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So.... before I explain what this is, let me just say that this isn't the original image I had in mind. I was going to cover the invertebrate and plant fossil record as well as the vertebrate one... but the entire file crashed and I had to recover everything by copying and pasting the Windows Image Viewer file onto a new document. So if the majority of the image looks a bit blurry, that's why.

Okay! So how many of you remember those charts in old paleontology books that showed the evolution of any one lineage of animal life by scaling it to a geologic time chart? Like this: www.daviddarling.info/images3/…

Well this is basically a gigantic, up-to-date version of that. The majority of vertebrate lineages, the range of their fossil record, and their relationships to each other are all included. The widths of the bars are not important and do no show diversity over time. It's very foolish to think we even could estimate total species diversity from the fossil record. Not all clades are shown, however, and some people might be angry to see more dinosaurs and mammals and not enough ray-finned fishes or lissamphibians. Sorry about that, this is what I had to work with. Representative species or clades are highlighted by silhouettes of said animals (not meant to be exhaustive). The big 5 extinction events are labeled as well as an abridged chart of human history.

I've tried to keep this as up-to-date as possible based upon the latest studies, but should there be errors please PLEASE let me know and I'll fix them. The dates of the mammal lineages come from O'Leary et al 2013; bird lineages from Prum et al. 2015; and most everything else from the phylogenetic charts produced by Dr. Thomas Holtz and Dr. John Merck for their University of Maryland classes.

I have to indirectly thank for providing me with a basic template to base the length of the geologic time scale on, that being her amazing "Geologic Time Scale to Scale": dinolove453.deviantart.com/art…

I also would like to thank the individuals who created wonderful silhouettes for me to use for the image, from the wonderful site (show some support!) PhyloPic: phylopic.org/

And GoGo Tomago dressed as a paleontologist was my idea.

P.S. You're going to want to download this.

Description
So.... before I explain what this is, let me just say that this isn't the original image I had in mind. I was going to cover the invertebrate and plant fossil record as well as the vertebrate one... but the entire file crashed and I had to recover everything by copying and pasting the Windows Image Viewer file onto a new document. So if the majority of the image looks a bit blurry, that's why.

Okay! So how many of you remember those charts in old paleontology books that showed the evolution of any one lineage of animal life by scaling it to a geologic time chart? Like this: www.daviddarling.info/images3/…

Well this is basically a gigantic, up-to-date version of that. The majority of vertebrate lineages, the range of their fossil record, and their relationships to each other are all included. The widths of the bars are not important and do no show diversity over time. It's very foolish to think we even could estimate total species diversity from the fossil record. Not all clades are shown, however, and some people might be angry to see more dinosaurs and mammals and not enough ray-finned fishes or lissamphibians. Sorry about that, this is what I had to work with. Representative species or clades are highlighted by silhouettes of said animals (not meant to be exhaustive). The big 5 extinction events are labeled as well as an abridged chart of human history.

I've tried to keep this as up-to-date as possible based upon the latest studies, but should there be errors please PLEASE let me know and I'll fix them. The dates of the mammal lineages come from O'Leary et al 2013; bird lineages from Prum et al. 2015; and most everything else from the phylogenetic charts produced by Dr. Thomas Holtz and Dr. John Merck for their University of Maryland classes.

I have to indirectly thank for providing me with a basic template to base the length of the geologic time scale on, that being her amazing "Geologic Time Scale to Scale": dinolove453.deviantart.com/art…

I also would like to thank the individuals who created wonderful silhouettes for me to use for the image, from the wonderful site (show some support!) PhyloPic: phylopic.org/

And GoGo Tomago dressed as a paleontologist was my idea.

P.S. You're going to want to download this.