Evolutionary Beginning

Charles Darwin made great evolutionary discoveries with his work on the theory of Natural Selection which was shown in his publication of “Origin of Species”, in 1859. Though, he is not the sole contributor to this theory. While in the seminary, Darwin met and worked with many naturalists. It is thought that this work with them grew his understanding and theory of Natural Selection.  Thomas Robert Malthus wrote a book about how food production is a limiting resource for the increasing human population. Darwin applied this concept to nature and that anything could constitute as a limiting resource.

 

The planet Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. This video demonstrated the Earth’s timeline as one endzone being the past and the other being the present. Single-cell life began 3.8 billion years ago. This is hard to fathom that single-celled organisms have been present so long compared to animals that appeared .53 billion years ago. This gap between single-celled to actual animals is massive. Another surprising aspect of this video was to learn that humankind is such a microscopic part. Humans appeared on the Earth 200,00 years ago which when looking at the Earth’s entire timeline, does not constitute as much. 

 

During the Evolutiontalk episode, I was surprised to learn that the phrase “survival of the fittest” actually came from a man named Hubert Spencer in 1864. I had always assumed that this phrase had come from Darwin. Another interesting aspect of this phrase is the misconception of the meaning. I believe this happens a lot with scientific phrases simply because individuals may have never been taught better. The Survival of the fittest does not mean the strongest person or the healthiest person. It is concerned about the ability to pass on genes effectively. Though this may be common knowledge to individuals in the science community, to others it might be extremely confusing.