The evolutionary tree of living things is currently supposed to run something along the lines of that listed below. Most of the tree was based on ideas from cladistics; where more than two groups are shown in a single branch, there is disagreement about how they diverged. Hypothetically taxonomy would follow the tree whenever possible, but in many places it does not at present.

The description as a "tree" results from earlier ideas of life as a progression from lower to higher forms. Although such views are discredited now, the imagery is too well established to be readily lost.

The terminology originates with Linnaean taxonomy: living things are classified as belonging to domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species.

• Life
  • Domain Eubacteria
    • Actinobacteria
    • Aquificae
    • Bacteroidetes/Chlorobi group
    • Chlamydiae/Verrucomicrobia group
    • Chloroflexi
    • Chrysiogenetes
    • Cyanobacteria
    • Deferribacteres
    • Deinococcus-Thermus group
    • Dictyoglomi
    • Fibrobacteres /Acidobacteria group
    • Firmicutes
    • Fusobacteria
    • Gemmatimonadetes
    • Nitrospirae
    • Planctomycetes
    • Proteobacteria
    • Spirochaete
    • Thermodesulfobacteria
    • Thermomicrobia
    • Thermotogae
    • unclassified Bacteria
    • ...
  • Domain Archaea
    • Crenarchaeota (extremely thermophilic archaebacteria)
    • Euryarchaeota
    • Korarchaeota
    • Nanoarchaeota
  • Domain Eukaryota, organisms with cells containing a nucleus
    • Opisthokonts
      • Kingdom Animalia - animals
      • Choanoflagellates
      • Nucleariids
      • Kingdom Fungi - fungi
    • Amoebozoa
    • Rhizaria
      • Cercozoa
      • Foraminifera
      • Polycystinea
      • Acantharea
      • Sticholonche
    • Excavates
      • Retortamonads
      • Diplomonads
      • Oxymonads
      • Parabasalids
      • Jakobids
      • Heterolobosea
      • Euglenozoa
    • "Plants"
      • Kingdom Plantae - green plants
      • Red algae
      • Glaucophytes
    • Heterokonts
    • Alveolates
      • Ciliates
      • Apicomplexa
      • Dinoflagellates
      • Ellobiopsids
    • Stephanopogon
    • Apusomonads
    • Kathablepharids
    • Pseudodendromonads
    • Spironemids
    • Copromyxids
    • Vampyrellids
    • Dimorphids
    • Gymnosphaerids
    • Ebriids
    • Haptophytes
    • Xenophyophorea
    • Cryptomonads
    • Centrohelids

See Also

• Evolution
• Phylogeny
• Phylogenetic tree
• Taxonomy

External links

• http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html The Tree of Life — A multi-authored, distributed Internet project containing information about phylogeny and biodiversity

More examples

• http://www.aisee.com/graph_of_the_month/jura.htm — The most detailed and comprehensive family tree of dinosaurs yet available
• http://www.omne-vivum.com tree of life with lots of pictures