D- the mountains are evidence of plate tectonics
Evolutionary<span> thought, the conception that </span>species<span> change over time, has roots in antiquity - in the ideas of the </span>ancient Greeks<span>, </span>Romans<span>, and </span>Chinese<span> as well as in </span>medieval Islamic science<span>. With the beginnings of modern </span>biological taxonomy<span> in the late 17th century, two opposed ideas influenced </span>Western<span> biological thinking: </span>essentialism<span>, the belief that every species has essential characteristics that are unalterable, a concept which had developed from </span>medieval Aristotelian metaphysics<span>, and that fit well with </span>natural theology<span>; and the development of the new anti-Aristotelian approach to </span>modern science<span>: as the </span>Enlightenment<span> progressed, evolutionary </span>cosmology<span> and the </span>mechanical philosophy<span> spread from the </span>physical sciences<span> to </span>natural history<span>. </span>Naturalists<span> began to focus on the variability of species; the emergence of </span>paleontology<span> with the concept of </span>extinction<span> further undermined static views of </span>nature<span>. In the early 19th century </span>Jean-Baptiste Lamarck<span> (1744 – 1829) proposed his </span>theory<span> of the </span>transmutation of species<span>, the first fully formed theory of </span>evolution<span>.</span>
