With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Charles Darwin's tree of life is 'wrong and misleading', claim scientists

Charles Darwin's tree of life, which shows how species are related, is " wrong" and "misleading", claim scientists.

They believe the concept misleads us because his theory limits and even obscures the study of organisms and their ancestries.

Evolution is far too complex to be explained by a few roots and branches, they claim.

In Darwin's The Origin of Species, published in 1859, the British naturalist drew a diagram of an oak to depict how one species can evolve into many.

But not much was known about primitive life forms or genetics back then when he was only dealing with plants and animals – long before there was any real comprehension of DNA or bacteria.

Researchers say although for much of the past 150 years biology has largely concerned itself with filling in the details of the tree it is now obsolete and needs to be discarded.
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)