Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck

Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck was a French naturalist known for his early theories on evolution. In the early 1800s, he proposed that species could change over time through a process called "inheritance of acquired characteristics." This idea suggested that traits gained during an organism's lifetime, like a giraffe stretching its neck to reach higher leaves, could be passed to offspring. While his theory was later overshadowed by Darwin's natural selection, Lamarck's ideas were significant in shaping the study of evolution and sparked discussions about how species adapt and change over generations.