The atlas · Back through time
Evolution of life
From the first cells to us.
7 written · 5 in outline · 3 sections
Beginnings
- Where life began
Everything alive shares one ancestor, and a study of genes says it lived 4,200 million years ago. Here is the evidence, and how sure we can be of each piece.
- From single cells to bodies
How cells with a nucleus arose, and how they came to live together as bodies.
- The first animals
A schoolboy’s find in Leicestershire, a predator named after Attenborough, and the moment life opened its eyes.
Great transitions
- Onto the land
The land was bare for billions of years. Then came spores, a hot-spring garden in Scotland, and a fish with a neck.
- Before the dinosaurs
Our side of the family split from the reptiles’ 315 million years ago. The first mammals were as old as the first dinosaurs.
- How dinosaurs became birds
Feathers came first, beaks came late, and the pigeon outside is a dinosaur. How a bird was put together over 100 million years.
- Flowers and insects
Insects came first. Flowers arrived late and burst into thousands of kinds, and now most of them cannot do without insects.
- Whales go back to the sea
How land mammals became whales, step by step through the fossils.
- Before us
Seven million years of walking apes. For most of that time there were several kinds of human. Now there is one.
How evolution works
- Natural selection
How evolution works, and how the idea has been tested.
- The tree of life
All life on one tree, with when the main branches split.
- Diversity through time
How the number of kinds of sea animal has risen and crashed over 540 million years.