Third sentence of the lead 

Hello, I was just perusing this article randomly and I have a suggestion for the third sentence of the lead paragraph. It reads "Anatomical similarities, geographical distribution of similar species and the fossil record indicate that all organisms are descended from a common ancestor through a long series of these divergent events, stretching back in a tree of life that has grown over the 3,500 million years of life on Earth." I have two comments on this sentence.

1) First, it seems to me that the purpose of the sentence is to lay out, at the highest level, the independent lines of evidence in support of evolution. As such, I think that DNA (or genetic) similarities is a fourth line of independent evidence of the same level of importance as the three lines already listed in the sentence. Certainly, those three lines of evidence are the ones Darwin primarily relied upon when he laid out the theory (actually, he more apologized for the fossil record than relied upon it as an independent source of supporting evidence), but I think the incorporation of genetic evidence into the theory of evolution is at least as important a source of independent evidence and should be included in this sentence.

2) Secondly, for both anatomical similarities and genetic similarities, it's not so much the similarities per se that are crucial, it's the pattern of those similarities. The article states later that it's the fact that these similarities can be classified into a hierarchy of nested groups that is key to their support of the theory of evolution. I understand the lead isn't supposed to go into all the detail that is laid out later in the article, but I still feel it's crucial to say something about how it's the nature of the similarities that's important.

I might suggest: "A nested hierarchy of anatomical and genetic similarities, geographical distribution of similar species and the fossil record indicate that all organisms are descended from a common ancestor through a long series of these divergent events, stretching back in a tree of life that has grown over the 3,500 million years of life on Earth." for that sentence.