In a world dominated by religious dogma, where people turned to the Church both moral guidance and rational inquiries, two Englishmen offered a theory that challenged the old ways and unified the study of biology. Though history has credited Charles Darwin as the source of both natural selection and evolution, his lesser known colleague, Alfred Russel Wallace (A.R Wallace) had independently arrived at the conclusion. The experiences that formulated both versions of evolution were independent in time and location, illustrating that the phenomena was not unique to any one temporal or geographic location.

The concept of natural selection (as understood today) began with the HMS Beagle, a 235 tonne brig sloop, on which Charles Darwin travelled for five years. Though the ship was not commissioned to radically alter the face of biology, it inevitably helped its now famous passenger to do just that. Joining Captain Robert FitzRoy as an unpaid gentlemen, Charles Darwin looked forward to the opportunity to pursue his love for geology in South America. During the five year journey, Darwin had the opportunity to visit a group of small islands off the coast of present day Ecuador called the Galapagos. Darwin, a budding naturalist, spent a great deal of time collecting samples for later study and taking meticulous notes on rock formations and geological trends. As an after thought he embellished in the crews custom of collecting various species of birds from the locations visited. This tradition would set Darwin on the road to discover natural selection.

Though the birds played little role in his writings subsequent to his voyage, they ultimately gave him a reference to which he could ground his theory of natural selection. Darwin eventually returned to the birds after John Gould, an ornithologist, revealed that what Darwin thought were a series of different species of birds were in fact, all varying species of Finch. Intrigued, he began to pore over his notes quickly discovering, or re-discovering, that each species of finch had a distinctive bill, unique to a particular food source that was abundant to the island it was obtained.

Reading the ideas of economist Thomas Malthus, Darwin began to formulate the foundations for evolution. Malthus argued that a human population growing unchecked would double every 25 years. Because no environment can sustain infinite growth, there was intense competition for the finite resources available. Building on Mathuses idea, Darwin was able to apply the concept of competition for finite resources to the observations made during his journey to the Galapagos.

Variation between individuals of a species exists when combined with limited resources leads to competition. Darwin theorized that if the preceding statement was true, that species with advantageous variations would more likely survive then those without. This idea would explain the variation in the bills of finches he saw across the Galapagos, and explain why each bill was specialized to a specific resource abundant in the area that species of finch was found. Darwin coined the term natural selection to describe the process by which only favorable variations survive.

Though Darwin's roots as a geologist and his study of Charles Lyells, Principles of Geology , planted the seed for belief that great changes were the outcome of gradual processes over huge periods of time, Darwin did not apply this idea to biology until his study of fossils.

In 1837 Darwin began making detailed notes of evolution. Studying homologous structures, vestigial organs and embryological development of living species gave him ample evidence that evolution was occurring. Once natural selection became the avenue for explaining why evolution occurred, Darwin had amassed a huge amount of evidence for his theory. His facts eventually took the form of a 230 page essay written over two years, titled The Origin of Species.

Though he arrived at the same conclusion as Charles Darwin, A.R Wallace did so at a later date, taking a different route. Unlike his famous counterpart, Wallace was not interested in geology or rock formations; his goal was to solve the riddle of the origin of species. Like Darwin, Wallace chose South America as his destination to find an answer to the riddle. He found both evidence and bad luck. Concluding his voyage two years later due to an illness, A.R. Wallace decided to return to England and begin cataloging the large collection he had amassed. On his voyage home his ship caught fire and sank, taking with it a substantial portion of his samples. Determined not to let a little bad luck inhibit his thirst for knowledge, Wallace left for Indonesia two years later. It was during the eight years A.R. Wallace spent in Indonesia where he came up with his theory of speciation via survival of the fittest.

Unlike Darwin, Wallace did not study finches to formulate his theory, rather, Wallace observed a slew of organisms including the Rhacophorus Nigropalmatus, or the flying frog. Like Darwin, Wallace observed how geographic separation seemed to cause speciation amongst similar individuals. He too eventually connected these observations back to Thomas Malthus, eventually authoring a mechanism to how such change occurred. He called what Darwin referred to as natural selection, "survival of the fittest". The "survival of the fittest" concept used by Wallace was similar to Darwin's but not identical. Both agreed that some sort of selection occurred, but while Wallace described it as a natural phenomena, Darwin used selective breeding as a means to explain and understand the mechanism.

In essence, A.R Wallace arrived at the same conclusions that Darwin had some twenty years before. When he sent Darwin an early manuscript of his findings, Darwin realized that he could no longer hold back his results. Darwin himself described Wallace