What 1835 Chile quake taught Darwin - CNN.com
Not only did he collect widespread evidence of the uplift of the coast during the earthquake, but traveling inland and into the mountains, he discovered a series of remains of marine shells -- proof that the shifting that had recently uplifted the coast by a small amount had occurred over and over in the recent geological past.
The experience convinced him that the great geologist Charles Lyell was right -- mountain chains were not created by sudden immense catastrophes, but grew almost imperceptibly, the product of thousands of successive uplifts over almost endless geological time.
via cnn.com
