A clue to the taxonomically challenged about our heritage?

The tree of life

The various divisions of the Earth's diverse creatures drawn in proportion to the numbers of species in each grouping as a percentage of all known life on earth.

Each segment of the "deep dish" biological pie stands for the relative abundance by mass of each type of life.

Encased within our genetic inheritance is the record of races long extinct.

But with some cousins its harder to explain their relations with other family members. For that reason the common genes along each different species' genome are compared to find common codons across groups such as HOX genes that relate to the development of body plans.

Two Rival trees:

Six Kingdoms and Two Domains,

or

"The hidden hand."

	Five kingdom system**
	• Monera
	Ediacarian amalgamation & symbiosis
	• Protoctista *
• Fungi		• Animals
	• Plants

* “first established beings” 250,000 species, p. 65

** Diagram, p. 31

This dialectic grows ever older with every step taken in this "garden of forking paths."

JVS

Vernal Equinox, 04

Could there six kingdoms on

?

“Evolution is simply all history.”
“change through time...the convoluted history of which we are the living legacy”

Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet, p. 24.

“Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution.”

Theodosius Dobzhansky
quoted in Symbiotic Planet, p. 24.

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