150 years of Descent with Modification

Today’s also the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace’s joint presentation of the concept of evolution by natural selection to the Linnean Society of London. Darwin had been carefully assembling on a massive book on natural selection for years, until Wallace came up with the same idea and gave Darwin sudden impetus to publish. On the Origin of Species, which was really only an “abstract” of the intended longer work, was published the next year, in 1859. Wired.com has a very nice retrospective on the event.