When did Jean-Baptiste Lamarck first present his idea that species can change?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck first presented his revolutionary notion of species mutability in 1800 during a lecture to students in his invertebrate zoology class at the National Museum of Natural History.1

While he later refined and published his broader theory of organic transformation in works such as Recherches sur l’organisation des corps vivans (1802) and Philosophie zoologique (1809), the 1800 lecture marks the initial introduction of his ideas regarding the changeability of species.1