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Some of the Reference Links no longer work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.64.230.8 ( talk) 20:18, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
The list contains a couple of modern extinctions (aurochs and thylacine but no modern appearances of species. Would it be acceptable to add one or two choice examples to give the modern end of the list a sense of a process still going on rather than a process ending? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.5.186.28 ( talk) 23:55, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
The timeline gives the date of this collision as 22Ma. Previously, the only date I've seen for this event is 50-60 Ma. Thoughts? 140.247.23.113 16:08, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to see citations for virtually all these dates, but especially the early ones. The Wikipedia entries on Archaea, bacteria, biogenesis, etc are much better sourced than this timeline, and I think the numbers there are more accurate as well. Hopefully, someone will find the time to update his timeline according to more recent research. For example a 2008 letter in Nature confirms the oldest known bacteria as biologic. But the date is about 3.5 billion years old, not 3.8. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v416/n6876/full/416073a.html#f1 Eperotao ( talk) 17:16, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
This article makes very bold and definite statements about the dates of early life. Can anybody really put their hand on their heart and say life began at exactly 4Ga? Or that photosynthesis started at 3.5? There's a lot of interesting discussion, that could be placed in the article or elsewhere, about the veracity of this. There should be at least some mention of the arguments involved! Verisimilus T 09:32, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Under 11ka, the article states "Domestication of dogs (first domesticated animal)". I can't find a good reference, but I seem to remember a study which suggested that pigs were actually the first domesticated animals. Does anyone else know anything about this? - Athaler 19:47, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
“ | This timeline of the evolution of life outlines the major events in the development of life on the planet Earth. | ” |
At the moment, it reads more as a catalogue of events in Geological and Human history.
I'd propose that it was considerably slimmed, with only the essential points marked, in time order. Trying to provide precise dates is often difficult so ranges should be given where appropriate. My list of events to include, in approximate order, would be:
I've deliberately avoided an anthropogenic slant - for example, human evolution should be left to the Timeline of human evolution, to which a see-also should probably be conceded. I also feel that physical constraints and processes - for example, low oxygen levels - should be given higher precedence, as they affect evolution as a whole, not just a small sub-clade of life. Their significance must be explained - as it stands, the reader will wonder why they're being told that Rodinia formed and fragmented, for example. This event may have impacted on the evolution of life - but no clue to this effect is given in the article as it stands!
Please feel free to comment on this list, or my opinions, which I imagine will not be shared by all!
Verisimilus T 20:26, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Regarding the recent outright reversion of edits: Please feel free to add data that is:
It looked like you'd simply undone my edits, although I may be wrong; either way lots of the bogus and inapplicable content appears to have re-emerged... although I'm open to debate! Verisimilus T 15:01, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
On the timeline, it says all dates prior to 1 billion years are speculative. Technically, if no one was there, aren't all dates prior to humans speculative? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.237.134.9 ( talk) 22:59, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I see both points, but saying dates prior to 1 billion years is "speculative" is misleading. The calculated margin of error should attached. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CuriousLayman ( talk • contribs) 22:28, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
Since peroxisomes are thought to have initially developed as a response for the early stages of the Oxygen Catastrophe, it seems odd that eukaryotes appear much later. What is the date of their appearance based about? All the stuff about early evolution is totally unsourced, by the way. Dan Gluck 15:47, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
According to this article the ozone layer formed 500 millions years ago, when land became habitable (this is what I have always thought)). However in the Oxygen Catastrophe article its formation is related with the much earlier oxygen catastrophe. Is it a real discrepancy, or are we talking about two different phases in its forming (i.e. for a stable 21% oxygen atmosphere one needs a much thinner ozone layer compared to the one needed for the land to become habitable)? Dan Gluck 09:43, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Should Theia be mentioned here? It has always seemed to me that there are a lot of difficulties with this hypothesis, and the evidence offered so far is equivocal, to say the least. Perhaps it could be included with some indication of evidence to the contrary. -- 210.240.107.24 ( talk) 02:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
There are diferant dates for the evolution of grasses. On The Grasses page there is a third date. Which date is accurate? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.230.97.85 ( talk) 22:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
This article claims modern human facial bone structure evolved 200 millennia ago. This is wrong. Only ape-like creatures that could stand upright evolved by then. Anwar ( talk) 19:58, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Is anyone even paying attention to this page anymore? Look under the Cenezoic era section: " The term Anthropocene has been used to describe the period of time during which humans have had a major impact on the planet...." The page as of today lists this as happening 14 million years ago. Is that just vandalism? Or have people just lost interest because the page is too boring. Kaimiddleton ( talk) 08:14, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
EvoWiki is not working, I had to put it here as there is no page on EvoWiki and this page references it Phthinosuchusisanancestor ( talk) 12:12, 1 January 2009 (UTC)Phthinosuchusisanancestor.
What kind of unit of measurement is Ma? This isn't clear. Please provide an explanation so we can also post it on the main page for other users -- Northern ( talk) 13:42, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
Annum is latin for year, and the root word for annual. per annum could be translated as "for each year", per diem "for each day" M is for million. Therefore Ma=Million years.
Actually in Roman numerals M is 1000, one thousand, not one million, which has actually caused some misunderstandings at times. I used to work in tool and die, and it used to be the common convention to quote part prices for stamped parts "per M". but then thousand became confused with million as fewer and fewer people studied latin in school. Hindsight, it might have been better to use the Greek ekatommýrio for million instead, but Mega became the standard with metric.
The page varies between stating Earth is 4.5 and 4.6 billion years old. The link to "age of earth" states 4.54, the summary at the top states 4.5, the timeline itself states 4.6, etc. It would be optimal to (1) choose one date and be consistent, and (2) mention the justification for this chosen date. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.121.97.12 ( talk) 06:41, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
I think this article should use time periods as well as the duration of the event occurrence to list and categorize events of the evolutionary history. Simply listing the duration it happened from present ages did not give much understanding to readers who don't have much background on geological time records. KnowledgeRequire ( talk) 21:11, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
In the article: The gravitational pull of the new Moon stabilises the Earth's fluctuating axis of rotation and sets up the conditions in which life formed There is a reference to Note 1, but the page referenced there mentions nothing about an axis or its stabilization. (I'm not claiming the claim is false, just that if it is true there should be a reference for it.) Jamesdowallen ( talk) 15:41, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
Good point. I found a reliable reference, in a site sponsored by NASA: Astrobiology Magazine, and have added the reference to the article. NameIsRon ( talk) 03:42, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
It jumps from arthropods to "complex animals", then fish. Is "fish and proto-amphibians" synonymous with that, more or less? Would chordate/vertebrate be a useful thing? It sounds more useful than "complex animals", which I realize is not the same thing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.224.239.114 ( talk) 15:48, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
Hi. Please see Template talk:Life graphical timeline#Reverse order? Chronological? and reply here or there. Thanks. -- Quiddity ( talk) 18:46, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
The previous version gave the origin of both ants and termites as 80 million years ago. This is very wrong for termites, as you can easily see by going to the termites page. I did not put termites back into the chronology, since I am not really sure what the date should be. I suggest that someone should check all the dates. Vegasprof ( talk) 16:22, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
There is a LOT of overlap between these two articles; indeed I think much of that was copied from this one. A broader, geological as well as biological approach may help Timeline of evolution reach FL. Serendi pod ous 19:19, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Underneath the Life on Earth timeline it says "Dates prior to 1 billion years ago are speculative." I can't help thinking this isn't very satisfactory wording. Although it may be difficult to get accurate dates of events that happened that long ago, surely the estimates we do have have been arrived at using a scientific process rather than merely being speculation. Or am I splitting hairs? MFlet1 ( talk) 15:04, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
I don't agree very well with the image on the top of the page... it shows the history of life on this planet as some kind of line, rather than the sprawling, ever branching, ever widening increase in diversity (punctuated by extinction events) that it really was.
I suggest we replace it with a more suitable image... something like this one, for example:
http://evogeneao.com/images/Evo_large.gif
What do you think?
Obhave ( talk) 10:50, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Or maybe we should just remove the current lead image and let the "Life on Earth" brightly colored table act as the lead image? That would be quite nice...
Obhave ( talk) 10:58, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
In addition to describing the evolution of life on Earth, the current article also discusses a related subject of the origin of life, which is arguably outside the scope. Moreover, what little information is provided on the origin of life primarily argues that life on Earth emerged from Earth itself, and does so despite there being no direct or indirect evidence for this (to my knowledge). To make our article more accurate and better reflect the specific aims of Wikipedia, I suggest we remove all information that describes life's origin, and instead link the reader to abiogenesis. Perhaps if anything is to be written for the origin of life on Earth in our article here, it should be a clear statement that it is uncertain how life first emerged, or whether life on Earth emerged through abiogenesis on Earth at all, or instead/additionally was transported to Earth from elsewhere in the solar system/galaxy/universe. Please comment if you have objections to this potentially imminent, non-minor edit. Besh ( talk) 12:39, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
I'm sure cites exist for all these points on the timeline but there's not many in the article. By the time you get to the Paleozoic, they're almost extinct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.207.145.188 ( talk) 11:48, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
Is there any good reason why the basic section so favours frst Chordate organisms and then primates, great apes and humans. This to me seems to tie in to a largely discredited view that the purpose or crown of evolution and our ancestors, e.g. in Wonderful Life (book) by Stephen Jay Gould. The section also has no refs, and while the detailed sections may suffer from a similar bias it is to a much lesser extent. I dont want refs that primates merged etc but refs that these are the most important events in the biology of the last few hundred million years. So I propose we simply remove the section. IMO the article will be just as good without it. ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 21:59, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
Is there any reason to have these tables? IMO it can be better formatted without using these tables, and just highlight each time period and have its text as a paragraph. There are articles where tables are great but I seriously question whether this is one of them.
The list doesn't mention when was Plantae appared on Earth? I think that's important!-- 181.27.184.97 ( talk) 18:42, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
changed captions, removing "complex" from precambrian multicellulars and calling cambrian "many kinds of multicellular" as the Cambrian explosion did not concern only land organisms and the precambrian organisms were few and simple by comparison. CharlesHBennett ( talk) 23:49, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
Someone be so kind as to place the annotation where at each junction of an extinction event, multitudes of still remaining subsets begin to deviate and find niches, each one evolving on their own in seperate ways, adapting, changing slightly in chromosome contents when each adaptation favours one over the over, and overal spread out at a very rapid pace.
86% of all life extinct, implies all traces no longer pertinent, which is not correct. The smallest living relative of a dinosaur is a lizard, one of the larger ones, the crocodile. So yes, of the multitude of species, the larger ones vanished, but solely to be replaced by meriat slightly changed smaller ones, spreading out rapidly. One lizard, lays a 100 eggs, and without predation, 86% of these could very well survive into a next generation, with a good proportion with a slight chromosomic distinction.
Therefore: Extinction 1: 86% gone, 1 million years later, 150% other subsets (in niches). Extinction 2: 86% gone, 1 million years later, 150% other subsets (in niches). Extinction 3. same Extinction 4. same
Extinction 5. Now we have a junction, 86% gone, but the only dumb niche there is, is a loft, room or other 3x3, therefore NO increment and moving out, and no other species but that species. It'll take a few hundreds of millions of years to redo that what was/came before (if not a few billion), and most any scientist would be willing to state: Can that be without any brains at all, after all, 7 billion niches, all of the same minuscule capacity and no overal instance of any indication that those will ever produce any distinct subgroups. :) Extinctions aren't that bad, if it's the right species that becomes extinct. Tough luck for us. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.88.245.101 ( talk) 23:21, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
Shouldn't it be "Timeline of the evolutionary history of life"? Abyssal ( talk) 12:26, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
These changes to the timeline information are going to need more explanation, especially since the sources being replaced are newer than the ones added. ... discospinster talk 19:17, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
It does appear that while some sources do indeed indicate a date of first plant life of around ~470 mya, the sources that I have listed, that have been shared around other websites including ones hosted by universities, it does appear that they are accurate. Since this information is new, it makes sources would have not "caught on" to the earlier date for plant evolution. In addition, it appears as if the 4.28 billion years ago for the date for life appears to contradict other sources (including other Wikipedia pages) which say that life may have arisen later, and that the 4.28 figure is not confirmed, and that 4.1-3.8 bya is more reasonable. Also, the chart for the evolution of life now has Land Plants at 1 bya, and I think it would be a good idea to keep Wikipedia consistent. I propose that we keep the 1 bya for earliest evidence of plant life, but do not say that such plant life's existence has been confirmed until a later date. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Ryan Shakiba (
talk •
contribs) 21:20, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
I noticed their recent removal. While I don't think I was the one who added them, this article may likely be the best candidate for their inclusion (they were indeed removed at other places where they seemed out of line too). — Paleo Neonate – 04:55, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
Pinging Plantdrew for their input. Thanks, — Paleo Neonate – 04:57, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
The date in the article looks too early. The Great American Interchange happened, according to its own article, 2.7 million years ago, even though there might have been instances of migration before then. The phrasing in this article seems to imply that the majority of species crossed 9.5 million years ago, which is false. Hyxl4161 ( talk) 01:37, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
I understand the writing "megaannum" (which the wikipedia spellchecker just corrected to "mega annum") from words like "megatons". However, google returns "megaannum" with a question whether I meant mega-annum. And, in my opinion, the latter should be entered here in this article for better readability and compliance with spellcheckers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LMSchmitt ( talk • contribs) 05:50, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
Under "Archean Eon" we have
4100–3800 Ma ... "Remains of biotic life" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia.[22][23]
but later:
3800 Ma ... The earliest evidences for life on Earth are 3.8 billion-year-old biogenic hematite in a banded iron formation of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in Canada
Which? Geoffrey.landis ( talk) 16:22, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
Is anybody able to provide an authoritative reference in answer to that question? I can't seem to find the answer on the Internet, although I recall reading an estimate in an article I can no longer find. It was up there around 10 to the power of something. 2600:8801:B011:300:A0B9:F42B:4906:8956 ( talk) 14:35, 19 February 2021 (UTC)Thanks, James.
The Palaeozoic Era, Mesozoic Era and Cenozoic Era sections have little citations. This is why I added {{More citations needed|section|date=September 2022}} to them. @ Chiswick Chap NiceWikiEditor5 ( talk) 15:13, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
This article makes two pretty bold claims about the appearance of fungi:
Regarding (1): Clicking on this label in the timeline takes you to Evolution of Fungi, wherein there is little support for the claim of fungi appearing 1.5 bya. This claim appears to stem from a widely cited study by Heckman et al. (2001) which argues for fungi diverging around 1500 mya. However, a later study from Lücking et al. (2009) found a more plausible earliest divergence date of 1 bya, and an even more recent study from Tedersoo et al. (2018) found a divergence time of Holomycota from Holozoa at around 1.2 bya.
Regarding (2): This claim, as pointed out by @ Geoffrey.landis above, is inconsistent with other claims elsewhere in the article. The actual claim in the table only cites a news article about the aforementioned 2001 study, based on an interview with one of the authors of the then-upcoming paper and published before the paper itself. A much more recent article by Loron et al. (2019) claims to have found the earliest direct evidence of fungi on land in a 1 billion-year-old fossil.
Another problem with (1) is evident when you look at the label for "earliest animal" in the timeline. In its current state, the timeline's labels for earliest fungi and animals seem to rest on completely different definitions of "fungi" vs. "animals". The label for fungi appears to refer not to Eumycota (true fungi), but rather to Holomycota (all fungus-like organisms). By this logic, since Holomycota and Holozoa (being sister groups within Opisthokonta) diverged at the same time, we should be saying that the earliest "animals" and the earliest "fungi" both appeared around ~1.2 bya (according to Tedersoo et al.). But in the timeline, the "earliest animals" label sensibly points to the earliest proposed Metazoan (true animal) fossil species, and not to the proposed divergence of Holozoa (all animal-like organisms) based on molecular evidence. I think it would be far more sensible to use the same definitions for fungi and animals in the timeline – that is, to point to the earliest proposed Eumycota fossil (e.g. the Ourasphaira giraldae discussed by Loron et al.?).
It's not clear to me what exact claims should replace (1) and (2). Can any (palaeo)mycologists weigh in here? Adrianrorheim ( talk) 13:44, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 00:07, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
This has probably been raised before but there is an inconsistency here which perhaps wants an airing. If I click on 'earliest multicellular life' in the diagram which appears against 1550 Ma it takes me to the article on the disputed Francevillian biota which is dated at 2.1 Ma. Perhaps it ought to direct elsewhere e.g., Multicellular_organism ? cheers Geopersona ( talk) 11:05, 7 November 2023 (UTC)