He was born in Shrewsbury in Western England, in 1809.

He joined the expedition on Beagle to South American coastline. Observations on American Coastline. He observed and collected thousands of specimens of diverse fauna and flora of South America. Fauna and Flora. He noticed that the fauna and flora of the different regions of the continent had

 Definite South American stamp,

 Very distinction from the life forms of Europe. Fossils. Furthermore, the South American fossils that Darwin found,

 Though clearly different from modern species,

 Were distinctly South American in their resemblance to the living plants and animals of that continent.

Observations on Galapagos Islands.

A particularly puzzling case of geographical distribution was the fauna of the Galapagos Islands. Most animal species on the Galapagos live nowhere else in the world, although they resemble species living on the South American mainland. Probability. It was as though the islands were colonized by plants and animals that

 strayed from the South American mainland and

 Then diversified on the different islands. Darwin finches. Among the birds Darwin collected on the Galapagos were 13 types of finches that, although quite similar, seemed to be different species.

 Some were unique to individual islands, while

 other species were distributed on two or more islands that were close together.

Darwin Perceptions about origin of species.

After returning to Great Britain in 1836, Darwin perceived “The origin of new species and adaptations as closely related processes.” Adaptations to new environment. A new species would arise from an ancestral form by the gradual accumulation of adaptations to different environments, separated from original habitat by geographical barriers. Over many generations, the two populations could become dissimilar enough to be designated as separate species. This is apparently what happened to the Galapagos finches.