Speaker Eric Meikle said fossil proof is continuing to verify and refute the evolutionary ideas of Charles Darwin.

Meikle, the education project director for the National Center for Science Education, spoke about Charles Darwin and his ideas of human evolution during “Darwin and the Human Fossil Record: 150 Years of Discovery, Exploration and Debate” on Monday.

Meikle said Darwin did not base his ideas off of fossil evidence, because during his time, there were not many fossils recovered.

Darwin based his ideas off of live organisms around during his time, Meikle said.

“That’s one way to learn about the past is have the physical evidence, but you can actually come up with ideas about things that might have happened in the past, just by looking at organisms that are alive today,” Meikle said.

Meikle said Darwin accepted two major theories: humans relation to apes and the timeline of human existence.

Darwin looked at apes and human and compared them to see what is unique to humans.

Darwin then proposed the traits that a common ancestor would have and would not have based off of the differences.

Darwin also suggested the two major differences as a larger brain size and skeletal differences.

Meikle said some fossils have been able to forge ancestral connections of humans and apes despite some missing links.

Meikle also said Darwin used his ideas of the possible ancestor to suggest the progression of evolution, which Darwin suggested were all connected with the other.

Because some primates spent more time on the ground that they began to stand straighter and walk on two feet, which Meikle said lead to throwing resulting in the development of stronger feet.

Meikle said some of Darwin’s ideas still need to be proven.

“I would like people, who were not aware of it, to understand that it is possible to think about and study the past and come to some ideas, without necessarily having only the fossils,” Meikle said.

Iwo Gross, a junior biological sciences major, said he thought the lecture was interesting.

Gross said evolution is a topic that is always changing with new discoveries.

“They think they know the fact and then science comes and kicks them in the butt,” Gross said. “It’s cool we can refute the knowledge we thought we knew.”

Meikle said there are many people who are trying to find the different connection left in evolution.

“I would hope that people have an idea that there is a lot of fossil evidence about human evolution that has accumulated over the last century and a half,” Meikle said. “There are people who spend a lot of time studying it, trying to make sense out of it.”

Meikle said he hopes students learned a lot about Darwin’s ideas of evolution.

Sarah Baxter, a freshman biological sciences major, said she thought the lecture was very informative.

“It was brief, he didn’t go through the whole book,” Baxter said. “You can go really deep into it and be here all night.”

Samantha McDaniel can be reached at 581-2812 or slmcdaniel@eiu.edu.