Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

'Open Tree of Life' Shows How 2.3 Million Earthling Species Are Related

posted by janrinok on Thursday September 24 2015, @06:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the I'm-related-to-a-tree dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers from multiple institutions have come together to publish Earth's most complete family tree to date, illustrating the evolutionary relationships between about 2.3 million named species of lifeforms over the course of roughly 3.5 billion years on the planet.
...
While exhaustive, scientists still have a long way to go. That's because it's believed there are currently about 8.7 million species on the planet today and countless others from Earth's past that are yet to be catalogued.

In an effort to expand the tree even further over time, the researchers, who collaborated from 11 institutions, have put their work online at Open Tree of Life -- a massive and open-access digital depository where anyone can download, view and edit the tree -- a kind of "Wikipedia" for evolutionary trees.

It's an impressive feat to accomplish in 25 years, considering it took 90 years to complete the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, another large cataloguing project. The graphic is worth looking at, too.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
'Open Tree of Life' Shows How 2.3 Million Earthling Species Are Related | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 25 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 2) by joshuajon on Friday September 25 2015, @02:21PM

    by joshuajon (807) on Friday September 25 2015, @02:21PM (#241485)

    Why does every single comments thread on this site need to include a vitriolic diatribe about NoScript, adblocking, etc. complete with needless hyperbole?! Yes, the web is a mess, and yes many of this sites users are smart enough to work around that fact. Let's drop the meta-threads of this nature pretty please?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday September 27 2015, @12:51AM

    by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 27 2015, @12:51AM (#242099) Journal

    In this case; a scientific page that stubbornly remains blank unless you use the Microsoft Edge browser with an Adobe plugin? Or am I getting that wrong? Allowing the script doesn't do anything for me who doesn't use Microsoft.

    That's not even a hoop to jump through, it's a burning ring of fire with a portal into hell.

    25 years of work, purportedly “open”, and they stuffed it so far up into one of Satan's asses you have to French kiss him with an oversized tongue to get a taste of it, what a complete waste (and shame) :(

    --
    Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))