General Biology II · Module 4 · Phylogeny and the history of life

Phylogeny Walkthrough

Travel from a lifeless early Earth to the tree of life: watch sparks make amino acids, rocks bury fossils, atoms decay like clocks, continents drift, extinctions prune the tree and branches join into cladograms. Go at your own pace. Nothing here is graded.

Speed

Think of it like this

Quick check

Wrong answers are fine here. Read why, then try again.

Dr. Akash Garg · General Biology II Study Tools · Drawings are simplified and not to scale. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Use the left and right arrow keys to move between steps. Deep time is squeezed and decay is sped up enormously so you can watch it. Dates are rounded values from current estimates. Practise next in the Phylogeny Lab.