One hundred and fifty years ago today the world first heard of natural selection at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London. The meeting was presented with extracts from (the now famous) Charles Darwin's writing - which were unpublished at the time - and an essay (by the less well known) Alfred Wallace.

Dr George Beccaloni of the Natural History Museum has written an extensive blog post on this milestone on The Beagle Project Blog which is well worth a read, especially as it highlights the often forgotten part that Alfred Wallace had in the story of Natural Selection.

You can also read a perspective on Darwin here on open2, an exploration of the phrase 'survival of the fittest' (and why so many people misunderstand it), and an extract from Darwin's On the Origin of Species.