Saturday 19 September 2015

Utlimate Tree Of Life: First appearance of everything that ever lived on earth

Ten thousands of DNA branching charts have been integrated for the first time to show a timeline of all life on earth.  Each branch point is the "last common ancestor".  The middle of the chart is the beginning of time and the perimeter is today.  The passage of time runs counter-clockwise, starting at Archaea near the centre.  It's an arbitrary graphic choice to force this into a single flat image that runs 360 degrees and puts our recent emergence next to Archaea.

Another graphic from 2008, less accurately detailed with a comma shape, more labels and some major extinctions noted.
Source

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