How did Charles Lyell's work help lay foundations for evolutionary biology?

Charles Lyell’s work was instrumental in laying the foundations for evolutionary biology by establishing a framework of deep time and gradual change that influenced Charles Darwin.12

His primary contributions included:

• Promulgation of Uniformitarianism: Lyell championed the doctrine of uniformitarianism, which posits that Earth’s features are the result of slow, continuous physical and chemical processes that operate today just as they did in the past.34
• The Necessity of Deep Time: By arguing that geological change occurs through incremental, gradual processes rather than sudden cataclysms, Lyell demonstrated that the Earth must be incredibly ancient. This vast timescale provided the necessary context for the slow process of biological evolution to occur.35642
• Influence on Darwin: Darwin drew heavily on Lyell’s Principles of Geology for both content and scientific methodology. While Lyell was initially hesitant to accept evolution, he eventually embraced natural selection and provided powerful arguments that helped gain support for Darwin’s theory.12

Ultimately, Lyell’s methods of scientific inquiry and his "vistas of time" fundamentally altered the scientific perspective, making the development of evolutionary biology possible.2