Trees of life
Subtitle: a visual history of evolution
By: Theodore W. Pietsch
Contributors: University of Washington
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Baltimore
Language: eng
Number of pages: 358
ISBN-13: 9781421404790
Subjects: Charts, diagrams; Tree of life; Biologists; Evolution (Biology); Naturalists; Biography; History
Description: For the past 450 years, tree-like branching diagrams have been created to show the complex and surprising interrelationships of organisms, both living and fossil, from viruses and bacteria to birds and mammals. The author has chosen 230 trees of life - from among thousands of possible contenders - dating from the sixteenth century to the present day. His chronological arrangement gives readers a visual sense of the historical development of these diagrams and reveals the history of human theories of evolution. The earliest tree of life examples were meant to portray the imagined temporal order in which God created life on Earth. More recent scientific trees represent hypothetical histories of life.--From book jacket.
Notes: "Published with the assistance of the University of Washington"--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 335-354) and index.
Table of contents: title: Brackets and tables, circles and maps, 1554-1872; title: Early botanical networks and trees, 1766-1815; title: The first evolutionary tree, 1786-1820; title: Diverse and unusual trees of the early nineteenth century, 1817-1834; title: The rule of five, 1819-1854; title: Pre-Darwinian branching diagrams, 1828-1858; title: Evolution and the trees of Charles Darwin, 1837-1868; title: The trees of Ernst Haeckel, 1866-1905; title: Post-Darwinian nonconformists, 1868-1896; title: More late-nineteenth-century trees, 1874-1897; title: Trees of the early twentieth century, 1901-1930; title: The trees of Alfred Sherwood Romer, 1933-1966; title: Additional trees of the mid-twentieth century, 1931-1943; title: The trees of William King Gregory, 1938-1951; title: Hints of new approaches, 1954-1969; title: Phenograms and cladograms, 1958-1966; title: Early molecular trees, 1962-1987; title: Notable trees of the past four decades, 1970-2010; title: Primeval branches and universal trees of life, 1997-2010.