Word: lamarckian
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...than others-"survival of the fittest." Geneticists later concluded that inheritance was locked in a set of genes that usually bred true, but once in a while spontaneously "mutated" to produce a new characteristic that thereafter bred true and thus produced evolution's changes. This knowledge undercut the Lamarckian concept-named for Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (1744-1829)-that characteristics could be acquired in response to environment and become hereditary.* The cause of mutations remained a mystery...