The Tree of Life: Solving Science's Greatest Puzzle

The Tree of LifeIn Telford’s hands, the many-branched evolutionary trees that biologists assemble—from Charles Darwin’s first sketches to the vast computer-generated diagrams scientists are building today—become time machines that take us on a vivid journey through four billion years of life’s history. We meet long-lost ancestors, picturing them in the environment of a much younger earth, and discover where we first acquired our backbones and nipples and, conversely, where we lost our tails. We learn how insects are “actually” crustaceans, and how dogs and wolves are more closely related to whales than to the recently extinct Tasmanian wolves they so resemble. Far from a dry representation of the dead, the tree of life is a living, shifting thing that constantly alters our perspective on the past, present, and future of life on earth.The Tree of Life