TimeTree's New Look At Evolution — And It's Free!

Depictions of the "tree of life" have come a long way — and changed in meaning — since this 17th century Russian take on it. (Credit Wikimedia Commons) Who doesn't love free stuff? I know I do. And a renovation of open access evolution database TimeTree is a treasure chest of data for the taking. The idea of a tree of life has been an element across many cultures for millennia, but since the days of Darwin it's become a handy way to visualize how species diverge from common ancestors over time. TimeTree, a self-described "public knowledge-base" about the evolutionary timeline for life on Earth, has been around for seven years. It's the product of Temple University researchers who wanted to gather nerdy data from thousands of studies using DNA and number-crunching calculations of the rate of speciation, then translate all that into a user-friendly way of looking at life on Earth and how it has evolved. TimeTree has already incorporated data from more than 3,000 peer-reviewed, published studies; the team continues to add research to refine and expand the database — oops, excuse me, knowledge-base. Today TT gets a makeover, adding new features to make it easier and faster for anyone to answer such burning questions as "when was the last common ancestor of my dog and a T. rex?"