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Charles Lyell, born on November 14, 1797-February 22, 1875, accomplished major events that led to our current time and place now. He was one of several people to debunk the theory of how the earth is much older than just 6,000 years old. Also the Scottish geologist largely responsible for the general acceptance of the view that all features of the Earth’s surface are produced by physical, chemical, and biological processes through long periods of geological time. Which led to other things that coal/other minerals take a long process to form. The concept was called uniformitarianism. Lyell’s achievements laid the foundations for evolutionary biology as well as for an understanding of the Earth’s development, which is a really big deal. Charles spent many years in and out of expensive private schools but was said to prefer wandering and learning from his father. At the age of 19, Charles went off to Oxford to study mathematics and geology. He spent vacations from school traveling and making astute observations of geological formations. Charles Lyell graduated, with honors, with a Bachelor's of Art in Classics in 1819. With all those accomplishments in hand, he took what he learned into his own observations which made him really exceptional for geology.

For inspiration, Lyell turned to the fifty-year-old ideas of a Sco uniformitarianism, because of his fierce insistence that the processes that alter the Earth are uniform through time. Like Hutton, Lyell viewed the history of Earth as being vast and directionless. This also helped improved on Lyell's idea of uniformitarianism, because of his fierce insistence that the processes that alter the Earth are uniform through time. Like Hutton, Lyell viewed the history of Earth as being vast and directionless. And the history of life was no different. Lyell traveled through Europe to find more evidence that gradual changes, the same we can see happening today, had produced the features of the Earth's surface. He found evidence for many rises and falls of sea level, and of giant volcanoes built on top of far older rocks. Processes such as earthquakes and eruptions, which had been witnessed by humans, were enough to produce mountain ranges. Valleys were not the work of giant floods but the slow grinding force of wind and water.

In the 1840s Lyell became more widely known outside the scientific community, socializing with Lord John Russell, a leading Whig in London, Sir Robert Peel, founder of Scotland Yard, and Thomas Macaulay, the historian of England. In 1848 Lyell was knighted for his scientific achievements, beginning a long and friendly acquaintance with the royal family. He studied the prevention of mine disasters with the English physicist Michael Faraday in 1844, served as a commissioner for the Great Exhibition in 1851–52, and in the same year helped to begin educational reform at Oxford University—he had long objected to church domination of British colleges. Lyell’s professional reputation continued to grow; during his lifetime he received many awards and honorary degrees, including, in 1858, the Copley Medal, the highest award of the Royal Society of London; and he was many times president of various scientific societies or functions. Expanding reputation and responsibilities brought no letup in his geological explorations. His other work, “Antiquity of Man”, was published in 1863, and discussed the proofs of the long existence of human beings on the earth. Lyell’s geological approach tends to be an assessment of evolutionism in the wider sense. He was one of the earliest men to embrace Darwin’s theory of natural selection in biology.

On his travels in both Britain and North America Sir Charles Lyell paid particular attention to coalfields and their fossils. Understanding the formation of coal and associated rocks was the subject of several publications. In this contribution three aspects of this work are highlighted, all of which are the subject of ongoing modern research. Lyell was interested in modern analogues for the Carboniferous coal swamps and was amongst the first to suggest analogies with the mires of the eastern United States, such as the Dismal Swamps. A brief review of recent research on new modern analogues from Southeast Asia is presented. Lyell observed ‘mineral charcoal’ in some of the coals and noted its anatomical structure. Considerable advances in our understanding of the role of fires in terrestrial ecosystems and their potential as an agent of fossil preservation are addressed. One of Lyell’s most important palaeontological finds was of remains of the earliest reptiles (these proved to be amphibians but Sir William Dawson found reptiles subsequently) preserved in the Upper Carboniferous tree trunks at Joggins, Nova Scotia, Canada. Whilst this occurrence of reptiles is no longer the oldest, the reasons for the remarkable tetrapod occurrences in upright sandstone-filled lycophyte trees at Joggins are currently being investigated and recent progress is presented.

Sources: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_12