1. 1 Apply Concepts How would Hutton and Lyell explain the formation of the Grand Canyon 2 Review What is an acquired characteristic and what role did Lamarck think they played in evolution 3 Review What is artificial selection Infer Could artificial selection occur without inherited variation- explain 4 Draw conclusions How did Malthus influence Darwin Writing Imagine you are Malthus in the year Write a newspaper article that explains your ideas about the impact of a growing population on society and the environment

2. Ch 16 Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
16.2 Ideas that shaped Darwin’s Theory

3. Hutton and Geological Change
Recognized the connections between geological processes and geological features
Some rocks form very slowly, as sediments build up and are squeezed into layers
Mountains, in turn, can be worn down by rain, wind, heat, and cold
Earth is much older than a few thousand years.

4. Lyell’s Principles of Geology
Uniformitarianism
Idea that the geological processes today are the same ones that shaped Earth millions of years ago
Lyell argued that Earth was much, much older than a few thousand years.

5. An Ancient, Changing Earth
Hutton and Lyell concluded that Earth is extremely old and that the processes that changed Earth in the past are the same processes that operate in the present.

6. Helped Darwin
Witnessed a earthquake that lifted a stretch of shoreline 3 meters out of the sea with mussels and other sea animals clinging to it
Darwin observed fossils of marine animals in mountains thousands of feet above sea level.

7. Lamarck’s Evolutionary Hypotheses
Organisms could change during their lifetimes by selectively using or not using various parts of their bodies
Individuals could pass these acquired traits on to their offspring.

8. Black-necked stilt could have acquired long legs because it began to wade in deeper water looking for food. As the bird tried to stay above the water’s surface, its legs would grow a little longer
It acquired longer legs.

9. Darwin wasn’t the first to suggest species could change over time
His grandfather Erasmus
Patrick Mathew came up with ideas
of Natural Selection in 1831
Published in “Naval Timber and Arboriculture”
“Anyhow one may be excused in not having discovered the fact in a work on ‘Naval Timber’”
Darwin.

10. Evaluating Lamarck’s Hypotheses
We know that Lamarck’s hypotheses were incorrect in several ways
Organisms don’t “strive” to get better
Traits acquired by individuals during their lifetime cannot be passed on to offspring
Or can they
Bacteria and recombinant DNA.

11. Population Growth Malthus wrote on human overpopulation
The rate of population increase was greater than the rate of food increase
Eventually there will be more humans than the amount of room and food needed to support everyone.

12. Helped Darwin
Darwin applied this idea to his own data- most species have a high reproductive potential (maple trees and helicopters, fish laying thousands or millions of eggs) but not all individuals reproduce let alone survive.

13. When Darwin realized that most organisms don’t survive and reproduce, he wondered which individuals survive…and why?

14. Artificial Selection
Nature provides the variations, and humans select those they want or find useful
Plant and animal breeders
Over time this would produce trees with even bigger fruit and cows that gave even more milk.

15. Helped Darwin
Darwin put artificial selection to the test by raising and breeding plants and fancy pigeon varieties.

16. Darwin had no idea how heredity worked or what caused heritable variation
He did know that variation occurs in wild species
He recognized that natural variation provided the raw material for evolution.