The Tree of Life: Mapping Evolution’s Greatest Story, with Max Telford

Apr 24, 2025

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INSIGHT

What Is an Evolutionary Tree?

Evolutionary trees depict relationships by tracing all living things back to a single common ancestor.
Species diversify over time splitting into branches on this vast family tree of life.

INSIGHT

Human Urge to Categorize Relates

Humans have a natural compulsion to categorize and trace family lineages.
Evolutionary trees combine categorization with lineage to show deep relationships among species beyond appearances.

ANECDOTE

Sea Squirts' Larval Surprise

Sea squirts were once misclassified as mollusks due to their jelly-like appearance.
Their tadpole-like larval stage revealed they are related to vertebrates, illustrating challenge in classification.

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Understanding how the diversity of life on earth came to be is one of the greatest puzzles in biology. In his new book, The Tree of Life: Solving Science's Greatest Puzzle, Professor Max Telford charts a four-billion-year journey through the evolution of our planet, from humans, fish and butterflies to oak trees, mushrooms and bacteria.

On today’s episode, Professor Telford sheds light on an epic history of the family tree that records the relationships between every living thing - from Darwin’s early sketches to the vast computer generated diagrams scientists are building today, this is an epic history of the gigantic

Professor Max Telford is an evolutionary biologist and the Jodrell Chair of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at University College London, where he founded the Centre for Life's Origins and Evolution and the Telford Lab.

Joining Telford to discuss the book is Güneş Taylor, Fellow at the Centre for Reproductive Health and science communicator.

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