Looking out from Paviland cave, Palaeolithic burial site in foreground. (0)PUBLIC DOMAIN
Paviland Cave on the Gower peninsula of south Wales was the site for one of the oldest ceremonial burials in Western Europe, the misnamed Red Lady of Paviland. Tides make this cave rather difficult to access, and on a recent visit I couldn’t find many online details about accessing the cave by foot. I found two ways to reach the cave, one a short but rather dangerous scramble. Continue reading
A revised universal tree of life
Here’s a new depiction of the ‘universal evolutionary tree of life’ which incorporates some recent advances in the field. In particular, some fast-evolving taxa that are known spuriously placed in previous ribosomal RNA trees have been omitted (e.g. microsporidia, which are known to fall within the fungi), and it also illustrates the increasingly popular idea that Eukaryotes nest within the Archaea. Unlike some other universal trees on the internet, this is shown as an unrooted tree, which is a more conservative approach than the (arguable) rooting of the tree of life between Eubacteria and Archaea. The tree has the distinct advantage that it (more or less) correctly reflects our understanding of the major groups of Eukaryotes (including plants, fungi & animals). In my opinion it is a more accurate depiction of our state of knowledge than other ‘universal trees of life’ commonly found on the internet. Continue reading