Galapagos Islands

GALAPAGOS ISLAND
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Galapagos Island
Galapagos Islands are a part that is isolated from other islands in the pacific ocean about 650 miles of the coast from Ecuador South America. The Galapagos Island are totally isolated from any other island or the mainland, due to this fact the islands are a home to many species of both plants and animals that are rare in any other part of the world. Among some of the Galapagos unique species is the Galapagos tortoise which is the largest existent reptile and has outlived any other animal known to man. The tortoise is currently at 170 years and lives in a zoo in Australia. Other unique animals include the Galapagos penguin, the marine iguana, the Darwin finches and the flightless cormorant. There exists unique forms of plants in the island including threaten species of daisy-like plants and different forms of cacti.
It’s in Galapagos that Darwin provided a starting to the theory of natural selection; Darwin made sense that natural processes made more since when he saw the different species in different islands. The other importance of the Galapagos is that the islands are volcanic and this has led to new islands which create new Galapagos Island (Whittaker & Fernández-Palacios, 2007). The other is that there are two major ocean currents that affect the climate of the Galapagos; these currents are Humboldt Current that comes from Antarctica and the deep water current from the west. These currents bring with them nutrients that feed the food chain and the western waters of the island are richer in marine life.
Some of the roles of Galapagos in the development of biological evolution are that some of the rare species found in the island played a great role in Darwin’s formulation of the natural selection theory. Some of the species in the island includes the amazing animals and the plants; these include the finces, mockingbirds and the tortoises. According to Darwin the Darwin finches were most likely to be descendants of the many finches that colonized the islands about 2million years ago. Of the other rare species in Galapagos are the flightless cormorants which have wings re...