page_title: Tree of life (biology)
section_title: Early trees in natural classification
hierarchical_section_title: Tree of life (biology) / Early trees in natural classification
caption_attribution_description: English: This is the Paleontological Chart in the publication 'Elementary Geology' (1840) by Edward Hitchcock. It shows two trees: one for plants, one for animals.
context_page_description: The tree of life or universal tree of life is a metaphor, model and research tool used to explore the evolution of life and describe the relationships between organisms, both living and extinct, as described in a famous passage in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
  The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth.
  — Charles Darwin
  Tree diagrams originated in the medieval era to represent genealogical relationships. Phylogenetic tree diagrams in the evolutionary sense date back to the mid-nineteenth century.
  The term phylogeny for the evolutionary relationships of species through time was coined by Ernst Haeckel, who went further than Darwin in proposing phylogenic histories of life. In contemporary usage, tree of life refers to the compilation of comprehensive phylogenetic databases rooted at the last universal common ancestor of life on Earth. The Open Tree of Life, first published September 2015, is a project to compile such a database for free public access.
context_section_description: Although tree-like diagrams have long been used to organize knowledge, and although branching diagrams known as claves ("keys") were omnipresent in eighteenth-century natural history, it appears that the earliest tree diagram of natural order was the "Arbre botanique" (Botanical Tree) of the French schoolteacher and Catholic priest Augustin Augier, first published in 1801. Yet, although Augier discussed his tree in distinctly genealogical terms, and although his design clearly mimicked the visual conventions of a contemporary family tree, his tree did not include any evolutionary or temporal aspect. Consistent with Augier's priestly vocation, the Botanical Tree showed rather the perfect order of nature as instituted by God at the moment of Creation.
  In 1809, Augier's more famous compatriot Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), who was acquainted with Augier's "Botanical Tree", included a branching diagram of animal species in his Philosophie zoologique. Unlike Augier, however, Lamarck did not discuss his diagram in terms of a genealogy or a tree, but instead named it a tableau ("table"). Lamarck believed in the transmutation of life forms, but he did not believe in common descent; instead he believed that life developed in parallel lineages advancing from more simple to more complex.
  In 1804, the American geologist Edward Hitchcock (1793–1864) published the first tree-like paleontology chart in his Elementary Geology. On the vertical axis are paleontological periods. Hitchcock made a separate tree for plants (left) and animals (right). The plant and the animal tree are not connected at the bottom of the chart. Furthermore, each tree starts with multiple origins. Hitchcock's tree was more realistic than Darwin's 1859 theoretical tree (see below) because Hitchcock used real names in his trees. It is also true that Hitchcock's trees were branching trees. However, they were not evolutionary trees, because Hitchcock believed that a deity was the agent of change. That was an important difference with Darwin.
  The first edition of Robert Chambers' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which was published anonymously in 1844 in England, contained a tree-like diagram in the chapter "Hypothesis of the development of the vegetable and animal kingdoms". It shows a model of embryological development where fish (F), reptiles (R), and birds (B) represent branches from a path leading to mammals (M). In the text this branching tree idea is tentatively applied to the history of life on earth: "there may be branching", but the branching diagram is not displayed again specifically for this purpose. However, the image of a branching tree could easily have inspired others to use it explicitly as a representation of the history of life on earth.
  In 1858, a year before Darwin's Origin, the paleontologist Heinrich Georg Bronn (1800–1862) published a hypothetical tree labeled with letters. Although not a creationist, Bronn did not propose a mechanism of change.
caption: Fold-out paleontological chart of Edward Hitchcock in 'Elementary Geology' (1840)
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