Lesson 1 – Timeline Biology SBI3U-C

Timeline: The Life and Work of Charles Darwin

For more information about the formation of Charles Darwin’s theory, read the following section. You
will not be tested on this information, but it will give you more insight on how the theory was developed.
1809
Charles Robert Darwin is born on February 12 at The Mount in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. He is
named after his uncle Charles, who had died a few years earlier, and his father, Robert.
1817
Darwin’s mother, Susannah, dies when he is eight years old.
1825
Darwin’s father decides that his son should pursue a medical career, as he and his grandfather did before
him. Darwin is sent to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, known as having one of the best medical
schools in Europe. Darwin does not enjoy medical studies. He faints at the sight of blood and finds
medicine boring.
1827
Darwin quits medical school.
1830
Darwin attends botany lectures given by Professor Henslow. Henslow thinks Darwin is a gifted
student with great promise. They often go on long walks together, discussing botany and going on
plant-collecting outings. Henslow encourages Darwin to apply for the position of naturalist aboard the
exploration ship H.M.S. Beagle.
1831
Darwin sets sail aboard the Beagle on December 27 with a crew of 73 under clear skies and a good wind.
He becomes sea-sick almost immediately.
1832
The Beagle arrives at Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands on January 16. Darwin goes ashore and
explores for a few days. Here he makes his first discovery, a white horizontal band of shells embedded in
a cliff face along the shoreline about 45 feet above sea level. The cliff face was at one time under water.
Darwin wonders how it ended up 45 feet above the sea. He notes that the line was not even perfectly
horizontal, but varied in height. This meant that the rocks had moved. This supported Lyell’s theory of a
world slowly changing over a great period of time.
Later that year, Darwin spends many weeks collecting unknown fossils, sending them back to England to
scientists and Henslow. The captain of the Beagle, Robert FitzRoy, has a difficult time understanding why
Darwin is bringing all sorts of “useless junk” aboard the ship. The fossils turn out to be the remains of
giant rodent-like animals, armadillo shells, ground sloths and giant teeth, most of which are unknown to
science at the time.
1835
After considerable exploration in South America, the Beagle reaches the Galapagos Islands. Darwin is
fascinated by such oddities as volcanic rocks and giant tortoises, and collects samples of birds. He later
observes that the birds are somewhat different on each island, leading him to believe that they had a
common ancestor on the mainland of South America, and that each had followed different evolutionary
paths once they were separated from one another on the various islands.

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Lesson 1 – Timeline Biology SBI3U-C

1837
John Gould, an ornithologist at the London Zoo Museum, has been examining the birds Darwin brought
back from the Galapagos Islands. Gould discovers that the birds were all different species of finches,
distinguished by the shape of their beaks. Darwin sees that each species filled a different ecological niche
on its own island. Sometimes they were like woodpeckers, eating insects they gouged out of plants using
their narrow bills. Sometimes they were like big finches, eating large seeds with the help of a very large
bill. Darwin proposes that they all evolved from a mainland species of finch that had somehow got blown
onto the islands many years before.
1838
Darwin starts his notebook, covering topics like transmutation (another word for evolution), the
distribution of species, the relation between habitat and anatomy, and behavioural adaptations. The way
Darwin gathered information for this notebook was rather clever. He sent a list of questions to pigeon
breeders, dog breeders, and experts on animal husbandry. The questions centered on how they bred
animals and the results they got from different kinds of reproductive crosses. In a time when the subject
of variation of species was still a religious taboo, this was a safe way to gather the information he needed
to support the theories he was developing.
1839
Charles Darwin marries Emma Wedgwood on January 29 at St. Peter’s Church at Maer.
1842
Darwin writes a 35-page sketch of his ideas about transmutation. This was the very first rough draft
of his theory. In it, he outlines the process of natural selection and provides a basic description of
evolutionary descent, both of which he said obeyed strict laws of nature. It is interesting to note that, at
this time, Darwin thought these laws of nature were set forth by God during creation, after which God
stepped back and no longer intervened in the universe.
1843
Darwin gives a new friend of his, Joseph Hooker, the opportunity to examine and catalogue the plants
he brought back from Tierra del Fuego. Darwin shares his transmutation theories with Hooker, who
approves of them, giving Darwin confidence that his theory might be right and encouraging him to
gather more data.
1858
On June 18, Darwin receives a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace entitled On the Tendency of Varieties
to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type. Wallace had come up with a theory of natural selection
that was very similar to his own. The paper contains concepts like the struggle for existence and the
transmutation of species. Darwin makes his views on the evolution of species public for the first time
when his paper and Wallace’s are read at a meeting of the Linnean Society in London later that year.
1859
On the Origin of Species is published on November 22.
1882
Charles Darwin dies on April 19.