My Science School

Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) was a Swedish botanist and explorer who was the first to create a uniform system for naming plants and animals. Most plants and animals have popular names that vary from place to place. Scientific names are given so that the same name is recognized everywhere. Latin is the language used for scientific names. The scientific names are in two parts. The first is the generic name, which describes a group of related living things, and the second name is the specific name, which applies only to that living thing.

Fact File: The Latin name of the White Water Lily is Nymphaea alba. They are one of a group of plants whose flowers close up for the night.

 

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Upon his return from the voyage, Darwin turned over all the specimens he had brought back to cataloguing experts in Cambridge and London. In South America he had found fossils of extinct armadillos that were similar but not identical to the living animals he had seen. On November 24, 1859 Darwin published his theories in a book called The Origin of the Species. It caused a great sensation, but it was some time before it was accepted by the scientific world. The first edition sold out immediately and by 1872 the work had run through six editions. It became generally accepted that evolution took place along the lines that Darwin suggested. His theory on evolution of species solved many puzzles.

Fact File: We can see how evolution has changed living things by examining fossils. Fossils preserve the body parts of living creatures from long ago so that we can see how they have changed over millions of years.

 

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In the year 1831 Charles Darwin (1809-1882) set out on an exploratory voyage in the ship Beagle, heading for South America. The voyage lasted five years and during this time Darwin kept careful notes of everything he saw, in particular the strange animal life on the Galapagos Islands, off the western coast of Ecuador. He was disturbed by the fact that the birds and tortoises of the Galapagos Islands tended to resemble species found on the nearby continent, while inhabits of similar adjoining islands to the Galapagos had quite different animal populations. In London Darwin later learned that the finches he had brought back belonged to a different species, not merely different varieties, as he had originally believed.

Fact File: When Charles Darwin first published his theories on evolution they created a sensation, but it took a while before they were accepted.

 

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