Short answers, pulled from the story.
Cave paintings in France dating back 15,000 years show bison, horses, and deer rendered with careful detail. Prehistoric people studied animals to exploit them and survive their environment.
Conrad Gessner published a 4,500-page encyclopedia between 1551 and 1558 that marked the beginning of modern zoology. Albertus Magnus wrote commentaries on all of Aristotle's works during the post-classical era.
Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution by natural selection in 1859. The publication placed organic evolution on a new footing with observational evidence.
Francis Crick and James Watson determined the double helical structure of DNA in 1953. Rosalind Franklin contributed to this discovery alongside them.
Carl Linnaeus grouped species according to shared physical characteristics in his first edition of Systema Naturae published in 1735. Modern biological classification generally starts with the three-domain system including Archaea, Bacteria and Eukaryota.