Final answer:
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed the inheritance of acquired traits, implying that organisms could pass on traits modified by environmental interaction during their lifetime to their descendants, which was a significant, albeit later refuted, contribution to evolutionary theory.
Step-by-step explanation:
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck talked about the inheritance of acquired traits. He suggested that life forms interact with the environment during their lives and that they could pass on traits they developed as a result of this interaction to their offspring. According to Lamarck, modifications caused by the environment or the use or disuse of a structure during an organism's lifetime could be inherited by its offspring, contributing to evolutionary change in a species. His ideas, forming the basis of what we refer to as Lamarckian evolution, were an important influence on evolutionary thought, even though they were later discredited by the scientific community with the advent of Darwinian theory and the understanding of genetics.