Evolution, ever since its introduction by James Hutton in the early 1700s, has been a very controversial topic with many people opposing the various theories presented by scientists throughout the years. In modern science, evolution has come to be accepted by many scientists around the world, with significant amounts of evidence from various fields of science provided to support Charles Darwin’s theory of naturally selective evolution - “survival of the fittest” and adaptation. http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_2.htm Charles Darwin, as he underwent a 5 year voyage around the world, came to understand that any animal population consists of individuals that vary slightly from one another. Another realization came to …show more content…
Darwin also noticed that all of the finches varied in beak size and shape, and that they were associated with various diets based on different foods. He concluded that when the original South American finches reached the islands, they dispersed into different environments where they had to adapt to different conditions; and that over several generations, the finches on different islands had changed anatomically in ways that allowed them to get enough food and survive to reproduce in their respective environments. ~~~ http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/phylogenetics_02 Phylogenetic trees, or evolutionary trees, are used today to represent the evolutionary relationships among a set of organisms, or taxa. Scientists create these evolutionary trees based on empirical evidence found through research over the years, and then use them to make predictions about unknown fossils and poorly studied species, and learn about the order of evolution. http://www.evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/VIIA1bPunctuated.shtml Punctuated Equilibrium, another theory about evolution proposed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould in 1972, proposed that after species appear in the fossil record, they become stable and show little evolutionary change for most of their geological history in a state called stasis. It also proposed that when significant evolutionary changes are generally restricted to rare and geologically rapid events of branching speciation. In the fossil record, both Punctuated Equilibrium and Darwin’s gradualistic changes have been observed, providing proof for both theories of