Final answer:
Most people in Mendel's era believed in the blending theory of inheritance, which suggested a blended mix of parental characteristics in offspring. Mendel's pea plant experiments provided evidence against this view, revealing that traits are inherited in distinct forms, leading to the modern understanding of genetics.
Step-by-step explanation:
In Mendel's time, most people believed that c. the characteristics of parents were blended in the offspring. This was known as the blending theory of inheritance, a popular notion that offspring are a mix of their parents' features. Contrary to this belief, Gregor Mendel's experiments with pea plants showed that traits were inherited in distinct forms, demonstrating discontinuous variation. For instance, crossing a tall pea plant with a short one resulted in offspring that were either tall or short rather than an intermediate height, challenging the blending theory.
Mendel's meticulous work with pea plants led him to propose that traits could be dominant or recessive, and his model, quite ahead of his time, was overlooked by the scientific community until its rediscovery in 1900, which fuelled our modern understanding of genetics.