It was commonly believed the species had been created fully formed, like in Genesis. Slective breeding was known, but it was not obvious that entirely new speci

It was commonly believed the species had been created fully formed, like in Genesis. Slective breeding was known, but it was not obvious that entirely new species could be created that way. There is a big step from breeding a bigger dog to breeding a dog into an octupus. Different theories of evolution existed before Charles Darwin, but the mechanism driving the evolution was not understood. Lucrete (Roman writer) had ideas close to Darwins natural selection - he believed the species had been initially created by all kinds of organs and body parts combinimg at random, but only the “fit” ones surviving. But I think Lucrete thought this was a historcal event, not an ongoing process.