Darwin's voyage on the HMS Beagle and experience with a broad range of habitats and lifeforms (extinct and extant) was pivotal to his rejection of Lamarckism and identification of Natural Selection as the primary mechanism of evolution.
If Darwin had been around earlier and had traveled with Columbus to the New World in 1492:
- Would it have impacted his research?
- Would he have made the same discoveries?
- Why or why not?