🔬 The Tree of Life
One of the fundamental principles of biology is that all life on planet Earth is part of one vast 3 billion year old family tree. The evidence for this idea is overwhelming ranging from evolutionary biology, to genetics, to molecular biology. And yet we seldom take this idea literally and most of us hardly ever look at other organisms on the planet as the (very distant) cousins that they in fact are. Here is a great website that enables you to explore the relations between all organisms in our huge family.
OneZoom Tree of Life Explorer
An interactive map of the evolutionary relationships between 2,235,362 species of life on our planet. Each leaf on the tree represents a species and the branches show how they are connected through evolution. Discover your favourites, see which species are under threat, and wonder at 105,277 images on a single page.
I think this article is a good way for people to quickly learn where things come from. I know that in my quick few clicks on this website there are random categories (quinoa?) that if you clicked on them it would show you how they came about as well as what was derived from it. It’s really interesting especially since the scale of objects go all the way down to the eubacteria.
This is a really great resource. I like how It gives you species to start exploring on the tree. Its cool to see how species evolved and changed on a family tree.
This website was filled with so much information I am glad to have seen this. Thinking back to what life was like 3 billion years ago I don’t think we will ever have concrete evidence due to humans not existing and documenting from the start, same with the theory of Pangea. I think this family tree is highly plausible but I don’t think we will ever know the truth, just theories.
I really liked how the tree of life shows clearly what type of animals fall in the same category. I was looking at the relevance between different types of birds and how they relate and differentiate from each other.
This website is super interesting! It is neat to see how every living species are interconnected. A lot of thought, effort and planning must have gone into creating this page.
I thought that this is such a great resource to have. I think it’s so cool to be able to see how species have changed as time has evolved. This was super informative and I got a lot from it.
this tree was super cool to explore. it showed me names of organisms I didn’t even know existed on this earth. It really put the spectrum of life into perspective.