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Evolving Evolution

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EVOLVING EVOLUTION

Bejarasco, Aubrey Jayl A. BS Biology IV

April 21,2012

Earth: only habitat that sustains LIFE, where number and variety of plants is astonishing. How can we make sense of such a huge range of living organism?

Holy bible, explain how this wonderful diversity came about as shown in the movie; how God created the Earth, how Adan came into life and how Eve was created from his ribs, as then God said to them: “go and multiply”. This was the Theory of Creation, but a hundreds of years later, a man was born to explain this astonishing diversity of life, which revolutionized the way everyone sees the world—Charles Darwin.

On 1931, HMS Beagle, set off to tour around the world, on board was Charles Darwin, in his 5years journey he was amaze by the diversity he was able to witnessed, that in 1 day he was able to collect 69 different kinds of beetles, enough to disturbed the composure of entomologist’s mind. In addition to that, Darwin also noticed the distinction of plants and animals in the Galapagos Islands and Cape Verde Islands. There came the dilemma: “could it be that species were not fixed at all time, could it be in fact slowly change?”

Problem of natural history: how could one species turn to one another? Key: only the fittest survive hence, “natural selection”. In a moment of insight he had solved the species question. Darwin illustrate this in his collection of birds which has same characteristic except their beaks of finches, which shows how this birds evolved as their way of adaptation for survival. In his notes Darwin sketched: how single ancestor species might give rise to several different ones and wrote a tentative “I think” (theory). For 22 years he continued accumulating mountain of evidence to defy his theory. June 1858, Darwin received a package from a naturalist- Alfred Russel Wallace, containing an

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