Darwin's observations in the Galápagos
Observaciones de Darwin en las Galápagos
- Date
- 1835 · confidence high
- Place
- Galápagos Islands, Ecuador
- Credited to
- Charles Darwin
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Over five weeks, Darwin collected birds and reptiles from several islands and noted that mockingbirds and tortoises varied from island to island. Those differences, later studied by Gould and others, fed his idea of the transmutation of species.
The story that 'Darwin's finches' directly inspired evolution is a later simplification; Darwin did not label birds by island and it was John Gould who identified them in 1837 (Sulloway, 1982).
What it led to
- Study of the adaptive radiation of the finches
- Development of the theory of evolution by natural selection
- Turning the Galápagos into a natural laboratory of evolutionary biology