A phylogenetic tree, also known as a phylogeny, is a diagram that depicts the lines of evolutionary descent of different species, organisms, or genes from a common ancestor. Phylogenies are useful ...

After 3.8 billion years of evolution, the tree of life has branched again and again, with some branches dying out and others with living descendants out at the branch tips.

When linguists talk about the historical relationship between languages, they use a tree metaphor. An ancient source (say, Indo-European) has various branches (e.g., Romance, Germanic), which ...