Darwin notebooks returned two decades after disappearance

Two notebooks belonging to Charles Darwin were mysteriously returned to Cambridge University after being lost for more than two decades. The multi-million-dollar leather-bound booklet and including the evolutionary theorist's famous "tree of life" sketch has been returned, 15 months after the BBC broadcast it was lost and libraries have called for an international effort to recover it.

A sketch in one of naturalist Charles Darwin's recovered notebooks (AAP) Source: Cambridge University Library

Until now it is still unknown who brought them disappeared and where.

The notebook was last seen in November 2000 when it was taken out for photography. It was only during a routine inspection two months later that they were found missing. One of the notebooks featured a scrawny sketch of the tree of life, which helped inspire Darwin's theory of evolution.

So many questions remain unanswered - including, who took the notebook and who returned it?

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