1832 a young Englishman, Charles Darwin, twenty-four years old and naturalist on HMS Beagle, a brig sent by the Admiralty in London on a surveying voyage round the world, came to such a forest outside Rio de Janeiro. In one day, in one small area, he collected sixty-eight different species of small beetle. That there should be such a variety of species of one kind of creature astounded him. He had not been searching specially for them so that, as he wrote in his journal, ‘It is sufficient to disturb the composure of an entomologist’s mind to look forward to the future dimensions of a complete catalogue’. The conventional view of his time was that all species were immutable and that each had been individually and separately created by God. At the time, Darwin was far from being an atheist – he had, after all, taken a degree in divinity at Cambridge University – but he was deeply puzzled by this enormous multiplicity of forms.
During the next three years, the Beagle sailed down the east coast of South America, rounded Cape Horn and came north again up the coast of Chile. The expedition then sailed out into the Pacific until, 1,000 kilometres from the mainland, they came to the lonely archipelago of the Galapagos. Here Darwin’s questions about the creation of species recurred, for in these islands he found fresh variety. He was fascinated to discover that the Galapagos animals bore a general resemblance to those he had seen on the mainland, but differed from them in detail. There were cormorants, black, long-necked diving birds like those that fly low along Brazilian rivers, but here in the Galapagos, their wings were so small and with such stunted feathers that they had lost the power of flight. There were iguanas, large lizards with a crest of scales along their backs. Those on the continent climbed trees and ate leaves. Here on the islands, where there was little vegetation, one species fed on seaweed and clung to rocks among the surging waves with unusually long and powerful claws. There were tortoises, very similar to the mainland forms except that these were many times bigger, giants that a man could ride. The British Vice-Governor of the Galapagos told Darwin that even within the archipelago, there was variety: the tortoises on each island were slightly different, so that it was possible to tell which island they came from. Those that lived on relatively well watered islands where there was ground vegetation to be cropped, had a gently curving front edge to their shells just above the neck. But those that came from arid islands and had to crane their necks in order to reach branches of cactus or leaves of trees, had much longer necks and a high peak to the front of their shells that enabled them to stretch their necks almost vertically upwards.
The suspicion grew in Darwin’s mind that species were not fixed forever. Perhaps one could change into another. Maybe, thousands of years ago, birds and reptiles from continental South America had reached the Galapagos, unintentional passengers on the rafts of vegetation that float down the rivers and out to sea. Once there, they had changed, as generation succeeded generation, to suit their new homes until they became their present species.
The differences between them and their mainland cousins were only small, but if such changes had taken place, was it not possible that over many millions of years, the cumulative effects on a dynasty of animals could be so great that they could bring about major transformations? Maybe fish had developed muscular fins and crawled on to land to become amphibians; maybe amphibians in their turn had developed watertight skins and become reptiles; maybe, even, some ape-like creatures had stood upright and become the ancestors of man.
In truth the idea was not a wholly new one. Many others before Darwin had suggested that all life on earth was interrelated. Darwin’s revolutionary insight was to perceive the mechanism that brought these changes about. By doing so he replaced a philosophical speculation with a detailed description of a process, supported by an abundance of evidence, that could be tested and verified; and the reality of evolution could no longer be denied.
Put briefly, his argument was this. All individuals of the same species are not identical. In one clutch of eggs from, for example, a giant tortoise, there will be some hatchlings which, because of their genetic constitution, will develop slightly longer necks than others. In times of drought they will be able to reach leaves and so survive. Their brothers and sisters, with shorter necks, will starve and die. So those best fitted to their surroundings will be selected and be able to transmit their characteristics to their offspring. After a great number of generations, tortoises on the arid islands will have longer necks than those on the watered islands – one species will have given rise to another.
This concept did not become clear in Darwin’s mind until long after he had left the Galapagos. For twenty-five years he painstakingly amassed evidence to support it. Not until 1859, when he was forty-eight years old, did he publish it, and even then he was driven to do so only because another younger naturalist, Alfred Wallace, working in Southeast Asia, had formulated the same idea. He called the book in which he set out his theory in detail, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
Since that time, the theory of natural selection has been debated and tested, refined, qualified and elaborated. Later discoveries about genetics, molecular biology, population dynamics and behaviour have given it new dimensions. It remains the key to our understanding of the natural world and it enables us to recognise that life has a long and continuous history during which organisms, both plant and animal, have changed, generation by generation, as they colonised all parts of the world.
There are now two direct sources of evidence for this history. One can be found in the genetic material in the cells of every living organism. The other lies in the archives of the earth, the sedimentary rocks. The vast majority of animals leave no trace of their existence after their passing. Their flesh decays, their shells and their bones become scattered and turn to powder. But very occasionally, one or two individuals out of a population of many thousands have a different fate. A reptile becomes stuck in a swamp and dies. Its body rots but its bones settle into the mud. Dead vegetation drifts to the bottom and covers them. As the centuries pass and more vegetation accumulates, the deposit turns to peat. Changes in sea level may cause the swamp to be flooded and layers of sand to be deposited on top of the peat. Over great periods of time, the peat is compressed and turned to coal. The reptile’s bones still remain within it. The great pressure of the overlying sediments and the mineral-rich solutions that circulate through them cause chemical changes in the calcium phosphate of the bones. Eventually they are turned to stone, but they retain the outward shape that they had in life, albeit sometimes distorted. On occasion, even their detailed cellular structure is preserved so that you can look at sections of them through the microscope and plot the shape of the blood vessels and the nerves that once surrounded them. In rare cases, even the colour of skin or feathers can be detected.
Saddleback Galapagos tortoise (Chelonoidis nigra hoodensis) in defensive posture, Espanola Island, Galapagos Islands.
Fossil ammonites (Arnioceras semicostatum), in a sample of rock from the lower Jurassic period (195 to 172 million years ago), Robin Hood’s Bay, Yorkshire, UK.
The most suitable places for fossilisation are in seas and lakes where sedimentary deposits that will become sandstones and limestones are slowly accumulating. On land, where for the most part rocks are not built up by deposition but broken down by erosion, deposits such as sand dunes are only very rarely created and preserved. In consequence, the only land-living organisms likely to be fossilised are those that happen to fall into water. Since this is an exceptional fate for most of them, we are never likely to know from fossil evidence anything approaching the complete range of land-living animals and plants that has existed in the past. Water-living animals, such as fish, molluscs, sea urchins and corals, are much more promising candidates for preservation. Even so, very few of these perished in the exact physical and chemical conditions necessary for fossilisation. Of those that did, only a tiny proportion happen to lie in the rocks that outcrop on the surface of the ground today; and of these few, most will be eroded away and destroyed
