darwin tree of life poster

[mollykins]

The ength of the line going up to a species indicates how long it took to evolve, but is there a ratio, such as 1cm is 1million years?

[gen2]

You can draw it to any scale you wish.

[factor-fiction]

Where is this poster? There should be a scale on it for it to be meaningful

[theprof]

Here's a link to the online version of the poster:

http://www.open2.net/treeoflife/index.html

The full size version can be seen here:

http://www.flickr.com...30309@N05/3650347833/

It wouldn't be possible to provide a meaningful scale ratio on a poster of the size shown. Besides, evolutionary theory is ongoing and organism positions are subject to change.

[heathfield]

Where the curved lines are drawn on such a poster, they are drawn so that the creatures can be conveniently arranged on the paper - resulting in there being no scale. For a chart with scale, the lines are normally arranged horizontally and vertically, with the scale of time on the vertical lines, and the horizontal lines showing the connection between species. Considering the time involved, this makes for rather a long chart!
Incidentally, I notice that the free BBC Darwin Tree of Life poster is said to be double-sided. So everyone who wants to pin it up will need two of them?

[rov1200]

What interests me is that life started just millions of years ago but the age of the Earth is said to be 4.5 billion years old. Why was nothing happening in the meantime? If evolution is the answer to life why so dormant initially but progressed at an exponential rate in comparison.

What was the initial spark that prevented it happening before. Could it be that another star in the universe had burnt itself out and the transfer to another planet or solar system was necessary? We may be in the same position ourselves in another 5 billion years.

[mollykins]

yeah its double sided but its blue tacked on my wall and because i've rearanged the furniture since i put it up, i can't reach it to bring it down and read the other side.

[mollykins]

yeah gen you can, but i was on about the open university darwin one.

[chakka35]

rov 1200, life on earth started about 3,600,000,000 years ago, or 3.6 billion years ago for those who like to give 'billion' its modern devalued meaning. I don't know where you got your millions of years from. Cheers.