BILD 3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Robert Edmond Grant, Punta Alta, Erasmus Darwin
13 Jun 2018
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BILD 3 Lecture 2
4/4/2018
• Concepts of geologic change were beginning to be accepted
o Seen through strata in earth layers of rocks
• Controversial proposals were made that species change over time
o Darwin was not the first to voice this idea
o Thig as the ae o ae’t eessail ho the alas hae ee
• These ideas were largely kept quiet for fear of persecution
o e.g. Erasmus Darwin
• Robert Edmond Grant (1793-1874)
o Chales Dai’s ealiest eto
o He had followed the writings of Hillarie
o Had taken writings of previous peoples into his own way of thinking in evolution
• Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
o Pulled out of med school, sent to clergy at Cambridge
o Met a botany prof there (Fitzroy), went on the voyage w him on the HMS Beagle
to be an intellectual companion, onboard for 5 years
o What he knew before he left (emerging ideas)
▪ Species are changing over time
▪ Geological processes are very slow
▪ The earth must be much older than a few thousand years
o Not known
▪ How traits were inherited
▪ That land masses were once together and move about (i.e. plate
tectonics and continental drift)
• Charles Lyell
o Provided popular concepts of geology
o Dai ead Lell’s ook o the Beagle, ad his ajo otiutio as the idea
of uniformitarianism
▪ Reasoned that the same forces that have changed the earth are old
o Lyell saw minute effects of geological processes at present in volcanoes and
earthquakes, then reasoned that the same forces shape the earth and therefore
change is slow and earth is old
• Cape Verde islands
o Darwin observed there was a ring of white sedimentary rock that was several
meters above the level of the sea that had shells embedded in it→evidence of
geologic change over time
• Punta Alta, Argentina
o Observed bones of fossilized organisms that looked very similar to then present
species →ade the oetio that Cuie had’t
▪ Extinct species are very similar to living species
• Brazil
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