new technollogy made DNA sequencing relatively easy and inexpensive, which leaded to a lot of research. Scientists could see how DNA has changed through time as organisms evolve.
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    Textbook Disclaimer

    The school board passed a requirment that whenever evolution was taught, students must be informed that the material is "not intended to influence or dissuade the Biblical version of creation".
  • Pop John Paul II

    Pop John Paul II

    By distinguishing between body and spirit, he opened the door for Catholic accpetance of evolution.
  • Science Standards

    Science Standards

    19 US states did a weak-to-reprehensible job of handling evolution in their science standards. Some even avoided topics related to evolution.
  • Human Genome

    Human Genome

    With the first draft of the sequence of the human genome complete, scientists noticed that we have genes in common with fruit flies and yeast. This new tool helped for the understanding of how organims have evolved over billions of years.