Was Lamarck right?

The environmental lability of epigenetic inheritance may not necessarily bring to mind Lamarckian images of giraffes stretching their necks to reach the treetops (and then giving birth to progeny with similarly stretched necks), but it does give researchers reason to reconsider long-refuted notions about the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Eighteenth-century French naturalist Jean Baptiste de Lamarck proposed that environmental cues could cause phenotypic changes transmittable to offspring. "He had a basically good idea but a bad example," says Rohl Oflsson, Uppsala University, Sweden.