The Great Tree of Life

This Great Tree of Life diagram is based primarily on the evolutionary relationships so wonderfully related in Dr. Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale. Some secondary branching relationships and ages of common ancestors were gleaned from university and other scholarly websites as well as scientific journals. The smallest branches are purely illustrative; they are intended to suggest the effect of mass extinctions on diversity, and, on a few of the branches, changes in diversity through time. This tree of life diagram is NOT intended to be used as a scholarly reference tool or as a complete picture of life history (only a very few extinct main branches are shown, for example). Instead, it tries mainly to illustrate a great lesson of evolution; that we are related not only to every living thing, but also to every thing that ever lived...read article