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Tistron · 2 years ago
I love exploring the tree of life in different ways, and I appreciate the other links here in the comments. My favourite one hasn't been mentioned yet: https://www.onezoom.org/life.html

It's fun to see the different UX considerations and possibilities that can go into this space.

29athrowaway · 2 years ago
Also: http://www.tolweb.org/tree/

The most interesting part to me, is the root of the tree of life, or LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_common_ancestor

limbicsystem · 2 years ago
Also https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/lab/evolution/research#/c...

But but not a good experience on mobile. I like the feature where you can compare two species...

not_knuth · 2 years ago
I quite like the radial timeline on the visualisation shared by OP. A while back I was looking for exactly this kind of visualization and stumbled upon https://lifemap.univ-lyon1.fr
boxed · 2 years ago
Also check out my hobby project: https://relatedhow.kodare.com/

It's not as fancy looking, but it's a lot more complete.

KineticLensman · 2 years ago
For a complementary take on this, I'd recommend 'The Ancestor's Tale' [0] by Richard Dawkins. It goes backwards through time, focussing on the points where our history branches from a common ancestor to different modern 'cousins'. In other words, similarly to the tree of life explorer, it's looking at the non-leaf nodes (the branching points) inside the tree of life, albeit with a fixed path, but adding info about what actually changed at the branching point. So we successively meet other hominids, primates, non-primate mammals, non-mammal chordates, non-chordate animals, etc etc, each with many different sub-divisions. It's quite a unique perspective, and brings home just how extensive the tree of life actually is.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ancestor%27s_Tale

isolli · 2 years ago
Fantastic! I think that I prefer their visualization to the alternatives that have been suggested here (all worth exploring, of course).

I have been looking for a good tree-of-life poster for a while, so I was disappointed to read this on their website. I didn't know that the EU was such a tangled mess of regulation.

> We ship our posters throughout North America and internationally to most countries. Unfortunately, due to regulations that have increased shipping costs and complexities, we are unable to ship to countries within the EU at this time.

derbOac · 2 years ago
Some of these relationships are really interesting.

For example, according to this, an American Robin is more closely related to the Tyrannosaurus rex than the Tyrannosaurus rex was to, say, a Brachiosaur.

I guess I knew birds were closely related to dinosaurs but I didn't think of it quite that way.

The mass extinction intervals are also a little concerning when you think of where we are now. It looks like right about now is when there would be another one, if there was some regularity to them.

pvg · 2 years ago
It looks like right about now is when there would be another one, if there was some regularity to them

The timescale of the tree graph is a bit misleading since it's not very... scaly. Better extinction event graph:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event

They're not all that regular nor are we particularly 'overdue' a big one.

n42 · 2 years ago
This video gives you an idea of the scale, using a football field:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8V_glRW1hA

alexthehurst · 2 years ago
But: we are KNOWN to be undergoing one right now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction?wprov=sfti...

boxed · 2 years ago
> I guess I knew birds were closely related to dinosaurs but I didn't think of it quite that way.

Birds ARE dinosaurs. Just like humans ARE mammals.

Deleted Comment

neolefty · 2 years ago
So cool! I especially like the "122-millionth cousin, 28 million times removed" description and the fact that it has many different pictures for "Human".