Darwin's voyage

Edwin Harris Colbert, AMNH curator of fossil reptiles and amphibians, is interviewed for this broadcast concerning Charles Darwin's five year voyage around the world on the H.M.S. Beagle. Darwin's revolutionary theories on evolution and survival of the fittest were largely formulated during this voyage. Only 22 years old at the time, Darwin was the naturalist commissioned to make geographic and navigational surveys for the British Navy. His theories on the process of adaptation and natural selection greatly contradicted the prevailing theories of the early nineteenth century that maintained that all animal forms were originally created as they appear today. Colbert presents detailed narration and film footage of the Galapagos Islands, a natural laboratory for the study of evolution because of their isolation.