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Evolution: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
Natural Selection
Living things vary, and those with traits that help them survive and reproduce leave more young, who inherit those traits. Over many generations, populations change.
Key fact
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both came up with the idea.
Darwin’s Voyage
Charles Darwin sailed around the world on HMS Beagle in the 1830s. Finches and tortoises on the Galápagos Islands helped shape his ideas.
Key fact
He published On the Origin of Species in 1859.
Fossils
Fossils are the remains or traces of ancient life preserved in rock. They show how living things changed over hundreds of millions of years.
Key fact
The oldest known fossils are over 3.5 billion years old.
Adaptations
Adaptations are traits that suit a living thing to its home: a camel’s hump stores fat, a polar bear’s fur keeps it warm, and cacti store water.
Key fact
A polar bear’s skin is black, to soak up heat.
Common Ancestors
All living things are related. Humans and chimpanzees share an ancestor that lived around 6 to 7 million years ago.
Key fact
Humans didn’t evolve from modern chimps; we’re cousins.
Extinction
Most species that ever lived are now extinct. Five mass extinctions reshaped life; the last, 66 million years ago, wiped out the non-bird dinosaurs.
Key fact
Birds are living dinosaurs.
Evolution Today
Evolution is still happening. Bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics within years, and some moths turned darker as pollution blackened trees.
Key fact
Antibiotic resistance is evolution happening fast.
Fun facts
After a drought on the Galápagos in 1977, scientists watched finches’ beaks get bigger within a single generation.
Darwin waited about 20 years before publishing his theory.
Some fossils are poo: fossilised dung, called coprolite, reveals what ancient animals ate.
Arctic foxes change coat with the seasons: brown or grey in summer, white in winter.
About 60% of human genes have a recognisable counterpart in bananas.
The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs was about 10 km wide, and left a crater around 180 km across.
After years of heavy poaching, more elephants in Mozambique are now born without tusks.
Story: Nearly Turned Down for His Nose
Nearly Turned Down for His Nose
1831. Young Charles Darwin is offered a place on HMS Beagle, but Captain Robert FitzRoy nearly turns him down.
FitzRoy believed faces showed character, and doubted a man with Darwin’s nose had the energy for the voyage.
Darwin went anyway. The five-year trip around the world gave him the ideas behind On the Origin of Species.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
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Question 1 of 10
Natural selection can change a population’s traits over generations.
Show the answer
True. Helpful traits become more common.
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Question 2 of 10
Darwin visited the Galápagos Islands.
Show the answer
True. In 1835, aboard HMS Beagle.
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Question 3 of 10
Fossils can show how species changed over time.
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True. They’re a record written in rock.
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Question 4 of 10
A camel’s hump stores fat.
Show the answer
True. The fat is an energy store for lean times.
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Question 5 of 10
Humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor.
Show the answer
True. We split from a shared ancestor millions of years ago.
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Question 6 of 10
Birds descend from dinosaurs.
Show the answer
True. They’re the dinosaurs that survived.
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Question 7 of 10
Bacteria can evolve resistance to antibiotics.
Show the answer
True. Survivors of a treatment pass on their resistance.
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Question 8 of 10
Animals evolve during their own lifetime because they need to.
Show the answer
False. Populations evolve over generations; individuals don’t.
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Question 9 of 10
Darwin’s voyage around the world lasted just a few months.
Show the answer
False. It lasted five years, from 1831 to 1836.
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Question 10 of 10
Fossils form in a few weeks.
Show the answer
False. Fossilisation usually takes thousands to millions of years.
Keep going in the app
KnowSoda learns what you know and brings back what you’re about to forget. Evolution has 6 more ideas at the Advanced and Expert levels.
Sources
- Natural History Museum (London) — Evolution and Darwin
- Understanding Evolution (UC Berkeley)
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Human Origins
- Darwin Correspondence Project — On the Origin of Species (1859)
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Human origins; Burgess Shale
- Hublin et al. (2017), new fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Nature 546
