Where do we come from?

[VorVZakone]

Ok I get the evolution from ape ancestors bit, but I was wondering about the bigger picture. I used to trawl the net trying to find such a chart, but never ever found one. I'm pretty interested to know what part of the mammal line we step in at. Look at cats, birds, whales, for example. If you throw humans into that mix, what part of the tree do we all start diverging at?
Why do I have eyes and fingers? Is it because I inherit them from the first animal to crawl from the sea, or do I have them through a reconvergence?

[dundurn]

We're from a pretty non-descript branch - the tree shrews (it is postulated) which gave rise to the monkey/ ape/ human line. important to remember that none of the living members of any of these trees gave rise to anything else. We're all highly evolved from even earlier models.

The first animals to crawl from the sea or fresh water still had fins. Fingers came a long way later, and thumbs even later still. Eyes, of the type we have, were a fish invention and the basics are pretty much unchanged, but the bipolar vision, colour reception, complex brain connection etc is a fairly advanced model of the original design.

Convergences do happen; compare marsupial moles to the European varitey or Austalian magpies to the ones in your back garden - no relation but spookily similar. Big convergences are more unlikely, however. There is still a lot of talk about bats, as to whether two groups as different as the fruit bats and the insectivorous bats could both independently have acquired such similar wings. On the other hand there are those who say it had to have happened because they are so dissimilar in other ways.

I'm pretty sure there are some decent illustrations around taking the vertebrates all the way back to the tunicate worms they used to be.

[VorVZakone]

great answer thanks dundurn

[chakka35]

Vorv, get hold of Richard Dawkins' book The Ancestor's Tale.
It is briliantly illustrated with the very sort of charts you want.