The Tree of Life

From the first cell to the branches still growing today · tap any name or dot to open it · Science One-Pagers
Scroll or pinch to zoom · drag to pan · double-tap to zoom in

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Go further

This page is the orientation map: a few hundred branches, living and extinct, one picture and one story each, drawn to time. Once you know where something sits, these are the places to go deeper. Each is free and runs in a browser.

OneZoomGrades 9–10 · first lookEvery one of 2.2 million living species, on one endlessly zooming page. Best for the sheer size of life, and for finding your own animal or plant and following its branch back to ours. TimeTreeGrades 10–12 · timeType two organisms and get the best estimate of when their lines split, with the studies behind it. Best for the questions this page raises: how long ago did humans and chimps part? Plants and fungi? LifemapGrades 10–12 · namesPan and zoom like a road map through the full scientific naming hierarchy (domain, kingdom, phylum … genus, species). Best when a student wants the proper names behind a branch here. Open Tree of LifeGrades 11–14 · evidenceThe research synthesis this page is simplified from: thousands of published studies stitched into one tree. Best for how scientists decide the shape of the tree, and for citing a source in a CER. Kew Tree of Life ExplorerGrades 11–16 · plantsA DNA-sequence tree of flowering plants from Kew Gardens. Best for plant units: where corn, the mustards, and the crops of the Americas sit, and which genes were used to place them. iTOLGrades 12–16 · build your ownUpload a tree file from a DNA or protein alignment and draw, colour and annotate it yourself. Best for AP and college work where students make the tree instead of reading one.