Ogura Lab

この系統樹もかっこいい。

via i.imgur.com

Bacteria, Archaea, Eukaryotes

I’ve seen this picture so many times and it still blows my mind, it’s really the only way evolution makes sense to me. Look how far along you have to go just to get to fish. Note how birds A.K.A. Class Aves springs from the dinosaur line. Observe that Class Mammalia survived not one but two mass extinctions, and sprung up from the mammal-like reptiles or “synapsid” subclass which appears Just a little while after amphibians appear. Finally notice how incredibly short our existence on this planet has been. You can barely discern humans from the other hominids. It strikes me as a bid odd and depressing that we are the only species in our genus. Apparently there may have been species- Homo floresiensis- alive, as recently as 12,000 years ago. It seems pretty likely that the main reason why there aren’t any others like us is because we drove them to extinction. I wonder if maybe our obsession with humanoid aliens and domesticated aliens doesn’t have something to do with that. We are always searching for our evolutionary cousins. Perhaps the question people of faith are asking isn’t “why are we here?” but “why are we the only ones here?” It’s no wonder people tend to think of humans as the ultimate goal of the universe, there’s nothing else like us. Where are our homonid rivals? I guess we beat them.