Short answers, pulled from the story.
James Watson and Francis Crick described the double helix structure of DNA in 1953. This molecule encodes genetic information in a sequence of four bases: adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine.
Scientists reported identifying 355 genes from the last universal common ancestor LUCA in July 2016. Prokaryotes inhabited Earth from approximately 3 to 4 billion years ago before eukaryotic cells emerged between 1.6 and 2.7 billion years ago.
The earlier Permian Triassic extinction event drove approximately 96% of all marine species to extinction. Present-day extinction rates are 100 to 1000 times greater than the background rate with up to 30% of current species potentially extinct by the mid 21st century.
Charles Darwin developed his theory of natural selection from 1838 onwards and published On the Origin of Species at the end of 1859. Their separate papers were presented together at an 1858 meeting of the Linnean Society of London alongside Alfred Russel Wallace.
The Mexican tetra is an albino cavefish that lost its eyesight during evolution but no specific year for this loss is provided in the text. Breeding different populations produced offspring with functional eyes which helped identify genes required for vision and pigmentation.