Portugal: Charles Darwin Birth Bicentenary (1809 - 2009)

Date of Issue: February 12, 2009

This souvenir sheet was issued exactly on Charles Darwin's Birthday, along with a set of six stamps. Many other countries too commemorated this event by issuing postage stamps.

Charles Robert Darwin FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.

The design of the stamp sheet is based on the watercolor painting by Conrad Martens, draughtsman of HMS Beagle, and also a landscape painter.