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The OneZoom tree of life explorer
- NotSwift 5y agoOne of the fascination results of modern DNA research is that we have a lot more knowledge about the evolutionary relations between species. All mammals must have descended from a common ancestor and even though we probably will never find fossils of it, we can make reasonable estimates on when it lived. The relation between a species and its ancestor species generally forms a tree [0] that is called the Tree of Life. It is not easy to display this tree because it is huge. This website has an elegant solution by using fractals. It makes it easy to zoom in or out on a group of organisms. [0] There are some groups that cause problems, e.g. because they have horizontal gene transfer between different species, but for most higher organisms a tree is a good description.