I’m thinking that fossils - mostly marine invertebrates - became a matter of major interest in Europe around the time period I mentioned. However, I don’t know why the existence of different kinds of seashells and stuff implies either billions of years of time OR the evolution of lower life forms to higher.
I do remember starting a book about a British man who mapped geologic strata around the 1850’s (canal-building period), and the statement that various kinds of ammonite fossils “proved” all live evolved from pond scum. One suspects a pre-existing agenda behind this kind of reasoning!
Preconceived notions and a priori assumptions do seem to have driven the process, so it strikes me that there could be some value to backtracking and plugging a different set of assumptions, just to see what shakes out.
This would earn him the name "Strata Smith". As a natural consequence, Smith amassed a large and valuable collection of fossils of the strata he had examined himself from exposures in canals, road and railway cuttings, quarries and escarpments across the country.
His collections ...included many types of brachiopods, ammonites and molluscs characteristic of the shallow seas in which they were deposited.
He did enunciate The Principle of Faunal Succession, but this was in the 1790's and I don't think he was pushing an evolutionary agenda at this time.
It was Lyell's later work, Principles of Geology, which systematised the work of Smith and others, which had a formative influence on Darwin.