A branching diagram that shows the evolutionary relationships among various species or groups based on their shared characteristics and common ancestry. The branching points represent speciation events.
From Greek 'phylon' meaning 'tribe or race' and 'genetikos' meaning 'of birth', combined with 'tree' from Old English 'treow'. The concept was first developed by Ernst Haeckel in 1866 who drew the first 'tree of life' showing evolutionary relationships.
Phylogenetic trees are like family trees for all life on Earth - they show that you're more closely related to mushrooms than mushrooms are to plants! Every branching point represents an ancient ancestor, and the tips of the branches are all the species alive today or in the fossil record.
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