Professor Warren Schmaus of the Illinois Institute of Technology says the union of evolution and genetics only started around the nineteen thirties. Also, in Darwin's time, the age of the Earth was estimated only in the millions of years - too short a time some said for evolution to work. Not until the nineteen fifties did scientists, using radioactive dating, place the age of the Earth at over four billion years.
But natural selection has stood the test of time as a basis for the science of biology. Professor Schmaus notes that, before Darwin, naturalists only collected and named species.
WARREN SCHMAUS: "I mean it's hard to even understand how biology was a science as we would recognize it today. I mean, where are the scientific explanations before Darwin?"
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To celebrate Darwin and his idea, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington created a special exhibit. "Since Darwin: The Evolution of Evolution" opened in September. It uses objects from the museum's collection to show how Darwin helped us understand the history of life on Earth. The goal is to show that evolution is not an old, accepted idea, but continues to be the basis for new discoveries, itself changing with modern science.
People from all over the world have visited the exhibit. Many people found the objects and displays helped explain a subject that is hard to understand.
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Jim and Irene Mikkelson were visiting Washington from Charlotte, North Carolina when they stopped by the museum. Mister Mikkelson called the exhibit educational.
JIM MIKKELSON: "I never really realized that that meant that every living thing really came as an evolutionary development of the first seeds of life."
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Aravinda Pillalamarri lives in both India and the United States. She brought her daughter Khiyali to the exhibit and was surprised to find how much she already knew.
ARAVINDA PILLALAMARRI: "What I find interesting is how much of evolution she really takes for granted. For her the idea that birds have come from dinosaurs is just common knowledge and there's nothing surprising in that at all."
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Keith Leonard attends George Mason University in northern Virginia. He visited the exhibit to research Darwin's big idea.
KEITH LEONARD: "It's based on scientific observation which I think is important. And sort of the same ideas have been confirmed over and over again. I think trying to understand our world is a really complicated endeavor and it's important to have a sort of solid rational approach like science does."
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Most visitors spent a long time looking at the display called "The Tree of Life." Darwin explained the evolutionary process as the branching of a tree with complex species developing from simpler ones.
John Kress, a botanist and curator with the Smithsonian, says the team that created the exhibit had a different idea. He says the display was designed to look like a map of the local Washington Metro train system instead of a tree. The reason? All life is connected. Now we know that genetics makes this connection even deeper and we are linked to our ancestors by DNA.