3 ms·

So horses are closer to lions than to antelopes? The pictures on phys.org and in the Science article preview are frustratingly unclear; most leaves of the tree

• akiselev 3y ago
  Sort of - it's more accurate to say that the order Perissodactyla (containing horses) shares a common ancestor with the order carnivora labeled #4 in the picture. Both of them share a common ancestor with artiodactyla (even toed ungulates like antelope) labeled #3. They all differentiated over 60 million years ago, though, which was enough time for mammals to split into herbivores and carnivores and evolve back into sea animals like whales and dolphins. With converging and diverging evolution over that kind of time span, saying an animal is "closer to" another over simplifies a lot of detail. One species' genetics might resemble one order while the slowly evolving genes used to identify evolutionary relationships place it in a second order.
• cjbgkagh 3y ago
  I think the layout is optimized for showing branches event and not relative difference between species, though as a side effect of showing branching it does somewhat approximate relative difference.