‘Charles Darwin’s evolutionary revelation in Australia‘, The Conversation, 12 January 2016
Looks at the contributions of Darwin’s work in Australia (New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia) in 1836 to what ultimately became his famous work On the Origin of Species.
Near present-day Wallerawang, just west of the Blue Mountains, [Darwin] examined a rat-kangaroo and a platypus. Noting that they occupied (what we now call) ecological niches similar to those of the rabbit and water rat in the northern hemisphere, he wondered in his diary why a single creator would make such different animals for the same apparent purpose: “Surely two distinct Creators must have been [at] work.”