On this day in history Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. He died at the age of 73, but his theory of evolution has persisted. In his landmark 1859 publication, On the Origin of Species , Darwin presented meticulous evidence that all life descended from common ancestors, with differentiation of species resulting from a process of natural selection. How is this selection accomplished? I, for one, love the theory offered by this animated version of a New Yorker cartoon. Want to know more about how Darwin derived his theories? One possible source is a book by one of my favorite authors, David Quammen.

Ruth Padel is the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin She visited the Galapagos Islands with her 85-year-old mother Saw tortoises which sparked Darwin's first insight into evolution Ruth Padel, Charles Darwin's great granddaughter, went to see the giant tortoises of the Galapagos islands Sitting in a dinghy, six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador, on a wildlife holiday, I found myself questioning the wisdom of our long-dreamed-of family trip. We were there to see the giant tortoises of the Galapagos islands...

1959: Inauguration of the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands With the help of the IUCN, UNESCO, and a team of worldwide conservationists, the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands (CDF) was founded under Belgian Law in 1959. For over 50 years, CDF has provided unique scientific solutions to protect the Islands Galapagos. Our work continues to make the biggest impacts at local, national and international levels. 54 years of CDF impacts: 1959 Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos Islands created and (GNP) established. 1964 Charles Darwin Research Station established in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos. Internationally-recognized herbarium established, containing the largest Galapagos plant collection in the world. 1965 Giant Tortoise repatriation program established; world-class program continues today. 1966 The first educational program for conservation is initiated on the Galapagos Islands. 1968 The Galapagos National Park Directorate (GNPD) began operating. 1971 Together with the Galapagos National Park Directorate (GNPD), CDF discovered the last known surviving Pinta Island giant tortoise, Lonesome George. 1972 CDF scholarship training program founded for Ecuadorian students. Alumni have gone on to very successful careers working on Galapagos conservation projects. The program continues to be a success today. 1976 Land iguana breeding and repatriation program initiated. 1978 The Galapagos Islands are established as a Natural Heritage Site for Humanity by UNESCO. 1984 The Galapagos National Park is considered a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO. 1995 Daisy tree Scalesia atractyloides, thought to be extinct, rediscovered on Santiago island. 1997 CDF and the GNPD launch Project Isabela to restore Santiago, Pinta, & northern Isabela Islands. Rediscovery of Floreana flax Linum cratericola, previously thought to be extinct. 1998 Special Law for Galapagos creates the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR); contributions from CDF are crucial in ensuring that Galapagos’ needs for sustainable local development and environmental education are met under this new law. CDF and the Galapagos Conservation Fund (Lindblad Expeditions) launch the Local Conservation Action Fund (LCAF), with the objective of providing seed funding for 95 community conservation programs and sustainable businesses. Partnership continues with Lindblad and National Geographic today. CDF establishes Environmental Education Centers on Santa Cruz, San Cristobal, and Isabela, providing learning resources for all ages. 1999 Sultan Qaboos Prize for Environmental Preservation awarded to CDF by UNESCO. 2000 Terrestrial Invertebrates Database and Collections established. Galapagos Inspection and Quarantine Program initiated to prevent introduced species from reaching the islands, after major contribution from CDF.

2009 is the year of Darwin, celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his most famous work On the Origin of Species. BBC Radio 4 has recently been running a series of programmes called ‘Dear Darwin’, which invited five eminent thinkers to write a letter to Darwin, and to read it on air. One of the contributors was Jerry A. Coyne. Jerry Coyne is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and author of Why Evolution is True, which is published in the UK by OUP and in the USA by Viking. Below is the text of his letter to Darwin. My Dear Mr. Darwin, Happy 200th birthday! I hope you are as well as can expected for someone who has been dead for nearly 130 years. I suppose that your final book, the one about earthworms, has a special significance for you these days. Are the worms of Westminster Abbey superior to the ones you studied so carefully in the grounds of your home at Downe in Kent? They’ve certainly mulched some distinguished people over the years! But enough of the personal questions: let me introduce myself. I am one of thousands – maybe tens of thousands – of professional biologists who work full time on your scientific legacy. You’ll be happy to know that Britain remains a powerhouse in what we nowadays call evolutionary biology, and your ideas now have wide currency across the entire planet. I work in Chicago, in the United States of America. But even the French have finally reluctantly relinquished their embrace of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, whose misguided evolutionary ideas you did so much to discredit.

Melanin is important to the workings of the ear:
"The connection between albinism and deafness is well known, though poorly understood. E.g., in his 1859 treatise On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin observed that "cats which are entirely white and have blue eyes are generally deaf".[11] In humans, hypopigmentation and deafness occur together in the rare Waardenburg's syndrome, predominantly observed among the Hopi in North America.[12] The incidence of albinism in Hopi Indians has been estimated as approximately 1 in 200 individualsNews: St...

The early 1870s were a turning point in the global debate about human evolution, with deep implications for science, colonial expansion, industrial progress, religious belief, and ethical and philosophical debate. Darwin’s correspondence from this period is of fundamental importance for understanding both the development of his theory of human origins and its relationship to prevailing assumptions about human nature. The extension of evolutionary theory to humans was the most controversial aspect of Darwin’s work in his own day, and it remains the most contentious point in the global debates over Darwinism. Scholars and scientists still disagree about the evolution of moral behaviour, religious temperament, aesthetic taste, and creative potential. Although Darwinism is still often used to justify competition in human societies, in fact Darwin challenged the primacy of self-interest and gave a new foundation to traditional virtues such as compassion, sympathy, and love. He rooted ethics in animal instincts, but argued that such instincts are modified and strengthened in human societies through the power of natural selection , through our experience of approbation and shame, and through the influence of education and religion. In the Descent of Man , Darwin argued that the golden rule – “do unto others as you would be done by” – could be explained by a scientific, evolutionary, understanding of the development of human behaviour. The irony of this was not lost on him: about this passage he wrote to his daughter Henrietta, “I fear parts are too like a Sermon. Who would ever have thought that I should turn parson?”

Charles Darwin is a great man when it came to life. He was a practical genius and unluckily ridiculed of his theory of evolution by creationists. I was playing around on Google earth (exploring the world's oceans) I found an island called "Ascension Island". As always,I researched this mysterious island found in the Atlantic and found that it was terraformed by non other than Charles Darwin Aerial View of the island Now I dove into this experiment of Darwin a little bit more and I found out that there was a good friend with Darwin partnering up to terraform the Island,his name was Joseph Hooker. Together these two came to grow and artificially make a forest known as the green mountain. It is a great success boosting the ecology and such. So I thought I might post this to archive it when we start terraforming mars. I want to terraform an island myself really. The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep

Top 10 Missing Links Discoveries that have helped build the puzzle of mankind's evolution. Vestigal Organs Darwin argued that useless limbs and leftover organs are evidence of evolution. The findings suggest that about 9 percent of the human genes examined are undergoing rapid evolution. "Our study suggests that natural selection has played an important role in patterning the human genome, " said Carlos Bustamante, a biologist at Cornell University. A separate study announced last month indicated the human brain is still evolving, too. Compared to chimps ... Bustamante's team found that the genes most affected were those involved in immunity, sperm and egg production and sensory perception. A comparison between human and chimpanzee genomes found that these genes have undergone more changes in humans than in chimps, despite the fact that the two species shared a common ancestor some 5 million years ago. The genes for a group of proteins important for switching other genes on and off, known as "transcription factors, " were found to vary significantly in humans and chimps. One reason for this could be that turning a gene on or off is easier than changing the gene itself. "We believe that if you want to evolve a system, it's usually easier to tweak when the protein gets turns on or the total amount of a protein as opposed to the amino acid itself, " Bustamante said. Negative selection The validity of Darwin's natural selection has been attacked lately by a small but vocal group who argue that it cannot explain all the complexity seen in nature. They advocate a concept called "intelligent design, " in which a higher being is responsible for the variety of life. Scientists dismiss intelligent design as cloaked creationism and say that there are no significant problems with the widely accepted theory of evolution. While mainstream scientists do not need further evidence that natural selection occurs, Bustamante's work provides examples of its pace and extent and offers the promise of medical advances down the road. Another 13 percent of the genes examined in the study showed evidence for negative selection, whereby harmful mutations are weeded out of the population. These included some genes implicated in hereditary diseases, such as muscular dystrophy and Usher syndrome. The latter is the most common cause of congenital blindness and deafness in developed countries. Medical geneticists are interested in finding genes sensitive to negative selection because they might one day be useful for predicting an individual's likelihood of developing a disease if the types of mutation to a gene and the environmental conditions are known. Being able to determine which classes of genes are particularly vulnerable to negative selections is a first step, Bustamante said.

Matthew Chapman, Darwin’s kin, will be the guest speaker July 28 at New York’s fledgling atheist church, The Sunday Assembly. Held in the Hell’s Kitchen bikini bar Tobacco Road, the Sunday Assembly is the brainchild of London-based stand-up comics Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, who are currently busy exporting their sunny brand of atheism to start-up congregations across the United States. Drawn in by the group’s motto sunny motto, “live better, help often and wonder more, ” New York’s first atheist service was attended by roughly 120 godless audience members, organizer Michael Dorian told the Daily News. Meredith Modzlewski Sunday Assembly founder Sanderson Jones helped launch the New York satellite congregation in June. .

EDITED BY EUGENE M. MCCARTHY, PHD CHARLES DARWIN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Addendum. Written May 1st, 1881 [the year before his death]. Charles Darwin as an old man 'The Effects of Cross and Self-Fertilisation' was published in the autumn of 1876; and the results there arrived at explain, as I believe, the endless and wonderful contrivances for the transportal of pollen from one plant to another of the same species. I now believe, however, chiefly from the observations of Hermann Mller, that I ought to have insisted more strongly than I did on the many adaptations for self-fertilisation; though I was well aware of many such adaptations. A much enlarged edition of my 'Fertilisation of Orchids' was published in 1877. In this same year 'The Different Forms of Flowers, etc., ' appeared, and in 1880 a second edition. innean Society, corrected, with much new matter added, together with observations on some other cases in which the same plant bears two kinds of flowers. As before remarked, no little discovery of mine ever gave me so much pleasure as the making out the meaning of heterostyled flowers. The results of crossing such flowers in an illegitimate manner, I believe to be very important, as bearing on the sterility of hybrids; although these results have been noticed by only a few persons. In 1879, I had a translation of Dr. Ernst Krause's 'Life of Erasmus Darwin' published, and I added a sketch of his character and habits from material in my possession. Many persons have been much interested by this little life, and I am surprised that only 800 or 900 copies were sold. Francis "Frank" Darwin (1848-1924) In 1880 I published, with [my son] Frank's assistance, our 'Power of Movement in Plants.' This was a tough piece of work. ' which 'Cross-Fertilisation' did to the 'Fertilisation of Orchids;' for in accordance with the principle of evolution it was impossible to account for climbing plants having been developed in so many widely different groups unless all kinds of plants possess some slight power of movement of an analogous kind. This I proved to be the case; and I was further led to a rather wide generalisation, viz. that the great and important classes of movements, excited by light, the attraction of gravity, etc., are all modified forms of the fundamental movement of circumnutation. It has always pleased me to exalt plants in the scale of organised beings; and I therefore felt an especial pleasure in showing how many and what admirably well adapted movements the tip of a root possesses.