| People were clearly already well aware of the mechanism of natural/artificial selection and its effect on a popularion, so what did Darwin come up with that advanced knowledge of "evolution" (i.e., heritable changes on a population)? |
Darwin was influenced by Charles Lyell's book Principles of Geology, which showed that the Earth was much older than earlier scientists had thought. Perhaps Darwin came up with the idea that natural selection working on small changes for a very long time would produce very large changes, to the extent of creating new species of animals and plants
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