Lefalophodon: Timeline

Key:

• Human evolution
  
• Paleontology
  
• Natural history
  
• Genetics/development
  
• Evolutionary theory and systematics
  
• Institutional history

1749

• Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière (Comte de Buffon)

1754

• Genera Plantarum (Carolus Linnaeus)

1758

• Systema Naturae (Carolus Linnaeus)

1768

• James Cook's Endeavour departs for Tahiti and Australia with Joseph Banks on board

1772

• Joseph Banks becomes director of Kew Gardens

1789

• Genera Plantarum (A. L. Jussieu)

1793

• John Hunter dies, leaving his natural history collection to the Royal College of Surgeons

1794

• Zoonomia (Erasmus Darwin)

1800

• Georges Cuvier argues that fossils represent truly extinct species

1801

• Matthew Flinder's Investigator departs for Australia with Robert Brown on board

1802

• Natural Theology (W. Paley)

1807

• Founding of the Geological Society of London

1809

• Philosophie zoologique (J. Lamarck)

1812

• Founding of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia

1813

• An Essay on the Theory of the Earth (G. Cuvier)

1815

• W. Smith's great geological map of England

1818

• Philosophie anatomique (E. Geoffroy)

1819

• Théorie élémentaire (A. P. de Candolle)
• Horae Entomologicae (W. S. MacLeay)

1827

• Robert Brown moves to the British Museum and takes Joseph Banks' botanical collections with him

1830

• Geoffroy-Cuvier debate, Paris
  
• Principles of Geology (first of three volumes: C. Lyell)

1831

• C. Darwin embarks on Beagle voyage, returning to London in 1836

1838

• John Gould departs for Australia
• Charles Wilkes' United States Exploring Expedition departs for the Pacific with James Dwight Dana on board
• Darwin formulates theory of natural selection

1839

• The Silurian System (R. I. Murchison)
• James Clark Ross' Erebus and Terror depart for the Antarctic and Australia with Joseph Hooker on board

1841

• R. Owen defines dinosaurs

1842

• Darwin writes brief, unpublished Sketch of his theory of evolution

1844

• Darwin writes lengthy, unpublished Essay on evolution
  
• Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (R. Chambers)

1846

• Owen Stanley's Rattlesnake departs for the Antarctic and Australia with Thomas Huxley on board

1847

• Founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Louis Agassiz becomes professor at Harvard University

1848

• Hooker departs for the Himalayas
• Wallace and Bates depart for the Amazon

1849

• Spruce departs for the Amazon and Andes

1854

• Wallace departs for the Malay Archipelago

1855

• "On the law which has regulated the introduction of new species" (A. Wallace: argues for a pattern of branching evolution citing geographical distributions)

1856

• Discovery of the original Neandertal skeleton

1858

• Founding of the Botanical Club of New York (later the Torrey Botanical Club)
  
• Darwin and Wallace publish brief joint paper announcing theory of natural selection

1859

• Opening of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University
  
• Essay on Classification (L. Agassiz)
• On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (C. Darwin)

1860

• T. Huxley debates Bishop Samuel Wilberforce at meeting of the BAAS at Oxford

1861

• Archaeopteryx discovered at Solnhofen (described in detail by Owen in 1864; affinites to dinosaurs discovered by Huxley in 1868)

1862

• "Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon valley" (H. Bates: describes mimicry)

1863

• Founding of the National Academy of Sciences
  
• Publication of first books on human evolution by Lyell and Huxley
  
• The physicist William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) publishes argument that based on the cooling rate of the Earth, it is less than 100,000,000 years old (allowing insufficient time for gradual Darwinian evolution)

1864

• "Salem secession": large cohort of L. Agassiz' student employees quits Harvard

1865

• Louis Agassiz' Thayer Expedition departs for Brazil
• Gregor Mendel publishes key results of hybridization studies, which are ignored

1866

• Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (E. Haeckel)

1868

• Opening of the American Museum of Natural History, New York

1869

• Hereditary Genius (F. Galton)

1871

• The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (C. Darwin)
  
• Genesis of Species (Mivart)

1872

• Opening of the Stazione Zoologica at Naples by A. Dohrn
• Establishment of Yellowstone National Park (first in the U.S.A.)

1873

• Death of Louis Agassiz; his son Alexander soon takes over the Museum of Comparative Zoology

1876

• Founding of the Johns Hopkins University, with the first modern Department of Biology; T. Huxley delivers the university's inaugural address

1877

• Cope-Marsh war intensifies with discovery of major dinosaur localities at Canon City, Morrison, and Como Bluff

1881

• Opening of the British Museum's South Kensington buildings, which house the natural history collection, after years of campaigning by R. Owen

1882

• Founding of the Milwaukee Public Museum

1883

• Founding of American Ornithologists' Union at a meeting organized by Allen, Brewster, and Coues and held at the AMNH
  
• Uber die Vererberung (A. Weismann: introduces germ-plasm theory, polarizing the debate over selection)

1884

• The Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West (E. Cope)

1886

• The code of nomenclature and Check-list of North American birds, a key influence on the later ICZN, is published by the American Ornithologists' Union

1888

• Founding of the Marine Biological Laboraties at Woods Hole under C. Whitman

1889

• Founding of Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts (focused on graduate studies and research)

1890

• Cope-Marsh war becomes widely known with publication of incriminating letters provided by Cope to the New York Herald
  
• H. Osborn takes up appointments at Columbia University and the AMNH

1891

• Discovery of Homo ("Pithecanthropus") erectus at Trinil, Java by E. Dubois (published in 1894)

1892

• Mass resignation of scientific faculty from Clark University; many moved to the University of Chicago

1894

• Materials for the Study of Variation (W. Bateson: major mutationist attack on Darwinism)

1896

• Founding of the New York Botanical Garden

1900

• Simultaneous rediscovery of Mendel's laws by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns

1904

• Founding of the Station for Experimental Evolution, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, by C. B. Davenport

1908

• Reorganization of the recently-formed Society of American Vertebrate Paleontologists as the Paleontological Society

1912

• Alfred Wegener publishes his theory of continental drift
• Arthur Smith Woodward describes "Piltdown man," not revealed as a forgery until 1953

1915

• Climate and Evolution (W. Matthew: proposes dispersalist theory of biogeography with imperialistic overtones, opposing Wegener)

1916

• Founding of the journal Genetics with a board including Castle, Davenport, Morgan, and Pearl

1917

• Founding of the eugenicist Galton Society by Davenport, Madison Grant, and other American biologists

1919

• The Physical Basis of Heredity (T. H. Morgan)
• Founding of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, first editor Ales Hrdlicka
• Founding of the American Society of Mammalogists, first president C. H. Merriam

1923

• Establishment of the Barro Colorado Island research preserve, Panama

1925

• Description of Australopithecus africanus (the Taung child) by R. Dart challenges Osborn's theory of the Asian origin of man

1927

• Discovery and description of "Peking man" by D. Black
• W. D. Matthew moves from the American Museum to the University of California

1928

• T. H. Morgan and students move from Columbia to Cal Tech

1930

• Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (R. Fisher: first major work to argue for the Modern Synthesis)

1937

• Genetics and the Origin of Species (T. Dobzhansky)
• "The Fort Union of the Crazy Mountain Field, Montana, and its mammalian faunas" (G. Simpson: tour de force of biostratigraphy, paleoecology, and taxonomy)

1941

• Founding of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology as a breakaway group of the PS; first president A. Romer

1942

• Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (J. Huxley)

1944

• Tempo and Mode in Evolution (G. Simpson)

1947

• Founding of the journal Evolution, first editor E. Mayr

1953

• Piltdown fossils shown to be fraudulent by chemical analyses

1959

• Symposium held at the University of Chicago to celebrate the centenary of Darwin's Origin of Species, with almost all of the key architects of the Modern Synthesis in attendance