Darwin Island

Darwin Island (Spanish: Isla Darwin) is named in honor of Charles Darwin, and is among the smallest in the Galápagos Archipelago with an area of just one square kilometre (0.4 sq mi). With no dry landing sites, Darwin Island's main attractions are found in the Pacific Ocean, which is teeming with a spectacular variety of marine life. Darwin Island and Wolf Island sometimes are referred to as Darwin and Wolf or Darwin Wolf.

Although the island had been marked on maps and had initially been given the name Culpepper Island on Admiralty charts, the first landing on Darwin Island was not until 1964, by helicopter.

Geology

Darwin Island is the remains of an extinct volcano that reaches 165 metres (541 ft) above sea level. It is situated northwest of the main Galápagos Island group on the Wolf-Darwin Lineament, which extends from the Galápagos Platform to the Galápagos Spreading Center, a mid-ocean ridge separating the Nazca and Cocos tectonic plates. The formation of Darwin Island is different from the formation of the main Galápagos Islands. There are currently two theories on the formation of the lineament: the first is that magma rising from the mantle plume forming the main Galápagos Islands has been channelled towards the Galápagos Spreading Center; alternatively there has been a separate rise in magma caused by stress in the ocean lithosphere by a transform fault.

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZS (/ˈdɑːrwɪn/; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.

Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species. By the 1870s, the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many favoured competing explanations and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. In modified form, Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.