Explore Darwin's Tree of Life
4 February 2009
'Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life' was broadcast on Sunday night (1 February) as part of the BBC's Darwin season. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, the programme featured a dynamic and cutting-edge animated 'fly through' of the history of life on Earth, commissioned by the Wellcome Trust.
The animation, produced by Shadow Industries, is called the Tree of Life, and it forms a very special part of the Wellcome Trust's activities to celebrate the bicentenary of Charles Darwin in 2009.
In addition to Sir David's programme, the animation is available on YouTube and is also online as an interactive that you can explore to discover the evolutionary links between key species, both extinct and living.
The Tree of Life website has been made under a Creative Commons licence. This means the Tree of Life files are downloadable and can be used at home, in schools, zoos and museums free of charge, as long as it is not for profit.
The original Tree of Life was Charles Darwin's first attempt to illustrate his theory of evolution. It is still the model used by biologists and zoologists to demonstrate the relationships between all the different species on earth.
