The timetree of life

"This authoritative reference work brings together, for the first time, experts on all major groups of organisms to assemble a timetree of life. The result is a comprehensive resource on evolutionary history which will be an indispensable reference for scientists, educators, and students in the life sciences, earth sciences, and molecular biology. For each major group of organism, a representative is illustrated and a timetree of families and higher taxonomic groups is shown. Basic aspects of the evolutionary history of the group, the fossil record, and competing hypotheses of relationships are discussed. Detaisl of the divergence times are presented for each node in the timetree, and primary literature references are included. The book is complemented by an online database (www.timetree.org) which allows researchers to both deposit and retrieve data."
"This is a comprehensive reference source on the evolution of life, especially the family tree of organisms and when they originated in time. More than 100 experts on different organisms have distilled the latest research on the evolution of life, primarily from analyses of gene sequences but also from the fossil record. - ;The evolutionary history of life includes two primary components: phylogeny and timescale. Phylogeny refers to the branching order (relationships) of species or other taxa within a group and is crucial for understanding the inheritance of traits and for erecting classificati."@en