evolution, theory in biology postulating that the various types of plants, animals, and other living things

on Earth have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to
modifications in successive generations. The theory of evolution is one of the fundamental keystones of
modern biological theory.

The diversity of the living world is staggering. More than 2 million existing species of organisms have
been named and described; many more remain to be discovered—from 10 million to 30 million,
according to some estimates. What is impressive is not just the numbers but also the incredible
heterogeneity in size, shape, and way of life—from lowly bacteria, measuring less than a thousandth of a
millimetre in diameter, to stately sequoias, rising 100 metres (300 feet) above the ground and weighing
several thousand tons; from bacteria living in hot springs at temperatures near the boiling point of water
to fungi and algae thriving on the ice masses of Antarctica and in saline pools at −23 °C (−9 °F); and from
giant tube worms discovered living near hydrothermal vents on the dark ocean floor to spiders and
larkspur plants existing on the slopes of Mount Everest more than 6,000 metres (19,700 feet) above sea
level.

The virtually infinite variations on life are the fruit of the evolutionary process. All living creatures are
related by descent from common ancestors. Humans and other mammals descend from shrewlike
creatures that lived more than 150 million years ago; mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes
share as ancestors aquatic worms that lived 600 million years ago; and all plants and animals derive
from bacteria-like microorganisms that originated more than 3 billion years ago. Biological evolution is a
process of descent with modification. Lineages of organisms change through generations; diversity
arises because the lineages that descend from common ancestors diverge through time.

The 19th-century English naturalist Charles Darwin argued that organisms come about by evolution, and
he provided a scientific explanation, essentially correct but incomplete, of how evolution occurs and
why it is that organisms have features—such as wings, eyes, and kidneys—clearly structured to serve
specific functions. Natural selection was the fundamental concept in his explanation. Natural selection
occurs because individuals having more-useful traits, such as more-acute vision or swifter legs, survive
better and produce more progeny than individuals with less-favourable traits. Genetics, a science born
in the 20th century, reveals in detail how natural selection works and led to the development of the
modern theory of evolution. Beginning in the 1960s, a related scientific discipline, molecular biology,
enormously advanced knowledge of biological evolution and made it possible to investigate detailed
problems that had seemed completely out of reach only a short time previously—for example, how
similar the genes of humans and chimpanzees might be (they differ in about 1–2 percent of the units
that make up the genes).
greylag. Flock of Greylag geese during their winter migration at Bosque del Apache National Refugee,
New Mexico. greylag goose (Anser anser)

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Biology Bonanza

This article discusses evolution as it applies generally to living things. For a discussion of human
evolution, see the article human evolution. For a more complete treatment of a discipline that has
proved essential to the study of evolution, see the articles genetics, human and heredity. Specific
aspects of evolution are discussed in the articles coloration and mimicry. Applications of evolutionary
theory to plant and animal breeding are discussed in the articles plant breeding and animal breeding. An
overview of the evolution of life as a major characteristic of Earth’s history is given in community
ecology: Evolution of the biosphere. A detailed discussion of the life and thought of Charles Darwin is
found in the article Darwin, Charles.

General overview

The evidence for evolution

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Darwin and other 19th-century biologists found compelling evidence for biological evolution in the
comparative study of living organisms, in their geographic distribution, and in the fossil remains of
extinct organisms. Since Darwin’s time, the evidence from these sources has become considerably
stronger and more comprehensive, while biological disciplines that emerged more recently—genetics,
biochemistry, physiology, ecology, animal behaviour (ethology), and especially molecular biology—have
supplied powerful additional evidence and detailed confirmation. The amount of information about
evolutionary history stored in the DNA and proteins of living things is virtually unlimited; scientists can
reconstruct any detail of the evolutionary history of life by investing sufficient time and laboratory
resources.

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Evolutionists no longer are concerned with obtaining evidence to support the fact of evolution but
rather are concerned with what sorts of knowledge can be obtained from different sources of evidence.
The following sections identify the most productive of these sources and illustrate the types of
information they have provided.

The fossil record

Paleontologists have recovered and studied the fossil remains of many thousands of organisms that
lived in the past. This fossil record shows that many kinds of extinct organisms were very different in
form from any now living. It also shows successions of organisms through time (see faunal succession,
law of; geochronology: Determining the relationships of fossils with rock strata), manifesting their
transition from one form to another.

When an organism dies, it is usually destroyed by other forms of life and by weathering processes. On
rare occasions some body parts—particularly hard ones such as shells, teeth, or bones—are preserved
by being buried in mud or protected in some other way from predators and weather. Eventually, they
may become petrified and preserved indefinitely with the rocks in which they are embedded. Methods
such as radiometric dating—measuring the amounts of natural radioactive atoms that remain in certain
minerals to determine the elapsed time since they were constituted—make it possible to estimate the
time period when the rocks, and the fossils associated with them, were formed.

Radiometric dating indicates that Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago. The earliest fossils
resemble microorganisms such as bacteria and cyanobacteria (blue-green algae); the oldest of these
fossils appear in rocks 3.5 billion years old (see Precambrian time). The oldest known animal fossils,
about 700 million years old, come from the so-called Ediacara fauna, small wormlike creatures with soft
bodies. Numerous fossils belonging to many living phyla and exhibiting mineralized skeletons appear in
rocks about 540 million years old. These organisms are different from organisms living now and from
those living at intervening times. Some are so radically different that paleontologists have created new
phyla in order to classify them. (See Cambrian Period.) The first vertebrates, animals with backbones,
appeared about 400 million years ago; the first mammals, less than 200 million years ago. The history of
life recorded by fossils presents compelling evidence of evolution.