Final answer:
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, proposed early hypotheses on species evolution, which were later found incorrect but influenced the development of evolutionary theory.
Step-by-step explanation:
Charles Darwin was not the initial proposer of the idea that life evolves over time. The early hypotheses on how life evolved were brought forth by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. Lamarck, for example, was one of the first to suggest that species change over time and his theory proposed that these changes occur through the inheritance of acquired characteristics, though this theory is now considered incorrect.
Additionally, other thinkers like James Hutton and Charles Lyell contributed to the concept with their ideas on slow geological changes that suggested a much older Earth, allowing more time for species to change.