Saturday, October 16, 2010

Sexy Cladograms?

You know how they make these things which show the evolutionary family tree...

...of various species, or sometimes all species, or sometimes just a species and subspecies?

Anyway--they used to look awesome. Now I can't find any good ones.

Anybody know of any?

15 comments:

CC said...

Never seen one that really grabbed me visually, but here's a better one, based on Carl Woese's updated phylogeny

http://evolution-textbook.org/content/free/figures/00END_EVOW_Art/02_EVOW_END.jpg

Stefan Poag said...

I'm pretty inspired by the one you posted above where the species diverged to produce various lemurs, monkeys, a baboon, a gorilla and, finally, at the far right, the nadir of evolution: Jennifer Aniston.

Stefan Poag said...

I said 'nadir' but I meant 'zenith.' I guess I was confused because 'Zenith' makes me think of those big 1970s console TV sets.

Sorry, Jennifer.

biopunk said...

I'm thinking you might be looking for something like the ones in the old 'How and Why Wonder Book' series. Unfortunately, most of those are now considered so outdated or wrong, they only show up on creationist websites or the occasional history of scientific illustration retrospective.

Paleontological charts and phylogenetic or evolutionary trees are also terms you could search under, but most are going to be like these.

These skulls or this one might be close what you're looking for?



Semi-related: A book like Art Forms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel might be good to keep on file. Embiggenable, too!

Caveat lector: This creationist site has a few more Haeckel illos.

Syrsuro said...

For starters, it's not a cladogram. Cladogram is a very specific term and that ain't one. That type of representation is actually one that is generally rejected by cladists (it contains several assumptions cladists are not willing to make). To a cladist (and I was taught by several) a stylized tree like this has little scientific value and is generally only used to simplify the relationships and put them into a more non-scientist friendly format.

Your best bet is to skim introductory biology sites or to try a search using "evolutionary tree" and you might have more luck (although even then few of them are as cooly 3-D as that one).

Carl

Zak Sabbath said...

@Sysuro

thank you Dr. Completelymissedthepoint.

Wikitorix said...

How about the Tree of Life?

Syrsuro said...

If you think so, fine.

But things have names for a reason and using the correct name makes it far more likely to find what you search on the internet.

If you want to find pictures of a wolf, you aren't going to find them by searching under dog. And if you want pictures of Evolutionary Trees you aren't going to find them by searching for Cladograms (http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&q=cladogram&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=) . Did you try the search as I recommended (http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=Evolutionary+Tree&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= )?


Carl

Zak Sabbath said...

@syrsuro

I bet you're one of those people who, when someone goes "Do you know anybody who needs a roommate?" always says "Have you checked Craigslist?"

Yeah, dude, we checked Craigslist, of course we checked Craigslist, we're not stupid, we're not asking Craigslist, we're asking you.

Chris Lowrance said...

Hint: Someone asks for something, but calls it the wrong thing? Say "actually, they are called such-and-such, but..." and answer the question. You sound less like Comic Book Guy that way.

Anyway: Here's a bunch of pretty but wrong ones:

http://www.pachs.net/dialogues-with-darwin/item/80

This is the sort of thing I grew up with:

http://www.feenixx.com/science/milestones_of_evolution_history.htm

Urban Wild Cat said...

http://www.trendhunter.com/photos/45016/1

This one is shmexy.

Syrsuro said...

No, but if someone said: "Hey, I need a bicyle. Do you know here I can find one as cool as this Harley?" I might ask if they searched Craig's list under bicycle or motorcycle...

Carl

Zak Sabbath said...

@Syrsuro

If you think I'm holding that thing up as a good example then you're double missing the point.

John M. said...

this one is pretty good, old-timey and all:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpurrin1/449725455/#/

Not the best image, but you might be able to find a print somewhere, perhaps through the college mentioned in the caption. All reverse image searches led back to this one.

John M. said...

btw, the original is larger than one might think:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpurrin1/3275227164/in/set-72157613315216424/