Page 178 - Big Ideas Year 10 sciPAD 2025
P. 178

PHOTOCOPYING PROHIBITED
© Silverback Academic Media
178 SCIPAD - BIG IDEAS - BOOK 2
THE BASIS OF HEREDITY
Darwin and Evolution
Charles Darwin was an English naturalist. He studied variation in plants and animals
during a five-year voyage around the world in the early part of the 19th century.
He explained his ideas about evolution in a book called “On the Origin of
Species”, which was published in 1859.
Darwin’s ideas caused a lot of controversy. In the non-scientific
community this controversy still continues, because the evidence he
gathered can be seen as conflicting with some beliefs about the
creation of the world and the creatures in it.
Famously, Darwin studied the wildlife on the Galápagos Islands - a
group of islands near the equator, almost 1 000 kilometres west of
Ecuador. He noticed that the different species of finches on the islands
were similar to each other, but showed variation in their size, beak shape
and claw size from island to island.
For example, their beaks had different shapes depending on the local food
source. Darwin concluded that because the islands are so distant from the
mainland, the finches that had arrived there in the past had changed over time.
Darwin studied hundreds more animal and plant species. After nearly 30 years of research, he
made public his theory of evolution by natural selection. Today evolution by natural selection is
the cornerstone of modern biology and is accepted by scientists around the world.
1. What was the name of the book that Darwin wrote describing his theory of natural
selection? 
2. Why did Darwin’s ideas cause a lot of controversy? 

3. Where are the Galápagos Islands? 
4. What type of birds did Darwin study there? 
5. What caused the different appearances of the birds? 

6. What did Darwin conclude about the birds’ origins? 

7. Use the photos to identify the type of finch Darwin found on the islands described below.
Justify your selection.
(a) An island where there are trees that produce large, hard seeds? 


(b) An island where small insects hide amongst the long spines of cactuses? 


(c) An island where there are plants that produce small seeds and there are numerous
small insects? 

Finch A Finch C
Finch B
Unchecked Sample Pages
For Review Purposes Only - Photocopying Prohibited
www.scipad.co.nz

















































   176   177   178   179   180