Blog Archives
TimeTree – Common ancestor calculator
This is a lot of fun. Plug in two species or taxa and TimeTree will give you our best estimate of when they last shared a common ancestor. Drawing on a multitude of sources, you can look through the database and use TimeTree as a launching pad for further research.
Here are some sample results:
- Dogs and Cats, 57.5mya
- Dogs and whales, 82.8mya
- Whales and sharks, 523.1mya
- Dogs and oak trees, 1407.8mya
Fun suggestion – play the ‘higher or lower‘ game with pairs of taxa.
Encylopedia of Life
A huge and ambitious project to create an online species database. Here is their ‘about us’ blurb:
The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is an ambitious, even audacious project to organize and make available via the Internet virtually all information about life present on Earth. At its heart lies a series of Web sites—one for each of the approximately 1.8 million known species—that provide the entry points to this vast array of knowledge. The entry-point for each site is a species page suitable for the general public, but with several linked pages aimed at more specialized users. The sites sparkle with text and images that are enticing to everyone, as well as providing deep links to specific data.
Try the example page for Cafetaria roenbergensis here.
i-Biology 