Darwin's Predictions

Ahead of his time is putting it moderately for Charles Darwin. The father of evolution had conjectures that were only proved, or greatly substantiated, decades after his death in 1882, in some cases not until recently. Today, evidence that unequivocally supports his theory of evolution by natural selection, as well as other surmises he had, comes from an array of scientific disciplines, including paleontology, geology, biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, and, most recently, evolutionary developmental biology, or "evo devo." "The notion that all these lines of evidence could converge and give a common answer to the question of where we came from is truly powerful," says Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller. "This is the reason why scientific support for the theory of evolution is so overwhelming." Here, bone up on Darwin's most prophetic ideas.—Peter Tyson

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