Darwin and Newton: Lives (Non) Parallels. On the 20th of March, we are to honor the death of Isaac Newton as we celebrated previously, Darwin's Day in middle February. Much has been written about their work, but I just want to remind that in 1859 Darwin published his findings in the book "The Origin of Species", arguing that the species of living organisms do not remain unchanged, as Aristotle and the book of Genesis argued, but have a common origin and through natural selection evolve over millennia. This position generated strong reactions from the first moment, mainly from the Church, who believes that the creation of the world is the result of Divine Grace. Darwin was labeled an atheist and mocked as a descendant of monkeys, while some of his supporters were dragged to court (Trial of the Apes). Today, more than a century after his death, the scientific community has accepted his theory, which has since been verified through numerous observations and newer discoveries. A recent visit to the Mausoleum at Westminster in London made me think and led me to write this text

Darwin and Newton: Lives (Non) Parallels. On the 20th of March, we are to honor the death of Isaac Newton as we celebrated previously, Darwin's Day in middle February. Much has been written about their work, but I just want to remind that in 1859 Darwin published his findings in the book "The Origin of Species", arguing that the species of living organisms do not remain unchanged, as Aristotle and the book of Genesis argued, but have a common origin and through natural selection evolve over millennia. This position generated strong reactions from the first moment, mainly from the Church, who believes that the creation of the world is the result of Divine Grace. Darwin was labeled an atheist and mocked as a descendant of monkeys, while some of his supporters were dragged to court (Trial of the Apes). Today, more than a century after his death, the scientific community has accepted his theory, which has since been verified through numerous observations and newer discoveries. A recent visit to the Mausoleum at Westminster in London made me think and led me to write this text

The present work is an attempt at a bibliographic overview in the field of paleontology and specifically in the field of fossils regarding their value and connection with history and mythology, and how it has been used to teach theory of evolution through natural selection (TENS) in a university course. To make our case, we use as our paradigm two well-known historical locations of Greece, namely Thermopiles and Marathon. The area of Marathon includes the location of Pikermi, which is very well known for its fossils that historically have been one of the first locations rich in fossils that have been studied so extensively. Before we make a short tour of other similar locations of the Greek peninsula that are good cases for teaching evolution using paleontology, we present an example of how fossils can be formed via sedimentation. For that, we are using the case of Thermopile, while in antiquity was chosen as the field of the famous battle as it was a very narrow strip of land between the mountain and the sea, nowadays, due to sedimentary alluvial deposits, has become a rather large field. To make the reader familiar with the fossils found around Greece and their topology, we present a short tour and some history about the fossils found throughout its territory. And finally, we argue about how the fossils and the museum education could be used to prepare the pupils for first contact with TENS.