Charles Darwin is known as the British scientist who laid the foundations of the theory of evolution and transformed the way people think about the natural world. Darwin established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors and proposed the scientific theory that this evolutionary branching pattern resulted from a process that we know as natural selection. Though, Charles Darwin has sparked more than one controversy during his studies, the most recent being the evolution of coral atolls, the ring-shaped coral reefs that surround submerged tropical islands. A recent study proved that, about coral reefs, Charles Darwin might be wrong. 

Coral reefs are massive colonies comprised of tiny animals that need sunlight to grow. After seeing a reef encircling Moorea, near Tahiti, Darwin concluded that coral atolls grow as reefs, stretching towards sunlight while ocean islands slowly sink beneath the sea surface. In non-scientific terms, the cooling ocean crust combined with the weight of the island caused the island to sink. 

Darwin's proposal of the coral atolls being thousands of feet thick, sparked controversy amongst the scientific world, after his theory was published in 1842. Some scientists argued that the atolls were merely a thin veneer of coral. In 1953, deep drilling on reefs finally confirmed Darwin's theory to be true.

However, as recent as last week, a new study published in the journal, Geology, informed readers that a computer model found seesawing sea levels, which rise and fall with glacial cycles, discrediting Darwin's theory.

"Darwin actually got it mostly right, which is pretty amazing," said Taylor Perron, the study's co-author and a geologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, Darwin didn't know about these glacially induced sea-level cycles. The computer model accounts for the wide array of coral reefs seen at islands around the world, which Darwin's model left unexplained.

"You can explain a lot of the variety you see just by combining these various processes - the sinking of islands, the growth of reefs, and the last few million years of sea level going up and down rather dramatically," Perron told OurAmazingPlanet.

The researchers also found that one of the few places in the world where sinking islands and sea-level rise create perfect atolls is the Society Islands, where Darwin made his historic observations. And as new technologies continue to come forth, historic observations will continue to be disputed.