Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Climbing life's tree

Nature volume 412, page 487 (2001)Cite this article

As these efforts at classification often failed, palaeontologists changed tack, creating countless high-level categories for fossils. At best, problematic groups were tagged as, for instance, 'annelid-like', given their own class or phylum, and cheerfully connected to the tree of life with dotted lines and question marks. This gave rise to the view that early evolution was different from 'standard' microevolution, with living groups of organisms suddenly appearing amid fireworks of excess 'body plans'. The most popular victim of this muddle has undoubtedly been the origin of animals in the 'Cambrian explosion'. Yet this amazing pattern — the inspiration for entire books devoted to analyses of its supporting mechanisms — is entirely the consequence of bad systematics.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Norbyvägen 22, Uppsala, SE-752 36, Sweden

    Graham Budd

Authors
  1. Graham Budd
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Budd, G. Climbing life's tree. Nature 412, 487 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35087679

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35087679

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing