Charles Darwin was born in 1809 in England to an esteemed family with intellectual lineage. He studied medicine at university but found geology more interesting. His mentors introduced him to new ideas in geology and the emerging concept of deep time. In 1831, Darwin joined the HMS Beagle voyage as a naturalist. During the 5-year voyage, Darwin intensely studied geology, actively witnessed earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, discovered giant fossil mammals in Argentina, and began questioning theories about the fixity of species. His geological observations on the voyage formed the basis for his later theories about evolution and natural selection.

1. Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882):
The making of a Geologist

3. “I a geologist have illdefined notion of land
covered with ocean, former animals, slow force
cracking surface &c truly poetical.”

4. Born to do Science
• Born February 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury, England
(west-Wales)
• Mother (Susannah) was a Wedgewood (pottery);
died when Darwin was only 8 years old
• Father (Robert Waring Darwin) was an esteemed
medical doctor and Fellow of the Royal Society
• Grandfathers on both sides were intellectuals:
– Erasmus Darwin  physician, inventor, poet and
natural philosopher
– Josiah Wedgewood  potter, inventor, patron of
the arts, and prominent slavery abolitionist

6. Shrewsbury Public Library, Castlegates
Shrewsbury town square

7. Shrewsbury Town Square & Market
1850

8. Shrewsbury Public
Library, Castlegates; formerly
housed Charles Darwin's alma
mater
Darwin attended school here
from 1818-1825
Charles as a child, with his sister
Catherine (Cambridgeshire Collection)

11. Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)
• English physician
• One of the key thinkers of
the Enlightenment, he was
also a natural
philosopher, physiologist, sl
ave trade
abolitionist,inventor and
poet
• His poems included much
natural history, including a
statement of evolution and
…the relatedness of all
forms of life

12. Erasmus Darwin
Charles Darwin’s
paternal grandfather

13. Josiah Wedgewood (1730-1795

14. Typical blue
Wedgewood
plate

15. England’s Industrial Revolution
• Early years of the industrial revolution (coal-powered)
• Scientific thought and innovative ideas were encouraged
• Early ideas about evolution had germinated during the 18th century
and became more cohesive in early 19th century
– French naturalist Compte de Buffon  father of natural history
thought during the second half of the 18th century
– French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier
de Lamark  Philosophie Zoologique in which evolution was presented
as a theory (characteristics acquired by an individual during its lifetime
are passed down to its offspring)
– Erasmus Darwin  suggested that every living thing had “degenerated
from a single living filament”
– Many others…
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

16. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

19. The Education of Charles Darwin
• Early youth  gardening, fishing, rock
collecting, examining flowers, taking long
solitary walks, climbing trees, general
collector
• Shrewsbury School  labeled a “trifler”
• University of Edinburgh (1825-27) 
studied medicine as the insistence of his
father; quit after two years, but he was
nevertheless baptized into contemporary
scientific thinking
– Studied
meteorology, mineralogy, geology, botany,
zoology, anatomy, etc.
– Exposed to the ideas of Cuvier, Abraham
Gottlob Werner & James Hutton

20. Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric
Dagobert Cuvier (1769-1832)
• French Baron, naturalist, zoologist
• Brilliant comparative anatomist and paleontologist
• Had a major impact on Charles Darwin when he
studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh
• Cuvier’s Important scientific contributions:
 Established the fact of extinction
 Fine-tuned the Linnaeus classification by
comparing the internal structure of organisms
 Rigorously compared the anatomy of living
organisms with fossils
 Showed that species become more complex and
diverse as they are replaced through time

21. Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749-1817)
• German geologist who developed an
early theory about the stratification of
the Earth's crust
• Led the school of thought called
“Neptunism”
• Though much of Werner's theoretical
work was erroneous, science is
indebted to him for clearly
demonstrating the chronological
succession of rocks
• Zealous teacher who greatly inspired
his students
• Has been called the “father of German
geology”

23. Cambridge University
• Attended from 1828- 1831
• A great time for Darwin
“I clambered over the mountains…with a bounding step and
made the volcanic rocks resound under my geological hammer!
All this shows how ambitious I was.”
• Mentored by mineralogy & botany Professor John Stevens
Henslow
– Attended weekend meetings at Henslow’s house and
went on many field excursions
– Became known as “the man who walks with Henslow”
• Henslow taught Darwin how to pay attention to variation
• Henslow also encourged Darwin to read the books of
Alexander Von Humboldt and John F.W. Herschel (A
Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy) –
these books had a huge influence on Darwin’s scientific
development
• Henslow also encouraged Darwin to study more geology:
– Geology was growing fast at this time
– Geology offered opportunities for “large views” of the
natural world
– Henslow introduced Darwin to geology professor Adam
Sedgwick
Darwin’s residence at Christ’s College, Cambridge

24. Christ’s College, Cambridge

25. Darwin’s geologic
mentors during his
Cambridge years
Sedgwick
Henslow
Lyell Hooker

26. Adam Sedgwick
(1785-1873)
• One of the founders of modern
geology
• Educated at Trinity
College, Cambridge – studied
mathematics and theology
• Proposed the Devonian and
Cambrian Periods
• Guided the young Darwin in his
pre-Beagle geological education
• Held Woodwardian Professor of
Geology Chair at Cambridge from
1818 until his death in 1873

27. Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873)
• He founded the system for the classification of
Cambrian rocks and, with Roderick
Murchison, worked out the order of the
Carboniferous and underlying Devonian strata
(1830s)
• Was the first to distinguish clearly between
stratification, jointing, and slaty cleavage
• He strongly believed that species of organisms
originated in a succession of Divine creative acts
throughout the long expanse of history
• While he became increasingly Evangelical with
age, he strongly supported advances in geology
against conservative churchmen
• However, Sedgwick never accepted the case for
evolution made in On the Origin of Species in
1859
Sedgwick: 1887

28. Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873)
• Worked with Sedgwick in August, 1831 in Wales
• Sedgwick taught Darwin an array of field skills and detailed note taking
that proved invaluable on the voyage of the Beagle
• Darwin learned the field skills and science of structural and stratigraphic
geology from the best
• Darwin learned from Sedgwick the process of constructing a scientific
argument from empirical facts
• Darwin “came of age” as a scientist under Sedgwick’s mentorship
• The two kept up a correspondence while Darwin was on the Beagle
expedition, and afterwards

29. The Cambrian (540-488 Ma)
• Named in the 1830s by
Sedgwick after Cambria, the
Latin names for Wales
• Geologically complex area
• Type section in northern
Wales  poorly fossiliferous
dark siltstones and
sandstones

31. Cambrian rocks, North Wales
Poorly fossiliferous dark siltstones and sandstones

32. Founders of Deep Geologic Time
Nicholas Steno (1660s)
– Superposition
– Original horizontality
Charles Lyell (1830s)
– Cross-cutting relations
– Principle of inclusion (xenoliths)
William Smith (~1800)
– Faunal succession
– Fossil correlation
James Hutton (1785) = uniformitarianism

33. W. W. Norton
Superposition & Original Horizontality
Nicholas Steno (Niels Stensen)
Danish physician who settled in Italy
Became physician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany

34. Charles Lyell
Charles Lyell, 1840

36. Cross-cutting relations & inclusions
Charles Lyell

37. Frontispiece to Elements of Geology

41. a) Sedimentary layers can be
identified by their own
unique assemblage of
fossils
b) Fossil organisms succeed
one another in a definite
and determinable order
(“biostratigraphy”)
c) Stratigraphy can be
correlated based on their
fossil assemblages
William “Strata” Smith

43. Canals of England

44. One of Smith’s sketches of dipping stratigraphy:

46. James Hutton (1726 – 1797)
Lived during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe (Philosophers
like Voltaire, Kant, Hume and others encouraged people to cast aside
constraints of dogma and think for themselves)
Discovery of physical laws by Newton and others made people
look to natural, not supernatural, processes to explain the
universe
Considered the “Father” of modern geology
Gentleman farmer in Scotland
Trained as a physician, but never practiced medicine
Main interests in life = natural history (geology)

47. Hutton’s Great Contribution to Science-
Uniformitarianism:
 Physical processes we observe today also operated
in the past and were responsible for the formation of
geological features we see in outcrops
 Geologic change occurs over long periods of time
 Implication  the earth is ancient  very, very old

48. Hutton’s Famous Quotes:
 “The present is the key to the past”
 “We find no vestige of a beginning, no
prospect of an end”
Thus, Hutton conceived of the concept of DEEP TIME

49. Famous angular unconformity at Siccar Point, Scotland
-- James Hutton --

51. W. W. Norton
Angular Unconformity Nonconformity

52. W. W. Norton
Disconformity

53. W. W. Norton

54. Voyage of the HMS Beagle
27 December 1831 to 2 October 1836

55. Voyage of the HMS Beagle
• It took three years and nine months for Beagle to reach Galápagos; during that time, Darwin became an
experienced field man & theorizer
• He rode over 5000 km across the Pampas of Argentina and the Andes on horseback
• Filled 18 field notebooks, four volumes of zoological observations, 13 volumes of geological
observations, composed several essays, kept a descriptive specimen catalogue, and maintained a diary
from beginning to end
• Darwin’s top priority during the voyage was GEOLOGY; he wrote four times more geology notes (1,383
pages) than zoology notes (368 pages) and collected 2,000 rock samples
• He wrote five books with multiple volumes and editions based on his experiences on the voyage:
1. Journal of Researches
2. The structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs
3. Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islnads visited during the Voyage of HMS Beagle
4. Geological Observations on South America
5. The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle (in five parts)

56. Coquimbo to Copiapò

57. Darwin’s Geological Research on the
Voyage of the HMS Beagle
• Foxes of the Falkland
Islands
• Giant fossil Pleistocene
mammals
• Active volcanic
eruptions
• Earthquakes
• Tectonic uplift
• Cross-sections across
the Andes

58. Discovery of Giant Fossil Mammals
• Sept. 22, 1832 near Bahía
Blanca, Argentina (10 months into the
voyage)
• Several extinct species of Pleistocene
mammals
• He found a Megatherium that was more
complete than the one described by
Cuvier, which he used to introduce the
principle of extinction in the fossil record
• Extinct mammals and their resemblance
to living species living in the same area led
Darwin to question the doctrine of “fixity
of species”
• Megatherium went extinct around 10,500
years ago

59. Bahía Blanca

60. Bahía Blanca
Megatherium

61. Megatherium
• Megatherium was one of the largest land mammals
known, weighing up to 4 tonnes and up to 6 m (20 ft) in
length from head to tail. It is the largest known ground
sloth, as big as modern elephants and would have only
been exceeded in its time by a few species of mammoth.
Although it was primarily a quadruped, its footprints
show that it was capable of assuming a bipedal stance.
This sloth, like a modern anteater, walked on the sides of
its feet because its claws prevented it from putting them
flat on the ground. Megatherium species were members
of the abundant Pleistocene megafauna, large mammals
that lived during the Pleistocene epoch.
• Megatherium had a robust skeleton with a large pelvic
girdle and a broad muscular tail. Its large size enabled it
to feed at heights unreachable by other contemporary
herbivores. Rising on its powerful hind legs and using its
tail to form a tripod, Megatherium could support its
massive body weight while using the curved claws on its
long forelegs to pull down branches with the choicest
leaves. Its jaw is believed to have housed a long
tongue, which it would then use to pull leaves into its
mouth, similar to the modern tree sloth.

62. American Megatherium
The first M. americanum
skeleton discovered in 1798

63. Active
convergent
margin
Passive
margin
Passive
margin
Nazca
Plate
Atlantic
Plate

66. Isochron map of the Nazca Plate South America
Syn-convergent extension in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru
Credit: Micah
Jessup, Univ.
Tenn.

68. ~2-15o South
Peru
Flat Slab
Subduction
segments
~27-33o South
Chile & Argentina Sierras
Pampeanas
Mendoza

70. 30o

73. Falkland Islands
• Beagle arrived at East Falkland Island in March, 1833
• Darwin found Paleozoic shells and corals  evidence of
tectonic uplift
• Darwin discovered a wide “stream of stones” that was
remarkable for their enormous size
– Freeze-thaw processes, not earthquake shaking as Darwin believed
– Left an impression that the landscape could change through violent
movements of the Earth’s crust
• Darwin studied the famously fearless now-extinct (in 1876)
Falkland Island wolf (Dusicyon australis)

74. West Falkland
East Falkland

75. Stone run at Mount Kent, East Falkland

76. Falkland Island Wolf (Fox)
• Dusicyon australis
• This was Darwin’s only
example outside Galapagos
of an organism that exists as
distinct varieties on
separate islands
• This discovery really shaped
his thinking on the
relationship of geography
and the distribution of
organisms

77. Dusicyon australis

78. Dusicyon australis - Falkland Islands

79. Andean Orogen
South American Cordillera

80. Darwin in the Andes
• Darwin saw the Andes as the “backbone” of
the South American continent
• As such, it was a “great barrier” dividing
eastern and western species
• He kept lists of “birds and animals” seen on
his numerous transects of the Andes

82. Active Tectonics
• January 1835  witnessed the sky-illuminating eruption
Chile’s Osorno Volcano 100 km to the north
• February 20, 1835  experienced a severe earthquake in
Valdiva
– 70 villages destroyed
– Large tsunami had deposited slabs of marine sediments high on the
beach
– Fissures split the ground in all directions
– The offshore island of Santa Maria was uplifted 9 ft.
• Darwin came to understand that the geography of a place,
and therefore its organisms, could change suddenly or
gradually over time

83. Osorno Volcano - Chile
• 2,652-metre (8,701 ft) high stratovolcano;
resembles Mount Fuji in Japan
• Osorno is one of the most active
volcanoes of the southern Chilean Andes,
with 11 historical eruptions recorded
between 1575 and 1869
• The upper slopes of the volcano are
almost entirely covered in glaciers despite
its very modest altitude and latitude,
sustained by the substantial snowfall in
the very moist maritime climate of the
region
• Osorno sits on top of a 250,000-year-old
eroded stratovolcano, La Picada, with a 6-
km-wide caldera

84. Portillo Pass: Chilean/Argentine
Border near Aconcagua
• March 21, 1835  elevation 3,700m (12,140 ft.)
• Discovered marine fossil shells on the “highest ridge”
• Two weeks later he crossed the Uspallata Range and found a
silicified coastal forest at over 2000m elevation
• Time and time again he found evidence for tectonic uplift
over long periods of geologic time, but sometimes occurring
suddenly

86. Los Penitentes – border of Chile & Argentina

87. Portillo Pass

90. Darwin’s Hut
Near Chilean-Argentine Border
West of Mendoza (Los Penitentes)
(April 2006)

97. Cerro Aconcagua

98. South face of Cerro Aconcagua
Highest Peak in the Americas (6,962 metres; 22,841 ft)
North of Mendoza (April 2006)

99. North side of Cerro Aconcagua

101. Puente del Inca Hot Springs

105. Darwin’s hand-drawn and hand-colored
cross-section of the Andes
(from his voyage on the HMS Beagle)
www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/Darwin/theory.html

108. Ideal (and highly simplified) model of an Andean orogen:
Subduction alone does not lead to orogeny!

109. Aconcagua Structure Sections

111. Mendoza, Argentina: eastern foothills of the Andes
Organically poor desert soils
with scarce rains create ideal
conditions for quality viticulture
By controlling irrigation, the Mendoza winegrower
can influence vigor and hang-time

112. Mendoza Malbec Harvest Time
Mendoza, Argentina
April 2006

113. Beagle’s last stop in South America
was Lima, Peru
Darwin enjoyed the ladies and a
Peruvian custard apple called
“chilimoya”
September 7, 1835  Beagle steered
towards the Galápagos Islands after
hugging the South American coast for
almost four years
Darwin was 26 years old and highly
excited

114. Charles Darwin & Reefs
• Darwin, C. R. 1842, The structure and
distribution of coral reefs, Being the first part
of the geology of the voyage of the Beagle
under the command of Capt. Fitzroy, R.N.
during the years 1832 to 1836: London, Smith
Elder and Co.

116. Cocos (Keeling) Islands

117. • The Territory of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands is a territory of Australia, located in the Indian
Ocean, southwest of Christmas Island and approximately midway between Australia and Sri Lanka
• The territory consists of two atolls and 27 coral islands of which two, West Island and Home
Island, are inhabited with a total population of approximately 600
• April 1st, 1836  Charles Darwin arrives aboard the HMS Beagle (Captain Fitzroy)

118. South Keeling Island

120. Progressive evolution:

121. Mount Tavurvur in Papua New Guinea

122. Fiji: Monukiri & Monu Islands

123. Maldives, Indian Ocean

124. Polynesia

125. Taiaro Atoll, French Polynesia
First visited in 1835 by Charles Darwin aboard the Beagle
UNESCO protected area & Biosphere Preserve