Remember the division between pure and applied research is also new. And most things that have a "definitive" old date of discover need an proof (if math) or application to solidify their claim.

Evolution isn't really practical knowledge --- artificial selection predates recorded history so what is left to do before genetics or the ability to observation fast-reproducing microorganisms? I'd say evolution was doomed to be at best re-hypothesized again and again until the 19th century, with nothing to make it stick as part of the culture.

I guess one could dig up fossils, but that sort of traveling and exploring for fun didn't become popular until 19th century provided the vast empires, elite leisure time, and disdain for the empire's current inhabitants that made digging up bones appealing.

There's something very 19th western about traveling around and thinking about natural, not just human, history. Witness how new plate tectonics and geology is too. Perhaps industrial-scale mining was an important vector for getting digging to be part of the culture.

Ibn Battuta, Islamic traveler extrordinaire, checks some of those boxes but not all, and lived after the Islamic Golden age. He commented on pyramids but not fossils.